by Jon McGregor
By May the reservoirs were as low as they’d been in forty years, the ruins of the old village buildings dry above the waterline and people walking down to picnic where the churchyard had once been. There were hosepipe bans over four counties; the hills were drying out. Will and Claire Jackson separated again, and Claire went to live with her mother while she looked for a flat. Tom stayed in the village with Will. Martin stood for election as chair of the parish council, on a vague platform of being what he referred to as a new broom. It was the first time anyone could remember the chairship being contested. It was noted that there was a difference between being a new broom and never having attended a meeting of the council, and Brian Fletcher was voted back in. In the village hall the well dressers were into their third day of pressing in the petals and mosses, and tempers were running short. Some of the newer dressers were lacking for technique, and Irene had to be clear when sections weren’t up to scratch. She even had to explain that the petals were meant to overlap in the manner of roof slates, so that any rainwater could run off. It boggled the mind how someone could live in a well-dressing village and not know that. At the badger sett in the beech wood after dark the first cubs of the year came out. They stayed close to the adults, watching their mothers find food. There was a cacophony of smells. They marked a path back and forth between the adults and the sett entrance, scratching and shuffling and keeping the way clear. The Jacksons moved their sheep up on to the moors. The lower fields needed time to recover. The sheep made a ruckus as they bunched together up the lane but they soon settled down. A police officer was seen going down to Fletcher’s orchard, and as he stepped through the gate he saw a man urinating against the drystone wall. This was Flint, who turned and nodded, wiping his hands on his trousers. The police officer said he was making enquiries about a theft. Flint shrugged, and the police officer asked about his place of residence, his line of work, his recent whereabouts. He explained that these were routine questions. Flint gave him routine answers. There were noises from inside the caravan. The door opened, and Ray came out. He nodded at the police officer, and at Flint, and went to urinate against the drystone wall. The police officer asked were there any objections to his having a look around. Flint shrugged again, and the police officer poked around in the nettles under the caravan, and into the gap between the caravan and the wall. Ray and Flint looked at each other. The police officer stepped into the caravan and started opening the cupboards and drawers. Ray adjusted his trousers, and Flint held out a hand to steady him back. The police officer stepped down from the caravan and thanked them for their time. Flint said he thought they were entitled to see a search warrant for that type of thing, and the police officer said he just wanted to exhaust all the avenues of possibility. Ray said he could exhaust some more avenues of possibility for him if he liked, but he waited while the police officer was halfway up the lane before he said it.
At dawn on Midsummer’s Day the sun fell into line with the two pairs of fallen stones at either end of the Stone Sisters. The drumming could be heard from down in the village. The bracken was up but was browning already. Ashleigh Wright was found to have been missing days at school. There was a phone call to Susanna and a meeting with the head of year, Ms Bowman. Ashleigh was at the meeting but she couldn’t be brought into the conversation. She slumped low in the chair and her hair hung over her face and she wouldn’t be drawn. Was there bullying. Was she finding the lessons too difficult, or too easy. Where was she going when she wasn’t in school. Was she meeting anyone. If there was a problem they wanted to work with her to resolve it. But she couldn’t go on like this. She kept shrinking into her chair, and when Susanna put a hand to her shoulder she jerked away. It was difficult to ask questions into that sullen vacuum without becoming frustrated. Susanna and Ms Bowman fell silent. It was a small room and warm and there was condensation on the window. Outside there were shouts as the younger year groups took their morning break. There was a stack of books on Ms Bowman’s desk that needed marking by the end of the day and she tried to keep her eyes from it. Susanna’s hand was still smarting from the way Ashleigh had pulled back. This was new. Or not new, in fact. It was the same way she’d retreated when they were with the children’s father. Susanna hadn’t seen it for a long time. There had been a kind of strength in it then, she knew, the kind of strength a child shouldn’t need. But she wondered what was happening now to make her retreat in that same way. Ms Bowman was watching the two of them. She knew there was a history. There’d been little concern with the brother but this one seemed more troubled. Probably they would need to talk separately. There