Читать книгу Reservoir 13: WINNER OF THE 2017 COSTA NOVEL AWARD - Jon McGregor - Страница 9

At midnight when the year turned there were fireworks going up from all across the village. The dance at the hall was crowded and hot and there was steam in the light of the doorway. In the morning there were spent rockets lying in the street and sparklers jammed into the planters in the square. There was rain for most of the day and snow on the higher ground. The tips of the new-growth heather could just be reached through the snow. Woodpigeons came into the gardens where feed was put out and were often chased away. A contractor came out to the Jackson place with the ultrasound tackle and Gordon Jackson took her out to the ewes. They spent most of the morning doing the scans and the two of them had to work closely. The proportion of twins was decent and there were fewer barrens than in most years. Gordon felt good about the way the morning had gone. The woman’s name was Deborah and she knew how to handle the sheep. She had strong arms and a firm grip. He asked what she was doing at the weekend and she said she had family to see. There was an ambiguity in her use of the word family but he let it go. When he dropped her back at her van she left him with a smile that some would have taken for a dismissal. She stayed on his mind for some days. The parish council moved their meetings to the function room of the Gladstone, and there was an immediate improvement in attendance which Brian later told Sally reflected poorly on all concerned. Martin and Ruth Fowler separated, which was more of a surprise to him than it was to some others. He was heading for an interview at the job centre when Ruth stopped him by the door and said she was leaving. There was a winded feeling in his stomach but he didn’t let on. Christ, Ruth, you couldn’t have picked more of a moment? She held up her hands as though she was sorry and she told him there was never a good time, there was never the time to talk. He stood in the doorway and rubbed his face. There were words he wanted to say but they were muddled. If he started he would get there too late. He told her he’d got some good prospects for work, that things were on the mend. He stopped because there was no point. When Ruth made a decision. She touched the side of his face and he slapped her hand away. There were words but he couldn’t get started. He was going to be late. He wanted things to be different but they weren’t going to be different. Do what you feel like doing, he said. She stood in the doorway and watched him go. They had been married since they were twenty-two, a year after meeting each other at a Young Farmers’ dance. Neither of them had been young farmers, but it was known as a place for meeting. He’d bought her a drink, and there was a bluntness in the way he spoke that she knew was a cover for being shy. He couldn’t dance, but there was otherwise a grace in his gestures and especially in his hands which intrigued her. When they met for the second time he took her to see the butcher’s shop he was taking over from his father. He gave her a tour, and as they stood behind the counter he kissed her and she leant back against the chopping block. For her this was when it was settled. The wood of the chopping block was bowled and smooth beneath her hands. When they married she moved into his house, and a few years after that, while she was pregnant with Bruce, his parents moved out to a sheltered housing complex in town. They were happy for a long time, or comfortable, and when that changed Ruth had been hard-pressed to explain why.

At the Ash Wednesday service Jane Hughes daubed the congregation’s foreheads with a thumbprint of ash in a way that hadn’t been done for years. There were only the very regulars there, and the service was short. But there was a hushed intimacy to it that made the ashy touch of Jane’s thumb seem quite in keeping with the moment, and when they came out into the cold sunshine they were each caught by the same moment of self-consciousness, reaching towards their foreheads. In the churchyard a pair of blackbirds courted, fanning their tails and fluffing their rumps and watching each other bright-eyed. There’d been a break in the frost so Mr Wilson went up to the allotments and put some new rhubarb crowns in the ground. The place was busy as it hadn’t been since autumn. Clive was potting up broad beans. Miriam Pearson was raking over a bed and sowing rows of early carrots. Jones was still digging. There was a short period in the afternoon when the heat of the work and the steady fall of the sun had people shrugging off coats and hats, hanging them on earthed shovels while they stretched their backs, but the chill soon returned to the day and the light faded and the ground began to steel. There was a new moon, thin and cold and high. In his studio Geoff Simmons wedged up balls of clay for the wheel, weighing them out and cutting each one with a wire. His studio was at the top of the lane behind the Jackson place, in a converted feed store he’d bought with an inheritance ten years before. The planning permission was for a workshop only but it was known he spent nights on a sofa in there. He had the front area set up as a shop but there weren’t many who had yet beaten a path to his door. He sat at the wheel and soaked his hands in a bowl of water. The whippet lay curled on a rug beside the oil-heater. In the evening the teenagers were seen down by the weir, drinking. At the school there’d been talk that either James Broad or Liam, or both, had once slept with Becky Shaw. The talk seemed malicious and unlikely. Sophie and Lynsey wanted to know where the talk had come from and James told them he didn’t want to fucking think about it. Sophie tried to give him a hug but he shook her off. Liam threw stones into the water. The girl had been looked for; in the beech wood, in the river, in the hollows at Black Bull Rocks. She had been looked for at the abandoned quarry, the storage containers broken open and the rotting freight wagons broken open and the doors left hanging as people moved on down the road. They had wanted to find her. They had wanted to know she was safe. They had felt involved, although they barely knew her.

