The Reservoir Tapes

by Jon McGregor

  And now here she was again, looking after Claire. Practically holding her up. They weren’t being much use to the search. They’d stopped before they’d even got to the far side of the market square, falling behind the others. They were leaning against the wall by the bus stop, while Claire rummaged through her handbag. She was looking for her cigarettes, emptying everything out on to the wall, getting more and more agitated. She must have left them in Cardwell, she was saying, they’d have to go back. They weren’t going back, Donna told her. It was late. It was time to go home.

  They could hear people further down the street, calling the girl’s name.

  Claire gave up. Her breathing was ragged. The contents of her handbag were spread out across the wall like some kind of tiny car-boot sale. Donna wanted to ask her about the evening, about what had happened and about what she thought Will would think if he ever found out. She wanted to ask what Claire thought was going to happen next.

  But she was too tired to have that sort of conversation. She didn’t think she’d get much sense out of Claire this evening in any case.

  The stone of the wall was warm against the back of her legs. The streetlights were just starting to flicker on, but the light at the top of the moors was still pale and open. Donna could feel her irritation ebbing away.

  And then her brother showed up.

  Hello again ladies, he said, a smile spreading across his face, loping long-legged down the street like an idiot spider. He was waving a pack of cigarettes. You looking for these? he asked Claire.

  She shrieked, snatched them out of his hand, and kissed him. It started out as a friendly thank-you kiss, but kept going until it was something more reckless.

  It was too much. After what had happened in Cardwell, it was really too much. Donna wanted to get them away from each other. She took Claire by the arm and told her it was time to get home. Claire wriggled loose and turned to look at her.

  This is none of your business, she said, steadily.

  It was, though. It was all of her business. This was her brother. Will was her friend. And didn’t it always end up being her business, picking up after other people?

  *

  Tony and the others had come full circle back to the market square when Ian Dowsett came over and asked what all the commotion was. When they told him, he said he’d seen a girl swimming at the quarry and sent her home. The girl’s father described her again and Ian said yes, that sounded like her. He was insistent that he’d seen her heading back towards the village. I didn’t know her from Adam, he said; but I wasn’t about to walk away from her swimming in the blasted quarry. Place is a bloody hazard. They should fill it in.

  Ian’s views on the quarry were well known. But he reiterated them at some length.

  Tony took a phone call from someone at the other end of the village. Becky had been seen sitting in the churchyard, and was being walked back up to the pub now.

  The girl’s father sat down suddenly on a bench, and his whole body went limp with relief.

  There we go, he said. I did think she wouldn’t have gone far. I’m sorry about all this, he said, aiming his apology at Tony but awkwardly trying to take in everyone else. Tony told him there was no need for apology; they were happy to help, they were glad it had turned out well.

  Someone brought a whisky out from the pub and set it on the bench next to the man. There was a feeling of people not knowing whether to applaud, or what exactly they should do. It felt ignorant to just walk back into the pub and return to the conversations that had been interrupted when he’d first appeared with Stuart Hunter. But at the same time they didn’t want to make it too obvious they were waiting to see him reunited with his daughter.

  When she arrived, walking up the street with Gordon Jackson, looking taller than people had imagined and with her hair tied back in a damp ponytail, Donna realised she was bracing herself. She was expecting the girl’s father to be angry, or at least sharp with her. It would seem natural for there to be irritation mixed in with the relief. She imagined that he would feel humiliated, and have nothing to do with that humiliation but pass it on. As she watched, she waited for the girl to slow down, to be hesitant about approaching him; or even perhaps to be defiant in some way that would be new to them both.

  But none of that happened. Her father stood up. The girl walked towards him, quickly, and said she was sorry but she’d lost track of the time. It was such a beautiful evening, she said. I was sitting in the churchyard and there were I think they were swallows everywhere. The man was soft with the sight of her. He opened his arms and drew her in. He had to lift his chin slightly so that she would fit against him. Donna turned away.

  *

  Later, once the man and his daughter had gone off with Stuart Hunter, and everyone else had gone back into the pub, Donna managed to get Claire away from her brother and start walking her home. She was quieter now, and finally starting to sober up.

  There was the noise of a loud engine from the other end of the street, and then Will was driving towards them on his quad bike. Claire groaned, and started turning away, but he drove straight up to them and reached out an arm to pull her towards him. Donna watched Claire give in. Their foreheads pressed together and they spoke softly to each other. Donna saw Claire nodding at something Will was saying, and then she climbed on to the back of the bike. She held on tight, and they drove away without saying goodbye.

  Once the sound had died down the street was quiet and still and Donna just stood for a moment. Night had fallen properly by then but there was still a blue tinge to the darkness and a damp warmth in the air. There were insects humming in the hedges around her. There were bats moving deftly overhead. She’d never liked the way you only saw them from the corner of your eye. It put her on edge.

