by Jon McGregor
On top of the moor a wreath of poppies was laid beside the remains of the Lancaster bomber. There were few in the village now who could remember the years of the air-raids; the bombers nightly ploughing the sky and the glow of burning cities from beyond the horizon, and the smell. There was a mishap with the fireworks at the bonfire party, a couple of rockets tilting over in the soft ground after the fuses had been lit and shooting over the heads of the crowd. But no one was hurt, and it was agreed to go on with the display. In his studio Geoff Simmons loaded the glazed pots into the kiln for a second firing. It was raining and there was water running down one of the walls. He had buckets under most of the drips but the rugs were wet. There was a smell of mouldering paper and the pots were taking longer to dry. The whippet was gone and he didn’t know what to do with the hours the kiln was firing. He opened the door and let the air blow in and a curtain of rain swayed across the threshold. Nobody came up the lane. The river turned over beneath the packhorse bridge and moved on towards the weir. Nobody much mentioned the missing girl, but she was still thought about often. What could have happened. She could have been hurt by her parents in some terrible mistake, some push or stumble that wasn’t meant that way at all, and in a fury of panic they could have carried her somewhere they’d know she was at peace before running back down to the village for help. She could have been hurt by her parents in some deliberate way, pushed or tripped or struck repeatedly from behind, and fallen without getting up again, and they could have taken her up high on the hill and laid her to rest somewhere they knew she would never be found.
Richard and Cathy were in bed together when she told him she didn’t think they should carry on doing this. His first thought was whether she couldn’t have waited until they were dressed. He’d had enough of these conversations to recognise the pattern but it had never happened in bed. Lately it hadn’t even been while he was in the same country; and geography was usually the point being made. Cathy’s point was something more elusive. They were trying to re-create something from the past, she told him. It couldn’t work like that. They had both changed so much, and yet they still thought of each other as being eighteen years old, and they would come to resent each other for changing. She knew this, it seemed. She could see it would cause a problem. But is it a problem now, he asked. No, but it will be, I can see it, she said. I want to protect us both from that happening. I want to protect our friendship, she told him. He didn’t know how to disagree. When he dressed he was suddenly self-conscious and he carried his clothes in a bundle to the bathroom. He ran the taps. Downstairs he told her he wouldn’t stay for coffee. He told her again that of course he understood. He said hello to Mr Wilson, who was standing in his open doorway with Nelson, and walked to the top of the lane. There were carol singers going from door to door for the local hospice, carrying candle-lanterns on poles, their breath clouding in the yellowy light and their voices pressing through the low air. For a moment Richard was caught up amongst them, and obliged to join in. O little town of Bethlehem. How still we see thee lie.
In the parlour at Thompson’s farm, the last cows of the day came in to be milked. The men were tiring. What little conversation there’d been had faltered, and for the last ten minutes there was only the rhythmic slurp and click of the machinery, the occasional snort or stamp of the cows. At the reservoir a heron speared suddenly towards the water and stopped just before its beak broke the surface, carefully straightening and holding itself still once more. In the beech wood the foxes were loud. Mating season was approaching and claims were being made. There were barks and screams and at night the sounds carried the old dread. There was scent-marking and fighting until pairs were established. There were springtails in the soil of the cricket ground, a million or more, moulting and feeding and moving up to the light, and amongst them a female springtail laid the last eggs of her life. The goldcrests fed busily deep in the branches of the churchyard yew. Richard and Cathy were seen up on the moor with Mr Wilson’s dog, walking much further than Nelson was used to. He didn’t seem to mind. Richard was explaining to Cathy why it wasn’t such a bad idea for them to try and make a go of a relationship. They were financially independent; they’d been together before and there was something then that had worked and something they still had now; they were both from the village, and belonged here, and they had an understanding of the place they could share. He’d actually numbered these points, and was counting them off on his fingers. He seemed to have been talking for a while. She stopped him. Richard, she said. This isn’t like putting in a tender for a contract. You do know that, don’t you? He started to laugh and then realised she wasn’t joking and he didn’t know where to look. He was still bending back his little finger to indicate the fifth point. It was starting to hurt but he couldn’t let go.
13.
