by Brian Clarke
It was not even that it was any hotter or colder than it sometimes was at mayfly time, though the sky was a seamless blue by day and clear and crisp at night. It was because there were no trees or hedgerows to slow it that the wind blew unfettered where the mayflies flew and created the problems. It was because the willows and the ash trees and the elder bushes and the alders and the hawthorns and the beeches and the oaks had gone that the mayflies could find no leaves to roost under so that they could be protected from the sun by day and no high branches to lift them clear of the frosts by night.
The nearest place any of the hatched mayflies could find to roost was in the steep, wooded slopes that faced in all around and that was where the mayfly from the island was blown: across the one great field where Hinters and Penny Furlong and Aftdown had been, to the beech tree on the edge of the wood.
Her wings were strong, but only as strong as the law of continuing had written in the plan. They were strong enough to beat back the gravity that wanted to drag her down, but only for as long as it would have taken her to reach the bushes and the trees that had lined the banks and the ditches and that all the generations before her had used. They were strong enough, once she had found a leaf to hide under high above the ground and had changed her skin for the last time, to carry her among the males that would have been rising and falling in columns behind the hedges and trees that all the generations of males before had used. They were strong enough to carry her back to the stream again when she was ripe with eggs, but only from those places close by where all the generations before her had hidden and mated and then only if there was some shelter from the wind if shelter were needed. The wings she had been given were strong, but only this strong.
And so when the mayfly lifted in the shelter of the alder that still stood on the island and misjudged the airs, the wind grabbed her and drowned her and carried her away.
The wind carried her over the places where the hawthorn had spread its lace and where the dog-rose had wound and where the barn owl had sometimes rested on the post. It carried her past the place where the single oak had once stood and where the saw had whined and where the branches had snapped and crackled in the flames. The wind carried her over the wide, flat fields that were winking with the wings of the flies that the wind had cast down. It blew her over the regiments of green shoots that stood on the parched, brown earth to the beech tree. It was only there, in a space safe in the branches but far from the stream, that the mayfly found a leaf to cling to and clung.
The mayfly from the island held her wings shut tight and waited as the sun went down and the bats came out and the moon honed its sickle on the thin winds all about it. All the flies under all the leaves about her folded their wings tightly and waited while the stream gleamed like tinsel on the far horizon and frost crusted the flies that had fallen in the open.
It was long after the hollow cough of the pheasant had prompted the blackbird to sing and the day’s chorus had begun; long after the cardboard flap of the wood pigeon’s wings had caused the sparrowhawk to look up and tilt down; long after the swifts and finches had headed out to the stream to feed on mayflies again that the law of continuing passed over the mayfly from the island and prepared her for mating the way mayflies had been prepared since before the counting of the years had begun.
It was long after the hot sun had warmed the ground again and thawed the bodies of the mayflies that had either not been able to reach the woods on their way from the stream or else had not been able to reach the stream on their way back from the woods, that the mayfly stopped opening and testing her wings.
It was only when Earl Johnson, the Director of the Cogent Electronics site, was being told a blackbird’s nest had been found in the powerhouse and was agreeing to reschedule some work there so that it need not be disturbed, that the mayfly from the island joined the males and was mated. It was only when the fullness of her body urged her and the odours of the stream inhaled and consumed her that she left the cover and the shade.
The wind was strong, but she had still gone a long way over the wide, flat fields by keeping low and out of the worst of it before a gust unhinged her and threw her down.
The mayfly with the broken wing lay for a long time between the shoots that stood high and straight all about her, at first unable to move. Then she managed to struggle upright and she swayed as though dazed beside the male whose wings had subsided when the night frost reached through him so that now he lay crucified, embracing the warm earth. She lurched unsteadily beneath the fly that the sun had dehydrated and that spun slowly as a clock wheel from a spider’s thread. The mayfly from the island knew only the uselessness of wings and the menace of the sun and the need to reach the shade that the high shoots offered.
A little way above the ground, on the first shoot she reached, she stopped. She clung to the shoot for a long time, one wing held high and sparkling above her and the other hanging downwards, awkwardly awry. All afternoon she kept edging sideways, keeping the stem between herself and the sun. All afternoon the sun angled and stalked her.
About the time that the last nymphs of the day were leaving their cool, dark tunnels in the bed of the stream and were launching themselves upwards to meet the needs of the birds, the mayfly from the island could find no strength to move again and clung where she was, drained and spent. The high sun swung and found her. It warmed her upright wing first and then the wing hanging downwards awkwardly awry and then her back and sides.
By the time the last birds were back in their roosts and sleeping, the fields were glistening as though with dew. All across the wide, flat fields where the green tussocks had grown and where the blossom and flowers had scented the air, all along the ditches where the hedgerows and trees had given their shelter to the flies and where generations of mayflies had been able to fly where they needed to fly, the moon lit the mayflies that had been cast down and sparkled from their wings when they trembled in the frost.
Before the hatching of the mayflies was over, even before the supermarket buyer had come to inspect the farm again and the fledglings had safely flown from the powerhouse at Cogent Electronics, the young man was installing pipes to take water from the stream. The pipes were shooting the water in wide, arched curtains across what once had been Cress and Homefield onto the tall, green shoots that grew there.
