Waterland

Tom redirects his story back to history: “What is this—a biology lesson? No, I prefer, in order to point a contrast, to call it Natural History. Which doesn’t go anywhere. Which cleaves to itself. Which perpetually travels back to where it came from” (205). Tom ponders the unknown then entreats his students to remain curious, maintaining that curiosity is crucial for the survival of humankind.

Tom returns to the moment immediately after Mary discovers the eel, a tense moment in which Dick looks at Mary with “a long and searching look […] a stern, baffled and questioning look” (207). When he does this, she stops giggling and looks back at him. Freddie witnesses this interesting exchange, as does Tom.

Tom tries to process this moment without emotion, but “it’s too much for your history teacher’s unpractised objectivity, or for his short-lived pubescent boldness” (207), because at this moment, he realizes he is in love with Mary Metcalf.

Tom resumes the initial story of Freddie’s death seven days after the incident. As he and Mary suspect Dick of causing Freddie’s death, and a beer bottle he finds in the river of being the murder weapon, Tom conspicuously places the bottle where Dick will see it and waits. After finding the bottle, Dick stealthily hides it in a locked attic trunk, much to Tom’s dismay. But “there’s no keeping down that old detective spirit” (209), and he vows to find the key to the trunk.

Ernest Atkinson’s daughter, Helen, is Tom’s next topic as he revisits the Atkinson narrative. At a freak accident during a parade in 1915, Helen’s beauty literally triggers chaos when the “silly soldiers with their rifles bumped into each other and forgot how to march” (219) upon seeing her. Since her father admires her inadvertent “mockery of these war-mongering proceedings” (219), he falls in love with her.

Ernest and Helen live as recluses and become so close they form an incestuous relationship. Ernest wants a child, but Helen does not, so to prevent this from happening, she convinces him to turn their home into a hospital for war victims. But the plan backfires—Earnest still wants a child.

Soon a war victim, Henry Crick arrives at the hospital; Henry and Helen fall in love and want to marry. Helen tells her father, “I assent. I will bear your child, if first you let me marry this man and live with him” (229). Ernest accepts this plan after they both agree that the baby “will be the saviour of the world” (229). Helen secretly hopes she will become pregnant with Henry’s child first.

Henry and Helen move to Atkinson Lock Cottage, and a black trunk arrives from Ernest that holds “a written statement addressed to this unborn child, explaining how it came to be” (232). On the night Ernest writes this letter, he commits suicide.