by Jon McGregor
Richard Clark came home just after Christmas, and for once his sisters were there when he arrived. When he sat down to eat with them he felt cornered. The husbands and children made for a crowded dinner table and he didn’t have much to say. They were staying up at the Hunters’ barn conversions, and on the doorstep when they left his sisters talked about their mother’s health. There was talk about responsibility being shared. He couldn’t be out of the country this much, he was told. He was the oldest of the three but it had never felt that way. He said he’d do what he could but it seemed that their mother was coping perfectly well. His work wasn’t always predictable, he said. Your work’s a total bloody enigma, Rachel said. You know what I do, he replied. He started to explain again about his consultancy business, but they made yawning noises and laughed and headed for their cars. The high street was busy. The pantomime was on in the village hall, and well attended again. It was Aladdin this year. Tony was Widow Twankey, and he made a good job of it. He delivered his lines in a loud deadpan which at times didn’t look entirely deliberate, and he wore the heavy costume with a certain grace. Will Jackson was working backstage but had refused a part. When the audience headed out into the night the snow was falling thickly again. The next day Martin stopped off at Harefield to look at Ruth’s new shop. She was surprised to see him. He was heading to his new job in town but this wasn’t on his way. She asked how he was keeping and he said it was okay. There was a lot of fresh produce in wicker baskets, and sausages hanging in strings above the chiller counter, and a strong smell of coffee. There were many different types of olive. There were prices Martin found it difficult to believe people were actually paying, but when he asked how business was going Ruth said he’d be surprised. People had cut back on cars and foreign holidays, she told him, and they were spending what was left in shops like this. People liked to treat themselves to nice things. He wondered if this was a pointed remark but he let it settle. They’d had differences. It was done now. He was just glad to know things were going well. He drove into work fast enough that he almost lost grip on the last corner before town, and parked across two parking bays, and clocked on just before his shift was due. If he’d wanted a fucking economics lesson he would’ve asked.
4.
At midnight when the year turned there were fireworks from the Hunter place. The sound carried suddenly to the village hall and for a moment people wondered what it was. Irene was called out from the kitchen and asked to take Andrew home as he’d become agitated. At the next parish council the Hunters were asked not to repeat the display. When term started Rohan Wright caught the bus to the secondary school in town with Liam and James and Lynsey and Sophie. They’d seen him around the village but they hadn’t yet spoken. There were nods and he told them his name. They asked where he’d moved from and he said south of London. Liam asked if his mum was the hippy who was going to run yoga classes, and the others told him to shut up. I’m not being funny, I’m just saying, he said. My mum’s well into yoga. She knows Yuri Gagarin and everything. There were so many ways this didn’t make sense that no one quite knew what to say. You know, he explained, incredulously. The spoon-bender! Your mum’s a bender, Lynsey said, and James gave her a high-five. The bus turned on to the main road by her parents’ farm-supplies place, and they asked Rohan questions about his old school all the way to town. Cathy Harris drove past the bus in the other direction, and when she got home she knocked on Mr Wilson’s door and asked whether Nelson needed a walk. He said that would be a great help, and asked whether she’d have a cup of tea first. A routine of theirs, this, to make the arrangement seem temporary, when in fact Cathy had been walking Nelson most days for years. Mr Wilson’s hip made it hard for him to get up the hill and as far as the shop, let alone the hour’s brisk stride that Nelson hankered after all day. A cup of tea would be lovely, she said, bracing herself for the thud of Nelson jumping up against her. Mr Wilson closed the door and walked slowly to the kettle. The Millennium Millstones were pushed off their plinths, and Sean Hooper was contracted to repair them. By the packhorse bridge a heron paced through the mud at the river’s edge, head bobbing, feet lifted awkwardly high. It stopped, and settled, and watched the water.
In February there was no snow but the frosts were hard. Ruth was sent a Valentine’s card and knew that it came from Martin. The best response would be silence, she decided. At Reservoir no. 7, the maintenance team checked the upstream face of the dam, looking for erosion along the edge of the crest. There were cracks of ice in the shallow puddles along the path. Susanna Wright held her first yoga class in the village hall. There were only three people there, and because the room was too cold for safe stretching she spent the session talking about What Yoga Is and What Yoga Isn’t. She said she’d speak to the caretaker about the heating, and then she asked who the caretaker was. The County sent someone to clear the old quarry down by the main road. The two burnt-out cars had been a beacon for every fly-tipper in the area, and it took three trucks to cart it away. Where’s it all come from? Martin asked Tony, as they stood up on the cliff above the quarry, watching. Where’s it all going is more the point, said Tony. They’re only going to stick it in some other hole in the ground. Might as well leave it here. Wait while the quarry’s full and then bury it all. Plant some fucking trees. Job done. There were gulls and crows circling overhead. Jones was with them but he had nothing to say. Martin headed off down the road to work. He’d taken a job on the meat counter in the new supermarket. He hadn’t told people but they found out soon enough. They all shopped there, after all. It felt like the final humiliation, after Bruce, and the shop, and Ruth. But the hours were fine and although the pay wasn’t great it was more in his pocket than he’d had when they were running the shop into the ground. They gave him a striped apron and a badge saying Master Butcher, but it wasn’t butchery. The meat came in ready-jointed, and he was just there to hand it over. He didn’t even have his good knives. They were locked in the shop, and the stroppy young bollock from the bank was refusing to let him have them back. He’d been in the job three months now, and his supervisor said there were no complaints as such but did he want to have a think about engaging with the customers a little more? Martin said he would certainly think about that, and went out to the loading bay for a smoke and a kick of the packing cases which were stacked there. The sun went down around half past four but it was already dark by then, the murky light blotted out by the high moors and the gathering clouds.
