by Jon McGregor
In their front room the Cooper family watched Harry Potter, after a day of walking up on the hill. The twins fell asleep after twenty minutes, one hand each resting in the bowl of popcorn wedged between them. Austin had just been commenting quietly on this to Su when he realised she was asleep as well. He turned the sound down on the film and listened to the three of them. He had a memory of listening to them like this when the boys were babies. They had become so much more in the meantime. He watched the boys’ chests rise and fall, their lungs still small and their bodies busy growing. He looked at them. The neatness of their proportions. Their skin. The utter stillness on their faces. The light in the room kept changing with the movement of the trees outside. The people in the film kept shouting at each other, mutely. And Su, turned in towards him, her slight frame slow and tidal in its sleeping breath. He felt as though he were holding the three of them, holding this room, this house. They made him feel at once immensely capable and immensely not up to the task. He remembered all the times he’d lain awake at night, thinking over the locks on the doors and windows, working through what he would do when someone came crashing into the house. And here they all were, safe. The light from the television screen shone across the boys’ faces. Austin was holding his breath, as if letting it go would let the moment spill. He felt the contentment in his chest like an aching muscle. He noticed Sam’s hand twitch in the popcorn bowl, and wondered what he was dreaming of. He felt Su shift beside him, her cheek turning into his shoulder, and then Lee asked him to turn the volume up because he couldn’t hear the film.
When the first siren sounded over at the quarry the workers cleared the area. When the second siren sounded the birds fell silent. In the village, windows and doors were pulled shut. The third siren sounded, and the birds rose into the air, and the explosion came from deep behind the working face, spreading through the body of the earth, a low crumping shudder that shrugged huge slabs of limestone to the quarry floor. The dust rose and continued rising and drifted out through the air for five minutes or more. The first all-clear sounded, and the birds returned noisily to the treetops. The second all-clear sounded, and the workers returned to their places. In the village the windows and doors were kept closed as the dust spread. On the bus back from town Winnie saw Irene and asked whether she’d had her hair done. Irene’s hand went up to her head, although she hadn’t meant it to. She told Winnie it was only the usual. Keeping it tidy, she said. Well, it suits you, Winnie told her. Irene only nodded, and turned to face the front of the bus. Winnie wondered how she’d caused offence. It wasn’t always easy to tell, with Irene. At the bus stop Irene saw Sally Fletcher, who wanted to know about the plans for the next Women’s Institute sale and also felt it necessary to pass remark on her hair. What a lovely job they’ve done there, she said, and for a moment she had her hand on Irene’s shoulder, as though she wanted to turn her back and forth like some kind of dressmaker’s dummy. Well, Irene said. I do prefer it short, you know. Practical. Later, when Su Cooper said something similar, Irene began to wonder if some elaborate joke was being played on her. She didn’t welcome the attention. She wasn’t vain about her appearance. She would have to ask Jackie to do a simpler cut, next time. Tidy was all she’d asked for. In the evening she met Winnie for a drink at the Gladstone, as they’d arranged. It was her sixtieth birthday but she didn’t want a fuss. At the council meeting there was a dispute about burning the Guy Fawkes at the bonfire party. Susanna Wright said it was anti-Catholic which was more or less the same as racist when you thought about it and she didn’t think the parish council should be condoning anything like that. The majority saw it as a harmless tradition which there was no need to drop. After the meeting Susanna was taken to one side and told that as a newer member of the parish council she should wait a year or two before tabling any more motions. There were springtails in the crumbling wood of the fallen ash by the river, moulting and feeding and getting ready to lay more eggs. There was a storm and the felt on the village-hall roof came away. There was so much water damage that the wall panelling down one side had to be taken out. That end of the hall was cordoned off, and a meeting held about urgent fundraising for repairs. There was flooding the length of the valley and some newly cut trees from the Hunters’ land came crashing down the river and took out the footbridge by the millpond weir.
