Waterland

Tom addresses the present-day Mary, who is “gone, still here but gone, somewhere inside yourself […] and all that is left is your story” (116). He asks poignant questions about their youthful optimism in their “miraculous land” where “God looked down on us” (116). He elaborates on his young beauty, who “was adventurous, inquisitive, unrestrainable” but announced they must part after becoming pregnant and after “much having occurred in the interval” (117). In her seclusion, Tom says Mary is “preparing herself for her later marriage—which would be a sort of fenland” (118).

The couple marries upon reuniting three years later, after Tom serves in the war and after her father approaches Henry Crick, fearful for his daughter’s health. Tom and Mary move to London and prosper while living a very quotidian existence. Henry Crick dies, and the farm is sold. After three decades, Mary suddenly leaves her job. At a dinner party Tom relays the story of Price, his “bit of a trouble-maker” (125) student.

Back in the classroom on Tom’s last day, he rambles about “a future history teacher and a future history teacher’s wife for whom things went wrong” (126). He begins each section of the story with “Once upon a time” (126), ending with 52-year-old Mary announcing she will have a baby because God has told her she will. Tom then implores his students never to “stop asking why […] don’t try to escape this question Why” (130).

Young Tom is relieved when he realizes, “If death was accidental then it couldn’t have been murder […] Nothing’s changed” (131). Mary replies, “It’s not all right. Because it wasn’t an accident. Everything’s changed” (131).

Tom is furious. Mary asserts she knows what she will do without telling Tom. When he returns home, Tom is confronted by his father asking whether their relationship is serious, to which Tom has no answer, just questions about what he is going to do.

Tom continues to address his class, this time delving deep into philosophical explanations for history and its treatment of time. He asserts it’s “no wonder we move in circles” (136). He then poses the question, “What is this thing that takes us back, either via catastrophe and confusion or in our heart’s desire, to where we were? Let’s call it Natural History” (137), after which he uses the French Revolution to illustrate various points. When Price makes a case for the future, Tom goes back even further in time to prove his points.

Tom reaches further in time to tell of the origins of the Ouse River. Like time, Tom argues, the river comes back to itself. He asserts “that we cannot step twice into the same river, [it] is not to be trusted. Because we are always stepping into the same river” (146). The Leem River flows into the Ouse, and “by the Leem, in the year 1943, lived a lock-keeper” (146) named Henry Crick.