The Stream

by Brian Clarke

  Year 1, April

  the young salmon owned all of the stream near the Cattle Drink from the place where the sheep’s tooth had lain so long, to as far out towards the middle as the flint. He also owned all of the water from there, upstream to the edge of the water crowfoot plant that one of the big trout guarded. The space was a great space. It was about as large as the shadow of a wading cow.

  By the time the young trout that had hatched in the gravels was starting to make his way downstream, the changes the law of continuing had made inside the young salmon were complete. The law of continuing had long since written what the young salmon must do. The young salmon had been instructed to spend a year in the stream if he could survive it and then a year in the sea if he could survive that. If he could survive the year in the sea he would grow immense because of all the smaller fish to be eaten there and then he would return to the stream as a great fish and spawn. This was the way the law of continuing had planned things for the strongest salmon in the stream. Things had been planned this way long before the man in the deer pelt had given the perfectly round stone to the girl whose smile was like the sun coming out. They had been planned this way since before the counting of the years had begun. They had been planned this way before the wolves had prowled there or the bears had roared there or the wild pigs had truffled in the loose-littered ground.

  The young salmon that owned a space as large as a cow’s shadow had the whole plan deep inside him. He had driven away many other small salmon and had taken their spaces because his need was greater than their need and he had eaten his fill of all that each space provided. He had taken mayflies with wings like chapel windows from the surface and Baetis flies that looked like mayflies except they were tiny and caddis flies that carried their brown wings low over their backs. He had taken the great mayfly nymphs on their way up to the surface to hatch and the little nymphs of the Baetis flies that lived in water crowfoot and the grubs of the caddis flies that built stone cases around themselves from fragments of gravel. He had eaten the grubs that reached and looped like caterpillars and that paid out safety-lines behind themselves and the shrimps that had misjudged the power of the currents and been swept away. He had gorged on the trout eggs that rolled and tumbled like weighted bubbles along the stream bed in winter. He was almost as long as the heron’s beak was long. His tail and fins had darkened, the spots and smudges on his sides had faded. The young salmon was silver and sleek and ready for the sea.

  About the time Tony Chadwick got back from Hollywood and heard about the development, the young salmon began to back downstream. The trout that owned the Otter Stone saw the salmon coming and watched him. She saw the fish keep to the edge of the space she owned because he had seen her, saw him drift alongside the roots of the water crowfoot plant that grew towards the centre of the stream and then saw him whirl suddenly away. All of this time the trout took no action because she could see that the young salmon was only a young salmon and was just passing through.

  The young salmon travelled for a long time before resting. He passed the mouth of the Tussock Stream where the otter was hunting. He escaped by a fin’s breadth when the pike near the willow made a late lunge. He did not see the heron that stood coiled as a springwire near the shingle banks but that could not reach him because he was too far away.

  All through the time Tony Chadwick was getting more and more angry about the implications of the development for the house he had just built in the Broadchalk Valley and SAVE was finalising its publicity plan, the young salmon was edging downstream, threading his way around large fish wherever he could, pausing to feed in the places held by the smaller fish when the opportunity came.

  By the time the Department of Transport and Industry had given the Inspector his final briefing on the details of the inquiry, the young salmon had reached the low, planked bridge on Longate.

  By the time Tony Chadwick had insisted on giving his services for nothing and SAVE was expressing its delight at having such a famous film director on its side, the young salmon had swum past the rushes beyond the low bridge and was resting near the sycamore where the stream met the river.

  On the day Tony Chadwick started shooting the publicity video that would show just what the development would do to the nation’s countryside and heritage and as it happened his new house, the young salmon tasted a new taste and smelled a new smell and picked up the ocean’s call.

  The young salmon felt the soft braids that held him beginning to loosen and fall away while the chairs in the village hall at Stinston were being set out for the inquiry. It was as Tony Chadwick’s aircraft was roaring down the runway to start the flight back to Hollywood that the young salmon turned his tail to the stream and entered the river. It was as the aircraft was lifting its nose towards the wide blue yonder that the young salmon turned his head towards the sea.

