Gathering the Water

by Robert Edric

  ‘Nothing has been taken,’ she said. ‘A man was up here yesterday, mid-afternoon. He told me in passing that the fire was already out and the door blowing open. I would have come then, only it was soon dark and the snow had started.’

  I went to the hearth and put my hand into the ashes. They were cold, and damp where rain had come down the chimney. Rising, I found myself again looking into the faces of her parents, and I knew in that instant that everything the woman was suggesting was true.

  ‘She would never have left that,’ she said, looking over my shoulder. ‘It was all she had of them.’

  ‘We ought to start searching for her,’ I said.

  ‘Search? You and I?’

  ‘Everyone. Anyone.’

  ‘Who is there?’

  ‘Everyone who remains.’

  ‘I meant who is there who cares for her? Few of them knew her.’

  ‘But surely they won’t refuse to—’

  ‘She endeared herself to no one here.’

  ‘And that will stop them from looking in the name of common humanity?’

  She turned away from me rather than confront me with the truth.

  I asked her if she would remain in the house while I went in search of assistance, but she said she would not. She came out with me and waited while I secured the door. Without her knowledge, I had taken the small portrait from the mantel and it was now in my pocket.

  I went down the slope ahead of her; she was infirm and moved slowly.

  Reaching the houses, I knocked on doors and explained to everyone who would listen to me what had happened. I told them how long Mary Latimer had been gone, what she had recently endured, how distraught and unsettled she had become. And almost everyone to whom I spoke listened to what I said and either shrugged dispassionately, saying there was nothing to be done, or, at best, tried to convince me that I was wrong and that the drama of the situation was all of my own making. Some even laughed in my face, said that she was nothing to them, that I was even less, and then slammed their doors on me.

  I did eventually gather a party of three men who agreed to make a search of the nearby buildings, occupied and empty, and then to follow the edge of the water for as long as the daylight remained. I tried to encourage them to go higher, on to the open slopes, to the places where I considered her most likely to have gone, but they quickly made it clear to me that what little help they were prepared to offer was beyond any negotiation.

  We searched and asked for any sighting of her, but to no avail. Someone living below the dam might have seen her walking downriver on the far bank. Someone else said they had seen a woman resembling her two days previously, but at a great distance and at the head of the valley.

  I returned eventually to the dam and met one of the searchers there. The others had already returned to their homes. I asked him what time we might resume in the morning, but he told me he would be busy with preparations for his departure. I thanked him for what he had done. On impulse, I gave him what little money I had with me, and only upon receiving this unexpected payment did he offer to encourage others to resume looking.

  I left him, little reassured by his words.

  46

  The next day I searched alone, avoiding the houses and the dam and looking instead towards the valley head, seeing all around me the great expanse of rough ground in which a body might lie hidden for weeks, longer were it soon to be covered by snow.

  I quickly saw how little I would achieve by this, and so against my better judgement I returned to the dam.

  There were men there who told me they had been searching – they pointed out to me where they had looked – but who did not convince me. They had learned of my payment and wanted the same for themselves. Their lies added confusion to the situation.

  I left them and went to the quarry, where she and I had once met, but that too was empty, and the echo of my pointless calls came back to prod me before my mouth was even closed.

  I returned home, and for long afterwards I speculated on where she might have gone and what she might have done, and how long and terrible her solitary deliberations might have been.

  Stronger winds than usual disturbed my fire and my candles, and smoke filled the room, thickened in the liquid yellow light until it resembled sediment floating in water, and by half closing my eyes and watching its shimmering patterns above and around me I could easily imagine myself dwelling underwater.

  I fear now that everyone here is wandering aimlessly in the endless puzzle of a cold and disappointing dream, and that all the certainties and comforts of life have been finally stripped away from them, leaving them lost and directionless, and with the rudiments of existence itself exposed and unbearably raw.

  47

  On the morning of the visit I woke early, well before the risen sun, and completed my preparations. I shaved and washed and trimmed my hair. I wore my cleanest clothes. I even took with me a clean pair of boots to change into upon reaching the dam.

  Thankfully, it had neither snowed nor rained in the night. The water now filled the lake at an increasing rate, and its rising was ever more noticeable, the empty buildings and spartan trees standing in its new shallows serving further to accentuate this progress.

  I arrived at the dam by ten. It was a cold day, but I sought no shelter. Few of the people I encountered paid any attention to me, and as far as I knew none of them was aware of the visit or of my purpose there.

  I enquired after Mary Latimer, but was told simply that she had neither yet been found nor seen elsewhere. Their pretence of searching for her had ceased.

  By eleven there was still no sign of the delegation, and my presence for so long in one place was beginning to attract unwelcome attention.

  Shortly afterwards, I left the dam and followed the road down the valley. It was from this direction they would come. I might meet them here away from anyone else and then usefully spend my time with them in explaining what they could expect to see. I had prepared several short speeches, and was convinced, after all my other preparations, that I had answers to all their questions.

