Deep Waters

by Ann Cliff

  ‘We’ve been here for twenty-five years, your mother and me,’ Kit told her. ‘It won’t be easy to leave.’

  That evening, Kit and Ruth went up to see Ruth’s father, Nathan, to talk over the disaster. They wanted to see how he was coping with the probability of losing his land.

  ‘You’ll have to give Roger his supper,’ Rachel was told. ‘He’s late tonight.’

  Little had been said about the reservoir when Roger was in the house. Kit Garnett had felt that the young engineer was doing a difficult job and would need a rest from it in the evenings, so the talk round the supper table had been of other things.

  Without the manager and his wife, the house was quiet and Rachel found little to say. Roger ate his mutton in silence for a while and then looked across at Rachel, who had no appetite for supper.

  ‘What’s wrong, lass?’

  ‘The Major has agreed to sell the estate … so I suppose the reservoir will be bound to go ahead. You’ll be pleased, Roger, it’s what you want. But I won’t bore you with it now.’

  Roger’s blue eyes widened. ‘Has he now? You poor girl, you must feel devastated. Sometimes, I wish I had another job. This project is affecting decent people.’

  ‘So, I remember you said that if people worked together, maybe they could stop the project. Surely you could find another valley, one with no good land and nobody living in it?’ Rachel got up to put the kettle on the range and busied herself with stoking up the fire.

  There was silence for a while; Roger finished his meal and pushed his plate away. ‘I still think it’s not too late, if only people knew. Bromley is telling them all it’s a foregone conclusion, but I think differently. If farmers and landowners could realize that no one wants a reservoir here, then … perhaps Leeds would look elsewhere. Even the Major might change his mind.’

  Rachel sat down opposite him. ‘But they don’t know, do they? There’s the village, of course, some of those houses belong to the Major. But most folks live in scattered farms all over the valley and the moor. Some of those farmers may be worrying about it right now, thinking they have no choice. There’s no way to reach them … except …’ She looked into the fire. ‘They all read the paper, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, everybody reads the Herald.’ Roger smiled. ‘You could write a letter to the editor, Rachel. That might raise a bit of dust, you know! I’d better say no more, I’m supposed to be promoting the project. I’ll go and groom Charlie.’ At the door, he looked back with a smile that was somehow comforting. Roger Beckwith was not quite so hateful as she’d thought.

  Rachel Garnett, writing a letter to the paper? Was it likely? Perhaps, if she concealed the fact that she was a young woman, a person of no importance. She would have to sound confident. The style was easy, she’d been reading the paper since she was small and noticing the different ways in which opinions were put down in print. Some people got quite heated about subjects like the town drains.

  When the dishes were done, Rachel sat down with a pencil and tried to compose a suitable letter to the Ripon Herald. Her heart sank; it was too hard. But then for a fleeting moment, she thought of her ancestors on the walls of the Long Gallery, people who probably did have some power in their time. How would they have gone about this? Their blood was in her veins, she should at least make an effort to save Firby Hall, if only for the ghosts.

  It would be better to state the facts clearly and simply, she thought, rather than to tell people what to think.

  To the Editor:

  Dear Sir,

  Will they flood our valley?

  Your readers may be aware (that was a good start) that it is proposed to build a reservoir in the Firby area … that Leeds Corporation is looking for water and maybe Bradford too …

  Rachel bit the end of her pencil. This was more difficult than she thought.

  Roger came back, said goodnight and went to his room. The grandfather clock in the corner ticked loudly in the unusual silence as Rachel struggled with the letter. After a few false starts, she decided to keep it short.

  ‘This would mean that the mixed farms of our area would disappear. We grow crops on the valley land, oats for the horses, turnips and good hay for the winter. Our cattle graze the sides of the valley, while the sheep live on the moorland above. Imagine the valley filled with water! There will be no good land left, no village, no historic houses. A way of life will have gone. If this goes on, our dales will be left to the sheep. Will the people of Firby fight this, before it is too late?

  R. G. ........’

  Rachel made the signature illegible.

  She added a note at the bottom of the page. ‘I would like this letter to be signed ‘Concerned.’

  It was possible to imagine that in the future, the greedy industrial cities could take the whole Nidd valley, with a string of dams across it. What a thought!

  Rachel too went to bed before Kit and Ruth returned. She decided not to tell them about the letter, but to post it in the village the next day. Just before sleep, she realized that she might not be such a helpless female after all.

  Alexander Finlay sat at his big mahogany desk in the Herald office, looking out of the window. Summer was ending and autumn leaves were drifting across the Ripon market place below. As the new Herald editor, he was expected to give the old newspaper a new look and to ‘Investigate the affairs of the day,’ he’d been told by the owners, elderly gents who tended to speak in headlines. The list of people attending weddings and funerals was no longer enough to fascinate the readers, some of whom were drifting like the autumn leaves away from the Herald to other papers.