The sound of the water over the weir came up to the village in staticky bursts, shifting and faltering on the wind as though the volume was being flicked up and down. Thompson’s men led the first of the herd into the milking parlour, each cow finding her place and dropping her head to the feed-tray while the men worked along the line and cleaned the teats. By the river the keeper cut back a willow, and as he took off another branch he watched the trail of sawdust drift downstream. The curl into a back eddy. The drop and sweep across a shallow fall. There were footsteps on the path and he set to the next branch. There was always plenty of work. At school the police came and spoke to Liam and James and Lynsey about any involvement they’d had with the missing girl. New information had been provided regarding the family’s stay at the Hunter place the summer before she’d disappeared. The interviews were handled sensitively, with the parents present at all times, but they led to trouble for the three of them at school. No further action was taken. They all three acknowledged spending some time with the girl that summer, but denied even knowing she was around over the Christmas period. They had no useful information to share. The police thanked them for their time and apologised for any distress which may have been caused. The clocks went forward and the evenings opened out. The buds on the branches were brightening. There were mattresses dumped in the old quarry and sometimes this was seen as a service by the couples who went there at night. Ruth Fowler moved away to Harefield. Neither she nor Martin had ever lived alone before. She found the adjustment easier than Martin. There was talk she was planning on opening a shop of her own. Organics. They went for that type of thing in Harefield. It was noticed that Martin was often away from the house. He was in the Gladstone or he was walking through the village, down the lane past Fletcher’s orchard to the packhorse bridge. When he was home there were lights on through most of the night. In the mornings his car was sometimes seen idling outside the butcher’s shop. Their daughter, Amy, was away at university when they separated. Ruth had offered to talk to her, and at first Martin was grateful but when Amy came and took her things over to Ruth’s new place he realised what had happened. He knew she had to choose but he still felt snubbed. Bruce, their eldest, was in Manchester, the last anyone had heard. He could do what he wanted, was Martin’s feeling. Martin didn’t want to know.