There was weather, and branches from the allotment sycamores blew on to the roof of the Tucker house next door to Jones. The place had been empty now for seven years. There was a dispute to be settled before it could be sold, but no one seemed to know what it was or who might be involved. Jones went up a ladder and took the branches down. He checked the slates. His sister watched from the front of the house. These things made her anxious. She would ask about them often until they were resolved. He told her the slates were fine and he put the ladder away. She went into the house. The woodpigeons built their nests in the trees by the river. The thin frame of sticks seemed barely enough to take the weight of one fat bird. But it was assumed they knew what they were doing. Cooper was seen working late on the magazine, hard up against the deadline once again. He enjoyed these last pressured hours. It reminded him of working on The Times, years back, before he’d come up here to do press for the National Park. There was that same sense of hurried exactitude, of getting one chance only to check everything through. There were differences, of course. The deadlines now were only a matter of his own pride, for one thing. And there was no one else in the office, which meant no one to go for drinks with once the issue was put to bed. The whole office was silent, in fact. He could hear the footsteps of the boys upstairs, hammering backwards and forwards, and Su’s muffled voice as she tried to get their pyjamas on. She sounded exhausted, and part of him wanted to go up and take over. But he knew it wouldn’t help, and that Su wouldn’t thank him for it. She hadn’t been in the mood for thanking
him lately. He’d been getting things wrong, it seemed. Doing too much, or too little. She’d fallen behind on some projects at work, and been asked to take unpaid leave. A view had been taken about her home-working arrangements, and she seemed to hold him responsible in some way. It was stressful having young children. He understood this. It would pass. He printed off the final proof sheets, and leant over them with a poised red pen. Outside the wind was brisk through the trees. In the band of conifers above Reservoir no. 5 a pair of buzzards rebuilt their nest from the previous year, weaving in new sticks and lining the shallow bowl of it with fresh bracken and grass.
By April the first swallows were seen and the walkers were back on the hills. At the heronry high in the trees above the quarry there was a persistent unsettledness of wings. Night came down. At the allotments the water was turned back on for the year and Clive was the first to get his hose hooked up, the silvery water skidding across the ground before seeping into the cracks. There was blasting again at the quarry, and when the first siren came everyone ignored the long rising wail. The second siren came a few minutes later, and anyone with washing on the line was quick to bring it inside. The third siren went and the birds flung up from the trees in the quarry and scattered, and the air stilled for a moment before the deep thudding crack thundered out through the ground and was gone. At the first all-clear the birds settled in the trees. At the second the workers in the quarry went back. In the village the windows were kept closed for a few hours more until the dust had cleared. At the river the keeper dropped the cage of sample bottles into the water from the footbridge by the weir. Always the same spot, at the same time of day, on the same day of the month. Meanwhile there were two chaps who looked like they were scouting for fishing spots, and he wanted a word. He passed Irene on her way up to the church with two bags full of flowers. When she got there she heard singing from the vestry, and it kept on while she gathered the vases. She wasn’t much of a judge but it was quite a piece of singing. Took a few moments to realise it was the vicar, because you didn’t hear her singing like that in a morning service. She didn’t recognise the tune and she could barely make out the words but there was something capturing about it. The high bright windows and the dust in the air and the smell of wood polish and Irene standing there with her arms full of flowers not wanting to move. Faintly another siren sounded at the quarry, and the singing stopped. Late in the month the Spring Dance was held in aid of Amnesty, which was controversial for those who thought politics should be kept out of it but was pushed through by Jane Hughes. It was agreed that no publicity material would be displayed as it could detract from the mood of the event. Some folk do find that manner of talk puts them off the hog roast, Clive told the meeting. His remark was carefully minuted. The police did a presentation on crime prevention at the Gladstone, and while everyone was in there someone took off with a stock trailer the Jacksons had left on Top Road. There were some who thought this story was funny when they told it but they were soon set straight.