Before the last of the mayflies was gone and the rare flower found on the Top Oil site had been gently lifted and moved to a safe place but not before the Stinston Herald had been called to photograph it being gently lifted and moved, the body of the mayfly from the island was crinkled and brittle in the open drill and her eggs were as lifeless as the dust.
Year 4, June
‘what’s the matter, love?’ Jim Hamilton could tell the moment the front door closed and her footsteps were in the hall that she was uptight about something.
‘Have you seen the Herald?’ Jo Hamilton tossed the paper onto the settee beside him and made straight for the rocking chair – her comfort chair, he called it. ‘Letters, page 13. Someone made redundant by Hamptons last week, got a job with Cogent this week. More pay, bigcompany benefits, the lot.’
‘Lucky old him. So what?’
‘He’s going on about environmentalists in general, SAVE in particular and me specifically. He says we’re tree-huggers, trying to stop the clock. Go on, read it. Top right-hand corner.’ She spotted the Scotch and water on the table at his side. ‘I need one of those.’ She groaned, hauled herself back to her feet and went to the cabinet. He read while she poured.
Before he was half-way through he was nodding and half-smiling to himself. ‘But come on, love. You’ve seen this stuff a hundred times during the last couple of years. There’s nothing new here. There’s—’
‘Just makes me despair, that’s all. If you actually stand up for anything these days, people assume you’re some kind of fanatic. Especially if it’s something to do with the environment. It’s part of industry’s strategy to make you look like that. The G
overnment’s, too. They try to make you look unreasonable or unbalanced. If you get in their way, they try to neuter you in the public mind.’
Her husband searched for truth in the depths of his glass. ‘Well, hang on. This chap’s writing personally, not for the company. Anyway, some companies are pretty responsible. Lots of environmental projects are sponsored by business.’
She was back in the chair now, rocking herself gently. ‘Only when they see a benefit to themselves. Only when they want to soften their image in general or to distract from something specific that could give them a problem. At the end of the day it’s only another investment to be turned on and off. It’s always maximum profits first, environment second.’
Jim Hamilton opened the paper and looked at the letter again. ‘I really do think he’s just talking priorities, love. You can understand it. He’d have been on the dole if it hadn’t been for Cogent. What’s it he says …?’ Hamilton flexed the paper to make it easier to read. ‘He says, “You don’t have to be a tree-hugger to worry about the future. Lots of people worry. But the truth is the earth’s not only full of woods and settlements and badgers and bats, it’s full of human beings. At the end of the day, we have to survive as well.” What’s the matter with that? Common sense, isn’t it?’
Hamilton knew he was sailing close to the wind, reading it out like that. It was old, old ground for both of them. They always ended up counting exactly the same angels on exactly the same pinheads. Sometimes, though, he felt he had to push her a bit. It helped to clear a build-up of unspoken frustrations, for both of them. It helped to clear the air.
She shook her head. There he was, same old patronising, myopic view. ‘But that’s exactly what I’m talking about, surviving. If we go on like this we’re going to end up digging ourselves and polluting ourselves off the face of the earth. If we don’t blow ourselves off it or genetically modify ourselves off it first.’
He smiled. ‘Not your best piece of self-expression, love.’
She ignored him. ‘The earth doesn’t need us, any more than it needed dinosaurs. There’s nothing written that man is here for ever. In the fullness of time we’ll be just one more extinct species come and gone. The big difference is, we’ll be the first species to make ourselves extinct. We’ll self-destruct. We’ve already started.’
Jim Hamilton opened the packet of peanuts on the table, tipped them into one of the cut-glass bowls his mother had given them and passed it to her. She always went cosmic like this. One minute you were talking about the Frontage or bats or something, next she’d be onto the end of the world.
‘Problem is,’ he said, ‘human beings are not standing on the sidelines, refereeing anything – we’re a part of nature ourselves. We’re the human animal, doing what the human animal does. Badgers dig holes, bats hang upside down, man changes things. That’s the way we are. We do it because we can. We do it to improve things for ourselves.’
His wife screwed up her face. ‘D’you know – I despair of you, I really do. We’ve got choices, haven’t we? We can understand cause and effect, can’t we? Try putting your argument to someone drowning on an atoll because the oceans are rising because the icecaps are melting. Try telling them it’s all perfectly natural – it’s just the rest of us changing and improving a few things so we can have more cars and freezers.’ She waved at the window. ‘It’s obvious we have to start saying no – and not just to things in our own back yard. Every new generation means millions more to feed and more needs to be met. We’re on a mad helter-skelter. Common sense says we can’t go on as we are. That’s what this chap in the Herald doesn’t have, common sense. Or you!’
He shrugged. ‘Oh, come on. There are no villains in this, Jo. There are just folks like you and me, trying to rub along. The problem with you is …’ He stopped in mid-sentence and shrugged. Beethoven’s Fifth was drowning him out and her head was buried in a book.
