Episode 17: Word from the River
By breakfast, Neil wished he had woken Robert when he saw the rider. In
daylight, his decision to stay at the window seemed foolish. He waited until
his aunt turned towards the stove, then told his uncle quietly. Robert
listened, his bread untouched. “You should have fetched me,” he said. There
was no anger in his voice, which somehow made Neil feel worse.
“I suppose it is what it is” muttered Neil. “I just wish I knew what happened to him”.
His aunt glanced over her shoulder. “What’s happened now?” Before either could
answer, someone knocked. She put down her spoon and wiped her hands on her
apron, watching Robert cross the kitchen. Since Thomas disappeared, every
visitor had brought the same brief hope to her face. Neil could scarcely bear
to see it again. Her eyes poised on the visitor she anxiously raised her eyebrows in hope.
The man on the doorstep had helped with yesterday’s search. His trousers were
wet to the knees, and he held his hat against his chest. “Robert,” he began,
then stopped when he saw her. That hesitation told Neil something was wrong.
He stood up, catching his knee against the table.
“They’ve found a body,” the man said. “Down by the river.”
His aunt gripped the back of a chair. Robert asked where, although the man had
already told him, then asked who had found it. Neil wanted them to stop
talking around the question. Yet when it finally came, he wished nobody had
spoken.
“Is it our Thomas?” his aunt asked.
“We don’t know, Mrs Jefferey. They were still bringing him out when I left.
There were branches caught over him.”
She pulled out the chair and sat down carefully, as though afraid of missing
the seat. Neil waited for her to ask something else. Instead, she looked at
her hands. One was still holding the corner of her apron. Her mouth tightened,
and he saw the effort she was making to keep it steady then down she went.
Robert reached for pocket and brought out some whiskey and leaned over her until she sat up.
“I’ll go with you.” He tried to push his arm into a sleeve, found it twisted and pulled it free with such force that a button struck the floor. The messenger bent to pick it up. Neither man seemed to know what to do with it.
Outside, a neighbour called from the yard. She had seen the messenger riding
hard and followed him. When she heard the news, she pressed a hand to her
mouth. “Dear God. Is it Thomas?” she asked, loudly enough for everyone in the
kitchen to hear.
“We don’t know,” Robert snapped. Then, more gently, “Let’s not jump to
conclusions.”
Neil looked at his aunt. She sat motionless, her shoulders slightly bent, as
though listening to something far away. Tears gathered beneath her eyes, but
she made no attempt to wipe them. He remembered her laughing at Thomas across
this very table, telling him to leave something in the bread tin for the rest
of them. It seemed unbearable that she should now be sitting beside his empty
place.
Robert crouched beside her and covered her hands with his. “I’ll come straight
back,” he said. She looked at him then, searching his face so closely that
Neil turned away. Whatever reassurance she wanted, Robert could not give it.
“Stay with her,” he told Neil at the door.
After they left, Neil poured a cup of tea and set it beside his aunt. He
wanted to promise that Thomas would come home, muddy and hungry, with some
explanation that would make them angry for worrying. But he could not make
himself say it.
“Would you like me to make more tea?” he asked.
She nodded faintly. He drew his chair closer, and together they waited for the
sound of a horse on the road then he rose, to go to the kitchen.