In his studio Geoff Simmons threw a new batch of pots. Yesterday’s were drying slowly at the back of the workshop, and the kiln was beginning to warm. He pressed a ball of clay on to the wet wheel and centred it off. The whippet slept in the sun. He palmed the spinning clay and drew it taller and fingered it into a vessel. The wall worked thinner in his hands. Throw lines formed on the surface and the water flowed out from the wheel. There were years of learnt discretion in these moves. It couldn’t be shown. The pressure of his touch was exactly sufficient and this pot from the clay came to be. He slowed the wheel and shaped the brim. There was a bellying in and out that he liked to impose, and a curl at the lip. Customers sometimes asked if these were vases or jugs or drinking cups and he said only that they were vessels. He had been accused of being obtuse. On the rug the whippet kicked her back legs, dreaming of sprinting across fields. In the quarry by the main road the small coppers were mating again. There were swallows nesting high in the barns, the eggs glossy white and speckled red beneath the fluffed feathers of the mothers. In the woodland by the river the bluebells were massing. The clay for the well dressing was cut from the wet end of the Hunters’ land, and carried up to the village hall. The men puddled it in a tin bath, stomping up and down while Irene kept adding water until she declared the consistency just right. When it was done Gordon Jackson went back to the Hunter place and asked Jess if she wanted to go for a drive. This had been mentioned. There’d been talk of wind turbines on the high ground overlooking Reservoir no. 9, and she wanted to get the lie of the land. She said she had some concerns. He thought there might be something else. Stuart Hunter was away. She’d been baking and she asked him to hang on while she got cleaned up. When she was ready she got into the Land Rover with him and they drove out past the visitor centre along the track leading up to the ridge. Gordon had a key for the gates. The track was deeply rutted and she bounced in her seat a few times and once there was a quick, embarrassed laugh and she reached out to grab at his arm. Eye contact, careful silence. There was a pattern but it was never routine. This had been developing for a time. At the top of the hill they stood against the Land Rover and he let her think the first kiss was her idea. He’d scrubbed his nails. She talked a lot and she had no shame about what they were doing. She wanted to be looked at and he took his time. Afterwards he wondered whether for once there might be something in it and he could see by the way she buttoned her blouse that there wouldn’t. He was just catching his breath and she already wanted to leave. She offered him a smile that made him want to sit down. He wondered how much concrete they’d need for the wind-turbine foundations, and whether they would build a new road to bring it in.
Sophie Hunter and Lynsey Smith went to a party in town and made a mess of the arrangements for getting home. They had no money for a taxi so they decided to walk. It should only have been four miles but they took a wrong turn in the woods in the dark. It was funny for a time but then they were scared at the trouble they’d be in. You know what my dad’s like about being late, Sophie said. He’ll have already called the police. It’s not just your dad, Lynsey said, it’s all of them. Lynsey was carrying her shoes and the mud was coming thick between her toes. They’d seen some car headlights and were heading down towards the road. I wouldn’t mind but it was a shit party anyway, Sophie said. She tried to laugh but she heard Lynsey crying. She turned back and reached for her hand. She could barely see her face in the dark. It won’t be far now, come on, you. Sophie, fucking hell, Sophie. They’ll be so pleased to see us they’ll forget to tell us off. Come on. I just wish. Lynsey, no. I just wish we knew what had happened to her. Lynsey; Jesus, again? Leave it out. They came out on the road by the cement works, and walked up the hill towards the village without speaking. The fourth car that came past was Mike Jackson and he gave them a lift. They were both kept home for a fortnight, and soon afterwards were given their own mobile phones, paid for by Sophie’s parents and meant for emergency use only. Olivia immediately wanted one as well, but was told she was too young. Jess Hunter made Sophie help Irene with the cleaning work in the barn conversions for that fortnight, and Irene worked her hard. Irene took the work seriously. She was quick but she didn’t take shortcuts. People employed her because they knew they wouldn’t have to check. It was the same at home. One thing Ted had always said was she kept the place decent. If you knew Ted you knew that was high talk. He’d never been much help himself, bringing all that dust in on his clothes and his boots. And the bath, when he was done, at the end of a week in the quarry. Like someone had used it to mix cement. This had been how it was. He worked out of the house, she worked in the house. It was only fair. And that included Andrew. If the boy was up in the night it was only fair that she go to him. Ted was older than her by nearly a decade, and too old for that type of carry-on. She’d been close to forty herself when Andrew was born, and sometimes she didn’t know where the energy came from. If the boy was having one of his fits then Ted was entitled to stay in his chair, the days he’d h
ad. This wasn’t something they’d negotiated. He liked the house to be quiet, and clean. It wasn’t too much to ask. But now that he wasn’t around she had more time to take on other cleaning work around the village. Cleaning was what she knew. She finished up and walked home the long way, cutting through the higher fields behind the Jackson place and the square. She had a little time before Andrew was back. The hard-baked footpath parted a way through the ripening grass. She felt the sun on her arms. She looked up to the moors. Years since the route of the Greystone Way had been moved and there were still deep ruts in the peat across the top of the moor, some of the walkers insisting on the original path, the eroded line widening steadily as people sidestepped the deepest mud. What was there to be done. The butterflies were out. The fieldfares were away, raising their young in the colder north.