At the school on the last day of term Miss Carter sat on her low chair in the reading corner with the whole class silent and looking up at her. Even Ryan Turner was quiet, for the first time since Miss Carter had known him. She was reading Hansel and Gretel, and when she came to the part where they found their breadcrumb trail had been eaten and they were lost in the forest she heard the children’s attention deepen. She lowered her voice to a whisper. They seemed to lean in more closely, and were quieter. She could see herself in their faces now, when she was their age, and had gazed up at Mrs Bradshaw and dreamed of one day being that smooth-legged woman perching on the edge of a soft chair, reading aloud. The moment lasted only until Ryan Turner pulled a scab from his knee and started crying. In the long grass around the cricket field, the skipper larvae span their tiny tents of leaves together. There were cowslips under the hedges and beside the road, offering handfuls of yellow flowers to the longer days. The Spring Dance was held in aid of the newly re-formed playgroup, which Jane Hughes had been working on for some time. She was hoping to raise enough money for some outdoor play equipment to use in fine weather. The week after Easter her car broke down and Stuart Hunter drove her round for the Sunday services. She was doing three services before noon, with a five- or ten-mile drive between each. There were no more than a dozen people at any of the services, and Jane conceded Stuart’s unspoken point about the inefficiency of the whole set-up. Two or more gathered in my name though, she said. Two or more. You won’t tell anyone I used the same sermon, will you? My lips are sealed, Vicar, he said. He dropped her off at the vicarage in town and said that he wouldn’t come in. And things are okay at your place? she asked. It’s settling down, he said. We’ve not re-let that barn conversion yet. It doesn’t feel right. Maybe you should come and exorcise it. He said this with a laugh, as though he wanted her to think he was joking, and as she got out of the car she told him to know that he and his family were remembered in her prayers. He had no way of laughing that off. There was rain in the evening of the sort it was pleasant to be in for a while, taking the dust from the air and leaving an exaggerated smell of early summer. In the beech wood the fox cubs were moved away from their dens.

Will Jackson called in to see his mother, and ended up helping the physiotherapist bring Jackson through from his bed and into the new sun room, one grudging step at a time. The effort of it exhausted Jackson, even with the two of them holding him up, and once they’d got him on to his special chair he was asleep before the television came on. Beside the chair there was a table of puzzles and toys so he could work on his motor skills. There were printouts of the exercises he was meant to be doing tacked up on the wall. The corners of the pages were curling in the sun. The physio said that people’s rates of progress varied enormously, and that it was important to encourage him to be mobile as often as possible. When he left Maisie asked Will if he had time for a cup of tea, and he said yes if she wasn’t going to talk about Claire again. She said she didn’t want to interfere, she just wanted him to be happy. I’m doing fine, he told her. Things are settled. It was never my doing in the first place, but things are settled now. He looked at her impatiently. I’ve noticed the odd thing, she said, that’s all. Mum, he said. I’m putting the kettle on and we’re not talking about it. Fine, she said. They stood at opposite ends of the small, cluttered kitchen, listening to the wet sound of Jackson’s breathing being drowned out by the gathering row of the kettle. There was rain and the river was high. The cow parsley was thick along the footpaths and the shade deepened under the trees. Stock was moved higher up the hills. The tea rooms by the millpond opened for the season, although business was slower than usual because the footbridge still hadn’t been rebuilt and no one from the campsite could get across. The reservoirs filled. James Broad finally admitted to his parents how much time he’d spent with Becky Shaw. He’d met her that previous summer, he said, when she’d been down at the tea rooms with her parents one afternoon while he was mucking about on the bridge with Deepak and Lynsey. She’d come over and talked to them, and later in the week when she’d seen them swimming she’d asked if she could join them. The four of you swam together in the river? his mother asked. And you told the police none of this? We were scared, James said. It didn’t seem important. We didn’t want them asking more questions. So you all decided not to say anything, his father said. James nodded. It was, like, a pretty intense time, he said. There was all that talk. Of course there was talk, his father said. Why didn’t you tell us everything? What were you thinking? He was raising his voice, and James was pulling back. His mother looked at him carefully. Is there something else? she asked. James? Christmas, he said. I saw her at Christmas as well. We met up a couple of times. On your own? He nodded. Just the two of you? He nodded again, and his parents looked at each other. James. Was there something going on between you? We were only thirteen, Mum. Come on. What would have been going on? James, his mother said. This is important. Did you see her the day she disappeared? He shook his head. He shook his head and he wouldn’t say anything else. James’s father had his hands over his face. Oh, Jesus Christ, give me strength, he said. James tried to ask if he was going to be in trouble but the words were whispered and cracked. His mother sat beside him. At fifteen his shoulders were as broad as an adult’s. His whole body shook. James’s father left the room. He heard James asking his mother whether the whole thing could really have been his fault.