  A bedroom light went out in the house across the road. She brushed her hand through the box hedge outside the butcher’s shop and a scent rose into the air.

  She supposed she’d have to get home.

  11: Ian

  When Ian Dowsett had gone up to the village to collect Irene and bring her back to the quarry, there’d been no need for explanations. She left her mop in the bucket and got straight into the car, peeling the rubber gloves from her hands.

  Now then, she said; is it bad?

  Well, Ian told her. It doesn’t look good.

  *

  Ted was still under the rocks when they got back to the quarry. Would have been a miracle if he hadn’t been. The rock fall was stacked halfway up the face.

  Ian could see from the way the pieces were sitting that the weight wasn’t all on him. They’d have been scraping up the leftovers with a trowel, otherwise. But the way the rocks were stacked, it was going to be like bloody Krypton Factor to get him out safely.

  It didn’t look good at all. His face was the wrong colour.

  The men had strapped some of the rocks for lifting, but they were waiting for specialist equipment from another quarry. The equipment should have been on-site, but Tony had been cutting corners.

  Tony Morrison, this was. Operations Manager. Health and safety had been on him. He was finished at the quarry, after this.

  Irene didn’t hang around. She got straight in there, and the men stood aside to let her through. Knelt herself down on the dry limestone dust next to Ted. Found his hand, and held it.

  She told him she had better things to be getting on with. The man managed a smile, just about.

  Don’t tend to see Ted smile at the best of times, so that was something.

  He couldn’t move his head so he was having to look at her out of the far corner of his eyes. Could see it was a strain. Everything looked a strain for him at that point. His breathing was quick, and shallow.

  Who knew what had happened. Something had just slipped. People worry about all the blasting that gets done in a quarry, but it’s more dangerous what happens in between times. People lower their guards. You stick high explosives in a hole, people understand about following procedures, listeni
ng out for warnings, keeping a safe distance. Whereas you start talking about things like slope stability, people stop listening. Certain amount of corner-cutting goes on. There’s always a pressure to get the job done. And then some small thing goes wrong. Something geological. The temperature changes, the ground shifts, and all of a sudden you’ve a man lying in the dirt with a ton of rocks stacked up upon him.

  *

  It’s not like no one knows a quarry is a dangerous place. Sometimes the wives could talk of nothing else. The men had all had The Talk at one time or another, working at the quarry. Any little bang on the head, any broken bone, they’d get the Mrs wanting everything to change. You’re not working in that bleeding quarry any more, tired of worrying myself sick about you. Get yourself out of there and don’t go back. It’s not worth it. All of that. It never happened. They all went back, in the end.

  And if it wasn’t the danger, the wives would get started on the noise, and the dust. This is meant to be a peaceful place to live, but there’s all that blasting going off. And the state of the laundry. All that. You’d think they’d rather there was no quarry at all. Except then what would all those lads have been doing for work. And where would all the limestone come from then. The wives knew this, really. It was only when there was an accident like that one with Ted that they got themselves all riled up again.

  There was none of that from Irene just then, of course. Was hardly the time. She just stayed there, kneeling beside him in the dirt, holding his hand. Flecks of dust kept settling on Ted’s face, and she kept wiping them away.

  It was the first time Ian had seen those two touch each other, he realised. You’d barely ever see them in the same room, most days, and if they were walking in the street Ted would always be ten feet ahead. The two of them were not known for being inseparable. And yet they’d always been known as a pair. They’d been married before they moved to the village, so no one had known one without the other.

  Ted came from another village not far away, somewhere to the north. He’d moved around as a young man, and come this way to work in the quarry. He’d picked Irene up in a town on his travels. It had taken her a while to adjust to village life when they’d first moved in.

  One incident Ian remembered from years back, not long after they’d arrived. There was a group of them used to meet up in the pub after work, regular. One night there was a conversation about family, and someone asked what Ted’s father did for work. It was innocent enough. People were curious. Irene started to answer the question for Ted, and Ted cut her right off.

  Barely even spoke. Just lifted his hand. Quickly like.

  Like getting ready to swat a fly.

  And Irene stopped talking, just like that.

  When they left there were jokes about what his father did that Ted didn’t want discussing. No one mentioned the way he’d silenced her.

  People didn’t think that manner of thing was anyone else’s business, in those days.

  *

  It should have been a more private moment. The two of them there like that. If they’d been in a hospital, Ian would have made himself scarce. But he was too involved in keeping the weight off Ted, keeping him comfortable until more help arrived.

  The two of them were very calm, the whole time.

  Not like Tony. Tony was in bits, running backwards and forwards, on the phone, shouting instructions at the men. They were still waiting for the proper lifting gear to arrive. Where’s the effing ambulance, he was shouting, where’s the effing rig, what’s the effing hold-up.

