Читать книгу Reservoir 13 - Jon McGregor - Страница 12

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. Wood pigeons 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 its 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 center 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 leaned 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 were being flicked up and down. Thompson’s men led the first of the herd into the milking parlor, 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 apologized 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 realized 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 spun 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 reformed 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 around 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 setup. 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 relet 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 sunroom, 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 tearooms 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 tearooms 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 onto 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 learned 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 that 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 realization 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. Afterward 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.