Reservoir 13

by Jon McGregor

  Sophie Hunter was at the university for a day and a half before she phoned her parents. They’d been trying not to watch their phones, because there was nothing to worry about; all the way down the motorway, with the back of the car empty and quiet, they had told each other there was nothing to worry about, that Sophie would be absolutely fine. But when the phone rang they both jumped, and Stuart stood by while Jess talked to her. The conversation started lightly but Jess thought something was wrong. Are you meeting people? she asked. Are you making friends? Sophie said she was meeting lots of people, yes, and some of them seemed nice. But the trouble was that as soon as she mentioned where she was from they all wanted to talk about the missing girl. I don’t want to talk about it any more, Mum. How come they even remember? Jess reminded her how big a news story it had been, at the time. People remember that sort of thing, she said. Later, via Facebook, Rohan and Lynsey and James reported the same experiences. Rohan called it The Curse of the Missing Girl, and Lynsey told him not to be cheap about it. In the village Mischief Night had become more or less the same as Hallowe’en, and for the first year doors were actually knocked on and the phrase trick or treat was used. Toilet paper also featured for the first time, draped across trees and bushes in people’s front gardens, and it was a hell of a job cleaning up the next day. Ashleigh Wright and Olivia Hunter were found to have been mostly responsible. They were coming into themselves now their older siblings had left home, was the feeling. Pumpkins were stolen from people’s front steps, and dumped in the walled orchard at the end of the Fletchers’ garden, which was overgrown and failing. The fruit hadn’t been harvested for years and the trees were thickly gnarled. He’d been told there were grants to restore it but he seemed in no hurry. Inefficiency was a point of pride with Brian Fletcher, a man known for being late to his own wedding despite living opposite the church. The reservoirs were high and the river thickened with silt from the hills and plumed across the weirs. A decision was taken to lay a second line of flagstones across the top of the moor, to limit the erosion caused by walkers, and a helicopter was brought in to drop them at intervals along the route. The flagstones came mostly from derelict mills in Manchester, cut a few centuries earlier and deeply rutted by the clogs of the workers going in and out for their shifts. At the school Jones had another argument with Mrs Simpson. The boiler had broken down again and an inspection had recommended replacing the system altogether. The boilerhouse would be demolished. He wasn’t having that. The boiler was fine. It just needed some work.

  When they’d left for university, James and Lynsey had said that of course they would keep in touch. They all had. Lynsey had texted the others a few times, but keeping in touch turned out to mean reading the updates on Facebook. Halfway through the term she took a coach to Newcastle, where James was studying, and only texted him for directions when she got there. She thought it would be cool to surprise him, she told Sophie. But then he introduced her to Holly, his girlfriend, and offered her Holly’s room to sleep in since she wasn’t using it at the moment. It wasn’t quite what Lynsey had planned. They’d left things open between them but she’d thought they could pick up again. There were things she wanted to talk about. There were possibilities she’d had in mind, such as sharing his bed. Instead of which she drank most of a bottle of vodka and was sick into Holly’s bedroom sink. When she woke in the early morning the sink was still full of it, and she left without saying goodbye. She caught the first coach back to Edinburgh. The coach drove through flat arable land and she felt a long way from home. She wanted to message Sophie but she had no signal. When she slept the bumps in the road became hills and she dreamt she was driving into the village, where the stems of coppiced willow stools on the Hunters’ land gleamed red and gold in the narrow winter light. The foxes were lying low. Martin Fowler was working at the meat counter in the supermarket when Bruce came through with his new partner. Dad; this is Hugh. Martin nodded, concentrating on the back bacon he was cutting. The slices fell thinly away as the blade whined and rolled to a halt. He fanned them out on a layer of waxed paper in the display chiller, and then looked up at Hugh, who seemed more embarrassed than he did. He nodded. Hugh; how do. He didn’t know what else to say so he turned back to Bruce and asked whether they’d been to see his mother. We’re heading there now, Bruce said. Martin nodded. She expecting both of you? Yes, Dad. She’s expecting us both. She’s met Hugh before, you know? Martin nodded, and from the corner of his eye he saw his supervisor step towards him. I should get on. Good seeing you. Pop over some time? Bruce nodded. Yes, Dad. I’ll do that. Some time. As they were leaving, Bruce told Hugh that he’d never heard his father say how do like that before, it wasn’t something he said, he must have come over all flustered. Hugh just wanted to get back to the car. Martin’s supervisor said he could have an extra break if he wanted, go for coffee in the store restaurant or something, and Martin said, thanks, no, but he was fine for coffee.

