by Jon McGregor
Lynsey Smith moved in with her new boyfriend, who lived in one of the new houses on the far side of town. He was older than her and worked as a surveyor for the quarrying company. He owned the house and had two cars, and although it had started as something she expected to be brief she realised she’d grown fond of the certainties he carried with him. He had a tidy home and he could cook and he bought her thoughtful gifts. He encouraged her to apply for the nursing school she’d been talking about since she’d graduated. His name was Guy and she’d met him while she was working at the Gladstone. She told Rohan about it one evening, when he’d come into the bar on his own. He was sort of charming, she said, but he wasn’t trying to be charming, if you know what I mean? Rohan nodded. He had no idea why she was telling him this. I knew he was interested, but it was like he was interested in me and not what he could get from me, sort of thing? He sounds nice, Rohan said. I’m pleased for you. I know it looks sudden but it just feels right. Does it look sudden to you? I think you should trust your instinct, Lynsey. Exactly, it just feels like the right thing, all of a sudden. You get to our age and sometimes you just know these things. And it’ll be good to move out as well, it’s been a nightmare living at home again. How about you, how’s things? How’s your mum? Your mum, Rohan said, automatically. The Spring Dance was held to raise money for repairs to the churchyard wall, and went off without more than the usual incident. New steps were cut into the embankment leading down to the new footbridge by the tea rooms, and within weeks the earth of each step had once again been trodden deeper than the boards set in place to hold it back. A pair of goldcrests built a nest in the spruce at the end of Mr Wilson’s garden, too high for him to see the work of knitting grasses and moss together.
Richard’s mother had kept hold of most of her husband’s possessions after he’d died, and he was having to sort through all those as well as hers. Cathy had come across to help, and they’d emptied boxes full of paperwork from the wardrobe over the bed. There might be some of this you can just chuck without really looking at it, she said. There were men on the roof, repointing the chimney and re-laying the slates. They could be heard shuffling around precariously. Every now and then a broken slate was flung over the side, falling past the window and smashing into the skip by the front door. There were glimpses of his father all over the paperwork: in his handwriting, in the names of the farm suppliers he’d dealt with, even in the slight smell of engine oil and tobacco. And although it had been almost twenty years now Richard still found himself thinking back to the funeral. He’d only come over for the day, and had felt detached from the whole thing. He’d seen Cathy and Patrick as he was leaving, and that would have been the first time he’d seen them in years, and he hadn’t been able to tell if they were awkward about that or just awkward about not knowing how to express sympathy. It was known that he hadn’t much liked his father. He’d made it easier by asking Patrick about his work, asking them both about their sons. Cathy had held him, stiffly, and Patrick had shaken his hand. That was the last time he’d seen Patrick. A few years later, his mother had called him to say that Patrick had just peeled over in the street, and been quite put out when he told her she probably meant keeled. You weren’t even there, she’d told him. How would you know. Another slate was flung from the roof and smashed into the skip, and Cathy began picking through all the papers spread across the bed. There might be some letters here I suppose, she said. There might be something your sisters will want to see. Before he knew what he was doing, his hand was resting lightly on her back, his fingers trailing down along the thin wool of her cardigan, bumping over the bones of her spine. She didn’t stiffen or move away, as he would have expected had he thought about it first. Rather she seemed to soften to his touch, to ease her back slightly towards him. She was old enough for grandchildren now. It should have been too late for something like this. On the roof the men pulled out more broken slates and flung them over the side.