  I waited on the same rise from which I had a fortnight earlier watched the departing families. The long downhill curve of the road was visible ahead of me, and I saw far to the south where the green of the winter countryside gave way to the darker irregularities of the towns as they grew together.

  By midday, still sitting alone on the cold rock, I gave voice to my curses, and as though in response to this, and just as I rose and gathered up my belongings, a carriage appeared at the bend in the road. Checking my appearance in the looking-glass I carried, I went down to await its arrival.

  I raised my hand to the driver and he leaned back to confer with someone inside before coming on to me. The breath of the four horses clouded the air and a froth of phlegm covered their mouths.

  The carriage door opened and a young man I had never before seen climbed down. He came to me and asked me who I was. I told him and he shouted this back to the carriage. A window was lowered and two other faces looked out. I recognized both men from my interview.

  ‘Where were you?’ one shouted. ‘We imagined something terrible had happened to you.’

  ‘I’ve been waiting,’ I said, at a loss to understand him.

  ‘You were expected in Halifax yesterday afternoon,’ he said. ‘We waited for you there.’

  ‘Your letter said you were to come here.’

  ‘Yes. After first having conferred with you in town. The fact is, our journey here today may not have been entirely necessary.’

  ‘Or wanted,’ the man beside him said.

  There was laughter inside the carriage.

  The younger man beside me bowed his head at hearing this, as though to disassociate himself from it, and perhaps to ease my own discomfort at hearing it.

  ‘Your letter made no mention whatsoever of my coming to Halifax,’ I called to the man in the carriage. It was difficult to conceal the anger in my voice.

  The sec
ond man at the window took out a silver flask and drank from it.

  ‘Is it far?’ he called to me.

  ‘Far?’

  ‘To the dam, to the water, whatever it is we’ve come all this way to be impressed by.’ He looked at the moor all around him. ‘Is it always this cold?’

  I said nothing in reply.

  ‘You’d better get in,’ he said. ‘We are six.’

  ‘And a dozen lucky others left back at the hotel,’ his companion said. More laughter erupted behind them.

  The young man beside me said, ‘None of us saw the actual letter that was sent.’ His voice was low and conspiratorial. ‘This was the Chairman’s idea. I wonder if some of them can even begin to imagine the existence of the dam or the water or what is being achieved here.’ He held out his hand to me. ‘I’m Smith,’ he said. ‘From Durham. I came because they are about to embark on a similar project there.’

  ‘And your part in it?’

  I held out my own hand, and the moment he grasped it he said, ‘Very much the same as yours here. Supervising overseer and consultant responsible for the evacuation, drainage and reclamation.’ He took pride in the title, and I regretted that the contaminated baton of hopeful expectation had just that instant passed between us.

  ‘So that’s what I am,’ I said.

  He looked at me uncertainly for a moment and then smiled. He withdrew his hand and gestured towards the carriage.

  Inside were others I recognized, and they greeted me as though we were great friends, as though I were one of them. The air was thick with smoke. Wicker baskets filled the luggage nets. I was offered a cigar, which I declined, and a drink which I accepted, though I was reluctant to take it. My face, hands and feet were numb from waiting.

  I was quizzed again on why I hadn’t gone to the hotel. I was told that all my expenses would have been met. One man told me he had visited the valley two years previously, before work on the dam had started. He looked out of the window as he spoke and said that the place looked just as miserable now as it had done then.

  I saw that Smith remained uneasy in their company. I guessed him to be four or five years younger than myself, and I knew well enough why he was examining me. He looked at the dirt on my clothes, at my bags and satchel and the hold I kept on them.

  We arrived finally at the dam. I was the first to climb down from the carriage. Our arrival brought the usual inquisitive crowd, smaller than formerly, but no less insistent on its right to be there.

  The Board members were slow in alighting. Smith came to stand beside me. I greeted those who had gathered to watch and explained to them who these visitors were.

  The others finally climbed down and put on their heavy coats. They all wore gloves, and I saw by their shoes that they would walk no distance, and certainly not over rough tracks or unmade roads. Most still had their cigars. They congregated briefly, held a whispered conversation, and then dispersed, some going to the dam and others coming to where I stood with the crowd.

  I had expected the usual resentment and then hostility from the gathered men and women, but to my surprise – dismay, I might say – they stood entranced by – almost grateful for – the words of the man who now unexpectedly addressed them. He gave a small girl a silver coin, and when other children approached him with their hands out he gave them coins too, and they all ran among the adults showing off what they had been given.

  Beside me, Smith whispered, ‘Watch him. He’s very good. He came to Durham last month.’

  ‘They won’t feel the same towards you once it starts happening,’ I said.

  ‘No, I know.’

  But he knew then only what he had been told and what he wanted to believe.

  I resented the crowd’s acceptance of all the Board man said to them.

  ‘Watch what happens at the first hostile response,’ Smith said to me.