Richard Clark’s mother had her upstairs rooms redecorated. It was one of the first things she’d thought of after her husband’s death, but it had taken almost a decade to get around to it. She’d wanted to redecorate before, but he’d always said it was squandering money. The rooms felt bigger when it was done, even after the Jackson boys had come over and put all the furniture back. When they’d finished, and she’d slipped them some pub money by way of thanks, she sat on the end of the bed and looked around at the changed room. The window was wide open to help shift the paint fumes, and she could hear people walking up to the square, the faint background whisper of the weir, the sound of Thompson’s herd unsettled about something. The room felt brand new. She’d never felt so at home. The curtains blew in and out with the breeze. The river was high and roiled with rainfall and the new flies were hatching thickly in the afternoon. Ian Dowsett stood on the packhorse bridge and watched trout as thick as his forearm leaping clear of the water for the take. It was two days more until the season opened. His whole body rocked as he thought through the motions of whirling a line out across the water. On the television there were pictures of forests burning in Malaysia, whole hillsides stripped bare and the topsoil washing off into the rivers. Early mornings in Thompson’s cowshed the swallows were laying eggs, the males flying back and forth with food for their brooding mates. There was a hush up there in the roof after the shriek and dash of mating time. Jackson’s boys, with Martin and Tony and a few of the older teenagers, went down to the packhorse bridge to lift the well-dressing boards out of the river. They were much heavier after a fortnight’s soaking, and there was some grunting as they lifted them on to the back of a trailer, the cold water streaming down their arms. They rode on the trailer to the top of the hill and then carried the boards into the village hall. When they’d finished they had to put a chain on the trailer. Scrap metal had been going missing in the area for a while, and now they were taking the stuff that wasn’t even scrap. Gates lifted off hinges, drainage gratings taken out of the roads. The thing was getting out of hand. There were blackbirds going in and out of the hedge in Jones’s garden, yanking up earthworms and beetles and fetching them back. Jones’s sister sat at the window a whole morning and watched them. She was waiting for Jones to come home and he was late. He was always gone longer than she liked. She hated it when they called him her carer. She could take care of herself but it was true she did need the company. The days were very long sometimes. She had ways of making the time pass but they weren’t always enough.

In July the heat hung over the moor and the heather hummed with insect life. Sally Fletcher went with Graham, the National Park ranger, to do the official butterfly count. She’d learnt her identifications quickly, and Graham was able to rely on her sightings. They’d become quite the team, and Brian had asked if they were having some kind of affair. Laughing at the very idea. The reservoirs shone white beneath the high summer sun. There was a parish council meeting which was almost entirely taken up with the issue of the proposed public conveniences, and by the time they came to Any Other Business Tony wanted to close the bar. So there was a general shifting in seats when Frank Parker stood up and said he wished to raise the issue of verge maintenance. Brian asked Judith to check whether this had been raised before. Judith looked through the record and confirmed that it had. I think in that case, and in light of the time, we’ll ask you to submit a written report to a future meeting, Brian said. Frank Parker experienced the brief turmoil of being offended and grateful at the same time. In the beech wood the fox cubs were doing their own foraging and the parents were spending longer away. In the night there were calls back and forth. The edges of the territory were understood. Around the deep pond at the far end of Thompson’s land a ring of willow trees were in full leaf, shielding the pond as though something shameful had once happened there which needed keeping from view. There was a parents’ evening at the school, and Will Jackson went down to see how Tom was getting on. Miss Carter showed him some of Tom’s workbooks and told him that he seemed a contented little boy. She said she’d be starting at a new school in September and he said that was a shame. He said Tom would miss her. But Tom wouldn’t be in my class in September, she pointed out. He looked embarrassed. But I just mean generally, about the place, he said. You’ll be missed. She held his gaze for a moment. Generally about the place? He nodded. A look of realisation came into her eyes. Oh, Christ, Will, she said. You idiot. He stood up, holding Tom’s report sheet, watching her watch him to the door. Afterwards he wondered whether she’d meant he should have asked. Later in the week there was a leaving assembly and when Mrs Simpson gave Miss Carter flowers the parents stood up and applauded so loudly that she didn’t know what to say. At the river a heron stood and watched the water, its body angled and poised while the evening grew dark.

