by Jon McGregor
Jones the caretaker lived with his sister at the end of the unmade lane by the allotments, next to the old Tucker place. His age was uncertain but he’d worked at the school for thirty years. His sister was younger, and was never seen. She was understood to be troubled in some way. Most of the parents in the village had known him when they were at school. He had his own way of doing things, which pre-dated the other staff. There were locks in the school for which he had the only keys. The other staff were senior to him but he wouldn’t be told and he worked to his own timetable. He had clear boundaries and some of these were known. The boilerhouse doubled as his staffroom and no one else went in. Through the doorway occasionally an armchair was seen; a radio, a kettle, a stack of fishing magazines. But the door was almost always closed. The boiler itself was often breaking down. In the middle of December it broke down again and Mrs Simpson went looking for Jones. She found him on the steep wooded bank behind the school, climbing up through the elder and hazel with a rubbish sack. He was reeling in a faded line of police cordon tape which was snagged through the trees. It took him some time and she watched. Two years already and it seemed like no time at all. He saw her and he climbed up the bank. Must have blown in from the lane, he said. Folk are careless. She peered at the coiled tape, and nodded. Boiler? he asked. I’m afraid so, she said. There’s been no heat at all this morning. He headed over towards the bins and she walked with him. Inlets are probably clogged again, he said. Everything else all right? Yes, yes. Fine. He took out a pouch of tobacco and rolled a cigarette. She looked as though she had more to say. He nodded up at a bank of clouds over the moor, thickening. Weather, he said, and walked on. Mr Jones, she called after him. Will you let me get someone in? He stopped. It’s a decent boiler, he said. I’ll sort it. A goldcrest moved through the tall firs at the far end of the playground, picking quickly at the insects feeding between the needles. From the hills behind the allotments a thick band of rain was moving in. The reservoirs were a flat metallic grey. There was carol singing in the church with candles and children from the school playing their recorders and opening their mouths wide to sing. Be near me, Lord Jesus. The church was full. I ask thee to stay.
Richard Clark came home between Christmas and New Year, after his sisters had left, and on New Year’s Eve he was seen going for a walk with Cathy Harris. They’d known each other at school, but had barely been in touch for years. They’d been as good as engaged, in fact, until he went to university and she didn’t. By the time he graduated she’d married Patrick, who had grown up alongside them and been their closest friend. Things would have been different if she’d come away to university with him. He’d barely spoken to either of them again. Patrick had been dead five years now. Richard had been out of the country at the time. The mist hung low over the moor and the ground was frozen hard. It had rained long into the night and the air was cold and damp. It was no kind of a day to be walking up on the hills but they’d made an agreement. Richard pulled his scarf over his mouth and walked behind Cathy, watching where he put his feet. The climb to the first ridge was steeper than he remembered. He was sweating already. He stopped to undo his jacket. Cathy turned back, waiting for him. She didn’t seem out of breath. She’d never left the village, and had kept the hill-fitness he’d lost. The mist was beginning to clear. They walked on. She asked how long he was home this time and he said he was flying out in the morning; that he was due for a meeting at lunchtime, local time. He asked how her two boys were and she said they were well. The oldest one was starting his A levels next year. Ben. Nathan was just starting secondary school. They had coped okay, in the end. He told her how sorry he was that he hadn’t made it to Patrick’s funeral. She shook her head and said she hadn’t expected him to. It would have been a long way to come. She knew it was difficult. She changed the subject. She told him what it had been like coming up here with the search party, walking steadily across the ground, wanting to find something but dreading what it was they might find. Richard said he didn’t think he’d walked up here since they’d been teenagers. She told him he was talking about ancient history, and laughed. They walked on. They were thinking different things. The missing girl’s name was Rebecca, or Becky, or Bex. In the video which had recently been released the mother was using Bex. In the video the girl was laughing but it was difficult to hear what was said. It was strange to actually hear her voice. Some people said the video didn’t look much like her. Her hair was longer than in the photograph, pulled back from her face in a thick plait which swung around her head as she sang and span towards the camera and pointed at whoever was doing the filming. The police were still treating the case as a missing-person inquiry.
3.
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 do
ne 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.