  It came a few moments later. The man had been talking about the risks taken by the investors when a woman in the crowd called out to ask him what those risks were compared to the hardships currently being suffered by the people living there who were losing their homes.

  Others took up the call. The Board man fell silent and hung his head. He stood like this until the shouting abated, and then he lifted his face and raised his hands. He began to tell them all that he understood perfectly their concerns and the upheavals through which they had lived this past year.

  I stopped listening to him then, and looked beyond him to where the others had climbed the steps to the dam and had gathered to look out over the grave of the valley below. I knew how impressed they would be by all they saw there, the encircling view made even more dramatic by its distant frame of dazzling snow.

  I was distracted from these thoughts by the sudden and enthusiastic burst of applause which rose all around me, and by Smith tugging at my sleeve and saying, ‘See?’

  I nodded, unaware of what had happened. I gathered from what was then said that some further compensation had been promised to those still remaining. To hear their applause you might think their lives had just been saved or made whole again.

  ‘See?’ Smith repeated.

  ‘I see,’ I told him.

  The men high on the dam had by then spread themselves along its entire length. They did not care how deep it sank into the water beneath them or how great was the weight pressing against every square foot of its surface.

  Smith saw me looking. He understood my disappointment. He had not known what to expect of me, but he had expected more than he had found, and it was vital now, in his mind, for there to be a distance between us.

  ‘They were talking on the way here of a naming ceremony,’ he said.

  ‘The Forge Valley Dam.’

  ‘You sound convinced of that.’

  ‘Then what?’

  He indicated the man who had made the promises and handed out the silver coins.

  ‘They’re going to name it after him?’

  ‘Nothing decided yet. But he’s working for it. Someone will make the suggestion at the appropriate moment during their meeting next week and no one will be able to refuse him.’

  I looked at the man, who in turn stood gazing up at the monument he had so cheaply secured for himself. Then he went to it and climbed each of the steps to its rim with a slow and measured stride, pausing every few paces to look around him at the revealed surroundings, and occasionally back down at us, growing ever smaller beneath him.

  No one else approached the steps while he climbed, and when he reached the top those already standing there applauded him and he raised his hands to them. And then he turned slowly to look out over the lake, savouring the surprise and the spectacle of it before drawing his hands back to his face in delight and rejoicing at what he saw.

  In all my time there it had never once occurred to me that the lake and the dam would be named for anything other than the place they had drowned.

  ‘See?’ Smith said again, and he too went to climb the steps of the dam and to be part of the man’s rejoicing.

  48

  Two days later the last of the hefted sheep were gathered in off the high land and penned prior to their sale and slaughter. They were the animals which could not be moved and there was no alternative to their killing. Fellmongers and butchers came from neighbouring towns to bid for them.

  In total, over three hundred were brought down. Ten times that number had been gathered in the previous autumn, and these last few were poor specimens. Most of the locals came out to watch, and it was easy to imagine the profitable celebration the occasion might otherwise have been.

  Most of the animals were bought by a monger with a contract to supply the militia and were slaughtered soon after being sold to him. I sought the man out and introduced myself. I asked him if any balance in the loss of value of the sheep was to be made up by the Board and he became suspicious of me and wanted to know what business it was of mine to ask. I left him and wandered among the pens.

  The sorry-looking creatures
were killed in a small enclosure bordering the chapel. The slaughtermen worked with hammers and knives, either crushing the animals’ skulls or stunning them sufficiently with their blows to slit their throats before they were fully aware of what was happening to them.

  The dirty fleeces were stripped from the sheep in a single piece, occasionally while they were still in their death throes and feebly struggling against something they could not possibly comprehend. Heads, tails and feet were chopped off and thrown into piles. Bellies were slit open and innards pulled out and left to slide over the ground at the slaughtermen’s feet. The carcases were then further reduced, some quartered, some halved, and the meat was cast on to a wagon. I watched the process almost mesmerized, calculating that each living creature was reduced to these pieces in less than a minute.

  It was bitterly cold, but the smell of the warm blood and viscera filled the air. Crows congregated along the chapel wall, the bravest of them alighting on the mess of innards while they were still fresh and steaming. The men busy at the killing did little to discourage the birds, threatening them only when they scavenged on the carts of piled meat.

  I stood with an old man who guarded the chapel entrance. I remarked on the day’s business with him. He was the same man who had long ago asked me about the wife and children I did not have.

  ‘First the animals, then the trees, then the dead,’ he said, meaning the arrangements already made for the coppices on the far side of the valley to be felled, and after that for the long-awaited removal of the bodies from the burial ground.

  I asked him if any of the sheep being slaughtered were his own.

  ‘Twenty or thirty,’ he said, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the penned animals.

  I asked him if he didn’t find the whole business distressing. He looked at me without feeling and asked me how I imagined it usually happened. A group of children arrived beside us, each holding aloft a dirty tail.