Once Upon a River

by Diane Setterfield

  Afterwards they lay together and spoke quietly of mysterious things: they wondered how Daunt had got from Devil’s Weir to the Swan, and why everybody had thought the girl a puppet or a doll when they first saw her. They asked why her feet were so perfect, it was as if they had never put foot to earth, and how a father could cross to other worlds and bring his daughter home, and they realized there are no stories of children crossing into other worlds to find their parents, and wondered why. They puzzled over what exactly Jonathan had seen from the window of the room where his father lay dead. They talked of the strange stories Joe brought back from his sinking spells and all the other stories at the Swan, and they wondered what the solstice had to do with all or any of it. More than once they came back to two questions: Where had the girl come from? And where had she gone to? They came to no conclusion. They thought too about other things both inconsequential and significant. The river swelled and subsided without insistence.

  All the time, Daunt’s hand lay on Rita’s belly, and she had her hand over his.

  Beneath their hands, in the damp vessels of her abdomen, life was swimming urgently upstream.

  Something, they both thought, is going to happen.

  Happily Ever After

  In the months that followed, Ruby Wheeler married Ernest; at the church her grandmother took Daunt and Rita by the hands and said, “Bless you both. I wish you every happiness together.”

  At Kelmscott farmhouse Alice grew her hair. She began to look less like her father when he was a child and more like the little girl she was. Bess took off her patch and declared, “There’s not much of Robin in her at all. That girl he married must have been a good woman. This is a lovely child.” And Armstrong said, “I think in some ways she takes after you, dearest.”

  Basketman’s Cottage was uninhabitable after the flood and would always be so. Lily moved to the parsonage. She looked about the housekeeper’s room in awe, touched the headboard and the night table and the mahogany chest of drawers, and reminded herself that the days when she had said about even the smallest possession I shall only lose it were over. The puppy slept in a basket in the kitchen and the parson grew as fond of it as she was. In fact, when she came to think about it, she wondered whether it hadn’t perhaps been her who was so keen on puppies as a girl—or perhaps she and her sister both were.

  The water, when it eventually receded, left behind a small skeleton on the floodplain. A fine chain was around its neck and a delicate silver anchor hung between the bones of its rib cage. The Vaughans grieved for their daughter and rejoiced in their son. They went together to the house in Oxford where Mrs. Constantine listened to them talk about everything that had happened, and they wept in her tranquil room and washed their faces afterwards, and before long Buscot Lodge and all its farmland and Brandy Island were put on the market. Helena and Anthony said good-bye to their friends and departed with their baby son to new rivers in New Zealand.

  With Joe gone, Margot decided it was time for another generation to take the helm at the Swan. Her eldest daughter moved to the inn with her husband and her children and they made a great success of it. Margot was still as present in the bar, mulling her cider, though she let her son-in-law, a strong fellow, chop the logs and carry the barrels. Jonathan helped his sister as he had helped his mother and often told a story about the child who was taken from the river one solstice night, first drowned, then alive again, who spoke not a word, until the river came up the banks to reclaim her, a year to the day later, and she was reunited with her father the ferryman. But if you asked him to tell any other story, he couldn’t.

  Joe the storyteller was remembered at the Swan for a long, long time. And though eventually there came a day when the man himself was forgotten, his stories lived on.

  Daunt finished his book of photographs and it enjoyed a modest success. He had thought to create a fine volume that would include every town and every village, every myth and every folktale, every jetty and every waterwheel, every turn and twist of the river, but inevitably the book fell short of its ambition. Still, he had sold over a hundred copies already, enough to order another reprint, and the book pleased many, including Rita.

  Standing at the helm as Collodion powered along, Daunt had to acknowledge that the river was too vast a thing to be contained in any book. Majestic, powerful, unknowable, it lends itself tolerantly to the doings of men until it doesn’t, and then anything can happen. One day the river helpfully turns a wheel to grind your barley, the next it drowns your crop. He watched the water slide tantalizingly past the boat, seeming in its flashes of reflected light to contain fragments of the past and of the future. It has meant many things to many people over the years; he put a little essay into the book about that.