At midnight there were fireworks in the next valley and tension in the village and no fires were set. It wasn’t until the next day that the old water-board buildings by Reservoir no. 7 were found smoking and charred. On the television there were pictures of a public search for another missing teenage girl, the volunteers strung out in a line across a hillside, their heads bowed. The pantomime was Cinderella. It was known that rehearsals had been late and under-attended, and that Susanna had needed to bring new people in at the last minute, and there was as much anxiety in the audience as there was amongst the cast. When Olivia Hunter stepped forward to begin the narration the main lights were left on and there was still furniture being shifted around. She had to be prompted twice in the first few minutes, but was so sprightly with the pleasure of being on stage that no one seemed to mind. Be careful, she announced, bursting with anticipation, here comes the Wicked Stepmother now! There was a long pause and then Les Thompson shuffled on to the stage, stubbled and made-up and minus his false teeth, unable even to remember his first line. The audience took a long time to settle enough for the prompt to be heard. No one had known he would be in the role, and his enjoyment of playing it, wandering in and out of scenes with no concession to the script, made everyone’s night. Ruth Fowler and Susanna, who had stepped late into the roles of the Ugly Sisters and worked a long time on their bawdy repartee, were entirely upstaged, and at the end of the show Les was surrounded by people wanting their picture taken with him. At the party afterwards Gordon Jackson got talking to Olivia, and congratulated her for keeping calm amongst all the chaos. He told her it took a lot of maturity to hold it together like that. He reached out without thinking and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
At the allotments there was little to harvest besides some hardened winter greens: thick-veined spinach leaves, small handfuls of mustard, a yellowing mulch of kale. The frosts had been hard. In the beech wood the foxes were quiet. The earths had been prepared and were warm and well lined, and the vixens stayed down there in the dark. The old Tucker house was refurbished as a holiday cottage, rewired and replastered, the woodwork painted a pale grey-green. The front garden was landscaped for low maintenance. There were planters with gravel and mixed grasses, and a picnic bench with a patio heater. In the beech wood the trees were traced with snow, the sunlight filtering through and shaking it loose. The river wedged branches beneath the packhorse bridge and poured fiercely over the weir. The missing girl’s father was questioned about the fires again, and arrested. At the heronry the nests were rebuilt. On Shrove Tuesday Mr Wilson asked Cathy to come round for pancakes. She had to help him lift the cast-iron frying pan on to the hob, but after that he insisted she sit at the table and be served. The first pancake caught and was thrown on the floor for Nelson. The second one was fine, but Nelson made such a fuss that Mr Wilson put that one on the floor as well. You must think me a soft touch, he said, and she didn’t deny it. She quartered the lemons on the chopping board while Mr Wilson made a stack of pancakes and kept them warm in the oven, and when he was done they sat and ate them together. Jean made a very good pancake, he said. Frilly at the edges. You know the way? Cathy nodded, and Nelson came a
nd rested his head in her lap, and she said she’d never known how to get them like that. When they’d eaten they walked up together towards the village with Nelson. For a change they stayed on the main street and headed towards the allotments and the beech wood. At the square Mr Wilson said he’d stop for a drink at the Gladstone and catch them on their way back, and Cathy asked if his hip was feeling okay. He told her it wasn’t too bad but he felt entitled not to go traipsing up the moors at this point in his life. As she laughed and turned to go he stooped slightly towards her and made a gesture which must once have been called doffing one’s cap. She waved in reply, and let Nelson pull on the lead towards the path through the beech wood and the visitor centre and the high breathless hills.
Cooper was seen outside the old butcher’s shop, half-kneeling, with his fist clenched against his chest. By the time Su got to the hospital he was already sitting up in bed. Just a scare, he said, hoarsely, and she told him very quietly that she’d give him an actual bloody scare if he ever did something like that again. The nettles grew up around the dead oak in Thompson’s yard, the timber stained white in the sun. A flock of fieldfares lifted from the elder trees on the bank behind the school, climbing out of the valley and heading north-east towards the reservoirs, the hills, the North Sea, Norway. Sally Fletcher persuaded Brian to let her keep hens in the old orchard, and asked Will Jackson to build her a coop. Will told her the hens would scratch up everywhere so to make sure the ground was safe, and she paid the Cooper twins to pick up what was left of the caravan. They filled six sacks with lumps of plastic and the cottony shreds of old cigarette butts. Martin saw Les Thompson at the new supermarket in town, standing at the checkouts with a basket of shopping. He hadn’t seen him there before. When Les noticed the price on a litre of milk he asked the young woman to tell him out loud. He looked at her for a long moment and then put his wallet back in his pocket and walked away, leaving his shopping half-packed and the young woman confused. A pale light moved slowly across the moor, catching in the flooded cloughs and ditches and sharpening for a moment before the clouds slid closed overhead.