  Jackson stopped using the sun room, and it gradually filled up with boxes and rolls of sheeting and sacks of feed. Tom had started making a Guy Fawkes, and left it unfinished in the reclining chair. Mike was in there looking for some waterproofs and from the kitchen the others heard him yelp and drop something heavy, and then shout something that sounded like shit up my arse. Nobody looked him in the eye when he came back in the room, and they were quiet as he filled the kettle. That was a lot of work we put in to build a fucking storeroom, he said. What was the bloody point of that? Is he never going to use it? Maisie told him they should be patient, that their father was feeling more tired than usual at the moment and wasn’t able to get out of bed. The doctor said there’d be ups and downs, she said. Mike made himself a tea and headed outside. Shit up my arse? Simon asked. Fuck off, Mike said, and slammed the door. At Reservoir no. 9, the maintenance team were unblocking the spillway screens, clearing out the weeds and rubbish in anticipation of heavy rains to come. At the allotments the Brussels sprouts stood tall, their leaves wilted and holed and the sprouts knuckled tight against the frost. The allotment committee asked Susanna Wright to give up her plot for lack of cultivation. She knew they had a point but it stung. She hadn’t realised what time would be involved. Folk never do, said Clive. Takes a retired or a nut-job to work an allotment properly. Well, I’m not yet either of those, Susanna said, giving him the key. On the estate the laying pheasants were taken in for winter feeding, and new stock delivered. In the woods the wild pheasants clustered together and fed on the spilt feed left in the pens. On a Friday after school Jones set to repairing a sash window in Miss Dale’s classroom. He had the casement down and was halfway through singing the second verse of ‘Fernando’ before he realised that Miss Dale was in the reading corner. When he saw her she caught his eye and kept an absolutely straight face. He nodded, and went back to scraping the paintwork and grease from the casement channels. After a few moments he thought he heard Miss Dale singing the next verse very quietly, but when he looked he couldn’t see her moving her lips. It took an hour to get the casement back up, and when he was done she was still working on her papers. He packed up his tools and said goodnight. Goodnight, Mr Jones, she said, smiling. There was rain through most of the month and more floods and the debris jammed up against the footbridge again but this time the footbridge didn’t fail. There was carol singing in the pub, and when the sheets were handed round there was a lack of enthusiasm. But by the time they got to the ‘Calypso Carol’ the singing could be heard from the square and people had started crowding in from the main bar. Oh now carry me to Bethlehem.

  On Boxing Day James and Rohan met at the Gladstone and compared notes on university. They saw Liam for the first time in years, and had bought him a drink before it became clear how little they had to talk about. He’d taken on the stone work with his father. His hands were swollen with bruises and pinched little cuts. There’s years of learning in it yet, he said, but it’s a good trade. We’re working on a demonstration wall at the visitor centre if you want to look? Rohan said p
robably they would. James was texting Sophie to get her and Lynsey to come down. A storm came and blew snow sideways across the valley, and when it had passed the trees were edged with white. The Jacksons had losses in the hills. Richard Clark came home just before New Year. His sisters had given their mother a mobile phone for Christmas, and when he got there it was still in its box. Rachel told me it would make it easier to keep in touch, she said, waving at the thing. Richard asked if she wanted him to show her how to use it. I’ve a perfectly good telephone right there. She can leave me a message if I’m out when she calls. Says she’s too busy for chatting on the phone, but it only takes five minutes. Richard gave her a look. Five or ten, she said. Ten at the most. She gave him a look in return which meant not to push it any further. Richard was fiddling with his own phone even as they spoke. I think the thing is, Mum, Rachel thought it could be useful in an emergency. What kind of emergency? Just, if you were out somewhere, if you needed to call for help. Or even if you were upstairs and couldn’t get to the landline. Landline? This wasn’t going well. He resented that he was the one having to do this, when it had been Rachel’s idea. Just let me get it charged up and turned on for you, he said. You can send the grandchildren texts, that would be nice, wouldn’t it? She picked up the box. It was awfully big and heavy. It didn’t seem very mobile at all. On New Year’s Eve there was another hard snowfall and drifts on the roadside by evening. A pale light moved slowly across the moor. The weather stayed cold and there was snow on the ground for another week.

  7.

  At midnight when the year turned there were fireworks on the big screen in the village hall and the sound of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ along the street. The Cooper twins were out for their first New Year, watching the fireworks from the Hunter place, their mother hurrying them back to bed as soon as the last rocket fell to earth. In the morning the snow was ankle-deep but by noon a hard rain had washed it away. The change came quickly, thick piles of snow falling in on themselves and hurtling away down drains and run-offs to the river, the river bright and loud with it and the streets left scrubbed and darkly gleaming and everywhere the first green tips of snowdrops nosing out of the soil. After the rain there was a quiet, and the melting of roof-snow down drainpipes, and the calling of birds on thawing ground, and the whine of a chainsaw up in Hunter’s wood. On the television there were pictures of an overturned ship, helicopters hovering, life jackets floating in the water. In the fields south of the church there were wild pheasants feeding, their dashed brown feathers muddled in amongst the tall dead grass. A line of parsnips were lifted at the allotments, the creamy heft of them shrugging free of the frost-black soil. At night there were foxes shrieking in the woods, and everyone who had stock on the hills sat up and bristled, listening. When the doctor came for Jackson’s check-up, Maisie admitted how little he’d been getting out of bed at all. She said she was worried there could be something affecting his energy levels, but that the physio hadn’t thought there was anything to worry about. The doctor examined him, and afterwards she told Maisie that she thought Jackson was depressed. Maisie laughed and said she didn’t think so. Jacksons don’t get depressed, she said. We don’t have the time. She’d heard it said so often that it just came out without thinking. She stopped and the doctor smiled gently. I think time might be his problem, she said. But there are steps we can take. He’ll not take happy pills, Maisie said. Well, that needn’t be our starting point. But we should look at something. A late-afternoon fog came in before dusk, and when the bus dropped off the secondary-school children their voices along the high street were muffled and lost.