  He wondered, fancifully, whether there was a way of appeasing the spirit of the river. A way of encouraging it to be on your side and not dangerously against you. Along with the dead dogs, illegal liquor, rashly flung wedding rings, and stolen goods that litter the riverbed, there are offerings of gold and silver down there. Ritualistic offerings whose meanings are hard to fathom so many centuries later. He might throw something in himself. His book? He considered it. The book was worth five shillings, and there was Rita now. There was a home to maintain, and a boat, and a business, and a nursery to be decorated. Five shillings was too much to sacrifice to appease a deity in which he didn’t really believe. He would take photographs of it. How many photographs could a man take in a lifetime? A hundred thousand? About that. A hundred thousand slivers of life, ten or fifteen seconds long, captured by light on glass. Somehow, in all that photography, he would figure out how to capture the river.

  Rita grew round as the months passed and the baby inside her grew. She and Daunt discussed names for their child. Iris, they thought, like the flowers that bloomed on the riverbank.

  “What if it’s a boy?” Margot asked.

  They shook their heads. It was a girl. They knew.

  Rita thought sometimes of the women who had lost their lives giving birth, and she thought often of her own mother. When she felt the baby turn in her underwater world she remembered Quietly. The future was unfathomable, but with every heartbeat she carried her daughter towards it.

  And the girl? What of her? Accounts emerged of sightings of her in the company of the river gypsies. She was quite at ease there, apparently. She had fallen overboard in the dark that first solstice night, it was said, and her parents hadn’t realized she was gone till the next day. They gave her up for dead, till word reached them of a child being looked after by wealthy people in Buscot. It sounded as if she’d be all right. No need to hurry back. They’d be passing that way the same time next year. She seemed happy to be back in her gypsy life, so it was said, after her year of being lost.

  These stories came late in the day, from far afield, one- and two-line reports, lacking detail, without color or interest. They were taken up briefly by the regulars at the Swan, considered and discarded. It wasn’t much of a story, they felt, but then, they never liked other people’s stories as much as their own. Jonathan’s was the version they preferred.

  There are those who see her still, on the river, in good and bad weather, when the current is treacherous or slow, when mist obscures the view and when the surface glitters. The drinkers see her when they mistake their footing, the worse for wear after one glass too many. Rash boys see her when they jump from the bridge on a fine summer’s day and discover how the serene surface stillness belies the pull of the current underneath. They see her when they find themselves out after twilight, and when they cannot bail as fast as they thought. For a time these reports were of a man and a child together in the punt. With the years the child grew until she did the punting herself, and then came the time—nobody can remember when exactly—when it was no longer the two of them but she alone. Majestic, they say; strong as three men; insubstantial as the mist. She handles the punt with smooth grace and has all her father’s mastery over the water. If you ask where she lives,
they will blow their cheeks out and shake their heads in mystification. “At Radcot, perhaps,” they suggest at Buscot, but at Radcot they shrug and wonder if it’s not at Buscot.

  At the Swan, if you press them, the Ockwells will tell you she lives on the other side of the river, though they don’t know exactly where. But wherever she lives—if she does live anywhere, and I am inclined to doubt it—she is never far away; and when a soul is in danger, she is always there. When it is not time to cross that border, she will see that you keep on the right side of it. And when it is time, why, she will see you just as surely to that other destination, the one you didn’t know you were headed for—at least, not today.

  And now, dear reader, the story is over. It is time for you to cross the bridge once more and return to the world you came from. This river, which is and is not the Thames, must continue flowing without you. You have haunted here long enough, and besides, you surely have rivers of your own to attend to?

