him, thinking she would put him in my arms, but instead she put him down on the side and gave a sort of shudder.
‘“I know what to do,” she said. “Don’t worry, Mrs Ockwell. It is a simple thing and cannot fail. We will get him changed back in no time, don’t you fret.”
‘That’s when I saw. Those slanting eyes of his and that funny little moon face and his ears that are so curious. He was an odd little fellow, a … a dainty creature … and I thought, Is that really mine? Did that really come out of my belly? How did it get in there? I had never seen a baby like it. But Beattie knew what he was.’
All the while she told, Margot was rocking the girl as though she were no weight at all, like a much smaller child.
‘Let me guess,’ said Rita. ‘A changeling?’
Margot nodded. ‘Beattie went down to the kitchen to set a fire going. I expect you know what she was going to do – put him over the fire, and when he got a bit warm and started to squeal, his fairy folk would come and fetch him back and leave my stolen baby in return. She called up the stairs, “I shall want more kindling and a big pot.” I heard her go out the back to the wood store.
‘I couldn’t take my eyes off him, little fairy creature that he was. He gave a blink and the way his eyelid – you know what it is like, not straight like yours and mine, but set at an angle – it closed over the eye not quite like a normal baby, but nearly. I thought, What does he make of this strange world he’s come to? What does he make of me, his foster mother? He moved his arms, not altogether like my baby girls used to, but more floppy – like he was swimming. A baby frown came into his face and I thought, He will cry in a minute. He’s cold. Beattie hadn’t wrapped him up or anything. Fairy children can’t be so very different from the ones I know, I thought, because I can tell he’s getting cold. I put my fingertips against his little cheek and he was all wonder, quite astonished! When I took my finger away his little mouth opened and he mewed like a kitten to have it back. I felt my milk rise at his cry.
‘Beattie wasn’t half cross when she came back and found him suckling. Human milk!
‘“Well,” she said, “it’s too late now.”
‘And that was that.’
‘Thank goodness,’ said Rita, at the end of the story. ‘I’ve heard the stories about changelings, but that’s all they are. Jonathan is no fairy child. Some children are just born like that. Beattie might not have seen it before, but I have. There are other children in the world just the same as Jonathan, with the same slanting eyes and large tongues and loose limbs. Some doctors call them Mongol children, because they resemble people from that part of the world.’
Margot nodded. ‘He is a human child, isn’t he? I know it now. He’s mine and Joe’s. But the reason I was thinking about it now is because of this little one. She’s not like Jonathan, is she? She’s not a – what did you call it? – Mongol child? She’s different in some other way. It’s not easy raising a child who’s different. But I’ve done it. I know how to do it. So even if she can’t hear, and even if she don’t speak …’ Margot clutched the child closer in her arms, took a breath and suddenly remembered the man in the bed. ‘But I suppose she belongs to him.’
‘We’ll know soon enough. It won’t be long before he wakes.’
‘What is that Lily doing now, anyway? I shall have to go and fetch her in if she’s still there. It’s too cold for a body to be praying out of doors – she’ll be frozen stiff.’
She went to the window to peer out, the child still in her arms.
Margot felt it and Rita saw it: the child quickened. She lifted her head. Her sleepy stare was suddenly keen. She gazed one way and the other, scanning the view with lively interest.
‘What is it?’ said Rita, rising urgently and crossing the room. ‘Is it Mrs White?’
‘She’s gone,’ Margot told her. ‘There’s nothing there. Only the river.’