Reservoir 13

by Jon McGregor

  In May there was snow on the higher ground, even as the walkers who came through the village started wearing shorts. The new-growth bracken spread across the hills above the reservoirs, pale green and thickening, and plans were drawn up for more spraying and cutting back. At the school the lights in the staffroom were seen on all night, and the next day the word was that Ofsted were coming in. When it was over Mrs Simpson looked as though she’d gone through a month of lambing and Miss Dale had to take a week off sick. Money was found to repair the village hall, and activities moved to the church while the work was carried out. There were objections to yoga taking place in the nave, on account of what Clive said were its possibly occultic origins. There was a discussion. Jane Hughes talked to the church council about how they might best handle her departure, and the interregnum which would follow. The diocese is committed to rural parishes, she assured them, but you will need to be ready for a long period without anyone in post. They were nodding but she knew they weren’t taking it on board. She talked about the need to put together rotas of readers and communion servers, the need to book visiting preachers, the options for drawing on retired clergy who lived in the area. She went home and told her husband that these people weren’t going to be ready, that maybe she was doing the wrong thing. He told her they would just have to grow up a bit, that they’d struggle for a while but she couldn’t always be responsible. She said saying grow up was a bit harsh and he threw up his hands. At the river the keeper dropped the sample bottles into the water from the bridge by the weir. Always the same spot and the same time of day. There were bubbles on the surface as the bottles filled and then he brought the cage up and put the bottles away. He watched a pair of dragonflies come together near the bank. The missing girl had been seen in the visitor centre, listening to one of the audio guides, her eyes closed in concentration and her legs swinging from the bench. She had been wearing the canvas shoes, apparently.

  In June the evenings were open and clear. The sun didn’t set so much as drift into the distance, leaving a trail of midsummer light that seemed to linger until morning. There was a reluctance to sleep. There was talk. In the meadows Thompson’s men worked the baler along the lines of cut grass, the thick sward gathered up and spun into dense bales. Every few hundred yards the tractor paused and there was a tumbling inside the machine and a neatly wrapped bale rolled softly from the hatch into the field. The woodpigeons laid eggs in their nests in the beech wood and in the horse chestnut by the cricket ground. They took turns sitting on the eggs, but there were still plenty stolen by magpies and crows. On the bank above the abandoned lead pits the badgers started coming out of their sett before dark. The sows with cubs were looking for food, and the boars were looking for mates. There were conflicts. There were some in the village still who could remember their grandparents talk of the lead-mining trade, of men who spent their lives clambering down hand-cut shafts to hack away at seams of toxic ore, the fields littered with workings and the smoke from the smelting works settling in everyone’s lungs. Mr Wilson went into hospital for a hip operation, and while he was gone Nelson stayed in Cathy’s house. In the village hall the well-dressing boards were almost finished. Winnie and Irene sprayed the boards to keep the clay damp, and when they finally stood back and smiled in approval there was a general dropping of shoulders and a cheer and the order was sent out to the Gladstone for sausage and mash. Jackson’s boys penned the sheep for worming. Will Jackson was ready with the drench gun and held each sheep by the neck in turn, easing the nozzle in through the corner of the mouth and down to the back of the throat. It put him in mind sometimes of getting Molly to swallow the pink medicine on nights when she’d sweated herself awake. The girl spent a lot of nights awake, it seemed. He wondered if he’d been the same as a child. His mother wouldn’t have had the time for it, he supposed. The ewes kept coming down the line and there was soon a lanolin sheen on his skin. Winnie’s grandchildren came to visit at the end of the month, and she took them out picking elderflowers in the old quarry by the main road, filling a bin-bag with the foamy white flower-heads and carrying it home on their shoulders. She sat them at the kitchen table and had them zesting the oranges and lemons she’d bought ready, while she picked the flower-heads clean and set them to soak overnight. By the next day they’d lost interest, and refused to leave the television when she added the sugar and fruit juice and heated it gently through. When her daughter came for the children she gave them a bottle of the cordial. It was still warm and the light shone through it, and Winnie knew it would never be drunk. Her daughter hugged her lightly and kissed her cheek and said they’d see each other soon. The children waved from the back of the car.

