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n the doorway with all the bags. Where am I putting these? he asked, and was told to take them straight upstairs. There were wild pheasant nests scraped into the long grass at the edge of the beech wood, and when the eggs started appearing they were taken in number by foxes and badgers and crows. The Hunters were having a new drystone wall built at the entrance to their drive, and Liam Hooper had already been working on it for a month. Sean Hooper went over most days to check on the progress, and when he noticed how often Olivia Hunter was coming down the drive with cups of tea and plates of biscuits, or just hanging around asking questions, he made a point of reminding Liam of her age. Liam looked surprised and muttered something about it at least being legal. Sean couldn’t help laughing but he told Liam to steer clear. It’d be more trouble than it’s worth, he said. At the Women’s Institute sale Winnie asked Irene if she was well. She said it with an upward tilt, as though of course why would she not be well, but Irene stiffened at the asking. I can’t complain, she said. I’m getting along. And how are you? Winnie said she was fine. She said Irene’s cakes and jams had been missed; it had been a while since she’d brought any to the sale. The colour rose in Irene’s face and for a moment she didn’t reply. I can’t be expected, she said. I can’t always be expected. Winnie put a hand to her friend’s arm. No one’s expecting, she said. But if I can help. Irene shook her head and moved back a little, so that Winnie’s hand was left in the air. Thank you, she said. I’ll manage. I appreciate your thoughtfulness. But, really. A pair of buzzards circled each other high over the moorland by Reservoir no. 5, locking claws and swinging towards the ground in a tumble of outstretched wings. The conservationists had been putting about a plan to control the vegetation in the flood meadows by grazing longhorn cattle, and the Jacksons were asked if they wanted the contract to manage it. The boys were in favour. It would mean putting up a new barn, and getting a bigger trailer to move the stock around, but there’d been a strong suggestion that if they took this on there would be more contracts to follow. Jackson said no. When they tried to explain the importance of diversification he made a big show of how hard he found it to speak and finally spat out the word sheep. We – do – sheep, he said. There was no use discussing it. There was a half moon over the cricket ground and the pale light fell through the leaves of the horse chestnut tree.
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.
Richard’s mother was still in hospital after Christmas, and when he came to stay for the week he spent most of his time on the ward. She hadn’t taken to hospital life. She seemed diminished by the experience. Some mornings when he arrived he thought she wasn’t in the bed at all. He sat with her, and she slept often, and he caught up with emails. The staff got to know him, and offered him tea and coffee, and he marvelled at the care with which they spoke to his mother, addressing her as Mrs Clark, speaking with something like love in their voices although he knew it couldn’t really be love. In the valley the rain was constant. The river thickened with silt from the hills and plumed across the weirs. There were scratch-marks in the heaped soil around the badger sett, and a trail of leaves and grass where fresh heaps of bedding had been dragged underground. The pantomime was Dick Whittington, with the lead role taken by Susanna Wright. The production committee had chosen a rather modern script, and afterwards there were objections. Clive raised it at the parish council, saying that he had concerns about the use of dick. Janice Green excused herself from the room for a short period, and on returning asked Clive how he would prefer that to be minuted. As is, Secretary, he said. As is. There was rain and the wind was biting. On the reservoirs the water was whipped up into whitecaps. It was a decade now the girl had been missing, and although little talked about she was still in people’s thoughts. Her name was Rebecca, or Becky, or Bex. She’d been wearing a white hooded top with a navy-blue body-warmer. She would be twenty-three years old by now. She had been seen in the beech wood, climbing a tree. She had been seen at the railway station. She had been seen by the side of the road. She had been looked for, everywhere. She could have arranged to meet somebody, and been driven safely away. She could have fallen down a hole. She could have been hurt by her parents in some terrible mistake. She could have gone away because she’d chosen to, or because she had no choice. People still wanted to know.
11.