  Author’s Note

  The river Thames irrigates not only the landscape but also the imagination and as it does so, it alters. At times the demands of the story have called upon me to tinker with travel times and nudge locations up- or downstream by a few furlongs. If reading my book inspires you to go on a river walk (something I wholeheartedly recommend), by all means take this book with you—but you might want to take a map or guide book too.

  The character of Henry Daunt is inspired by the magnificent real-life photographer of the Thames Henry Taunt. Like my Henry, he had a houseboat kitted out as a darkroom. In the course of a lifetime he took some 53,000 photographs using the wet collodion process. His work came close to being destroyed when, after his death, his house was sold and his garden workshop dismantled. On learning that many thousands of the glass plates stored there had already been smashed or wiped clean for use as greenhouse glass, a local historian, Harry Paintin, alerted E. E. Skuse, the city librarian in Oxford. Skuse was able to stop the work and arrange removal of the surviving plates for safekeeping. I note their names here out of gratitude for their swift actions. It is thanks to them that I have been able to explore the Victorian Thames visually and weave this story around Taunt’s images.

  Do people really drown and come to life again? Well, not really, but it can seem so. The mammalian dive reflex is triggered when a person is suddenly submerged, face and body, into very cold water. The body’s metabolism slows as the reflex redirects circulation away from the limbs and routes blood between the heart, brain, and lungs only. The heart can beat more slowly and oxygen is conserved for essential bodily processes, so as to maintain life for as long as possible. Once recovered from the water, the near-drowned person will appear dead. This physiological phenomenon was first written up in the medical journals in the middle of the twentieth century. The dive reflex is thought to occur in all mammals, both terrestrial and aquatic. It has been observed in adult humans but is believed to be most dramatic in small children.

  Acknowledgments

  There are times when friends make all the difference. Helen Potts, this book owes you an enormous debt of gratitude. Julie Summers, our writerly walks along the Thames have been invaluable. Thank you both.

  Graham Diprose provided helpful pointers relating to the history of photography, and John Brewer talked me very patiently through the wet collodion process of photographic development.

  Nick Reynard, of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Wallingford, put me right about flooding in language that proves how close science is to poetry.

  Captain Cliff Colborne from the Thames Traditional Boat Society helped figure out how an accident such as Daunt’s might have happened.

  Dr. Susan Hawkins of Kingston University provided valuable information about nurses and their use of thermometers in the nineteenth century.

  Prof. Joshua Getzler and Prof. Rebecca Probert made useful suggestions relating to legal claims to found children in the nineteenth century.

  Simon Steele was illuminating on the subject of distilling.

  Nathan Franklin knows everything a man can possibly know about pigs.

  A great many people explained aspects of rowing to me; despite their best efforts, I still don’t really understand it. Simon, Will, Julie, Naomi, thank you anyway.

  Thank you also to Mary and John Acton, Jo Anson, Mike Anson, Margot Arendse, Jane Bailey, Gaia Banks, Alison Barrow, Toppen Bech, Emily Bestler, Kari Bolin, Valerie Borchardt, Will Bourne Taylor, Maggie Budden; Erin, Fergus, Paula, and Ross Catley; Mark Cocker, Emma Darwin, Jane Darwin, Philip del Nevo, Margaret Denman, Assly Elvins, Lucy Fawcett, Anna Franklin, Vivien Green, Douglas Gurr, Claudia Hammer-Hewstone, Christine Harland-Lang, Ursula Harrison, Peter Hawkins, Philip Hull, Jenny Jacobs, Maggie Ju, Mary and Robert Julier, Håkon Langballe, Eunice Martin, Gary McGibbon, Mary Muir, Sally Read, Mandy Setterfield, Jeffrey and Pauline Setterfield, Jo Smith, Bernadete Soares de Andrade, Caroline Stüwe Lemarechal, Rachel Phipps of the Woodstock Bookshop, Chris Steele, Greg Thomas, Marianne Velmans, Anna Withers.