  In the pub before opening hours Irene was cleaning the floor. She was quick but she was thorough. Tony was talking about his plans for expanding the food offer, and she could have done without the distraction. He was talking about a pizza oven. She didn’t have an opinion. It wasn’t her money. On the television they said something about a missing girl in the south of England. Tony came around the bar to turn the sound up and Irene told him sharply to mind her wet floors. He stepped back and they both looked up at the screen. The news reporter said there would be a reconstruction. Irene carried the mop bucket through to the kitchen and told Tony to keep off until it was dry. A thirteen-year-old girl had been taken from a holiday cottage, and for a time it seemed there might be a connection with the disappearance of Becky Shaw. But her body was discovered, and a suspect arrested, and he was found to have been out of the country when Becky had disappeared. These things just kept happening, it seemed. The Tucker place was rewired and replastered and a new damp-proof course put in. There was talk the man who’d bought it was from Birmingham way and recently widowed. There were no signs of him moving in. Tony put a pancake dinner on at the Gladstone, and made the mistake of calling it All-You-Can-Eat. People could eat a lot of pancakes, as it turned out. The kitchen ran out of batter, and not everyone was understanding. On the bank at the far end of the beech wood the badger sett was quiet. Twenty feet in from the entrance, past dead-ends and leaf-lined sleeping nooks, the first cubs of the year were being born, spilling blind into a dark world of grassy warmth and milk. The days started with a cold mist that didn’t lift until lunchtime and then only seemed to get snagged in the tops of the trees. The butcher’s shop was empty. The chopping block had been left behind the counter, the bowled wood darkening with the years. There were fat spoony leaves of corn salad for those who knew where to look, under hedgerows and around the edges of the old quarries. At the school on the weekend Jones came in to buff the floors, the polishing machine humming softly as he pushed it back and forth. It took two hours to get all the way round, and he stacked the chairs and turned off the lights as he went. In Miss Dale’s class the socket for the machine was by the display of children’s artwork. There was a game he had of guessing whose names would be on which pictures. He was good at it. This was something people would be surprised about. He plugged the machine in and buffed the floor until it shone. He would have to be getting back. His sister would be restless. It couldn’t always be helped.

  Richard was back in the village to see to his mother, and on a quiet afternoon he and Cathy went for a walk on the moor. They’d found they could talk again about almost anything, and they talked a lot. As they came down the far side of the hill, dropping towards Reservoir no. 7, he asked if she’d been seeing anyone since Patrick’s death, and she asked about his relationships, and a conversation he’d been hoping would tilt towards a particular possibility became instead a kind of confessional. It felt like a mistake but there seemed no way of stopping it. In particular, having listened to Richard’s list of short-lived pairings, Cathy made the mistake of telling him about Gordon Jackson, years back. Richard was surprised, but he tried to sound understanding. Grief does things to a person, he said, and Cathy held herself back from asking how he would know. She told him that in fact it had happened before Patrick’s death. About six months before, she said. And regularly, for a time. I was with him when they called me to the hospital. It stopped after that. I could have carried on, but Gordon didn’t want to. She could see Richard was shocked now, although he claimed not to be, and she told him that relationships were more complicated than perhaps he realised; more complicated than it sounded like he wanted them to be. She felt something like irritation or resentment as she said this, and wasn’t sure why. He said that perhaps she was right but he was willing to learn. They followed the access track around the reservoir. The ground was dry. There’d been no rain and the water levels were low. They headed back towards the village. Afterwards it felt as though they’d had an argument. When she thought about Gordon, as she allowed herself to do once she got back home, it was only with a quiet relief that it had happened at all, long past the point of thinking she should be allowed those kinds of joys again. The first time had been rough and shambolic, and the only time risks were taken, but after that there were careful arrangements and they made sure not to hurry. They were such straightforward pleasures; lasting satisfactions that she
carried around with her for days afterwards and couldn’t shake off. One of the many surprises was how soft Gordon’s skin had been; even his hands, which by rights should have been more weathered. How gentle he also was, and how strongly felt his need. When she saw him in the village now she sometimes wondered about the softness of his skin. She thought about Richard and smiled at the timidity he hadn’t been able to grow out of. She had never decided whether it was something she found attractive. She heard Nelson barking, and went to knock on Mr Wilson’s door. Jackson’s boys were busy with lambing. There were some early losses but on the whole it went well. The nights were long and they took turns sleeping a few hours each. In his studio Geoff Simmons worked on handles, pulling each one down from a fist of clay, thinning it through his finger and thumb before slicing it off and laying it out to dry with the others. The whippet walked slow circles around him, waiting. In the beech wood the first fox cubs were seen above ground.