  In his studio Geoff Simmons loaded the kiln for a first firing and took the whippet out for a slow walk. She’d been a runner once but her hips were gone. They walked down the lane towards the Jackson place and the road. He was a bit off the pace himself. He went into the pub and came out with a pint and a bowl of water. He sat on a bench and read the Valley Echo while the whippet drank. He knew all the names of the people in the Echo but there were plenty he couldn’t place if they walked by. They didn’t tend to socialise. He’d never expected to be here this long so he hadn’t made the effort. He’d been in Devon for a week with the woman he’d been seeing, and she’d talked about him staying longer. He’d told her there were things he needed to get back for. He finished his beer and went in for another. It would be hours before the kiln needed attending. There were other jobs but they would wait. The whippet settled down and slept. By the river Jane Hughes saw Jones, sitting on the bench by the gated cave entrance. Had to stop for a rest, Vicar, he said. It’s a nice place to sit, she agreed; sheltered. She sat beside him. There was a commotion in the hawthorn on the other side of the river. Magpies want shooting, he said. They’re in there going for the wrens. Jane had learnt not to enter these discussions, and nodded. How’s your sister doing? They say she’s coming on, he said. Settling in. I told them she could come back here but they thought it best not for now. There was a whine of machinery from the Hunter plantation, and jackdaws circling over the woods. The afternoon was darkening. Jones nodded at the locked gate to the caves. Reckon she might have ended up in there, he said. Who? Jane asked. The girl, he said. They searched it all before they put the gates up though, didn’t they? Could never search all of it, he said. Jane watched him for a moment. You know if you ever want to talk, about anything, she said, looking out across the river and keeping her voice light. There was a pause while the river moved over the stones and through the reeds. That’s me then, Vicar, he said, standing up. She watched the magpies pull the young wrens out of the hedge while their parents fussed overhead. Jones had started walking away, and turned back. I didn’t do it, he said. I didn’t do any of the things they said. It was a mistake. Something went wrong with the computer. I’m not like that. Someone put that stuff on there. They can bugger off, the lot of them. He was standing with his body stiff and arched towards her and for a moment she was afraid.

  There was swimming in the flooded quarry, and another rope-swing went up. At the parish council a motion was tabled to have razor wire added to the fencing. Brian Fletcher objected. They’ll find a way past anyhow, he said. Young people think they’re invincible. There’s only so much you can tell them. Some of them are only going in there because you keep telling them it’s dangerous. Sometimes they just have to learn. The only way they’ll learn is by drowning, someone pointed out. Brian shrugged. His was a minority voice, and the razor wire was approved. In Cardwell the cricket was ill-tempered and the match was abandoned. Will Jackson’s boy was arrested with some friends from school in a stolen car up by Reservoir no. 8. Tom hadn’t done any driving, and insisted he hadn’t known the car was stolen, but Will still asked Claire to keep him indoors for a week. In the dead grass around the cricket field the eggs of the skippers turned from white to yellow, and the larvae span themselves into cocoons. At Reservoir no. 12 the maintenance team mowed the grass on
the embankment dam, letting a hover-mower glide down the steep face on a rope before hauling it up again. There was a childish pleasure in the work to which none of them would admit. Cathy knocked on Mr Wilson’s door before letting herself in with the key. Just in case, she explained, when he asked. He looked up at her from the bed. What do you imagine I might be capable of doing that I wouldn’t want you catching me at? he asked. She said she thought it was just polite. She asked whether he needed anything before she took Nelson out. He said he’d love a cup of tea but he wouldn’t want to deal with the consequences. She asked how he was doing and he said he’d be fine if the nurse didn’t keep dragging him out of bed to do exercises. She probably knows best, Cathy told him. They’ll have you walking this dog yourself in no time, she said, putting Nelson on the lead and heading out up the lane, past the cricket ground and the school and left at the church towards the packhorse bridge. When she came to Hunter’s wood she rested her hand on the smooth topstone as she squeezed through the gapstone stile.