  Sources Consulted

  Peter Ackroyd, Thames: Sacred River

  Alfred Williams, Round About the Upper Thames

  Robert Gibbings, Sweet Thames Run Softly

  Henry Taunt, A New Map of the Thames

  Susan Read, The Thames of Henry Taunt

  Graham Diprose and Jeff Robins, The Thames Revisited

  Malcolm Graham, Henry Taunt of Oxford: a Victorian Photographer

  There is one website I navigated a thousand times while writing this book and which was invaluable to me. It takes you on a journey through space and time, along the river. Where Thames Smooth Waters Glide (www.thames.me.uk) was created by John Eade and he maintains it with dedication. If you can’t get to the Thames itself, this website is the next best thing.

  An Emily Bestler Books Reading Group Guide

  Once Upon a River

  Diane Setterfield

  This reading group guide for Once Upon a River includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.

  Introduction

  On a dark midwinter’s night in an ancient inn on the Thames, the regulars are entertaining one another by telling stories. The night is interrupted when the door bursts open on an injured stranger carrying the drowned corpse of a little child.

  Hours later the dead girl opens her eyes and lives again. In the face of this event, the witnesses attempt to explain the impossible in a great outburst of storytelling. Was it a miracle? Is it magic? Or could there be a scientific explanation for the girl who died and lived again?

  The mystery deepens. Where did the child come from, and where does she belong? Who is she? Those who dwell on the riverbank grow increasingly fascinated by the mystery child, and the fates of three families in particular are connected by the mystery that began at the Swan on that winter’s night.

  Topics and Questions for Discussion

  1. The Swan Inn, Buscot Lodge, and the towns and villages along the river Thames create a very specific atmosphere for the story that unfolds. What role does the Swan itself play? Could this story have taken place anywhere else?

  2. To judge by such details as photography and transport as described in the novel, the events appear to be set in the 1870s or thereabouts. Could the novel have been set at another time in history? What would have had to be different if the author had chosen another period?

  3. What is the significance of the river?

  4. By the time Vaughan had written a concise two-page account of Amelia’s kidnapping to his father in New Zealand, “the horror of it was quite excised.” What effect does the act of storytelling have on Vaughan? What about the other characters?

  5. A wedge is driven between the Vaughans as they struggle to come to terms with the los
s of Amelia. In the end, what brings them together? How?

  6. How does Robert Armstrong, raised outside family life in circumstances of financially cushioned neglect, turn out to be such a good man?

  7. “Sometimes I think there is nothing more a man can do. A child is not an empty vessel, Fleet, to be formed in whatever way the parent thinks fit. They are born with their own hearts and they cannot be made otherwise, no matter what love a man lavishes on them.” Do you agree with Armstrong’s lament at the end of the book? Is it possible if he had been a different kind of father things might have turned out differently for Robin?

  8. Is Lily White responsible for her actions?

  9. Consider the importance of family in the novel. What does it mean to Robert Armstrong? What does family mean to Daunt and Rita? And Victor? What about Lily?

  10. It’s easy to get carried away talking about the key families in the plot, the Vaughans, the Armstrongs, and Lily and her brother, but what about the family at the inn? What important functions do they perform? And what do the drinkers—largely unnamed—add?

  11. Storytelling is central to Once Upon a River. The story of Quietly the ferryman is an invention of the author, but it contains many elements from traditional or mythological tales. Does it remind you of any other stories in particular?

  12. How many types or styles of story are told in Once Upon a River? Be as wide in your interpretation of “story” as you like!

  13. Folk beliefs are still alive on the riverbank—changelings, witches, and dragons are all still real to some, and the Armstrongs believe Bess has a Seeing eye. What are the real-life consequences of these stories? Which characters have faith in these stories, and which do not? How does it affect their actions?

  14. In the context of women’s lives in the nineteenth century, what do you make of Rita’s reluctance to marry? What brings her to reconsider?