  He knew it was on him. Cutting corners, letting blokes get on with it without checking what they were doing. But he was hardly rectifying the situation by running around like a blue-arsed fly the way he was.

  Irene just sat in the dirt next to Ted.

  Holding his hand. Looking at him.

  Not like this, she said. Not now.

  And Ted just looking up at her. Blinking, dead slow.

  Licking his lips, but he couldn’t talk.

  A couple of lads got a jack underneath one of the slabs at that point, and cranked it up. Trying to get the weight off his chest. It was ill-advised. There was a crunching noise, and Ted’s eyes sort of rolled back in his head.

  He didn’t scream. But his colour got worse.

  *

  Word spread, the way word does.

  Jackson and his boys showed up, asking was there anything they could do. They had all sorts of rig on the back of the trailer. But it was specialist gear Tony was waiting for.

  The ambulance arrived. Irene had to stand out of the way while they saw to him. Not much they could do while he was under the rocks. Make him comfortable. Give him oxygen. Pain relief. They managed to get a brace on his neck. Everything else had to wait.

  Jesus, though. It didn’t look good.

  Irene got back in there beside him. Said nothing. Held his hand again.

  Blood was coming out of his mouth by then. She wiped it away with a handkerchief, and tucked it back into her sleeve.

  *

  It had been the beginning of the end of the quarry. Tony stopped working there not long afterwards, and although no one said there was a connection it was plain there must have been. No one quite understood how he came through the investigation in one piece. He must have been given a pay-off when he left the company, because soon after that he went and took over at the Gladstone. There’d been no pub open for a few years by that point, so everyone was glad of it. Didn’t ask him any questions about the money.

  The quarry company closed the whole site not long after Tony left. Not because of what had happened to Ted; those companies had deaths and injuries factored into their business plans, surely. But as it turned out, that unstable face had been the last one they’d planned to work in any case.

  The regeneration crowd moved in. Stripped all the machinery they could use, broke down the rest, flooded the lot. Planted a few hundred trees, put up the nesting boxes, all that type of thing. Fenced the whole place off and put up warning signs.

  Ian used to go up there with Ted from time to time and watch the progress of it all. Was like watching history in reverse, slowly.

  It had taken four months for Ted to get home from the hospital, and he never lost the limp. But he made it. Broke his pelvis, and most of his ribs, and there was plenty of internal bleeding. But there was no head injury and they reckoned that was what made the difference. Iron Man, they called him after that. Made him seem invincible.

  Irene was known not to be impressed when he went back to work at another quarry. But she never said a word. She couldn’t. Ted wouldn’t have stood for it.

  He turned out not to be invincible in the end. Only lasted another six years.

  All the dust in the man’s lungs, they reckoned. Although Ian didn’t imagine that smoking forty a day would have helped much either.

  *

  Ian still walked past the old quarry site, now. He liked to make sure the fence was in good order. It was a peaceful place to be. Not like it had been back then, with the dust and the noise and the bare blasted rock. Now it was clear blue water, trees, birdsong. The evening air beginning to cool after a long hot August day. Dragonflies zipping about above the water, no doubt. Swallows skimming low across the surface. It seemed likely there’d be some good fishing down there, if you could get to the banks. Grayling, maybe even trout. But there was no chance he’d be trying anything like that. Trouble with all the regeneration that went on at these places, it tended to disguise the dangers. You make something look pretty enough, some idiot would forget why the fence was even there.

  And this one evening, again, some kid was swimming down there. Ian had seen her and stopped by the fence to call her out. He’d seen a group of them here earlier and now this one looked to have come back again on her own. Taking her chances once wasn’t good enough for her. These kids had no idea. They thought it was some kind of public lido. They had no idea there were loose rock faces down there, bits of old machinery and who knew
what else under the water. And brutal cold sometimes. It was no place for swimming. He waited until she’d climbed all the way out so he could give her a piece of his mind. The evening was starting to soften, and the air in the shade of the trees was cool and damp. The water had already stilled.

  The girl didn’t say anything to him when she got back up to the fence, but just pushed past him and marched off down the hill through the trees. Ian couldn’t tell if she was embarrassed or just rude. Didn’t much matter either way. Kids were either going to learn, or they weren’t.

  12: Irene

  Irene didn’t tend to have visitors. Not since Ted had died.

  She was sociable enough, but she liked to see people away from the house. She was so busy with her cleaning jobs that she didn’t always keep on top of things at home. She was by no means slovenly but she had very high standards. It was hard to keep up. And Andrew was getting older now. He could be disruptive, around the house.

  But now here she was with the third visitor in a week, breezing into the kitchen before Irene had quite had the chance to say good morning.