At midnight when the year turned there were fires in three sheds at the allotments, and again they were burnt out before the fire brigade arrived. At the school the lights were seen on early, and when Mrs Simpson walked from her car and came into the staffroom she was surprised to see Miss Dale already sitting there, working on a lesson plan and eating toast. They looked at each other, and Miss Dale asked if Mrs Simpson had overslept. I don’t know, Mrs Simpson said. I don’t, I don’t really know. She seemed confused. The nights were hard with frost. On the high frozen ground a ewe stumbled and died, and the buzzards came to feed. A smell of coal-smoke hung over the village through the days. In his studio Geoff Simmons sat on the sofa and watched the last batch dry. He had left them out too long and they were cracking. The kiln should have been on by now. He had made no sales for weeks and could feel another bad patch coming. He wanted to take the whippet out for a walk but there was too much weight in him to stand. There were plates and bowls in the sink to be washed. She’d said she wanted to see him again and he hadn’t yet told her he’d had enough. She wanted to come and stay so she could help him get his living space together. Those were her words. She’d asked whether he’d thought about teaching. It would make for a more reliable income, she said. He was finding her less persuasive than he used to. At the Jacksons’ the carers were only coming twice a week now. Jackson was finding it difficult to get out of bed again, but that was more down to the tremendous weight he’d put on than anything to do with the stroke. The adaptations they’d fitted to the shower room went unused. Towards the end of each day Maisie 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.
A scrap-dealer came for the remains of the caravan in Fletcher’s orchard, dragging out the chassis and wheels and leaving the shreds of blackened plastic on the ground. They were soon covered over by the brambles which had grown high around the walls. The fieldfares had started leaving already. Irene took a long walk back from the bus stop, up behind the post office and round to the top of the allotments. It was warm for the month and as she came over the rise she unbuttoned her coat. In the lane she saw Jones. She expected him to turn away but he nodded and stepped towards her. Said her name. She stopped. He looked at her steadily, waiting. Weather, he said. It’s not what it was, she agreed. He was tracing a line in the limey soil of the lane with his boot. Andrew away on the bus? She nodded. She told him she’d dropped him at the bus stop, that he’d be at the centre all day. Gives me a chance to catch up with some housework, she said, smiling. He nodded. He looked at her, steadily. There’s help, he said. I’m not sure as I know what you mean, she said. I can manage the house. He shook his head. No. I mean there’s help, if he’s hurting you. Irene had a feeling like her legs going out from under her but when it passed she was still standing. She could see Clive on his allotment, digging. He seemed to be looking in their direction. But he wouldn’t be able to hear. It’s not like that, she said. She was whispering. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t mean to. Jones lifted his hat and rubbed his head and put his hat back on. Probably none of my business, he said. But you took enough of that from Ted. You’re not obliged. Jones was the last person she wanted to have this conversation with. Where would he go? she asked. He’s got no one. He wouldn’t understand. Who have you got? he asked. She took a deep breath and pulled her coat together, fastening the buttons. He was right; this wasn’t any of his business. She couldn’t say anything more. She held up a hand to say it was enough, and she walked on. What was he thinking. What right did he have.
From his window if he slid far enough down the pillow Jackson could see the flag on the tower of the church and know the strength and direction of the wind, and in March the first westerly of the year had the flag standing out straight. It had him thinking of the flags on the moor when they were looking for that girl. The allotments committee got the insurance money for the burnt-out sheds, and there were rumblings when the replacements went up. Everyone’ll be burning out their sheds if that’s what you get in return, Clive said. Susanna Wright took on the allotment plot next to Clive’s. It had only been vacant a few months and was in good order. She walked round it with him and started talking about a shed, new paths, a lawn area with a table and chairs. There was a greenhouse but some of the panes were missing and she talked about replacing those. He nodded but he was making a face. You look like you have a suggestion, she said. Clive pulled some shreds of plastic feed-bag from the brambles by the greenhouse and began coiling them around his fist. Not really a suggestion, he said; more of an observation. Susanna waited. We get a lot of new folk taking on plots, he said. They like to do a lot of tidying up. They like to make the place look nice. Make themselves comfortable. Takes a lot of work. Gets so they forget to do the planting. Susanna nodded. There were some pieces of broken glass in the soil beneath the brambles, and she crouched down to pick them up. And that was my mistake last time? It’s a question of priorities, he said. You get your plants in at the right time, get the mulch down, do the weeding, do the watering, that’s work enough. You do all that, you’ll enjoy being here. A plot full of healthy plants, crops coming off, flowers out, that’s the best little place in the world. You’ll not be worrying about benches or lawns or tidy paths. Water features. Wind chimes, Clive? He looked at her. I see you putting a bleeding wind chime up here I’ll be straight over to take it down, he said. She laughed, but he wasn’t joking. That’s noted, she said. I appreciate it. I don’t want to meddle, he said. No, please do. Meddle away. He looked at her, and handed over the coil of shredded plastic. Bins are in car park, he said, and as he turned to go she heard him mutter something more about wind chimes. The clocks went forward and the evenings opened out. The bracken shoots sprang slowly from the hills and unwound towards the sky. The penned pheasants on the estate started to lay, and the eggs were taken to the hatchery to be washed and sorted. Su Cooper was made redundant from her job at the BBC, with a much smaller payment than she’d been offered the year before.