Jones came back to the village and kept himself to himself. When the lights were first seen on at his house there were those who felt he should be acknowledged. I’ll fucking acknowledge him, Tony said. There was no question of him working at the school again. Once his time on remand had been taken into account he’d only served six months. There were conditions attached to his release but he was allowed to live at home. Those who saw him said he looked gaunt. His offences were said to be at the milder end of the spectrum but in the village they wouldn’t be brushed off. Spectrum my arse, Tony said, more than once. Martin said that it wasn’t kiddy stuff but teenage girls, and even with some thirteen-year-olds it was hard to tell. There was a silence when he spoke and no one agreed. Tony told him a thirteen-year-old was still a child, and Martin immediately backed off. I didn’t mean it like that, he said. The bloody hell is wrong with you? Tony asked. There were sale posters in Susanna’s shop window all through December. It was understood to be a closing-down sale, although nobody called it that. She hung fairy lights and paper chains and held a Christmas event. There was mulled wine and mince pies and people sang carols together. The place was packed, although it was noticed that Ashleigh wasn’t there. She was having a difficult patch. In the morning there was a new padlock on the door. At the river the keeper repaired a section of path where the flooding had taken out a foot of bank and left the gravel to slide into the water. He’d been shovelling gravel all morning and was glad of the breeze. Richard Clark didn’t make it home for Christmas and neither did his sisters. They took it in turns to call their mother’s mobile on Christmas morning, and if she stood just outside the back door she could more or less hear what they said. The girls sounded hassled, coming up for air from their hectic preparations. Richard was subdued, speaking from a room that sounded full of carpets and drapes. There was someone in the bed with him, she could tell. She’d always been able to tell, and it tickled her that he was innocent enough not to realise. A rustle of sheets, an impatience in his voice. When the phone calls were done the house and the garden were awfully quiet. Later two of Jackson’s boys came and drove her to Winnie’s for lunch. They took an arm each as they helped her to the car, and she wasn’t sure her feet touched the ground at all.
There was talk of putting the pantomime on in the church, while the village hall was being refurbished, but given the tone of recent productions the church council felt it would be inappropriate. Oh no it wouldn’t, Jane Hughes said. Well, yes, I’m afraid it would, Clive replied. Her naivety disappointed him sometimes. The pantomime was postponed for the year. That Sunday Jane’s family was seen at the church, the son and the daughter home from university and looking uncomfortable in pews they hadn’t sat in since they were half as high. The son was taller and broader than both his parents now, and when he did the reading he had to stoop over the lectern, his big hands gripping the edges as though he were about to lift it over his head. They had gone a long way towards home, he read, when they realised Jesus was missing. He was swallowing his words a little. They hurried back to the temple and found the boy there, talking to the high priests. Didn’t you know you would find me in my father’s house? he said. Jane was standing to one side, waiting to announce the next hymn, watching her son and smiling at the story being told. This is the word of the Lord, he mumbled. Thanks be to God, the congregation replied. They sang another hymn, and during the sermon Jane talked about change and renewal and told them she would soon be moving to a new job in Manchester. The river thickened with silt from the hills and plumed across the weirs. A pale light moved slowly across the moor. The missing girl’s name was Becky, or Rebecca, or Bex. If she was still alive she could
be close to six feet tall by now. The computer-generated image of her at seventeen was five years out of date, but a police spokesperson said there were no plans to commission a new one. The case remained open, she said. The jeans and the body-warmer and the white hooded top would be too small. The shoes would have fallen apart.
10.
At midnight when the year turned there was a fire in the caravan in Fletcher’s orchard. It took a time for anyone to notice, and an hour more for the fire brigade to arrive, and by then the caravan was burnt out and a dozen trees gone with it. In the morning it was still smoking and a smell of molten plastic hung over the village. There was little doubt it had been deliberately set, and not much hope of finding who’d done it. For days afterwards Fletcher was seen pacing through the orchard, inspecting the burnt trees as though they might be salvageable. The softening fields on the south side of the church were thick with feeding fieldfares. Most evenings a fog came thickly down and stayed. Andrew had another incident with his mother. She was cleaning again and she kept on at him to pick his clothes off the floor. He was in the middle of a coding run. He didn’t want to lose his thread. She knew she wasn’t supposed to come into his room but she kept asking. He was trying to keep his thread but she kept appearing at the door. He would have done it later if she’d given him a chance. He told her he was busy but she said she had a wash waiting to go on. He stood to close the door but she crossed over the metal strip between the hallway carpet and his bedroom carpet. Let me just get them myself, she said. They need washing. She came past him and stooped for the clothes, and he brought his elbow down on the back of her neck. She made a noise he didn’t understand. She knelt down and picked up the clothes. Afterwards he said he was sorry but only because he knew that’s what people said.
