Chapter 29 Summary

"About the Savior of the World"

At 19 pages, this chapter is one of the longest in "Waterland." Tom Crick returns to the history of the Atkinsons after the events of the Coronation Ale and the brewery fire of 1911. He tells of his mother, a local beauty named Helen Atkinson, daughter of Ernest Atkinson. Ernest is badly regarded by the people of Gildsey, and it is suspected that he keeps Helen in the role of nurse and housekeeper to him as he becomes reclusive.

In describing Ernest's only pubic appearance in Gildsey during the First War, a military march past became a shambles - Tom Crick says that there was feeling in the town that this was the work of the Sara Atkinson ghost. Ernest Atkinson never appeared in Gildsey again. He did found a hospital. He destroyed all but a small portion of...