  In September the swallows left, lifting from the wires one morning and heading south, quickly picking up speed as they cleared the valley and strung out into a long steady line. A soft rain came up from the river and blew over the village, sifting through the fields and up to the first of the reservoirs. The river was slow and shallow and when the rain passed the sun bent through the water to the shore. Ian Dowsett stood in the damp shade of a beech tree and whirled a hairwing dun to an overhang on the far side. There was a brown trout in there he’d been watching rise. The dun settled lightly on the surface and sailed away untouched. He reeled it back and waited for a shift in the light to try again. Jane Hughes had moved away at the end of August, and the Harvest Festival service was held without her. It was Susanna Wright’s turn to put the display together. She collected produce from the allotments, and made wheat sheaves, and used flowers from the market in town to make two very attractive arrangements. Even with the overabundance of tins and packets, which were sent to the new food-bank, people said it was one of the finest displays seen in some years. After the service Clive found her and asked if it wasn’t time she had another go with an allotment. She looked surprised, or embarrassed. After my last attempt? I don’t think so, Clive, she said. You’d have more time on your hands now, I believe, he told her. I’m not a retired yet, Clive. So I hope you’re not suggesting I’m the other thing. The offer’s there, he said. There’s other folk’ll take it. He turned to go. Susanna told him she’d think about it, and as she thanked him for the offer she touched a hand to his arm. He looked at her hand as though she were wiping oil on to his sleeve. William Pearson was once again asked to step down from the parish council. At night there were fires sometimes in the hills, and it wasn’t known who was lighting them or what they were burning.

  On Mischief Night a large group of older teenagers from Cardwell somehow managed to lift the entire bus shelter and carry it halfway up the side of the moor. The next day there were pictures of it all over Facebook, and it took the Jackson boys half the morning to bring it back down. Questions were asked about where the youngsters had even got their hands on an angle-grinder, and why no one had heard it being used. Irene said it reminded her of the time her late husband had hidden an entire dairy herd, as a young man. The story was familiar, she was told. There were very few apples gathered in Fletcher’s orchard. The trees had been productive and well maintained for a time after Sally’s brother had left, and had become a source of pride for Brian. The loss of the trees taken out by the fire knocked the pleasure out of him. He blamed himself for being too lazy to have the caravan removed. Les Thompson was out with the quad bike at four in the afternoon to fetch the herd in for the milking. They’d heard the sound of the motor and were heading towards him by the time he found them, blinking against the low afternoon sun. He turned and let them follow, feeling a push of warm air behind him. He was not a sentimental man but he would miss these girls if he had to give up. He was one of the last dairy men for miles. The prices made no sense. The supermarkets were killing them. On the television there were pictures of floods and storms and fires. The Cooper twins asked if they could join the local football team, which ran training sessions and played on the pitches beside the river in town. Austin drove them down there on a Saturday morning, and did some shopping while he waited to pick them up, leaving Su to have a lie-in at home. He went early to collect them, and watched from the car park as they jogged along the pitch with the other boys, warming down. They didn’t say anything when they got in the car, and when he asked how it had gone they said it was fine. The following week they told him they didn’t want to go again, and he gave them a talk about how important it was to persevere. The third week they were waiting in the car park when he came back from the shopping, the session in full swing behind them, and they said they were definitely not going again. They refused to explain. They said it was nothing. Lee looked at him pointedly and told him he wouldn’t understand. The clocks went back and the nights overtook the short days. The sound of gunshots cracked down from the woods in pairs. At home once Andrew was finally asleep Irene ran a bath as deep as she dared, steaming hot and salted, and winced into it. Her body always felt lighter under the water. The salts had given the water a dark-green tinge which almost hid the bruising on her arms. She rested her head against the end of the bath and listened to the settling sounds of the house. The creak of timber, the water in the pipes, the frantic breath of Andrew’s sleep.

