Waterland

by Graham Swift

  But what is the greater cause for astonishment that hangs over Kessling? What is the greater cause for alarm that presses, amidst all this destruction and confusion, on Kessling Hall, where on the second morning of the rain, while the roads are still passable – on the morning after Sarah’s funeral – the Atkinson family, with the exception of Arthur and his wife, have come in what must be considered, despite the natural desire of the bereaved for privacy and seclusion, a certain fugitive haste?

  Rumour is unleashed with the floodwaters. Rumour has it that on the night of the twenty-fifth of October the figure of a woman dressed in the style of fifty years ago is seen on the rain-soaked terrace of Kessling Hall, amongst the dripping urns and stone pineapples, tapping on the French windows for admittance. Dora Atkinson – for she is the witness – is roundly scolded for this fanciful vision. It is the product of reading too much Tennyson. And, in any case, how could Dora, who had not even been born at the time a certain fateful blow was struck on a certain head, be sure that what she had seen was the younger image of her grandmother? Her grandmother who was buried yesterday.

  Yet that Dora is shaken – by something – is plain. For the female servant who unloosed this rumour on to the world (though she did not do it till years afterwards, till old George and Alfred were both safely dead) found cause to loose another on its heels. Namely, that when Dora went to bed that night it was not to her own room but to that of her cousin, Louisa; it being a well-known fact that these two confirmed spinsters would occasionally, in times of stress – thunderstorms, floods, and the like – curl up in the same bed together, just like little children.

  Rumour is but rumour. But several rumours, of similar vein, from different sources, cannot be ignored. On the same night of the twenty-fifth, Jane Casburn, the wife of the sexton of St Gunnhilda’s, sees in the churchyard the form of a woman, in outmoded dress, bending imploringly over the grave of Sarah. She sees it – she is sure that she sees it – but she does not tell her husband till some time later, because the Ouse is in flood and the good man is helping with emergency arrangements.

  Back at Kessling, by the barge-pool and the maltings, more than one mystified if not frightened witness will later claim to have seen during these confused times a female shape, moving about the hithes and moorings in the manner of someone searching; seeming to glide, some say, over the rising water; seen in the maltings and seen again, more than once, outside the evacuated manager’s residence – at the door where Thomas Atkinson brought his young bride – seeming to implore entrance. Which was soon granted – if not to her, then to the swollen waters of the Leem.

  And at Gildsey, in the house overlooking Water Street (which is earning its name), in the room where—?

  But nobody knows what spectral visitations, if any, have occurred in the house which at present Arthur and Maud are occupying. The only rumour to emerge from that quarter – but it is a precise and corroborated one – is that in the early morning of the twenty-seventh the Atkinson doctor arrives, with some urgency.

  The waters rise: the waters return. Has she returned, too, not just from the dead but from the former life that was hers before a knock on the skull dislodged her brains and for ever jumbled up her past, present and future? Has she come back, to Gildsey, to Kessling, to seek her lost husband, her lost bridegroom who was once merry and not jealous?

  Do not ghosts prove – even rumours, whispers, stories of ghosts – that the past clings, that we are always going back …?

  But if Sarah Atkinson lies in her new grave, beside Thomas’s old grave, in St Gunnhilda’s churchyard, where the rain, soaking the soil, is already beginning the process by which their dust will be commingled, is she not already spiritually reunited with her lost husband for ever?

  The waters rise. They wash up rumours and strange reports of many kinds, but they also flow over them again and sweep them aside. The brothers will perhaps be grateful (though why should they be grateful?) for these floods which so dominate attention and divert thoughts to practical matters. When news is flying hither and thither of houses ruined, livestock lost, roads impassable, what heed is to be paid to hysterical gossip about ghostly women? And when the flood at last begins to abate and grim costs have to be reckoned, what will the ramblings of a few housewives, bumpkins and servants count against the praiseworthy efforts of George and Alfred to bring order again to a stricken countryside – or against the labours of Arthur, who while he shares the local burdens of his father and uncle, still has energy left to speak out from his bench in the Commons, on far weightier and wider matters.

  Yet someone will ask – when these floods have become a memory, when the Leem once more flows contentedly within its banks, when a new lock and sluice, beside a new lock-keeper’s cottage which will one day be the home of Henry Crick, regulate and guard its currents – how do we know that Sarah Atkinson lies in that grave beside her husband in St Gunnhilda’s churchyard?

  And somebody will dig up again that preposterous and much scorned and suppressed imputation that Sarah Atkinson was not only incarcerated in Wetherfield Asylum but, being a woman of uncanny powers, also escaped from it – some days before her own funeral. That, giving her custodians the slip and eluding pursuit, she scrambled (a woman of ninety-two, mark you) in nothing but her shift, across ditch and field, till she reached the banks of the Ouse. And here – so the ludicrous testimony of a bargee has it – she dived ‘like a very mermaid’ beneath the water never to surface again.