In early May a group of students doing a sponsored walk were lost in a thick fog while coming down from the Stone Sisters. Somehow they ended up around the back of the cement works, and when they were shown where they’d got to on the map they refused to believe it. There were fires started in the Hunters’ haybarns and in the bins behind the tea rooms, but there was nothing to link them with the New Year’s Eve fires. There was still no evidence that those had been started by the same person. By the beech wood the wild pheasant chicks were hatching. They came out in a crouch and scattered from the nest, scratching around for food and ignoring their mothers’ calls. The twins went on a school trip to the visitor centre, and when they came back Lee wanted to know about Rebecca Shaw. He said it quite casually, with his fist in the biscuit tin, and Su had to keep her voice light as she explained. He nodded while she talked, and she guessed he’d heard most of this at school. So what happened to her? he asked. Nobody knows. She was never found. She’s not dead then, Lee said, through a mouthful of biscuit. She might be, Su said. It seems likely. She would have turned up by now. Nobody stays hidden for that long. I could, Lee announced cheerfully. Me and Sam worked it out. There’s all those tunnels under the hill, mines and stuff. You could hide in there, and come out at night for food. You could come out in a different place every time, and no one would know. You could live down there for years if you wanted. You know, if there was a war or something, or if you were being hunted. That’s what she might be doing. Waiting for the right moment to come out and surprise everyone. How old do you think she’d be now, Mum? Su felt cold. She sat down at the table and put a hand to Lee’s cheek so he would look at her and concentrate. She told him very calmly that he must never go into any of the mines or caves. Ever. She asked him to promise. Her expression frightened him. He promised they’d never go in again. There was rain and the river was high and the hawthorn by the lower meadows came out foaming white. The cow parsley was thick along the footpaths and the shade deepened under the trees. The river rushed under the packhorse bridge. Richard and Cathy were both surprised by the lack of urgency with which they took each other to bed. If they’d thought about it at all – which Cathy admitted she had a little, and Richard said only that it had in fact crossed his mind – they’d imagined stumbling up stairs, tangling clothes, crashing into furniture. But there was none of that. There was a question carefully posed, and an answer thoughtfully given, and then there were clothes folded over the back of the dressing chair, the bedcovers lifted back and pulled over them both. More slow awkwardness than ever there’d been as half-blind teenagers rushing through things up on the moor. It was no less lovely for all that. It was as though, Richard thought, they’d waited for so long that there was now no need to hurry. He had no idea if this was also what Cathy thought. When she came it was with a low murmuring chatter whose repeated words he couldn’t quite make out, her face arched towards the dusty light from the window. Afterwards when he tried to speak she put a finger on her lips and smiled and looked back to the window. There were swallows or house martins restless in the air outside. He realised he should know which they were by now. He knew that she would know. He didn’t know if he should ask.
In June it was Austin Cooper’s sixty-fifth birthday, and for a treat Su agreed to walk the first three days of the Greystone Way with him, while the boys stayed with a schoolfriend in town. He’d been trying to talk her into it for years, but now she’d agreed he seemed more nervous than she did. In the morning he checked through their bags for a third time, and asked if she was sure she felt up to it. She laughed and said she should be asking him that question. She told him he wasn’t getting any younger, and pushed him out the door. At the visitor centre they stopped for a photograph, and then set off up the long low hill. They held hands for a while, but Austin soon found he needed to use both the walking poles he’d brought with him. It took them an hour to reach the top of the first climb, and they stopped to take more pictures. The light was clear and they could see the village and the river and the woods along the main road. Ahead o
f them a line of flagstones stretched right across the moor, the reservoirs off to one side, the motorway along the horizon, a line of wind turbines turning over on a distant ridge. After you, old man, Su said, smiling and prodding him in the back, and for a moment Cooper wanted to pick her up and carry her into a heathery hollow. But they had a good distance to make before dusk, and there wasn’t the time for that manner of thing. He wasn’t sure his back would hold. For the first time in a decade there was grazing at the Stone Sisters, the new grass heavy and green and no sign now that this had ever been home to all those young people with their banners and fires and dancing. Lynsey Smith got engaged, which surprised even her. Things were going well but she hadn’t been thinking that far ahead. But she was so comfortable around him, and when he proposed she could see he had no expectation of her saying no, which was enough to make her want to say yes. There was a lot of talk about the wedding, which was coming up soon. The thing was happening very quickly, was the feeling. Very little was known of Guy, but Lynsey was thought of as a level-headed woman who wouldn’t do anything daft. Do you have fun together? Sophie asked, when Lynsey worried that it was happening too soon. He’s very kind, Lynsey said. He’s thoughtful. The well-dressing boards were taken down and scraped clean, the clay and dressing materials dumped in a corner of the meadow. The boards were washed and dried, and two of Jackson’s boys hauled them up to the barn at the Hunter place and put them away for the year. Olivia Hunter finished her A levels, with no party to mark the fact. She already knew she was going to fail, and had kept her parents off her back by talking about a year’s volunteering overseas. In truth she had no intention of going abroad, but hadn’t yet found a better plan. She was spending a lot of time in her bedroom, making YouTube videos. On Thompson’s land the bales were finished and dotted the fields in their pale green rounds.