Claire had been seen spending time at the Jackson house, and Will Jackson was uneasy about why. After almost three years of living with her mother, keeping Tom half the week and barely saying a word when they met, she appeared to be softening. She’d been taking Tom to the Jackson house while Will was out working, spending time with Maisie and staying for tea when she was asked. Maisie seemed to brighten in Claire’s company, as though they’d only just met and she was looking to make an impression. And Tom was happy to have both parents in the same room, looking from one to the other while he chattered about school, reassuring himself that they were both there. After one of these teas, Claire asked Maisie whether she wouldn’t mind having Tom for the evening while she and Will went for a drink in town. Which was the first Will had heard of such a plan. Maisie said that would be fine. Tom jumped up and asked if he could read a bedtime story to Grandad. Will could feel the weather shift around him. He asked Claire what was going on as they walked out to the car, and she told him they were just going for a drink. He didn’t think there was ever a just when Claire was involved. At the pub he bought the drinks without needing to ask what she was having. They sat opposite each other and talked about his father, his brothers, the farm. She talked about her work. He was watching her, waiting for something to happen. She seemed distracted. She couldn’t keep still. It was like she had some kind of secret, and holding it back was more fun than telling it would be. He wondered if she had a new boyfriend. She asked if it was true he was going to be in that year’s pantomime. He said he’d been asked. Well, you can’t really turn it down, she said. She bought a second round of drinks. He had a half, on account of the driving. He’d expected they would run out of things to say, but they didn’t. He’d forgotten how easy it was to talk to her, when they weren’t arguing or keeping each other at bay. He’d known her as long as he’d known anyone – from playgroup, from school, from paddling in the river and running around the farm and long summer evenings swimming in the quarry – so it should never have been a surprise. Their falling into a relationship had been as obvious and easy as his working with his brothers on the farm. It was having the baby had been the problem. They were too young. Eighteen, and old enough for a council flat on the Close but nowhere near old enough for the responsibility of it. It had made serious people of them, and that had never been the plan. They’d had help to begin with, from both mothers and from people in the village, but it had all fallen away after a while. And then it had just been chores. Chores on the farm, chores at home, and nowhere to go for any time off. She’d got fed up with his long hours of working. After a while it had seemed like they only knew how to argue. And a while after that, she’d left. He’d taught himself how to live without her, and as nice as it was to sit with her now, he had no regrets about the way things had turned out. They finished their drinks and he offered another round and she said they should get on. They drove back in silence, the light thinning as they came through the head of the valley and round past the old quarry entrance where she asked him to stop and was kissing him before he’d even put the handbrake on. He pushed her carefully away. He asked what she was doing. We’ve had a nice evening, haven’t we? she asked. And I know you’d like to. But I thought things were settled, he said. Her hands were moving up his thighs. I thought I’d unsettle them a bit, she said. He closed his eyes and rubbed his face. So you reckon you can just rock up and click your fingers, and that’ll be that? Whistle and I’ll come running? She sat back in her seat, looking at him. Yeah, she said. Pretty much. She got out of the car and walked into the quarry. She didn’t even need to look back. He muttered to himself and shook his head and followed her into the quarry, quickening his step to catch up.