might be a referral, if the mother would accept that. But now time was short and the poor girl just wanted leaving alone. She smiled at Susanna and gestured that she would call her later. Susanna stood to leave and Ashleigh was already heading through the door. In the corridor Ashleigh walked away without saying anything and Susanna watched her go. Her spine was all twisted and her shoulders hunched and her feet were dragging as she walked. Her posture was doing her no favours but she wouldn’t want to hear that. Susanna was feeling pretty tense around the clavicles herself. She’d go for a run when she got home. All those things that had happened. When she thought they were passed they kept coming back. She lifted her head and dropped her shoulders and tried to feel herself connected to the earth through the balls of her feet. Rohan had finished university and come home with no idea what to do next. He was helping her in the shop but she couldn’t pay him. She’d been running a loss for months and could barely afford to restock. The landlord was losing patience. James Broad came back from university and worked in Hunter’s timber yard for a time. He refused to go to his graduation. A certificate arrived by registered post, and he showed his mother, the two of them standing in the kitchen in their dressing gowns, James with his mouth full of toast and his mother having to whip the certificate away so it didn’t get covered in jam. Later he met the others for a drink in town, and although it was meant as a celebration they weren’t really in the mood. They sat out in the beer garden by the river where they’d sat three years before, and soon ran out of things to say. Sophie was the only one who had a job lined up, and she’d failed her course altogether. When Rohan suggested they take the shortcut across the river to the car park Sophie gave him a withering look. In the morning Les Thompson and his men were out early with the mowers. They went straight from the milking to the machinery shed and got things started. The morning had been clear and still, the mist lifting from the fields in waves and burning off before the cows were even turned out. Jones’s trial came to court and he was sentenced to eighteen months. There was a report in the paper that no one wanted to read. His sister was still staying elsewhere and his house stood empty. At night the bats flew low over the water and down the lane past the orchard, feeding on insects no one knew had existed before they were carried away. In the evening a police van was seen at Fletcher’s orchard. Ray and Flint were arrested.
The long days of July were hot. The heather seethed with insect life. On Sunday in the evening Sally and Brian Fletcher ate a meal together. Ordinarily there would be conversation but tonight they were silent. Through the window the caravan was pale against the dusk and the orchard was closing in. The dinner was mostly eaten before Brian spoke. You can’t say I haven’t been patient, he started. Sally looked at him, pushing the last of the mashed potato on to her fork. There was nothing she could say. Even after that last time, Brian went on, I welcomed him back. The boy’s got troubles. We know that. We thought this would help; a bit of stability. But if we could persuade Ray to keep away, Sally said. Ray’s always been the problem. There’s a hold he has over Phil. I don’t think you could persuade that man to go anywhere he didn’t want to go, Brian said. Not without a pair of handcuffs. But if we see what happens, with the charges? Ray will have been the instigator. Maybe Phil will just get a caution? Oh, come on, Sally. They were both in the house. They both went into her house and stole from her. It’s joint enterprise. It’s bloody h
ome invasion. This won’t be a caution. She nodded. She knew he was right. She loved Brian dearly and she knew he was right. She knew how much he’d sacrificed to go ahead and marry her, but there were still times when he sounded as though he was the lord of the manor. They did the dishes and settled down to watch whatever was on television. It was something about a murder. The second clutches of goldcrest eggs were hatching in the conifer plantation up at the Hunter place. When the school holidays started the widower’s ex-wife brought one of his children to stay: the youngest, a girl of around thirteen. No one had managed to drop the habit of calling him the widower. The girl spent more time in the garden than when she’d been there with her siblings the year before. She was especially good with the hens, it was noticed, and took longer than needed putting them away at night. Some evenings she sat with her father on a new bench in the garden, sipping at a mug of hot chocolate, and later he sat alone while the light in an upstairs bedroom shone into the gathering dusk and went out. At the end of the month, after his wife had taken the girl back, the same light was sometimes seen on in the evenings, the curtains drawn, the hens taking longer than usual to settle. At the river the keeper waded into the water and cut away at the weeds.
