A woman was beckoning him to a lower-floor window at the next-door house. As he approached she leant forwards, candle in hand, yellow hair escaping from her nightcap.
‘What does she look like?’
He started again with the white skin and the nondescript hair, but she shook her head. ‘I mean, who does she look like? Does she look like the fellow?’
‘The state he’s in, I’d say there ain’t nobody on earth looks like him.’
‘Has he got the same hair? Limp and mousy?’
‘His is dark and wiry.’
‘Ah!’ She nodded meaningfully and left a dramatic pause while she gazed at him. ‘Did she remind you of anyone?’
‘It’s funny you should ask … I had the feeling she reminded me of someone, but I can’t think who.’
‘Is it …?’ She beckoned him closer and whispered a name in his ear.
When he stood back from her, his mouth was open and his eyes wide.
‘Oh!’ he said.
She gave him a look. ‘She would be about four now, wouldn’t she?’
‘Yes, but …’
‘Keep it under your hat,’ she said. ‘I work up there. I’ll let them know in the morning.’
Fred was called then by the others. How did the man, the girl and a camera fit in a boat small enough to go under Devil’s Weir? He explained there was no camera in the boat. So how did they make the fellow out to be a photographer if he had no camera? Because of what was in his pockets. What was in his pockets, again?
He gave in to demand, telling the story once and again, and the second time he put more detail in, and the third time he anticipated the questions before they arose, and by the fourth time he had it just so. He left out the idea planted by the neighbour with the yellow hair. Finally, an hour after he arrived and frozen to the core, Frederick took his leave.
In the barn he told the story once more, in a mutter, to the horses. They opened their eyes and listened unsurprised to the beginning of the story. By the time he was halfway through they had returned to sleep, and before the end, so had he.
Back at his cousin’s cottage was an outbuilding, partly concealed by shrubs. Behind it, a pile of old rags with a hat on top organized itself into a man, albeit a scruffy one, and struggled to its feet. He waited to be sure that Frederick Heavins was out of the way, and then set off himself. Towards the river.
As Owen Albright followed the river downstream to reach the comfortable house he had bought in Kelmscott when he returned from his lucrative adventures on the sea, he didn’t feel the cold. Usually the walk home from the Swan was a time for regret – regret that his joints ached so badly, that he had drunk too much, that the best of life had passed him by and he had only aches and pains ahead of him now, a gradual decline till at the end he would sink into the grave. But having witnessed one miracle, he now saw miracles everywhere: the dark night sky his old eyes had ignored thousands of times before tonight unfolded itself above his head with the vastness of eternal mystery. He stopped to stare up and marvel. The river was splashing and chiming like silver on glass; the sound spilt into his ear, resonated in chambers of his mind he’d never known existed. He lowered his head to look at the water. For the first time in a lifetime by the river, he noticed – really noticed – that under a moonless sky the river makes its own mercurial light. Light that is also darkness; darkness that is also light.
A few things came home to him then – things he had always known but that had been buried under the days of his life. That he missed his father, who had died more than sixty years ago when Owen was still a boy. That he had been lucky in life and had much to be thankful for. That the woman waiting for him at home in bed was a kind and loving soul. And more: his knees didn’t hurt as much as usual, and there was an expansiveness in his chest that reminded him of how it had been to be young.
At home, he shook Mrs Connor’s shoulder before he had even undressed.
‘Don’t go thinking what you’re thinking,’ she grumbled. ‘And don’t bring the cold