Once Upon a River

Those who live along the river prepare for both the flood and the arrival of river nomads. Vaughan finishes preparations and finds Helena resting on the sofa, late in her pregnancy. She asks Vaughan to accompany her and The Child—Milly—to look at the river, but The Child is nowhere to be found. The two go outside into the rain to search for her. Helena sees Vaughan giving orders to the gardeners and slips in the mud. Vaughan catches her, but the sudden motion causes a pain in her stomach and she goes into labor. The two hear Daunt arrive in his boat. Daunt and Vaughan take Helena to the Swan where Rita is attending to a dying Joe. In his sickbed, Joe struggles to breathe as his family gathers around him; he “[calls] for Quietly” (416). Rita sees the Vaughans and Daunt arrive, understanding that Helena is in labor. Daunt tells her that The Child is missing before leaving to search.

Rita goes between Joe’s room and Helena’s, helping Joe pass while assisting in Helena’s birth. Helena gives birth to a baby still in its amniotic sac; Rita cuts the baby free and reveals it to be a boy.

Armstrong arrives at the meeting spot to find Robin. Robin demands the money, refusing to work to pay off his debts. Armstrong asks for the truth about Robin’s wife and daughter, and Robin says his wife drowned the child before killing herself. His charade with The Child was an effort to get money out of the Vaughans. Robin speaks disparagingly of Bess and says he found a letter from Lord Embury in his mother’s desk that proves that the lord is his true father. Armstrong denies it, and a voice from the darkness denies it as well. From the shadows, Victor emerges. Robin is terrified because this is the man to whom he owes money. Armstrong recognizes him as Bess’s rapist.

Armstrong confirms that Victor is Robin’s father, then confesses that Lord Embury is his own father and explains his childhood to Robin. Victor demands that Robin accompany him, then tells Armstrong of the blackmail he has on Robin. Three years prior, Robin and Victor conspired to steal Maud, use her to trick Ruby away from the Vaughan home, and kidnap Amelia. Victor took Amelia and tossed her to Robin, but Robin dropped her into the river. Amelia drowned before they could retrieve her, but Robin sent the ransom note anyway. Robin, filled with rage and despair, attacks Victor with the slaughter knife and both men fall into the river. Armstrong tries to pull Robin from the water, but the current is too quick. Armstrong watches as a ferryman on a punt appears and pulls both men out of the water, vanishing into the rain. Armstrong walks to the Swan, lost in thought and grief.

Lily awakes to find her cottage filled with water. She forces the door open to find herself in the middle of the flood. The rain has stopped, and the water is still. She walks out into it and is unafraid for the first time. A body floats by and Lily lunges for it, even though “there [is] nothing beneath her feet but water” (435).

Margot tries to comfort Armstrong at the Swan. Armstrong learns that The Child is missing and helps the search. Rita checks on Helena but starts to cry when she thinks of the missing girl. Helena comforts her, telling Rita that she knows people feel strongly for The Child. Helena lets Rita hold her son for comfort. The men return while Helena is sleeping, having had no success in finding The Child. As they dry off, Lily arrives holding a piglet in her arms. Margot’s daughters help Lily as Armstrong attends to the pig, who recovers. Jonathan enters and tells the group that The Child left on the punt with Quietly the ferryman. Jonathan says that The Child told him “[her] father came to fetch [her]” (440). Daunt is doubtful, but “[e]verybody present [opens] their mouths and [says] as one: ‘But Jonathan can’t tell stories’” (441). Armstrong also believes him, for he saw The Child sitting on Quietly’s punt when the ferryman took Robin and Victor away.

Back at the farm, Armstrong and Bess talk about Robin. Bess confesses that when her desk was broken into, she used her Seeing eye and saw Robin’s true nature, which is why she has never been surprised by his behavior. Someone knocks at their door and Armstrong answers, finding Ben the butcher’s boy with a child who looks like a much younger Robin. Bess attends to the children as Ben explains the other child is Alice, who he disguised as a boy to keep safe while they traveled. Alice falls asleep in Bess’s arms as Armstrong wakes his children, who gather to hear Ben’s tale. Ben explains that after a terrible beating from his father, he ran away to the river, where he jumped onto a barge in the darkness. He fell asleep and was woken by the furious bargeman. He helped the man and received directions to the orphanage Alice was taken to, where he pretended to be an orphan to get inside. He spotted Alice through the window but was kept isolated from her until they went to church, at which point the two of them ran away. He cut her hair to disguise her, then the two walked to the farm. Ben starts to leave but Armstrong invites him to stay.

Daunt takes Rita to her flooded cottage, where many of her belongings have been preserved thanks to her forward thinking. He helps her pack up her books onto his boat and the two talk about The Child with the understanding that she will never return. Rita reflects on how painful it is to lose her, then reads a passage from a book. She describes how the Vaughan boy was born in his caul, then describes the evolution of land creatures from aquatic creatures. She connects the water of the womb and The Child’s near-drowning but draws no formal conclusions. Daunt takes her back to the boat, where Rita announces that she would like to stay with him. The two consummate their relationship, then puzzle over the stories they have heard in the last year. They are both struck by the idea that something is going to happen.

Ruby the nursemaid marries her sweetheart and Alice finds a home at the Armstrong farm. Lily leaves her cottage and moves into the parsonage, where she raises the puppy she bought for The Child. When the flood recedes, it reveals the skeleton of a small child with an anchor necklace. The Vaughans identify her as Amelia. They move to New Zealand with their son. Margot’s oldest daughter takes over running the Swan while Margot and Jonathan help. Daunt finishes a photography book of the Thames as Rita’s pregnancy advances. Rumors circulate that The Child found her way home to the river nomads, to whom she belonged all along, but those who tell stories at the Swan believe Jonathan’s version of events. People tell tales of seeing The Child and a man on a punt until, one day, the girl replaces him as ferrywoman. At the end of the book, the narrator speaks directly to the reader, saying:

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? (460).