Martin Fowler w
as working at the meat counter in the new supermarket when his daughter called and asked him to come to the hospital, and when he got there he was a grandfather. Would someone tell me why I wasn’t told, he kept saying, holding the walnut-faced thing in his big hands. You’re here now, Dad, Amy said. We didn’t want you worrying. Ruth stepped across and took the child back, kissing him on the cheek as she did so. Congratulations, Grandad, she said. His hands shook with nothing to hold. He looked around the room. Amy’s fellow was sat on the side of Amy’s bed, looking mostly at his feet. This was the first time Martin had met him. He wasn’t sure of the name. None of this was the way he’d planned things as ending up by now. Bloody plans what, he said. He hadn’t meant to say it out loud. He coughed, and said he was going out for some fresh air. They called the boy Luke and told Martin he was welcome to come over. Ruth made a point of saying so. Amy and Luke would be at Ruth’s house to start with, while the fellow found them a place to live. Why hadn’t he sorted that already, Martin wanted to know. But he didn’t ask. It was a fortnight before he got over to Harefield, bringing a gift of clothes that would no longer fit. It was as though they’d swapped the child for another. The screw-eyed palmful from the hospital was gone. This one had a whole extra heft to him. Ruth took him upstairs for a nap, and Martin was left alone with Amy. There was an opportunity for him to make an apology but it went past. They sat and he offered to make a tea.
What Irene knew was cleaning. Whatever else was happening or became impossible to understand, she kept up the cleaning. The paid work, of course, but she made a point as well of keeping her own house presentable. Years now since anyone had paid a visit, because of Andrew and the damage he had wrought, and the way she feared he would respond to guests. But she worked to keep the place as though someone was going to call at any moment. Because they might. She might not be able to keep them on the doorstep, or make a show of being on her way out. They might come in and see how his computer equipment had taken over the front room and the hallway and the kitchen, the cables everywhere, the strange system of lights above the doors. They might see the split doorframes, the broken cupboard doors. But they wouldn’t be able to say she wasn’t keeping the place clean. They couldn’t say that. There was a lot she didn’t understand. But cleaning she knew. There was a small patch of wild redcurrant on the riverbank below the weir, and when the flowers came out at the end of May she clambered down from the path to gather a basketful. She took them home and for the next week or so was able to sit alone at her kitchen table and savour the rough pink tea they made and remember childhood’s first taste of this. It was a way to feel summer’s approach. The Millennium Millstones were pushed off their plinths again, and this time one of them split. There was a fight in the Gladstone, and talk it had something to do with Facebook. On the television there were pictures of explosions, fires, collapses, collisions. Broad beans started coming off the allotments by the carrier-bagful, and were shucked into saucepans from their softly lined pods. The gentle cushioning of the broad-bean pod was one of nature’s senseless excesses. The work was a tedious delight. In his studio Geoff Simmons took each newly fired pot from the tray and smashed it against the floor. He worked at a methodical pace. The rhythm was soothing. He had asked her not to come and see him again and she had not responded well. There was no reason now to keep the work her hands had touched. The whippet was wound up outside the door and making a racket. The pieces of pot were thin and white and clean. It seemed she hadn’t understood the worth his work had to him. He smashed the pots very evenly across the floor. It was a careful process. He was never not in control. When it was done he took the whippet for a slow walk and left the door hanging open. What had she expected, was his feeling. The reservoir was low and the river slowed between the gravel banks. Tom Jackson was seen walking out with Ashleigh Wright.