In April the first swallows were seen, sweeping low over the pastures in the early evening and taking the insects which rose with the dew. And still the sound of a helicopter clattering by was never just the sound of a helicopter but everything that sound had one night meant. Gordon took on some timber work up at the Hunter place, and was seen by his van talking to Olivia on his breaks. Survey stakes went up along the edge of the woodland by the Stone Sisters, and Cooper found a new planning application from a quarry firm. Richard’s mother’s house went on the market and was sold within a month, and Richard took a weekend to clear it out before dropping the keys at the solicitor’s. He thought about calling in to see Cathy on his way to town, but in the end he drove straight past the end of her lane and down towards the quarry and the woods and the bend in the river by the main road. The new bracken shoots were curled tight, waiting for the lengthening days. Mr Wilson died, after a short illness, and Jane Hughes was invited back to conduct the funeral. Cathy took Nelson in to live with her.
Su Cooper carried the new issues of the Valley Echo around the village in a large shoulder-bag. The bag was heavy, and it took her the whole afternoon to finish the job. Austin had tried to insist he could manage, but he’d already worn himself out getting the issue printed off. She was the one who’d listened properly to the advice he was given after his heart attack, and she was the one making sure he stuck to it. Gentle exercise, a good diet, sleep. Not lugging a bag up and down steep cobbled streets. She was strict with him, as the doctor had said she might need to be. It came easily. She wasn’t going to let him bugger himself up again. There was rain and the river was high. The reservoirs filled. Towards the end of each day Maisie Jackson filled a bowl with hot water, added soap and a little oil, and carried it through to the front room with flannels and a towel. When Jackson saw her he made a face that carried as much love as it did disdain. She ignored him, stripping back the covers and unbuttoning his pyjamas, and squeezing out the hot clean flannel. While she washed him he kept his gaze turned firmly to the window and the hills beyond. The fieldfares were gone from the field behind the church.
In the meadows by the river the early knapweeds were up, their thistly pink heads nodding when anyone walked past. In the village hall the well-dressing design was laid out on the boards, pinned into place, and the outlines pricked through into the clay. Irene watched to see that it was done well, then gave the nod for the paper to be peeled away. In Thompson’s fields the wrapped bales were lifted on to a long low trailer and taken to the yard to be stacked and netted. Les Thompson watched with a careful gaze as they worked. At the allotments Mr Wilson’s asparagus spears nibbed from the thick black soil. After a week the first two dozen were cut and carried away by Clive, the rest left to grow to their full ferny height, ready for the following year. James Broad fell and broke his leg while climbing on the edges below Black Bull Rocks, and was taken out by the mountain-rescue team. When she heard, Lynsey took the day off from college and went to visit him. He was asleep when she got there and for a few minutes she sat and looked at the dressings on his leg, the bruising on his arms. The movement of his eyelashes. She pulled the chair a little closer to the bed and he woke up. Here for some practice? he asked. She looked at his leg again. Someone needs to change those dressings, she said. But I’m not touching it. You’ve probably got the lurgy or something. He looked at her. The lurgy? Yes, James. The lurgy. It’s a medical term. And plus you smell. The nurse training’s going well then? he asked. Must be scoring well on bedside manner. Great, she said. It’s going great. How’s the climbing? Yeah, fine, he said. Climbing’s fine. It’s the falling I’m not so good at. She laughed, finally, and when he laughed as well he winced suddenly and stopped himself. She flinched. Ribs? she asked. Very good, Nurse. Yes, ribs. Not broken, but kind of fucked up. She didn’t say anything. She stood up and leant over him slowly and kissed his mouth. She hadn’t meant to and once she’d started it was difficult to stop. He kissed her back, and his hand came up to the side of her face. She stepped away. She didn’t actually wipe her mouth but she might as well have done. Lynsey, he said. James, no. She looked as though she might say something else, but she picked up her bag and left.
The first time Gordon Jackson slept with Olivia Hunter he was reminded vividly of the time on the hill with her mother. For a moment he had reservations. There was a similarity in her voice, although she had less to say. She seemed less certain of what she wanted than her mother had been. But she wanted something, and it hardly seemed fair to explain what his reservations were. Her parents were away and the barn conversions were all empty. He’d been working on Olivia for a time now and things were at a good stage. She was naked almost as soon as they got into the room. She was good to look at, but she seemed uncomfortable with him looking. She knelt on the bed. Her skin was very clear. Taut. He felt himself to be in good shape but looking at her now made him feel worn-down. She held out a hand and reached for his belt. He took hold of her shoulder and laid her down. She kissed him so hard it lifted him off the bed. There was a crushed smell of lavender coming in through the open window, and the sound of a quad bike on the hill. In the conifers there were buzzards bringing food to their nests, the chicks growing quickly and demanding more each day. At the allotments the early potatoes were lifted, pale and smooth as hens’ eggs on the warm dark soil.