  Year 1, May

  the old man sat for a long time after his son had left the room. He stared into the middle distance, focusing on nothing. The long-case clock ticked and tocked, measuring out the silence. It was not until the sound of the car had faded and his son was on his way back to college that the old man hauled himself to his feet and pulled on his jacket and went out.

  The old man did not see the moss that covered the loose tiles or the paint that was peeling from the kitchen door. The hinge on the yard gate had been broken so long he scarcely noticed the creak it made. It was only when he had cleared the top of Foremeadow and reached the old, planked bridge that he stopped and looked around and took notice.

  After all these years – all these generations, because the place was in his bones – the valley was still his escape. He loved it. He needed it. The peace of the place seemed to pass through him like ether.

  What a difference a generation made. His son had always been that way, even as a boy. For all the hours they had spent together, for all the times he had taken the boy on walks and shown him the secrets, his son had shown no interest in the beauty of the woods or the old meadows or the stream or the ditches full of kingcups and flag iris. He had never once gone on his own to look at the salmon, though they were the biggest secret of all. He had never once sat by the water and watched the great mayflies hatching and filling the sky. He wasn’t even interested in the family. Six generations, eight if you counted the Fletcher years, but what his son kept suggesting would sweep the lot away. Some day it would happen, he supposed, but over his dead body.

  Even as the old man walked and thought, the first mayfly nymphs were swimming from their burrows in the stream bed to the surface to hatch. Before the old man had reached the gate leading back into the yard the little trout that had hatched from the gravels had arrived in the Cattle Drink. The old man could not have closed the door behind him before the publicity video Tony Chadwick had made for SAVE was being run on local television, partly because the inquiry had just opened but mostly because it was Chadwick who had made it.

  The old man could not have been in his chair and worrying about his son again for more than a few minutes before the President of Cogent Electronics was picking up the telephone in Massachusetts and hearing for the first time of the crisis in Milan.

  Year 1, June

  a little grew in the stream every summer. It always began secretly in the slowest, shallow water where a little had clung on through the previous winter; always the tiny, cylindrical cells growing end to end so that eventually they formed strands long enough for the naked eye to see; by summer lengthening and dividing until each single strand looked like a long, frayed thread and many strands together looked like clumps of green hair.

  When Simon Goode, the biologist, was telling the inquiry about the possible dangers to the Broadchalk River and even the Clearwater if the development went ahead, he mentioned ‘algae’. When the Inspector stopped him and asked if that was the kind of thing most people knew of as ‘blanket weed’, Goode said yes, that kind of thing, though some people called it chokeweed because when it grew over anything it seemed to
choke it and kill it.

  A little chokeweed always grew in the sheltered water behind the island. Most years there was a little on the insides of the three bends where the water was shallow as well as slow. There was some every year in each of the three small streams and in the long, open stretch beside Longate where there were fewer trees to shade out the sun.

  It rarely spread further. It was as though the law of continuing kept reminding the long, tubular cells that they needed warm water to thrive in and that the stream was cool. It was as though the law of continuing kept reminding the weed it needed slow water to thrive in and that the stream ran fast. It was almost as if the chokeweed knew it would need more sunlight to achieve its potential and that the law of continuing was holding cloud and sun in some pre-ordained balance to deny it.

  There had been a few years when the chokeweed had thrived. The old man could remember one year when it had covered all the stream bed along Longate and from the bottom of the island to almost as far as the falls and when it had choked the Oak Stream and the Barn Stream completely. In that year it had grown so quickly that the old man had sworn he could see it growing. That was the year when the plants that liked slow water had also grown beyond remembering because the rains had not come for two winters in a row, but that had been in his youth.