In September a soft rain no more than mist hung in the trees along the valley floor. The river turned over beneath the packhorse bridge and carried scraps of light to the weir. The missing girl was seen walking around the shore of the reservoir, hopping from one breakwater rock to another with seemingly not a care in the world. This was Irene’s description. A public meeting was held in the village hall about the quarry company’s plans to open a site close to the Stone Sisters, and there was a general air of opposition. There were crab apples and wild apples beside the freight line curving into the cement works, and on a Sunday morning when there were no trains Winnie walked carefully down there and filled four carrier bags, taking them home to cook up into a clear golden jam, flavoured with rosemary stems. There was a commotion at the Jones house, and an ambulance came to take his sister away. This had happened before. Nobody thought it appropriate to ask questions, and he didn’t volunteer. He was seen in the week working at the school without interruption, and wherever she’d gone he didn’t seem to be visiting. Evenings he was down at the millpond with his fishing tackle. The boatmen and skaters slid across the still surface and his mind was clear. He could feel the tension lift away as the fish began to rise. People had no idea. He watched the teenagers on the other side of the river following the footpath down to the weir. They carried bottles of white cider that Lynsey had bought in town, and sat on the benches outside the tea rooms to drink them. Sophie asked whether it was true that James’s parents were going to split up. James said how was he supposed to know. It was none of his business. They hardly talked to him anyway. Not since. He stopped and lit a cigarette and tried to do a plank on the edge of the picnic bench. Liam asked not since what. James didn’t answer. Liam asked was he fucking crying or what, and Sophie told him to leave it. Lynsey told Liam to walk with her, and when they looked back Sophie was sitting next to James, her arms curled around him and the side of his head pressed against her chest. His dad had taken him to the police, it turned out. He’d made him tell them about the time he’d spent with Becky Shaw. The detective they’d spoken to had been sharp with them both and said it was too late for the information to be of any use. He asked Sophie not to tell anyone this. The pigeons fought in the trees. The bats came out at dusk to feed low over the water, fattening up for the winter. There were wild pheasants in the pens at the edge of the Culshaw Estate, drawn in by the fresh water and feeders. After a fortnight Jones’s sister came home and he put the fishing gear away.

In October the winds were high and in the mornings there were trees blocking the road. The sound of gunshots cracked down from the woods in pairs. There were more sightings of the missing girl’s father, although some of them turned out to be false. It was known that he no longer wore the charcoal-grey anorak, and there was anyway no shortage of preoccupied men striding solitary through the hills. But there were enough sightings to give the impression of a man who couldn’t keep away. There was talk that he and the girl’s mother had divorced, and around that time the sightings increased. On the shore of the reservoir; around the edge of the quarry; down at the river by the packhorse bridge. Almost always seen from a distance, moving away. At the allotment the pumpkins fattened slowly, lifted from the damp soil on squares of glass, striped in the low autumn light. Jane Hughes walked back from the Hunter place and happened upon Jones beside the millpond. He was standing patiently with his hands behind his back, his shoulders hunched and his neck angled forward. She didn’t want to interrupt, but as she walked past there was a softening in his posture which she understood as acknowledgement. She’d grown used to these cues. She stepped up beside him and looked at the water for a moment. Mr Jones, she said. Vicar, he replied. You’ve been keeping well? she asked. He nodded. And your sister? He didn’t answer, but pointed in at the water, at some tiny change in the light she could barely see. Scared them all off now, he said. Really? I’m stood in the shadow of the tree, he explained; so I’m right. But you’ve come looming, so. She stepped away from the edge of the water apologetically. She looked at him. Are you fishing today? No, he said. But if I was. I’ll remember that then. Sorry. There was the clatter of woodpigeons’ wings in the trees overhead, and the sound of the water moving over the stones. Jones still had his hands behind his back. She’s home again, he said. I gathered, yes. There’s plenty of trout in there, he told her, if you don’t bother them. We don’t see her around much, Jane said, leaning out over the water as though watching for trout, giving him a chance to speak without being looked at. She doesn’t go out, he said. She waited, but there was no more. That must be difficult for you, she said. Not really. She’s no bother. Do you get any help? She felt him stiffen beside her, and his hands came round from behind his back, rearranging his jacket buttons, his cap. He turned away from the water. Weather, he said, nodding towards the hills. It looks like it’s coming in, she agreed. Be seeing you then, he said, lighting a cigarette and setting off along the footpath towards the packhorse bridge. On the stubbled fields of Thompson’s land a buzzard wandered, picking for worms.