Brian Fletcher was still brooding on the fire and Sally knew to leave him alone. The Fletchers’ house was a big one and they each had enough space to themselves. He’d been cut off from the family’s wealth but he’d been allowed to hold on to the house. They couldn’t afford to keep it up but they did their best. It was a square Georgian townhouse which was out of all proportion with the rest of the street. It had been the vicarage at one time. There were four bedrooms and three reception rooms and a huge kitchen, and it was about three times as big as where Sally had grown up. She had a study for her wildlife books and watercolours, and Brian had a workshop crammed with bits and pieces of cars. It was known they had separate bedrooms. He was taking the fire personally. She kept out of his way while he worked it through. The fire had made him feel targeted. He found a garage in town where he could store the cars. He wondered for a time if his family might be involved, but settled in the end on some associate of Ray or Flint. That type of character is always after someone to blame, he said. After some days of agitation he came to her and asked if she would stay with him that night. It was always done in this way. There was a chance to decline, which made it easier to accept. They each had reasons to protect their own solitude but also nights when they needed to feel safe. They had sex rarely and it never made them feel they’d been missing out. Sally talked all this through with Cathy Harris one time, and afterwards wished that she hadn’t. It wasn’t something that people understood. In the rains at the end of the month a cast-iron gutter cracked and took down a soffit board when it fell. There was always something to mend and it was hard to keep up. On the moor the sheep were nicotine-yellow against the fresh snow. The falls were heavy and they drifted. Will Jackson kept Tom out of school and took him up to look for lost ewes. They’d brought most of them down the night before but there were a half-dozen they hadn’t been able to find. It was likely some would be dead by now, and Will thought Tom was old enough to see. Claire wouldn’t like it, and that was fine by him. He got the quad as far up the track as it would manage, and pointed it downhill before they got off. They had brought poles, shovels, sacks, a bag of feed and bottles of milk. They split the load between them before setting off across the hill. Tom was up to Will’s shoulders now and just as broad, and Will found himself working to keep up. He told his son to pace himself. Nothing wrong with this pace, Grandad, Tom shouted back against the wind. Will told him to fuck off, and Tom laughed. They waded on, their boots sinking deep into the settled snow, heading for the narrow clough where Will thought the sheep might have gathered. At the parish council there was disagreement about who was responsible for replacing the footbridge.