In the morning a mist hung over the fields of the kind that would once have been seen as a cue. Jackson banged his stick on the wall and Gordon went through to see what was wanted. He was checking we’d noticed it’s cutting weather, he told the others. I told him we’d already seen. Maisie asked whether he’d set Jackson straight and Gordon said of course not. In his room Jackson looked at the mist lifting around the church tower and felt an ache in his shoulders at the thought of a long day’s cutting ahead; the smell of the sap as it fell in the field, the long steady evenings barely turning blue as the swallows came out to feed. He caught himself, and turned on the radio. It was too easy to be nostalgic when it wasn’t you doing the work. He sent a prayer through the door to the boys. They’d have a full day ahead. He turned away from the window. Mrs Simpson took early retirement from the school with ill health. There was discretion about what this meant, but it wasn’t felt appropriate to hold a retirement do. She was sent a huge number of cards and her children read some of them out to her. Cooper wrote an article about her in the Echo. The weeks were long and cloudless and the sun scorched a passage through the days. The family who lived at Culshaw Hall put the estate on the market. At the top end of the beech wood a badger held a hedgehog down on its back and peeled it open. The well-dressing boards stood for just short of a week, with the crowds up on previous years and Jim Stephenson’s brass band from the high school playing over the weekend. By Thursday the wind had dried out the clay and the petals were starting to fade. The decision was made to pack up. Richard’s mother came home from hospital, and Rachel took time off work. There were care-workers who visited twice a day to help her wash and dress, and make sure she took all her medications, and although they always seemed rushed Rachel soon realised she wasn’t needed. Irene and Winnie came in most days, and the talk they had about the village went over Rachel’s head. She’d been planning to stay on until Richard came the next month, but in the end she left before he arrived. At Reservoir no. 2 there were divers going down to work on the gate valves at the foot of the towers. The maintenance team watched the screens in the van as the divers made their way through the water. In the white light there were bubbles and plumes of silt and then the first gate valve came into sight. The voice of the diver from inside his helmet was clear and close, as though he’d been standing outside the van all along. On the crest of the dam the men held the ropes and looked down at the dark surface of the water.
One evening in midsummer Gordon Jackson took Susanna Wright for a drive in his Land Rover. She’d mentioned wanting to see the wind turbines up close, and he’d taken that as an invitation to offer. This was how it went. He was never forward. He waited for situations to arise. He’d been waiting for Susanna for years. A quick conversation, a joke, an offer of help. Eyes. But he never said anything. That wasn’t him. He was careful in a way he didn’t need to think about. He never made a suggestion; never put himself in a position where there could be a refusal. It was the refusals that would get talked about, had always been his sense. The ones who went through with it had more of an interest in being discreet. He only had to steer a situation towards a possibility until the possible became likely and the likely a done thing. A good sheepdog never needs to bark, was how he thought of it. He looked at Susanna now. It had taken time but she seemed interested at last. She was looking out of the window and she had that thoughtful face. He wanted to lean over and kiss her neck but he held back. She was a fine-looking woman and he’d been watching. She’d been on her own for a long time and he’d found himself thinking of breakfasts in her kitchen, nights in front of her TV. He stopped the Land Rover where the new road went closest to the turbines and asked if this was okay. Asked if she was ready. Eye contact, careful silence. There was a pattern. They got out and looked up at the turbine. The wind was down and the blades were turning slowly. The sun was low and the shadows fell long across the ground. He looked at her. He could smell the warmth of her skin and he knew already how it would taste. She stood beside him and told him that she was flattered but she wasn’t interested in that way. It was a shock but he kept steady. He didn’t pretend not to know what she meant. He nodded, and held hi
s hands up in the gesture of someone losing a small stake at the races. He tapped his nose as if to say that this could be their secret, but she only raised an eyebrow and moved away. She took photographs of the turbine with her phone. When they drove back down the hill his discomfort wasn’t so much about the rejection as it was the fear that now conversations would be had and all his discretions begin to unravel. He couldn’t afford for that to happen. The days were getting shorter already but they were still so full that no one really noticed. The woodpigeons’ eggs were hatching out, and the squabs being fed on crop milk. The sheep had started shedding the wool around their necks and the shearing was due. Will Jackson took his son to bring them down to the pens. The boy knew how to work with animals now. He knew about their distances, and how to lead them from behind. He knew how they understood the rattle of a bucket. The two of them worked together without fuss and had them penned by lunchtime. The shearers were ready. The sound of the milk tanker pumping the morning collection came from Thompson’s farm on the far side of the valley, a low murmur through the heavy summer air. Richard’s mother died while he was out of the country, and it was two days before he could get back. His sisters had come up and cleared the bedroom by then, aired the house, made arrangements with the undertakers. There was little left for him to do. They told him they understood. They gave him directions to the undertakers’, and didn’t offer to go with him. She’d died in bed, according to the doctor, possibly in her sleep. He stayed long enough for the funeral, and saw her buried in the same grave as his father. There are going to be some difficult conversations ahead, he managed to tell his sisters. And now is not the time, Sarah replied.
