He raised his hand to his face, and this time, knowing that the insensate padding was his skin, detected a line of spikes. The tips of his eyelashes, their length half buried in the inflamed lids. He applied clumsy pressure above and below the line and pulled apart—‘No!’ the woman cried, but it was too late. Light pierced his eye, and he gasped. It was the pain, and something else besides: on its wave the light carried an image and it was the image he had dreamt. The drifting girl, his future child, infant of his imagination.
‘Is this your little girl?’ said the newcomer.
A child whose eyes were the colour of the Thames and as inexpressive.
Yes, said his leaping heart. Yes. Yes.
‘No,’ he said.
A Tragic Tale
ALL THROUGH THE hours of daylight the drinkers had been discussing events at the Swan. Everybody knew that Mr and Mrs Vaughan were in Margot and Joe’s private sitting room at the back, where they had been reunited with Amelia. Word had also got about that a rich Negro, Robert Armstrong from Kelmscott, had been there at first light and that his son was expected later. The name Robin Armstrong was broadcast.
A curtain was drawn back in every man’s inner theatre and their storytelling minds got to work. On the stage were the same four figures: Mr Vaughan, Mrs Vaughan, Robin Armstrong and the girl. The scenes that played out in the many heads were full of striking melodrama. There were seething looks, dark glances, calculating squints. Words were delivered in hisses, with stern decorum and in shrill alarm. The child was snatched from party to party, like a doll amongst jealous children. One farmhand of a counting disposition found his mind arranging an auction of the child, while the brawlers who had temporarily deserted the Plough indulged in fantasies in which Mr Vaughan drew a weapon from his inner pocket – revolver? dagger? – and set about Mr Armstrong with a true father’s determination. One ingenious mind returned the power of speech to the child at the moment of highest tension: ‘Papa!’ she called, lifting her arms to Mr Armstrong and dashing for ever the hopes of the Vaughans, who fell weeping into each other’s embrace. The role of Mrs Vaughan in these theatricals was confined largely to weeping, which she accomplished sometimes in a chair, frequently on the floor, and ending generally in a faint. One young cressman, in a flourish he was most proud of, imagined a role for the unconscious man in the bed: coming round from his long slumber and hearing an altercation in the next room, he would rise and enter the sitting room (stage left) and there, like Solomon, declare that the child must be sliced in two and given half to the Vaughans and half to Armstrong. That would do it.
When the last of the day had drained from the sky and it was past five o’clock and the river ran glinting in the darkness, a man rode up to the Swan and dismounted. The noise of the winter room was deafening, and before anyone noticed the door opening to let the man in, he had already closed it behind him. He stood for a little while, hearing his name in the general din, before anybody remarked on his presence, and even when they did see him, they failed to realize he was the one they were expecting. Those who had an idea what the older Mr Armstrong looked like – and the story was already being circulated that he was the bastard son of a prince and a slave girl – were waiting for a tall, strong and dark-skinned fellow; no wonder they did not recognize this young man, for he was pale and slender, with light-brown hair that fell into soft curls where it touched his collar. There was something of the boy still about him: his eyes were so palely blue they seemed nothing but reflection and his skin was soft like a girl’s. Margot was the first to spot him and she was not sure whether it was her maternal or her womanly instincts that stirred at the sight of him, for whether he was youth or man, he was pleasing to the eye.
He made his way to Margot. When he told her his name in an undertone, she drew him away from the public room and into the little corridor at the back that was lit by a single candle.