  A junior brought in the day’s mail and Alex sifted through it. Letters to the editor often needed much editing, especially the ones that ran to five pages of bad spelling. Good old ‘Disgruntled, Blossomgate’ was taking another swipe at the potholes in the roads. Guessing the identity of these letter writers was a local sport, sometimes with bets taken, but the editor was sworn to secrecy.

  A neatly written letter of only a single sheet caught his eye.

  WILL THEY FLOOD OUR VALLEY?

  That was eye catching, it could have been written by a senior reporter. Alex read the letter and whistled. Here was an ‘affair’ that needed the paper’s attention. Why had he not known about it before?

  Summoned to the editor’s office, his assistant, Rodney Dacre, shook his head.

  ‘But they’ve been talking about reservoirs up there for as long as I can remember,’ he protested. ‘How can we know whether this time it might actually happen?’ His expression implied that it was old news, from dead files.

  ‘Can’t it be revisited? A backward look, if nothing else?’ Finlay sat back in his chair. ‘It would do no harm to mention the possibility. Man, if they flooded a whole valley with people living in it, the effect on the community would be drastic. Some country people never move from the village where they were born … it would ruin their lives! What a story it would make!’

  Rodney picked up the letter. ‘You should be a novelist,’ he said sourly, scanning the page quickly. ‘Nothing definite, no contracts signed,’ he grunted. ‘Just some old codger getting into a panic, if you ask me.’ He looked up at the boss. ‘Maybe we should support progress, argue for the reservoir as a good thing.’

  ‘Find out,’ said Alex tersely. ‘I’ve only been here a few months, I need to know all about it.’ He ran his hands through his curly brown hair and took off his spectacles. ‘Have you any idea who R. G. might be? You’d better dig out any information you can in the files, Rod, and try to whip up some enthusiasm! And I …’ He looked out of the window again; the sun was turning the autumn leaves to gold. ‘I will take a ride out to Firby tomorrow.’

  Rodney shrugged and turned to go back to his desk. ‘Wild goose chase,’ he muttered. ‘Football season’s starting soon, I’ve got to interview the Ripon captain. And then there’s that cow with triplets out at Studley.’

  Alex was still thinking about the reservoir. ‘What if the church
goes under…?’ He remembered old tales of church bells ringing under the water, on the site of drowned cities. ‘Do you think they would move the graves in the churchyard?’

  Rodney grunted again and Alex wondered why Yorkshire people were so dour. Was it the cold climate, or indigestion? The food here did tend to be rich.

  FIVE

  Alex Finlay hired a horse from the stable at The Unicorn Hotel in Ripon for his journey to Firby and set out in the late morning. He planned to gather enough information for an editorial column, to be published at the same time as the letter from ‘Concerned’. The day was cool but fine; it was good to ride out of town and turn the horse’s head towards the west and the high ground of the grouse moors above Ripon.

  He had been in the editor’s seat at the Herald for two months and was beginning to appreciate this corner of the world. The decision to work on a country newspaper was deliberate; Alex had been brought up in the country and hated working in big cities. When he eventually married, he wanted to live in beautiful countryside.

  From Ripon he rode through the pretty village of West Tanfield to Masham, where he paused to ask the way.

  Rodney had suggested sourly before his editor left Ripon that the villagers might be living in squalor and be only too happy to be housed elsewhere.

  ‘Some of those picturesque old cottages are in ruins, landlords won’t spend any money. It’s been going on for years, since farm prices went down. How would you like to live with a leaking roof and mould everywhere? There’s no money on the land and no future for the villages. Sensible folks are moving to the towns.’

  ‘Yes, there is a recession, but surely only for corn? I thought that the demand for dairy produce and beef was going up, and Firby’s a – a grassland area. Maybe you should write a report on local economics, Rodney.’

  ‘Too depressing,’ was Rodney’s verdict.

  It must be the indigestion, Alex thought as he cleared his desk.

  Sunshine bathed the little village in a golden afternoon light as Alex clopped down the main street of Firby. The houses were of a light grey stone, well built and with neat gardens and orchards. The Fox and Hounds had a swinging sign advertising home-brewed ale.

  Rodney couldn’t have been to Firby. There was an atmosphere of modest prosperity; these people wouldn’t be desperate to leave their homes.

  Where were the villagers? There was nobody standing at a cottage door, nobody driving cows in for milking. The street was so quiet it seemed deserted … surely the place hadn’t been evacuated already? But then an unholy racket erupted as small children poured out of their schoolroom for the afternoon break.

  Led by the noise, Alex rode up to the school. It was built into the side of a south-facing slope, in pleasant grounds set with large trees. Dismounting, he asked a small boy where to find the head-teacher and was directed to where a middle-aged man was coming out into the sunshine.

  ‘There he is, that gaffer, Mr Jackson.’