In August the young bats moved away from their mothers’ milk and the nursery colonies broke up. Their networks of flight were complex and unseen. They flung themselves through the grazing meadows taking dung beetles and moths while the adults began finding mates. On the baking stone path beside Reservoir no. 5 a slowworm was basking, and was taken by a buzzard to feed to her chicks. Richard and Cathy were seen having lunch again at the new organic pub in Harefield. Questions were asked as to why they’d felt it necessary to go that far. Inferences were drawn. The cricket was cancelled for weather, and the Cardwell team didn’t come over for drinks as they had done in previous years. Su and Austin Cooper had their twentieth anniversary. Austin had learnt that Su’s reluctance to celebrate dates was sincere and deeply felt, but this year she had surprised him with a card and a booking at a restaurant in town. Susanna Wright had agreed to babysit. When they got into the car to drive to the restaurant, both of them a little damp and flushed from the shower, Su braced herself for Austin’s reminiscing. It was what he did. She sometimes saw him, in the middle of some family moment – in the woods with the boys, at dinner with her parents, at the village pantomime, even the two of them in bed together – seeming to close his eyes and store the occasion up for future recollection. He enjoyed the recollection more than the moments themselves, it seemed. But he looked at her, and said nothing. They drove through the village, the sunlight low and flashing through the trees, the smell of summer’s tail-end coming in through the windows. She thought about their first meeting, when she was an assistant producer at the radio station and had come to do a piece on the well dressing, and found herself talking to this clumsy, hesitant man with a bag full of cameras and Dictaphones and notepads. How he’d told her far more about the well dressing than she needed to know, but had then asked her about radio journalism and the BBC, and the other stories she was working on. He did a lot more listening than most of the men she knew, especially the journalists. When the well dressing was finished they’d gone for a drink, and when the drink was done they’d gone for a walk, and the walk had taken them all the way back to his tiny terraced house in town. The story had been simplified over the years, but it had never been much more complicated than that. She looked at him now. She wondered if either of them could ever be that impulsive again. They parked the car, and walked towards the restaurant, and she slipped her hand into his. She stopped him, and stretched up to kiss his cheek, and whispered thank you in his ear. He looked surprised, and kissed her back, and they walked on.
In the closing days of summer the eggs of the dark-green fritillaries in the beech-wood clearing turned from yellow to purple to grey before they hatched. There were no swallows left. The nests were still there, crumbling and mud-flaked, and would be there when the swallows returned in the spring. White campion thronged the verges along the road towards town, their neat flowers wrinkling as the seed-heads began to swell. In the beech wood the young foxes were ready to move on. It was Martin’s turn to put together the Harvest Festival display at the church, and despite regular promises not to let anyone down he disappeared at the last moment. Irene and Winnie stepped in. The river turned over beneath the packhorse bridge and ran steady to the millpond weir. Lynsey Smith came home from Leeds and moved back in with her parents. It was a temporary move but it took a hired van to bring back all her things. She’d been living with a boyfriend after graduation and it hadn’t worked out. He was older than her and worked at the university, and he’d decided the relationship had run its course. He’d told her she was too young to think about settling down. He’d told her she needed some time to find out who she was, to go into the world and have adventures and not be stuck in Leeds with a dowdy old lecturer in public health. He’d told her, when the conversation became a little more heated, that she was too needy and she made him feel trapped. It took her a while to share this with anyone. It made her feel ashamed, she told Sophie. It made her feel that she’d let him down in some way. He texted her sometimes, but when she texted him back he never replied. Sophie told her she needed to let it go. Her parents didn’t ask questions but they knew something had gone wrong. Her mother was patient but her father wanted to know what had been the point of spending all that money on university. They offered her work in the shop and it was easier just to say yes. The Workers’ Educational Association group stuck with Italian for a second year, and the more dedicated element started a conversation club at the Gladstone on a Wednesday evening. Tony ordered a few cases of Peroni in their honour. Cathy knocked on Mr Wilson’s door and asked whether Nelson needed a walk, and he asked her in for a cup of tea. She’d not sat down before he passed her his sponsorship form and told her she’d be sponsoring him for the swim he was doing. She asked if there was a choice and he gave her a look. These poor people don’t get a choice about not having clean water to drink, he said. She asked for a pen. He told her he was barely up to four or five lengths, tops, so she’d best make it at least a fiver per. She snorted, and then realised he wasn’t joking. She’d sat through his talks about this clean-water charity before, so she went ahead and put herself down for five pounds per length. Don’t go overdoing it now, she said. You don’t want to go damaging that hip. He poured the tea. Don’t you worry. The physiotherapy nurses are good but they’re no magicians. There was an unexpected smell about him as he handed over the tea, and she asked whether he’d been smoking.