The August nights were cold and in the mornings the first dewy hints of autumn rose from the ground. The swallows were starting to gather along the wires, the first to feel the cold, turning their heads south and waiting for whatever would pass as a sign. In the woods and along the shaded riverbank the ragged robin was in flower. The air was dry and the sounds of the cricket match carried right through the village, the knock and the chatter and the cheers seeming to grow louder each time. By the end of the afternoon word went round that the match was not being lost. More people turned up to watch. The exact score was a matter of confusion, but when Cardwell’s last wicket was taken, bowled clean by James Broad with a shout that volleyed right across the river and sent the pigeons scattering from the end of the field, there was a general understanding that the game had been won for the first time in memory. In the shelter of one of the cloughs coming down off the moor a well-made den was discovered, birch and larch branches propped up against each other and the whole thing roofed with bracken until the light barely shone through. It wasn’t known who had built the den or what it had been used for, but the ranger took it down all the same. He found magazines. At the office when he mentioned this they wanted to know what sort of magazines. Let’s say specialist-type ones, he said. You mean like gun magazines, fishing? No. I think you know what I’m talking about. Adult magazines. Not comics then; we’re not talking about Beano and Dandy? No. Special-interest adult magazines. Oh, like tit-mags you mean? Well. Like I say. These were particularly specialist. In what way, Graham? His colleagues could be very obtuse, sometimes. He was aware that they did it on purpose. The best response seemed to be a patience in excess of that which they may have expected. But he had no wish to take this conversation any further. Did you bring any back with you, Graham? For evidence? Can we see them, Graham? Are they in your desk? No, he said. They’ll be in the filing cabinet. Have a look in the filing cabinet. Under S for specialist? A for adult? B for bondage? I’m going to conclude this conversation now, folks. Graham pretended to tip his hat, and left the office. He had better things to do. He could hear his colleagues laughing as he closed the office door. Let them waste their time looking through the filing cabinet. On the allotments in the evenings there were queues for the tap and those with water butts looked on and said nothing. The water skidded across the hard ground and didn’t always soak down to the roots. There was a sense of the season beginning to turn; nothing wilting yet but a softening in much of the growth, the greens less green and the seed-heads starting to fall. The watering went on after the long shadows had stretched down to the road and been overtaken by the greater shadow of the hill. On a fence-post by the road a buzzard tensed and sprang into flight, settling claws-first on a young rabbit and carrying it away. At the school the boilerhouse was demolished.
Cathy Harris helped Sally clean out the caravan once the police had finished. Most of what they hadn’t taken was only fit for throwing away. Cathy asked what Sally thought would happen next. I really don’t know, Sally said. I’m starting to think he’s just that bit too damaged, you know? He gets himself into these situations. The only time I ever see him looking peaceful is when he’s in the hospital, but the only way in is when he gets arrested first. I don’t know what more I’m meant to do. The orchard looked hacked and awkward, but Brian Fletcher said he thought the two men had done a good job on the whole. The protest camp had mostly closed down, now that the new quarry was fully up and running. The first excavation had started three miles away from the Stone Sisters, and it was clear that it wouldn’t get much closer. Most days there was just the one protester up there, keeping the fire going and repainting the banners. The estate lost more pheasants than usual to poachers, and there was talk of an organised gang. The odd one or two was tolerated, but this was dozens in a single night. In the parlour at Thompson’s farm the men hooked the milking clusters up to the next group of cows, the rich smell of cream and shit rising in the late-afternoon air. In his studio Geoff Simmons fixed handles to a new batch of jugs, scoring a cross-hatch at the attachment and sticking each one on with a smear of slip. There were orders to pack and take down to the post office. There was a woman he’d been seeing, a potter from Devon who’d become very friendly at a craft fair and had been up to stay a couple of times. She said she preferred him to travel down to her place. She’d encouraged him into the mail order. He’d hated the idea of a website, and of people buying his pots without holding them first, but she was persuasive. This was starting to worry him. On his lunch break Martin took his sandwiches to the park by the river, and when he’d finished eating he stopped off at the toilets and heard something going on in the cubicle. There was just muttering at first, while he stood at the urinal, and then some other rustling or rattling around. It sounded as though two people were in there, and the thought crossed his mind that it could be two men having sex. He understood that this was something people did. He’d wondered, when they’d first learnt about Bruce, whether this was something Bruce had done. He’d found the thought upsetting, far more than the basic fact of his being gay or whatever they wanted to call it. He’d settled with that. He’d told Bruce, eventually, soon after meeting Hugh, that he’d settled with that. There was silence in the cubicle, and he thought he must have imagined the noises. Which was a concern in itself. And then as he was washing his hands there was the sound of a sudden movement, a bang against the cubicle door, and a kind of wincing grunt of pleasure. He realised, as he walked quickly away without drying his hands, that the idea of the pleasure had surprised him. Because why would it be a surprise. Because whatever else people thought about that type of thing it could only be assumed that they enjoyed it. Else why would they go to all that trouble. Why would they put up with people talking about them. He found himself thinking about whether or not he’d heard what he thought he’d heard for days afterwards. He wanted to tell someone about it but there was no one. He wondered how they went about agreeing to go into the cubicle together in the first place. The wheat fields by the main road were harvested and the woodpigeons gathered for the spilt grain. In the clough in the evenings there was a thin mist following the line of the river, rising like smoke from the water. The weather was closing in.