  On the day when the first salmon of the year nosed into the stream on its way back from the sea, about the time the old man was looking through his bank statements again and Peter Althorpe of One Earth was trying to fix a meeting with his old friend the Minister, the strands of chokeweed that had grown almost as far downstream from the island as the piece of ancient tiling, stopped growing. It was that day which came every year when the law of continuing seemed to caution the long cells and say that thus far was far enough.

  The longest thread of chokeweed was almost touching the front of the ancient tile when it was stopped. The chokeweed was stopped near there, most years.

  Year 1, July

  ‘news, Lisa! They’ve trailed your Stinston piece as a Special Report!’

  Roger calling from the lounge. Lisa Pearce pulled the bathrobe on, wrapped the towel around her head and went through. He was on the settee. He handed her the glass she had not quite finished before going to the shower. It was brimming again.

  ‘Thanks. Great they trailed it. These big environmental stories are so important. They—’

  ‘I know, I know. They show man and his own future unfolding before us. Our furred and feathered friends out there, they’re the human race in a few years’ time. We’re just like animals ourselves, fighting for territory … Hey!’ He ducked to avoid the cushion she had thrown at him and moved over. ‘Come on. You must be shattered. Put your feet up.’

  She plonked herself beside him, turned the fan to face her full-on and tucked her legs up under the robe. ‘There was nearly a riot in the editing suites today. Its crazy they’ve not got the air conditioning fixed yet. I’ve never known heat like this. OK. Here it comes.’ The titles rolled and she watched intently as she always did. She was a news junkie. They both were.

  The US Congress story ran first, then some ructions in Parliament, then the bank robbery in Salford, then Tara Gilbey the model getting married in California. ‘And now our Environment Correspondent Lisa Pearce with a Special Report on the issues raised when past, present and future collide.’

  Pearce took a slow slurp from her scotch-and-water. Some nice opening shots – ‘We did those from the top of Stinston Hill, above the village.’ Roger resigned himself to his own silence and her asides. She always gave a running commentary on her pieces. ‘That’s Stinston Bridge – it’s seventeenth-century. The ancient earthworks are incredible, like great stepping stones down the side of the hill. You can almost feel the history there.’ Then came her voice-over bit, then thirty seconds to-camera. ‘I think I set that up well.’ Finally the collage of interviews she had made her hallmark, letting the people involved tell their own story. One by one they rolled up and as each one appeared, she chipped in.

  ‘Sir John Plumpton, owns the Hanger Hall estate.’ Sir John covered the ground they’d agreed – the history of the valley, the changing farm practices that had seen machines replacing people, the drift of young people away to Farley, the rising unemployment among those who remained and the general down-at-heel air. Then ‘… the Godsend this thing could be if it gets approval. It would rejuvenate the whole region, put a spring into people’s steps again’. Pearce shook her head and smiled. ‘Put a spring in his step, he means. He’s the biggest farmer for miles around. Got fields like prairies. Didn’t mention he’ll make a packet if this thing goes through and they need some of his land for housing. I hadn’t realised that part of the hill was his or I’d have tackled him about it …’

  There was a change of scene, a couple of shots of container ships and cranes. ‘Michael Timms, boss of the Farley Port Authority. Brother’s Arnold Timms of the BBC.’ A close-up of the authority’s logo, a couple of lorries being loaded, then: ‘Oh, yes. Absolutely. A new road to the port is desperately needed. It will speed up freight to and from the Midlands and cut costs for everyone. What’s more, of course, we’d be the port of shipment for goods going into and out of the industrial park. What is certain is that if we don’t get the road we won’t get the development. Some people don’t seem to realise that. It’s not maybe one or the other, it’s both or nothing.’

  Roger’s voice broke in. ‘Oh, by the way, Pauline rang. Wants to know—’

  ‘Shush!’

  ‘But you’ve just been talking, yourself.’

