A RECONCILIATION OF THE EASTERN SURVIVOR-LISTS
Found paper — one large sheet, folded in four, ruled by hand with great care. Nine columns. Abandoned. Found in the back of a Murkminster drawer, unsubmitted, with the last column never filled.
THE OFFICE OF BOUNDARY CLARIFICATION · MURKMINSTER Working sheet. Not a return. Not to be filed. SUBJECT: the eastern expedition, 1893 — reconciliation of accounts of the survivor
The sheet is ruled in nine columns and a tenth, narrower, at the right, headed TOTAL and left empty. The hand is a good clerk's hand: square, patient, and — over the course of the sheet — getting smaller.
| Parish | The one who came back | Stated by | Corroborated | Notes of the enquiry |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Peatdike | E. Podd | the whole parish, without hesitating | his own hand shaken by me | Real. Came back wrong. Does not discuss it. A daughter who asks the questions he will not answer. |
| Saltgate & the coast | Mr Vance | the whole coast, same manner | the chair by the boiler-shell fire, pointed out to me | Kept a room thirty-one years. Had never heard of Podd. Nor had the parish. |
| Drudgeford | Mr Quigley | the Society (membership: one) | a published paper, forty-one pages | Walked out on the wrong side. Believes it was five minutes. Cheerful. |
| Murkminster (this office) | (names withheld — sealed) | the resolution of Frostgate 19th | the file itself | I am not permitted to reproduce these. They agree with none of the above. |
| The fifth | a woman | her sister-in-law, and four others | a grave, tended | I had not allowed for a woman. There is no reason I should not have. |
| The sixth | a name and a grave | the family | the family would not discuss it | I did not press. I should like that recorded. |
| The seventh | " the one who came back " | the parish, exactly so | — | They do not use a name. They use the phrase, as a name. Nobody found this odd but me. |
| The eighth | (a name; see reverse) | the innkeeper | two other drinkers | He was at that time nine years old. The parish is unmoved by this. |
| The ninth | — | — | — | See below. |
| TOTAL |
MEMORANDUM OF THE ENQUIRY, entered on the reverse in the same hand, smaller:
I have now visited nine parishes and hold nine survivors. I record, because it is the material fact and because an honest working sheet must carry the thing that spoils it:
There is no fraud here. I looked for it. The dates hold. The chairs are real. The graves are tended and the families are real families. Not one person in nine parishes has told me a thing they did not believe, and not one of them had heard of the others, and every single one of them told me theirs in the same flat way — as a fact about the world, of the kind you give a stranger when he asks which way the river runs.
I cannot total this sheet. I had assumed, ruling it, that eight of these would be error and one would be the survivor. That is not the shape of it. The shape of it is nine parishes that lost people, and nine parishes in possession of one each.
At the ninth a woman turned this sheet round to face her and asked whether I was trying to work out which one it was, and I said that I was, and she explained the matter to me in about a minute, and I have not been able to improve on her explanation, and I am not going to write it down here because it is not mine and because this office would enter it as an opinion.
The tenth column will remain empty. I am aware of how that reads. It reads correctly.
ENTERED BY ANOTHER HAND, LATER, IN PENCIL, ACROSS THE FOOT OF THE SHEET:
Found this in the back of the drawer. He never submitted it. Told his superior the eastern files could not be reconciled, on grounds of insufficient evidence, which was a lie, and which was the kindest lie anybody in this office ever told.
Entered as NO FURTHER ACTION. Left in the drawer, where he left it.
I have read it four times. I keep coming back for the tenth column. It is the only honest column in this building.
Archivist's note. The sheet was never a return and so was never destroyed; working papers are not filed and not disposed of, and this office has kept it for that reason alone, which is the reason it has kept most of the true things it holds. The clerk's name is on the reverse and this office declines to publish it. He is understood to have gone east afterwards on his own account, without a horse from the Office, and to have sat in the parishes, and to have written nothing down.