This afternoon she had noticed that one of the floor tiles in the kitchen was sticking up. Tile edges had always protruded here and there. She was used to them shifting a little when she walked about. But this tile had seemed more uneven than before. She had nudged the high edge with her toe to straighten it; as it sank, a silvery line of water appeared round its edges. Prising up the tile, Lily had seen water underneath. She had hurried to forget it. Now she remembered.
Lily raised herself on one elbow and peered down to the kitchen.
In the weak light, her first impression was that everything had shrunk. The table was shorter than it ought to be and the sink was nearer the floor. The chair was stunted. Then she caught a movement: the tin bath rocked gently, like a cradle. The dull terracotta floor tiles had disappeared and over them lay a broad flatness that shifted and shimmered like a thing making up its mind.
Though she could not see it grow, it was growing: at first it was inches from the bottom rung of the ladder, then it reached it, and then it swallowed it altogether. It crept slowly but persistently up the walls and pressed against the door.
It occurred to Lily that the thing was perhaps not looking for her, after all. ‘It wants the way out,’ she thought. When it was nearing the second rung, her fear of action was overtaken by her fear of inaction.
‘It’ll be no different from standing in a bath tub,’ she told herself as she descended the ladder, ‘only colder, that’s all.’
Three-quarters of the way down, she gathered up her chemise into a bundle and tucked it in her armpit. Another step and then, with the next one – in!
It came above her knees and, as she waded, resisted her. She pressed on, and her movement roused it into swirls and eddies around her body.
The door was reluctant to open. The wood swelled in the wet, it warped the door and made it stick in the jamb. She put all her weight on it, but nothing happened. In a panic she rammed it with her shoulder; it loosened from the frame to stand ajar, but still was stiff. Lily let go of her chemise, which trailed in the water, and gave the door a great double-handed shove. Against resistance she pushed it wide open – on to a new world.
The sky had fallen into Lily’s yard. Its dawn-grey had come to earth and lain itself over grass, rocks, paths and weeds. Clouds floated at knee height. Lily stared in bewilderment. Where was the basketman’s flood post? Where was the new flood post? She lifted her gaze automatically to the river, but it was gone. A flat silver stillness lay over everything. Here and there a tree emerged out of it and was reflected in its polished finish along with the sky. Every dip and crevice in the landscape was flattened out, every detail concealed, every incline erased. All was simple and bare and flat, and the air was luminous.
Lily swallowed. Tears welled in her. She hadn’t thought it would be like this. She had expected heaving masses of water, violent currents and murderous waves, not this serenity without end. Motionless, she stood in her doorway, staring at the fearful loveliness. It barely moved, just shimmered at times, peacefully alive. A swan came gliding across the water; the trail it left in the clouds settled into flatness.
Were there fish? she wondered.
She stepped carefully out from her cottage, trying to disturb the water as little as possible. Her nightdress hem was already sodden; now the water crept up, plastering it to her legs.
She took two more steps down the slope and the water rose to her thighs.
Onwards. The water came to her waist.
You could see shapes down there, flickering movements of things alive under the surface. Once your eye had worked out what to look for, you saw the slivers of motion everywhere, and with a thrill Lily felt it too in her own veins. Another step. Another. She came to a place and thought, This is where the old post is. You could just see it, under the water. How strangely marvellous to be here on the bank, with the water higher than it had ever been in the entire lifetime of the old post. Was this fear? She was in the grip of a great feeling, something many times vaster than fear – but she was not afraid.
How odd I must look, she thought. A chest and a head above water, reflected upside down beneath my own chin.
Grass and plants waved dreamily in their new world beneath the surface. Ahead of her the silver gave way to a darker, shadowy place. This was where the bank fell away more steeply. This was where the current would be, still there, under the surface. I won’t go any further, she thought. I’ll stop here.
There were lots more fish here, and also – Oh! – something larger, pinkly fleshy. It floated slowly and heavily in the water, was coming her way, but just out of reach.
Lily stretched out an arm for the body. If she could just catch a limb with one hand and draw it to her …
Was it too far? The little body drifted closer. In a moment it would be at its nearest point, but still out of reach.
Without thought, without fear, Lily launched forwards.
Her fingers closed on the pink limb.
There was nothing beneath her feet but water.
Jonathan Tells a Story
‘MY OWN SON!’ Armstrong groaned, with a distraught shake of the head, when he had finished his story.
‘Not your son, though,’ Margot reminded him. ‘He had his true father in him, I’m sad to say.’
‘I must make amends. How it can be done I do not know, but I must find a way. And before that, there is a task I dread but must not put off. I must tell the Vaughans what happened to their daughter, and my son’s part in it.’
‘It is not the time to tell Mrs Vaughan about it now,’ Rita told him gently. ‘When Mr Vaughan returns, we will tell them together.’
‘Why is he not here?’
‘He is out with the other men, searching for the child. She is missing.’
‘Missing? Then I must search with them.’
Seeing his dazed face and his trembling hands, the women tried to dissuade him, but he would not be stopped. ‘At this moment it is the only thing I can do to help them, so I must do it.’
Rita returned to Helena, who was nursing her baby.
‘Is there any news?’ she asked.
‘Nothing yet. Mr Armstrong has joined the search. Try not to worry, Helena.’
The young mother looked down at her newborn and some of the worry melted from her face as she lay her smallest finger against his cheek and stroked it. She smiled. ‘I can see my own dear father in him, Rita! Isn’t that a gift!’
When no answer came, Helena glanced up. ‘Rita! Whatever’s the matter?’
‘I don’t know what my father looked like. Nor my mother, even.’
‘Don’t cry! Rita, dearest!’
Rita sat down next to her friend on the bed.
‘You can’t bear that she’s gone, can you?’
‘No. Before you came to claim her – that night a year ago – and before Armstrong turned up – and before Lily White – during that long night, when Daunt was unconscious in this very bed and I was in that chair, over there – I took her on my lap. We fell asleep together. I thought then that if it turned out she wasn’t Daunt’s, and if she had nobody in the world, that I …’
‘I know.’
‘You know? How?’
‘I saw you with her. You felt the same way we all did. Daunt feels it too.’
‘Does he? I just want to know where she is. I can’t bear her not being here.’