At the allotments in the long days of rain the broad leaves of courgettes and beans were blackened with rot, the cow parsley collapsing into the hedgerows, the ground spread with a slime of autumn leaves blown in from the beech wood. Clive was cutting back the dead growth and raking it into a heap. Jones was digging his plot bare. Ruth and Susanna were talking on Susanna’s plot, sheltering under a large umbrella and watching the pumpkins ripen against the mulch. It had been a good first season for Susanna. The tomatoes and peppers in the greenhouse hadn’t amounted to much, and the carrots had never even germinated; but there had been potatoes and beans and courgettes and peas, and now these bright swelling pumpkins. The plot was nothing to look at but she had plans for the next year and she felt ready for what was to come. Ruth had been a help. At home Ashleigh had been filling in her university application, and Susanna remembered from Rohan how quickly this last year would go. Ashleigh had broken things off with the Jackson boy so she could concentrate on her A levels, and it didn’t look to Susanna as though either of them were much concerned. At midnight the clouds thickened and the moon dimmed. The widower hadn’t been seen for months, and Jones helped himself to what fruit there was. There had been a concern that something might have happened, and talk of breaking in the door, but when pushed Jones had admitted knowing the man was away, and being in possession of the key. He’d been offered a lecturing job abroad, was Jones’s information, and had taken his daughter with him for six months. For the educational experience. Jones knew a lot about the man, it turned out, but he didn’t share anything more. On Mischief Night a girl from another village dressed up in a white hooded top with a navy-blue body-warmer, and black jeans, and canvas shoes, and zombie make-up. She was driven back to her parents, and words were had. There was building work at Culshaw Hall, and talk the new owners were turning it into a hotel and lodge. The dams had their ten-year inspection and three of them were found to be failing, the steel rods in the concrete exposed and the concrete crumbling away. The Valley Echo carried a report of the sponsored swim, in which it was noted that Mr Wilson had shown unexpected stamina by swimming twenty-one lengths. Heartfelt congratulations were offered.