The reservoirs were dry and the spillways rose into the air like chimneys, reaching for a volume of water it was difficult to imagine ever returning. The sun was hot and unrelenting and cracked open the soil. In the beech wood a boar badger stood and watched as a sow turned circles in front of him. They both made low feeding sounds. The boar covered the sow for some minutes, biting the nape of her neck. There was a flurry of scrape-marks in the bare soil. The fledgling woodpigeons were falling from the nests. There were first attempts at flight. In the old quarry by the main road the toadflax was in full flower, low to the ground and buttery yellow in the pale evening sun. Rohan Wright left home for the second time. He’d been looking for work for months, apparently, but it was only once Susanna sat down with him and went through some applications that a job materialised. He asked if she was trying to get rid of him, and she said he knew she loved him to bits but she didn’t want him to be the sort of weirdo who still lived with his mother. When Susanna told Cathy about this they both laughed and then Susanna changed the subject abruptly to ask about Richard. Cathy dipped her head to hide a smile and said it was fine. It was good. It was going well. Susanna waited for more. What? Cathy asked. That’s it. It’s going well. He’s a good man. But it’s not a big deal. Although. Susanna waited. Although what? she asked. I think he’s making more of it than he needs to, Cathy said. I mean, it’s all good fun, he’s lovely, but I feel like he’s on the verge of doing something daft, like proposing or something. Would that be so bad? asked Susanna. Cathy rolled her eyes. I’ve done being married, she said. I don’t want to get into that again. I like not being answerable to anyone, you know? Like, this is my house, these are my boys, this is my time. I feel like he might have something different in mind. Rohan went for the interview, and got the job, and moved in with some friends in Manchester. Swiftly along the river and down the lane the adult bats flew in deft quietness and were gone by the time they were seen.
In August Lynsey Smith was married at the registry office in town. The reception was held at the Culshaw Hall Hotel. James and Rohan and Sophie were all there, and after the photographs they stood on the lawn trying to work out when they’d last been together. Must have been that summer after graduation, Rohan decided. I never graduated, Sophie pointed out. True fact, he said. And look at you now, new-media hotshot. Natural talent; there’s no degree certificate for natural talent. Is that what they call it now? They saw Liam heading indoors with a toddler in one arm and an older child holding his hand. He nodded in their direction but didn’t come over to say hello. They had to wait for the speeches before they could have any food, and at one point Sophie put her hand on James’s glass to suggest he slowed down. The look he gave her was unfamiliar and sharp. He drank on, quickly, and later in the evening Sophie had to ask Will Jackson to take him back to Rohan’s house, where he was staying. In Cardwell the cricket match was played right through for the first time in three years, and tradition restored with a win for the home team. Jackson’s boys went out and took the lambs away from their mothers and put them in a field out of sight and for three days and nights the racket they made carried over the village. By the middle of the month the evenings were earlier, and chill. The dew that rose in the morning brought with it a smell of must. Richard’s mother’s house still hadn’t been put on the market, and Richard was trying to explain to his sisters that if they wanted a good price they should wait until things picked up. They’d come for a long weekend with their husbands, the children old enough now to be left with friends, and after an evening of eating and drinking and catching up the subject of the house finally arose. Rachel gave out the same heartfelt sigh Richard remembered her developing as a twelve-year-old and her husband, Tim, told the room that everyone was tired of tiptoeing around all this bullshit. Richard asked could he be a little more frank and for a moment Tim didn’t hear the sarcasm. Sarah said there was no need for this kind of thing, and Tim said rather sharply that in actual fact there was. Where will I live? Richard asked them. Where will I go? This has always been my home. No one’s turfing you out, Tim said. But it’s time to talk about money. You were never here anyway, Sarah murmured. They all knew what the house was worth, inflated beyond sense by wealthy commuters and the second-homes market; and he assumed they knew that as a freelancer he’d never get a mortgage of that size. Why are you doing this to me? he said. He left the house and walked up through the square towards the beech wood. He wanted to talk to Cathy but he wanted to calm down first. If they could just leave it a bit longer. A few months, a year. If he and Cathy kept going the way they were they would move in together. It seemed inevitable. After all these years. But it was too soon to mention it now. He didn’t want her thinking it was only because of the house. He wanted her to know how much she meant to him. He thought she was ready to hear that. She’d as good as said something along those lines. If his sisters could just back off about the house. He’d said nothing about Cathy, of course. They wouldn’t take him seriously if he told them about that.