  But two things, for ever connected with those floods of ’74, are less in dispute. One is that numerous patrons of the Swan and the Pike and Eel and even of the Jolly Bargeman, who do not let a mere flood or even a cellarful of mud keep them from their tankards, notice a subtle change in their pints of ale. The beer is weak. It is watery. Is this a mental illusion brought about by so much rain and inundation? Or is it really the case that the floods have somehow infiltrated the Atkinson barrels, invaded the bowels of the brewery, and what they are drinking is – God forbid – part river-water? The brewers affirm that no such shameful dilutions have occurred, that the ale in question is none other than the good fortifying ale, made in the good old Atkinson manner. Yet the beer does not improve; and a large body of Gildsey opinion will rigidly maintain that – river-water and bad barrels apart – the beer brewed by the Atkinsons after those floods, after poor Sarah’s funeral, never was the same as the beer brewed before; that after 1874 – until a certain memorable time in the next century – Atkinson Ale, which for over fifty years had been the pride of Gildsey, was an inferior stuff. And whether this is true or not, the profits of Atkinson beers in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century show a gradual yet distinct decline.

  And the second thing concerns that doctor’s visit in the early morning to Cable House. What has brought him in such haste? Has something terrible taken place within? No – or, that is, no and perhaps yes too. For Mrs Arthur Atkinson, three weeks before her expected time, is being delivered of a son.

  What has induced this premature birth? Some sudden shock, at something seen, perhaps, in that upper room where Sarah, we are given to believe, breathed her last? The stress and agitation – which, who knows, might have betokened guilt as well as grief – attendant upon that rain-drenched funeral? Or was it that the swelling waters of the Fens, the bursting dykes, the rising river – already, through the window, visibly lapping at the foot of Water Street – awoke a mysterious affinity in Mrs Atkinson’s system and caused her own waters to break in sympathy? No one knows. But certain it is that on the twenty-seventh of October, 1874, Maud Atkinson is delivered of a baby son. And the baby lives and is healthy …

  And that is how, amid flood-fostered rumour, my grandfather, Ernest Atkinson, future owner of the Atkinson Brewery and the Atkinson Water Transport Company, came into the world.

  Meanwhile, the rain continues. It transforms the lands around the Ouse and Leem into an aqueous battlefield, it turns them back into
the old swamp they once were.

  Drainage. Begin again. The Cricks get to work.

  And down the swirling, swelling, slowly relenting Leem come willow branches, alder branches, fencing posts, bottles …

  10

  About the Question Why

  AND when you asked, as all history classes ask, as all history classes should ask, What is the point of history? Why history? Why the past? I used to say (until Price reiterated the question with a new slant to it – and that distinctly trembling lip): But your ‘Why?’ gives the answer. Your demand for explanation provides an explanation. Isn’t this seeking of reasons itself inevitably an historical process, since it must always work backwards from what came after to what came before? And so long as we have this itch for explanations, must we not always carry round with us this cumbersome but precious bag of clues called History? Another definition: Man, the animal which demands an explanation, the animal which asks Why.

  And what does this question Why imply? It implies – as it surely implies when you throw it at me rebelliously in the midst of our history lessons – dissatisfaction, disquiet, a sense that all is not well. In a state of perfect contentment there would be no need or room for this irritant little word. History begins only at the point where things go wrong; history is born only with trouble, with perplexity, with regret. So that hard on the heels of the word Why comes the sly and wistful word If. If it had not been for … If only … Were it not … Those useless Ifs of history. And, constantly impeding, deflecting, distracting the backward searchings of the question why, looms this other form of retrogression: If only we could have it back. A New Beginning. If only we could return …

  ‘Historia’ or ‘Inquiry’ (as in Natural History: the inquiry into Nature). To uncover the mysteries of cause and effect. To show that to every action there is a reaction. That Y is a consequence because X preceded. To shut stable doors, so that next time, at least, the horse— To know that what we are is what we are because our past has determined it. To learn (the history master’s hoary stand-by) from our mistakes so it will be better, in future …

  And to illustrate both our pressing need to ask the question why and the proposition that history begins with our sense of wrong, I used to ask you to liken the study of history to an inquest. Suppose we have on our hands a corpse – viz., the past. A corpse not always readily identifiable but now and then taking a specific and quite personal form. For example, the headless trunk of Louis XVI. Do we say of this corpse, Well, a corpse is a corpse and corpses don’t revive? No, we do not. We ask: Why did this corpse come to be a corpse? Answer: By accident – or because on a certain day in Paris when a certain guillotine was descending, Louis XVI happened to have his neck in the way. At which you would laugh, and prove your inquisitive minds, your detective spirit – your historical consciousness.

  But why, we ask, did Louis’ neck happen to be—?

  Because … And when we have gleaned that reason we will want to know, But why that reason? Because … And when we have that further reason, But why again—? Because … Why?… Because … Why?… Until, in order to find out why Louis died, it is necessary not only to reanimate in our imaginations his troubled life and times but even to penetrate the generations before him; by which stage that incessant question Whywhywhy has become like a siren wailing in our heads and a further question begins to loom: when – where – how do we stop asking why? How far back? When are we satisfied that we possess an Explanation (knowing it is not a complete explanation)? How – if only for a moment’s peace – do we turn off that wretched siren? Might it not be better (it can happen in extreme cases – witness my father’s one-time reply to inquiries about his Great War experiences) if we could acquire the gift of amnesia? But would not this gift of amnesia only release us from the trap of the question why into the prison of idiocy?

