in the grey and lingered, and twice in a row the afternoons were dry. There came to be a sense of expectation as the longest day drew near.
Solstice day dawned – and the sun shone.
‘In fact,’ thought Henry Daunt as he set up his camera outside the church for the wedding photograph, ‘it’s too bright. I’ll have to take it here, sheltered from the glare.’
The celebrants came out of the church. The parson was his summer self: this morning he had opened his window and stood naked to the waist, feeling the sun on his white chest and his pale face, saying, ‘Glory, glory, glory!’ Only he knew this, but everyone saw his lively smile and enjoyed his vigorous shake of the hand as they came down the steps.
Daunt positioned Owen and his new wife at the spot that was just right and arranged Mrs Albright’s hand through Mr Albright’s arm. Owen, who was struggling to remember to call his wife Bertha and not Mrs O’Connor, knew what it was to have his portrait taken; he had done it once before, some years ago. Bertha had seen a great number of photographs, so she too knew what to do. The pair held themselves stiffly upright and turned grave, proud faces towards the camera. Even the teasing from Owen’s drinking pals at the Swan could not crack their solemn faces, and their newly married dignity was transferred by sunlight on to glass, where it would outlive them for a long, long time.
When it was done, the wedding party gathered itself for the walk along the riverbank. ‘What a day!’ they said as they went, looking up to the clear blue sky. ‘What a splendid day!’ And they came, a joyful procession, to the Swan at Radcot, where Margot had put flowers on the tables on the riverbank and the Little Margots were waiting with pitchers of cool drinks covered with beaded cloths.
The events of six months ago seemed very distant now, for on a summer’s day winter always feels like something you have dreamt or heard spoken of, and not a thing you have lived. The unexpected sun made their skin tingle, they felt sweat at the backs of their necks, and a goosebump was suddenly a thing impossible to imagine. Yet the longest day of summer is the reversed twin of winter’s long night, and, this being so, one solstice inevitably recalls the other; and if there were some who did not connect the two days, Owen himself reminded them.
‘Six months ago,’ he told the wedding party, ‘I decided to make Bertha my wife. Inspired by the miracle that happened here at the Swan that you all know of – the rescue of little Amelia Vaughan, who was found dead and came to life again – I felt like a new man, and requested the hand in marriage of my housekeeper, and Bertha did me the honour of accepting …’
After the speeches, talk of the girl was renewed. Events that had taken place on this very riverbank, in the dark and in the cold, were retold under an azure sky, and perhaps it was an effect of the sunshine, but the darker elements of the tale were swept away and a simpler, happier narrative came to the fore. A little girl who had been kidnapped was returned to her parents, making her and the Vaughans and the whole community very happy. A wrong was righted, a family restored. The great-aunt of one of the gravel-diggers tried to say that she had seen the child on the riverbank and that the girl had no reflection, but she was hushed; no one wanted a ghostly tale today. The cider cups were refilled, the Little Margots came one after the other and indistinguishably with plates of ham and cheese and radishes, and the wedding party had enough joy to drown out all doubt, all darkness. Six months ago, a miraculous story had burst wildly and messily into the Swan; today it was neatened, pressed, and put away without a crease in it.
Mr Albright kissed Mrs Albright, who blushed red as the radishes, and at noon precisely the party rose as one to continue their celebrations by joining the fair.
Between Radcot’s neatly hedged fields was an awkwardly shaped piece of land that had fallen to common use. Today it contained stalls of all kinds and all sizes. Some of them were professional-looking affairs with awnings to protect the goods from the sun; others were