The Water Child
In a Portuguese port in the 1750s, nineteen-year-old Cecilia is waiting for her husband, a newly commissioned captain, to return with his ship from a mercantile expedition to the West Indies. Cecilia feels strangely, relentlessly, drawn to the ocean and walks a great deal, often down to the port where the sailing ships are arriving and leaving. Sometimes she thinks she sees her husband, but his ship is now very late returning, and there is never any news of him. She lives alone, with few English friends and no contact with her family back in England. The only other person in the house is her Portuguese maid, Rosalie. Cecilia has something of a sixth sense and begins to experience what she understands are impossible things, both at the port and in her home and ultimately, within her own body.
Cecilia’s visions and voices do build tension and add some much-needed interest midway through this story, as Part One in particular is slowed by descriptive passages which can be evocative, but within which the sea imagery becomes overworked. The gothic elements here enliven but are causally disconnected within the story structure, as things seem to happen for no reason. This leads to untied threads and far too many questions unanswered. I would have liked stronger handling of the technique of the unreliable narrator. This would have made the final resolution more convincing. Oddly, the central idea of the Water Child is despatched well before the end and then dismissed altogether. This feels like a short story stretched beyond its natural limits, but while there are issues with the plot, the characters are nicely drawn.