Lynsey stopped working at the Gladstone, partly because Guy had said he wasn’t comfortable with her being up on show behind the bar all hours like that. She’d started a place at nursing college, in Derby. Guy had bought her a newer car so she could drive in each day without worrying about breaking down. It was a lot of driving but she enjoyed having the time to herself. The quarries and the lanes were thick with rosebay willowherb, the purple stemmy flowers curling over and the seed-flights wisping away. The first guests came to stay at Irene’s and she told Winnie the weekend had gone well. They weren’t all that talkative, she said. I don’t think they wanted to chat at all, which was a shame. They spent a lot of time in their room. But they were very complimentary when they left. Winnie asked if there were more bookings and Irene said that since Andrew had made the website for her the diary had been filling up quickly. He must have done a good job, she said. Andrew was in the supported-accommodation place in town, and apparently very content with it. He was doing a course at the college. Irene went to see him most weeks, and he sent her emails. He’d shown her how to do emails. Late in the month Ashleigh Wright left for university, and Susanna was alone i
n a three-bed house. It was sudden and there was nothing to be done. She made enquiries about exchanging for a smaller place, and even though nothing was available she still had to pay the bedroom tax. She spent a lot of time at the allotment, harvesting the beans and first squashes and preparing the ground for the following year. In the cold evenings Ruth sometimes walked down from the allotment with her for dinner, and when she’d had too much wine to drive she stayed over. In the conifer plantation above the Hunter place the young goldcrests were already feeding up for the winter, fattening.
In October the old Tucker place went up for sale, and was on the market for no more than a month. A removal van appeared and the house was cleared. Jones helped himself to what fruit there was. The sound of two-stroke engines came from the Hunters’ land, and the whining of chainsaws cutting into timber, and the branchy crash of another tree felled. From the beech wood the young foxes lit out for new territory and were killed on the roads in great number. At the river the keeper took out the crayfish traps. They seethed with claws and bodies crawling over each other. There was a rattle as he tipped them into a damp sack. The eating was a perk although his girls wouldn’t touch them. It was true there was a job in stripping out the flesh but the work was worthwhile, he thought. The swallows which had left a few days earlier were most of the way to South Africa by now, and would spend the winter on feeding grounds down there before finding their way back in the spring. Richard had been seen spending nights at Cathy’s house, but nobody had felt need to comment. The two of them were entitled, was the feeling. In the mornings Richard was out of bed first, moving quietly through the house, making coffee. Getting into bed again, drawn back for more. They wanted each other in a way he had forgotten was possible or perhaps had never really known. He felt restless unless he was fitting his body to hers. When they’d done this as teenagers, high on the far side of the hill overlooking Reservoir no. 12 and the motorway, the two of them had felt weightless, lifting each other into the air and whispering. Thirty years on they both had more substance but there was no less delight. Her body weighed down on his and he gave himself up completely and only now did he realise how often he’d held something back before. With the others, even when it had been serious, he’d always looked ahead to what would come after. He’d always assumed there would be a moving on. He’d convinced himself it wasn’t the case but it was clear now he’d been waiting for Cathy. Waiting for this. The two of them grown old and returning to each other, surprised by the things they could still do. The things they could do better than they’d ever been able to do back then. When she pulled him back against the bedroom windowsill and took him inside her, their fingers laced together and the sash window rattling in its frame, he could see in her eyes she was thinking these things as well. There was no need to say them out loud. This was the way he had thought they would be. Coming to their senses. While she slept he cooked dinner and they ate it and went back to bed. There would be questions about arrangements in the months ahead but for now those questions could wait. As they were falling asleep again that night she told him they should be careful. She whispered this into his ear. He thought he knew what she meant.