In November the rain came day after day and at first people joked about it but by the third week it became uncanny. The moors were saturated and the water rushed off them and was everywhere. The smell of damp earth began to rise from between floorboards and everything was tinged with a dank green light. Les Thompson led his herd across the mud-thick yard from the shed. The sodden air was soon steaming with the press of bodies. From the riverbank up by the fishing pools
a heron hoisted into the air, hauling up its heavy wings and letting its feet trail out as it flew along the river. Rohan Wright had been away travelling but he was back again, living at his mother’s. She wanted to know what his plans were and he wouldn’t be drawn. He spent a lot of time on a laptop, working on his music. Sometimes he saw Lynsey, serving at her parents’ farm-supplies place or behind the bar in the Gladstone, and they talked about the others. Sophie was doing another internship in London, arranged through a friend of her father’s, and had been trying to get Lynsey to go down and visit. She’s moving with a different type of crowd now, Lynsey said. The money they spend on a night out, I couldn’t be keeping up with that. In an attempt to meet the county council’s target for budget cutting, the parish council agreed to the street lighting being turned off between midnight and five, not without much discussion, during which Miriam Pearson was advised that the expression black hole of Calcutta was no longer acceptable. There was an admission charge at the bonfire party for the first time, and nobody seemed to much mind. The predictions of cheapskates lining up along the boundary wall to watch the fireworks were unfounded, and if anything the numbers were up on previous years. Cathy knocked on Mr Wilson’s door and asked whether she wouldn’t be able to take Nelson for a walk again some time soon. Mr Wilson said he didn’t know about that. He stood in the doorway and he didn’t invite her in, and Nelson ran circles in the hall. She told him she’d already said she was sorry but she would never have offered that kind of money. He said it was the principle. He said the money was sorely needed and he was sure she could spare it in the long run. She said he had no idea what kind of money she could or couldn’t spare and he had no business making assumptions. She said she hadn’t thought she was writing a blank cheque. He said it wasn’t the money it was the principle and that when he’d been growing up people knew how to keep to their word. She said, David, I can’t bear for us to fall out over this. He closed the door, and she went back to her house and sat in the kitchen, and a few minutes later she heard his door slam and saw him struggle up the lane with Nelson. She wrote a cheque for £105, made it payable to a different charity altogether, and put it in an envelope through his door. She knew she was being petty, but she couldn’t think she was being more petty than he was.
On a warm day in early December the small tortoiseshells in Sally Fletcher’s shed came out of hibernation and were seen feeding on the privet hedge, their wings dulled and ragged and soaking up the watery sun. At the river the keeper thinned out the alder along the banks by the meadow below the school. In his studio Geoff Simmons mixed a glaze and stirred in grass seeds and leaf fragments he had gathered. He stood at the worktable and dipped the newly fired pots in and out of the glaze. There was a rhythm to it that soothed. He held the pots lightly and then brushed the glaze across the dry spots his finger and thumb had left. If there was a way of leaving no marks at all he would take it. James Broad was working in Manchester, but was seen in the village from time to time. He came for the climbing, bringing university friends with bags of ropes and harnesses and plenty of money to spend in the Gladstone, and he always seemed to know when Lynsey would be behind the bar. He was developing a reputation for his climbing. He was known for studying a route with great patience, but then climbing it at such speed that he seemed to be carried up the face by momentum alone. He climbs like a man in furious pursuit, was the way one magazine put it. The less approving said he didn’t have the strength to hold one position for any time. His pace of attack meant he took risks which won as much disapproval as admiration, but he hadn’t fallen yet. He brought his new girlfriend home just before Christmas and introduced her to his mother, which she hadn’t been expecting. She might not be as pretty as that other one, his mother told Cathy, later. But I can at least pronounce her name. She seems nice enough. And she’s black of course, but I haven’t a problem with that. James took her up to the moor and told her what had happened with the missing girl. She listened, and told him it wasn’t his fault. He nodded, and told her people always said that. In the evening they met Rohan at the Gladstone. Lynsey was serving at the bar. On Christmas Eve he drove his girlfriend back to Northampton. His mother told Cathy she didn’t really mind. There was carol singing in the church and the sound of it drifted towards the square.
Richard’s mother had left her papers in no kind of order at all. It took Richard months to even sort through the basics of reading the will, closing her bank accounts, and unsubscribing from the numerous magazines and charity newsletters that kept coming through the door. He was finding himself with longer downtimes between contracts now, and hadn’t yet told his sisters that he was no longer renting the flat in Balham that had been his base when he was in the country. He knew that they wanted to sell the house and share the money – Rachel had said they badly needed the money, which he found hard to believe – but he’d told them they should get the house in better shape before they thought about putting it on the market. He talked this over with Cathy one afternoon, and was disappointed to find that he couldn’t read her reaction in the slightest. There was a moment when she could have said she’d like it if he was in the village more often or even for good, but she was distracted by something on her phone and said nothing. He realised later that this had also been a moment when he could have asked her if that was a thing she’d like, but he was on the descent into Geneva by then, fastening his seatbelt and returning his seat to the upright position. On New Year’s Eve Cathy knocked on Mr Wilson’s door and asked whether Nelson wanted a walk. They had tea and cake and then she took Nelson quickly up the lane to the church, down past the orchard to the packhorse bridge and along the river. When she came to Hunter’s wood she stooped to unleash him, resting her hand on the wall where the topstone was worn to a watery shine.
12.