  On Bonfire Night there was a heavy fog, thick with woodsmoke, the fireworks seen briefly like camera flashes overhead. In the beech wood the foxes prepared their dens. The vixens dug down into old earths and reclaimed them, lining them out with grasses and leaves. In the eaves of the church the bats settled plumply into hibernation. By the river the willows shook off their last leaves. At night the freight trains came more often, a single white light leading and the wagons shadowing heavily behind. The widower asked Clive for advice over pruning his fruit trees and Clive was surprised to see the state that things were in. The plums had silver leaf and needed taking out altogether. The fruit bushes badly wanted cutting back. The timbers he’d used for the raised beds were splitting, and there was no sign of any new hens. It had been a good year for courgettes, he told Clive. He was thinking about keeping bees. Late in the month Brian and Sally Fletcher invited some people to the Gladstone for drinks, and let it be known that it was their fifteenth anniversary. There was a quiet surprise that they felt this worth marking, but there was cheering and applause all the same. More drinks were bought. The two of them left early, and as they made their way home the first snow of the winter started falling, turning in the orange light from the streetlamps and dissolving on the road and not looking like settling any time soon. It had snowed the night before their wedding, Sally reminded Brian. When they’d first set the date they’d been called in to speak to the vicar. They knew there’d been talk about the marriage so they steadied themselves for her to intrude. People didn’t know Sally, was part of it. The age difference was something else. There was a feeling that Brian was being taken advantage of in some way. His family had said this directly. They had taken steps to isolate themselves against the risk she might pose. This was the phrase they used. They said they didn’t want him to think there was anything personal in it but they had generations of the family to consider. He had no idea what they thought they meant and he didn’t much care. None of them had ever let him feel as cared for as Sally did. This was what he’d said to Jane Hughes when the three of them met and it had made her clap her hands with delight. He was embarrassed and told her not to let on he’d said any such thing. She had none of the questions they’d feared she would. She didn’t want to know where Sally was from or how they met or what made them think this would work. She’d baked them a fine lemon drizzle cake and she asked if they’d chosen the hymns. She’d only been gone from the village a few months now and the two of them missed her tremendously.

  Richard Clark’s mother went
into the hospital in Sheffield and there were some who thought she wouldn’t be coming home. Irene took it upon herself to make sure she had visitors while her family wasn’t around. There was a rota. Ruth and Susanna were seen together on the allotments, cutting holly and fir. Jones had hacked his hedge down to knee-height again and was burning off the cuttings in a slow bonfire, spilling wet smoke across the village. Clive was in his greenhouse. The snow started thinly from a low grey sky and was ignored for a time. Towards dusk it was settling, and by the time Jones had shouldered his tools it was clean and squeaking underfoot. There were springtails in the rotting sheets of plywood stacked against the wall in Fletcher’s orchard, and the juveniles among them were shedding the first of their many shell-like skins. Gordon Jackson was seen talking to a journalist who’d come up from London to do a piece on the tenth anniversary of the girl’s disappearance. The piece was going to be about the impact on the village more than the missing girl herself. Our readers know about the girl, she said. They can imagine how the parents must have felt. I doubt it, Gordon said. She smiled. Well, okay, but they think they can. Her name was Emma. She was wearing a long coat and a silk scarf, knee-length boots. Her hair was very tidy but she kept tucking it behind her ear. He wondered if she might keep the scarf on. He showed her around the farm, took her in for a pot of tea, talked about the challenges sheep farming was going through. There was a perfume came off her each time she fussed with her hair. When she seemed done talking he told her he had to get on. But you call me if there’s anything else I can do, while you’re here. Eye contact. Careful silence. There was a pattern but it was never routine. Later she texted him and they met for a drink at her hotel in town. She had more questions but he thought it was clear where things were heading. Towards the end of the evening she thanked him for his time and said she had an early start. He went with her towards the stairs and then realised he’d got things wrong. She smiled and said goodnight. He turned away. He didn’t know quite what to do with himself. This was new.