Year 4, July
the otter had not visited the stream for a long time. She had marked it from time to time, laying down the scent that told other otters to keep away, but she had not explored it since the time she chased the great trout that had escaped from the farm.
The otter had visited the stream often when it held lots of fish. She had taken three of the pike that had lived under the trees and that had lain like logs on the bottom and she had enjoyed many of the young trout and salmon that had leapt and splashed in the pool below the falls. Twice at night she had found salmon with the smell of the sea on them, great fish that had surged and leapt and made great waves when she chased them and that had thrashed and thrown pieces of moon into the air when she caught them, while the round-eyed voles had peered from their entrances and the ducks had made a commotion and turned in tight circles and while the swans and their young had lurched into the water and melted into the night like mist.
Many times when the otter had killed a fish, she had towed it to the big stone near the Cattle Drink to eat it. Then the fish farm had been made on the bend of the Clearwater and from time to time the farmed trout had escaped. Sometimes the fish slipped through the grilles that allowed the clean water from upstream of the farm to flow into the ponds where they were kept. Sometimes they slipped through the grilles that fed water laden with excrement back into the river once the trout had used it. Many thousands of fish had escaped when the Clearwater flooded at the same time as the stream flooded and thousands more had been freed when the chestnut tree came down in the gale and ripped one of the grilles clean out.
The otter had enjoyed the easy pickings that resulted. The farmed fish had no experience of living in the wild and they often settled in places that made them easy to see and sometimes, even if they had been in a place a long time, they failed to change their colouring so that they blended better into the background to make themselves more difficult to detect. Many other tricks that the wild trout had learned to help keep themselves alive had been bred out of the farmed trout to make them bigger and easier to control and all of this had made things easier for the otter, as well.
It was because the farmed fish had been so easy to catch that the otter had stayed near the farm so long. Then the fish had gradually got fewer. Then the taste of the new escapees had changed because the formula of the food they were fed was altered to make them grow more efficiently and to help them become more resistant to the diseases that kept breaking out. Then the road traffic had increased because of the work on the development and the otter had gradually ranged wider.
The otter had smelled the change in the stream that entered the Clearwater many times before, from a distance. She had tasted the strangeness of it on the water and had hesitated many times on the bank opposite the place where the stream flowed in, standing up on her hind legs and resting on her tail, looking across at the entrance.
On the night when the single salmon leapt so far downstream that she could not see it, around the time some of the long strands of chokeweed between Top Bend and Middle Bend were breaking away under their own weight and lodging elsewhere, the otter again paused on the banks of the Clearwater opposite the stream. Again the otter sat up on her hind legs and smelled the strange smells and made small lapping noises with her tongue as though tasting a new taste and stared into the gloom with her dark, round eyes.
Far downstream, the salmon she could not see but that could also smell and taste the strangeness being carried into the Clearwater, leapt again. The salmon seemed to wait in mid-air while the moonlight drained from him drip by drip before crashing back down into a pit of foam. Then he hurled himself into the air a third time. It was almost as if the images that had lured him there were becoming distorted and making him confused, as if he were jumping to check he was where he was supposed to be, according to the plan. As though the third leap had been a signal, the otter slid into the water from the bank opposite the stream, melting upwards from her nose. A silken ripple reached up the brown ribbon behind her and reached down again. The water folded over the place she had entered and smoothe
d it out.
For a time it was as though there was a clumsiness about the otter when she reached the entrance to the stream. She had to turn sharply to avoid the silt that reached out under the surface like an accusing finger. Then she caught her foot on the bed of the stream where it should have been deep and stirred up clouds of black debris and wobbling bubbles. Then she had to stop twice to pull away the strands of chokeweed that trailed from her hind foot like a leaden web.
The otter followed the line of the least-slow water all the way upstream, weaving in and out of the silt beds and the chokeweed that had not been there last time she visited; staying close to the cress bed near the new concrete bridge that had been built to replace the old bridge on Longate that the old man had made in his youth. The only reason she faltered at the bridge at all was to sniff at the empty nest that the coot had left and at the broken shells around it and at the small, clawed pad marks in the dust.
It was on her way past what had been Picket Close, near one of the sections of bank that had fallen in when the bulldozer passed, that she smelled the fresh green vileness that the mink had made to mark that place as its own. She passed a dried vileness with bones and fur in it opposite the post that the Baetis fly had crawled down to lay the eggs that the chokeweed had long since entombed. She saw a vileness with a coot’s feather in it close to the place where the cygnets were sleeping and where the cob had his neck laid along his back with his beak under his wing and one eye open, following every movement she made.
The otter heard the chattering of the mink when she was opposite the fallen willow and then saw the mink on the stone: the stone that had once been far out into the water and that she had so often used herself, but that now was a part of the bank. The mink that had been freed from her cage by the young men in masks because it was a kindness was crouching low, gnawing at what remained of the duck. Then the otter smelled another stink on the air and saw the five young mink padding in line up the far bank close to the water, each reaching nose to each trailing tail, undulating and gleaming over the ground like a furred snake. The otter felt no fear of the mink but smelled their smell and felt the pressure of their presence and knew the deadness in the water upstream. She turned, melted into the water again and swam downstream.