The estate was granted a court order against the last quarry protester and she was evicted. Two police officers gave her a lift to the train station with a rucksack full of what she could carry. She asked for everything else to be put into storage and was told this wasn’t possible. There was some distress. The police officers didn’t think she had much sense of where she would go. Men from the estate took a trailer up to the site and carted everything off for the tip. The reservoirs were quickly filled when the rains returned, the hills soon saturated and the spillways gushing into the river again. Along the footpath and in the corners of fields the first flushes of nettles came up. Winnie was amongst the few left who still cut the tops for soups and sauces. She gathered them with a creeping embarrassment now in case anyone saw. The National Park people put on a fire-safety exhibition at the village hall, most of which was about arson. Following recent events, they said. Refreshing people’s minds about securing premises and keeping flammable materials under lock and key. Brian Fletcher took it personally and asked what more he was supposed to have done. There were cutbacks at the BBC, and Su Cooper was offered voluntary redundancy. She spent three long evenings talking it over with Austin. If she stayed there might be redundancies anyway, with far less than they were offering now. If she left now she would always regret it; all the work she’d put in to get this far, all the time she’d missed when she’d been home with the boys. If she stayed some of her best colleagues would be gone anyway, and the workload would be heavier, the whole atmosphere changed. If she left what would she do? They could see it as a sabbatical, take the boys travelling. The boys were too young for that, they couldn’t be taken out of school. She could get more involved in village life, do some volunteering, find a hobby. Hobby? she said. A fucking hobby? There were no easy ways of talking around this. There was no obvious solution. Fucking hobbies, she said, again, and decided to keep the job. The clocks went forward and the evenings opened out. The buds on the branches brightened. Gordon Jackson took a delivery over to Ruth’s shop in Harefield and made sure to arrive after closing. Once he’d unloaded and she’d signed the invoice they both washed their hands and went upstairs. There was a sofa and they undressed and she pulled him down to her. There was never much talking. This didn’t happen every time. He only knew when she told him to wash his hands. Months now this had been happening but not often and he was always surprised. She was older than him but she was strong. There were sometimes bruises. Afterwards when he tried to talk she didn’t want to. He wouldn’t mind but there were things he wanted to know. He wanted to know what this was. Perhaps it was nothing. That would be hard to accept. She lay back against the end of the sofa and rested her feet in his lap. He thought she was falling asleep but she toed at his stomach in a way that made him get started all over again. It was dark by the time he left and he wondered if he’d be too late for tea. From the top of the moor the lights of the cars on the motorway could be seen, soundless and urgent while the village slept.
In April Su Cooper’s parents came to stay, and when they walked through the door the boys were all over them. Had they brought sweets, had they brought cookies? Su’s father laughed at their directness and bent down to lift up first Han Lee and then Lu Sam. Austin was already outside, collecting bags from the car. Su watched her father, and saw how he struggled with the weight of each boy. Her mother waited, then leant forward to embrace the two boys as they stood. Soon I won’t need to bend down at all! she said, as she had done for the last few years. Su embraced them both, and ushered them through to the front room just as Austin appeared i
n the doorway with all the bags. Where am I putting these? he asked, and was told to take them straight upstairs. There were wild pheasant nests scraped into the long grass at the edge of the beech wood, and when the eggs started appearing they were taken in number by foxes and badgers and crows. The Hunters were having a new drystone wall built at the entrance to their drive, and Liam Hooper had already been working on it for a month. Sean Hooper went over most days to check on the progress, and when he noticed how often Olivia Hunter was coming down the drive with cups of tea and plates of biscuits, or just hanging around asking questions, he made a point of reminding Liam of her age. Liam looked surprised and muttered something about it at least being legal. Sean couldn’t help laughing but he told Liam to steer clear. It’d be more trouble than it’s worth, he said. At the Women’s Institute sale Winnie asked Irene if she was well. She said it with an upward tilt, as though of course why would she not be well, but Irene stiffened at the asking. I can’t complain, she said. I’m getting along. And how are you? Winnie said she was fine. She said Irene’s cakes and jams had been missed; it had been a while since she’d brought any to the sale. The colour rose in Irene’s face and for a moment she didn’t reply. I can’t be expected, she said. I can’t always be expected. Winnie put a hand to her friend’s arm. No one’s expecting, she said. But if I can help. Irene shook her head and moved back a little, so that Winnie’s hand was left in the air. Thank you, she said. I’ll manage. I appreciate your thoughtfulness. But, really. A pair of buzzards circled each other high over the moorland by Reservoir no. 5, locking claws and swinging towards the ground in a tumble of outstretched wings. The conservationists had been putting about a plan to control the vegetation in the flood meadows by grazing longhorn cattle, and the Jacksons were asked if they wanted the contract to manage it. The boys were in favour. It would mean putting up a new barn, and getting a bigger trailer to move the stock around, but there’d been a strong suggestion that if they took this on there would be more contracts to follow. Jackson said no. When they tried to explain the importance of diversification he made a big show of how hard he found it to speak and finally spat out the word sheep. We – do – sheep, he said. There was no use discussing it. There was a half moon over the cricket ground and the pale light fell through the leaves of the horse chestnut tree.