  ‘Shush! Later. I want to hear Terry Summers. I had to chop his piece about a bit. He’s a member of SAVE, the local environmental group.’ Summers came up, setting out the group’s proposed amendments to the plans. ‘Follow the line of the old B4942 to Challerton for the first part of the new road, run a tunnel under Stinston Hill to save the Frontage and the Hangers, redistribute the housing around neighbouring villages to minimise the impact on Stinston itself.’ A few other tweaks here and there. Then the crunch. ‘Yes, the tunnel would cost more. Yes, millions more. But we can’t just put concrete over everything.’

  Then Jo Hamilton. ‘Damn, Keith’s cut a bit … Hamilton’s the leader of SAVE. Tricky for her. Walking a tightrope with the environment on one side and jobs on the other.’ Up came Hamilton acknowledging the region’s decline and the need for jobs, Hamilton talking of the irreplaceable woodlands and the 4,000-year-old settlement and the need to protect the Broadchalk and the Clearwater and their plants and wildlife. ‘The Ministry is refusing to look at the alternatives we’ve put forward on grounds of cost but not a penny’s value has been placed in their scheme on our history and heritage and the loss forever of this beautiful landscape.’

  Pearce sucked her teeth. ‘Damn again. There’s another cut. Must have been to make room for the Gilbey wedding. Broke late.’

  Then it was Dame Vanessa Bennett. ‘You remember Dame Vanessa, married to Samuel Bennett, the conductor?’

  Roger nodded. ‘Isn’t she the one who wrote that letter to The Times, really put this thing on the map?’

  ‘Yes. She’s as much a philosopher as she is a naturalist. A great old girl, eighty if she’s a day. And she sure knows how to use the camera. Just look.’

  Bennett’s eyes were looking straight into the room, as though she were speaking to the two of them directly. ‘Well yes, of course we need progress, but whose definition of progress are you proposing we adopt? … What we may be about to do here can never be undone … Every time we do something irrevocable to meet our own needs we are limiting the options our children will have to meet theirs.’

  The moment her piece was over, Pearce hit the remote control and the sound went down. ‘Well, what did you think?’

  ‘Wonderful. Brilliant. Liked the old girl. Profoundly moving et cetera et cetera. Seriously, though, a good piece. Now are we going out or aren’t we?’

  ‘What did you say Pauline wanted?’

/>   Year 1, August

  the swans always nested opposite the three old posts that stuck out of the water just upstream from Bottom Bend. The dense rushes there provided all that the swans needed for building and repairing and the bank of the small bay made it easy to walk down into the water and easy to climb out again, even for cygnets. That place also gave a good view as far downstream as the kingfisher’s nest and as far upstream as the Cattle Drink.

  The cob and pen owned most of the stream that was big enough for swans. They owned all the water upstream to the falls and downstream around Bottom Bend and along the shingle banks below that, almost as far as the old, low bridge on Longate. All this water swayed with the bright water crowfoot plants that swans like so much and, in summer, the surface was covered with the small white daisy-flowers the lush growths produced.

  The cob had been made to fight for the stream when he first arrived. He had driven off the older bird that already owned it, the one that had damaged a wing on the fence-wire a few days before.

  The old bird had been bigger but had been weakened by the deep red bite that the wire had taken from his wing when he glided in to land and the younger bird had driven him away. Then the young cob had driven him away again twice more when the old bird returned with a healed wing, each time the fight being shorter than the last because though his wing was strong again the damage of the first beating had taken root in the old bird’s brain and the confidence of the first victory had given the young bird new strength.

  The cob had fought off challenges from other birds every year since and he spent much time in the summer patrolling upstream and down, chasing off the migrant flocks of young males looking for places of their own. Mostly when the young birds saw the size of the cob and could see from the menace in him that he owned the water, they turned tail and lowered their necks in submission and hurried away. From time to time one of them would hold its ground because it needed a place of its own badly and then the cob would have to fight. Once, the cob had needed to kill an intruder in the way the law of continuing had told him. He had beaten the other bird with his wings harder than that bird had beaten him, and then he had twisted his neck around its neck and scrambled onto its back and forced its head under water like one man wrestling another’s arm down on a table. But mostly it had not come to that.