  I always taught you that history has its uses, its serious purpose. I always taught you to accept the burden of our need to ask why. I taught you that there is never any end to that question, because, as I once defined it for you (yes, I confess a weakness for improvised definitions), history is that impossible thing: the attempt to give an account, with incomplete knowledge, of actions themselves undertaken with incomplete knowledge. So that it teaches us no shortcuts to Salvation, no recipe for a New World, only the dogged and patient art of making do. I taught you that by forever attempting to explain we may come, not to an Explanation, but to a knowledge of the limits of our power to explain. Yes, yes, the past gets in the way; it trips us up, bogs us down; it complicates, makes difficult. But to ignore this is folly, because, above all, what history teaches us is to avoid illusion and make-believe, to lay aside dreams, moonshine, cure-alls, wonder-workings, pie-in-the-sky – to be realistic.

  So when your history teacher’s teachings are put to the test, when his wife, who is yet to be branded by the local press as ‘The Baby Snatcher of Lewisham’ and ‘The Child Thief of Greenwich’, delivers herself one Sunday afternoon of an inexplicable announcement, he obeys both human instinct and academic training. He drops everything (even the French Revolution) and tries to explain.

  But he already knows – though he carries on, in defiance of his professional superiors, risking, indeed, his whole career – that it’s not explaining he’s doing. Because he’s already reached the limits of his power to explain, just as his wife (a once dogged and patient woman) has ceased to be realistic – has ceased to belong to reality. Because it’s the inexplicable that keeps him jabbering on nineteen to the dozen like this and scurrying further and further into the past. Because when there’s no way forward the only way is— Because his children, who have bad dreams, suddenly want to listen, and although he’s trying to explain he’s really only telling a—

  11

  About Accidental Death

  SO WHEN the pathologist had presented his report and the witnesses – notably my father, Henry Crick, and Police Constable Wyebrow – had given their testimonies, the inquest into the death of Frederick Parr, sixteen, of Hockwell, Cambs, held at Gildsey Coroner’s Court on July 29th, 1943, reached the verdict that the deceased had died by accident. End of story.

  But sir! Sir! That can’t be all. What about that double bump on the head? What about that freaky brother? And this thing with you and Mary what’s-her-name? (Hey, we never knew you—) What about our detective spirit? Don’t stop, keep telling. That can’t be the end.

  Very well. No end of story.

  Because, for one reason, when the Coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death and the death certificate was signed and the order for burial drawn up, my father was still asking Whywhywhy. I could see the question tying new knots in his forehead, causing new twinges in that chronically troublesome knee and making him, when enough seemed enough, turn once more and continue pacing, on his evening sentry-walks on the tow-path.

  A coroner’s court is a court of law; though an inquest is not a trial. But my father, a simple and impressionable man, summoned by the coroner’s officer to attend as witness, was under every apprehension that he stood accused; that the purpose of this official gathering was not to ascertain how Freddie Parr had died but how he, Henry Crick, lock-keeper of the Atkinson Lock, had by his own negligence suffered a sixteen-year-old boy to drown in his sluice and had further compounded his crime by defacing the body of the same with a boat-hook. My father, in a hot courtroom, in an unaccustomed stiff collar under which the sweat prickled and trickled, awaited the judgement: Henry Crick, we find you guilty of manslaughter, of murder, of death, of the sins and wrongs of all the world …

  … CORONER: At what time, in your opinion, did death occur?

  PATHOLOGIST: As near as I can judge, between the hours of 11 p.m. of the twenty-fifth and 1 a.m. of the twenty-sixth.

  CORONER: Mr Crick, between those hours, did you hear any sounds to alarm you – splashings, cries for help – in the vicinity of the lock?

  MY FATHER: No sir. I’m afraid, sir, I was asleep …

  CO
RONER: Doctor, the wound and contusion on the right side of the deceased’s face – can you explain how and when they were caused?

  PATHOLOGIST: By a rigid, semi-sharp object or instrument, some hours after death had occurred.

  CORONER: On the last point you are sure?

  PATHOLOGIST: Yes, sir.

  CORONER: Mr Crick, could you give your account of how exactly this wound came to be caused?

  MY FATHER: He were heavy. I’m sorry, sir. The boat-hook slipped – got him.

  CORONER (patiently): Do not be sorry, Mr Crick – but be more precise. Rest assured, you have no cause to reproach yourself in this matter …

  But my father does not rest assured. He walks up and down the tow-path asking Whywhywhy. He asks, how do these things happen? (And I ask, watching him, does he suspect? – Mary, Freddie, Dick, me?) He casts back over his life (just as I, one day, will cast back over his life, going even so far as to unearth dusty inquest transcripts), looking for wrongs requiring expiation, omens to be fulfilled. And on his face, as he stares from flat river to flat fields, is imprinted an expression of exaggerated vigilance.