  The teacher welcomed Alex to the village with a warm handshake. ‘Alex Finlay from the newspaper? You’ll not have been here before, we don’t make much news in Firby. Tie up your horse and come inside, where we can hear ourselves think.’ He led the way into the building, which was small but neat and clean. ‘We have ten minutes before the children come back.’

  Alex took out a notebook. ‘Thank you, Mr Jackson. I’m interested in the proposal to build a reservoir here. What will it mean to the village?’

  The head motioned him to sit down and took his own chair behind a desk, his pleasant face serious. ‘It will destroy the village, and our community. The water, I believe, will reach yon birch tree.’ He pointed to where the window looked out on the back of the school, where the land rose steeply to a ridge. ‘Of course, we hope they will go elsewhere. There are other valleys farther up the dale, lonely places more suited to flooding. Here, there is too much to lose.’

  ‘Can anything be done? I’m willing to publish information about the proposal, if that will help.’ Already, Alex felt himself siding with the people who didn’t want the reservoir, didn’t want to see this sunny, sheltered valley submerged in dark water. But perhaps as a good journalist, he should look at both sides of the story. ‘Is there anyone in favour of the scheme?’

  Jackson shrugged. ‘Leeds and Bradford Corporations both, it seems. I feel that if one doesn’t take us, the other will, desperate for water as they are. You see, Mr Finlay, we have three main estates here and the landowners will call the tune, I’m afraid. The rest of the valley is owned by small farmers with no influence at all … and from what I can gather, the landowners are not against it, they will be happy to sell their land. Possibly because they have land elsewhere and would like to get their hands on some cash. None of the estate owners lives here permanently.’

  Alex wrote furiously as Mr Jackson told him all he knew about the proposed size of the reservoir and the type and number of farms in the valley, as well as the population of the village. This was more than he had hoped.

  ‘If you’re interested in history, there is a small but beautiful Elizabethan manor house here, owned by a Major Potts, one of the landowners I mentioned. It’s sometimes open to the public; I intend to take the children there for a visit and get them to write about it, before … it disappears.’

  ‘I will certainly visit the house, but not today, I have to get back to Ripon before dark.’

  Jackson jumped up. ‘I should have offered you some refreshment after your journey. Will you take a cup of tea?’ But it was time to start lessons again; the bell clanged and a beautiful young woman herded the children back into the classroom. Alex saw that they were all taught in one big room, but in two classes, one to each teacher.

  ‘Thank you, I’ll take a drink of water,’ Alex said, and drank with appreciation. ‘The water here is excellent, so pure compared with town water!’

  Jackson smiled gently. ‘So is the air, and our food is fresh, but I think many of us will have to move to live in the town.’ So that was it; he had accepted the inevitable. ‘I’ve told Miss Ward, my assistant, to look for another position. Violet Ward is a good teacher.’ The beautiful girl looked up and smiled; Alex caught a glimpse of lovely blue eyes in a heart-shaped face.

  Riding down into Ripon as the sun set behind him, Alex saw the smoke from many fires lying over the little city like a blanket, with the cathedral towers visible above the haze.

  Ripon could be smoky on evenings such as this, but he knew the industrial West Riding was much worse. He remembered a visit to Leeds. The smoke haze from tall chimneys had blocked out the sun and the handsome buildings in the city centre were black with soot. If the folks of Firby left their valley, he was sure it would not be of their own free will.

  Kit’s heart sank when he saw Guy Potts and his friend striding over the farmyard on a grey afternoon, just as he was going out to check the sheep.

  ‘Garnett!’ the youth bellowed, in a good imitation of the Major. ‘We want to shoot pheasant, now it’s October.’

  ‘Well, Mr Guy, what does your father say?’ Kit knew it wouldn’t be approved. There were not many pheasants about and the Major was expected to put on a shoot for his neighbours during the season.

  Guy pouted. ‘He said we should shoot rabbits … but he’s gone off for the day to see old Rupert, he won’t know.’

  Kit looked them over; Guy was tending to put on weight in spite of his youth and had bags under his eyes. A walk would no doubt do them good. ‘Rabbits, yes. Pheasants, no. I’ll give you single-barrelled shotguns, one shot at a time. You haven’t been here at the Hall enough to have much experience.’

  ‘Freddy’s a good shot, lots of experience.’ Guy indicated his friend. Freddy, a tall, thin lad, looked uncomfortable.

  Kit rather unwillingly took them to the gun room, gave them guns and safety warnings and told them not to go into any fields that held livestock. He gave them three cartridges each and two hours only, after which the guns had to be back and they had to be clean
ed. Trust Guy to try this on behind his father’s back.

  He decided to keep an eye on them. Kit called the collie Ben and walked away, but on a route where he could keep them under observation.

  Clouds hung low over the moors above them as the young guns set out to shoot rabbits.

  ‘I knew the old misery wouldn’t let us go after pheasants, but it was worth a try,’ Guy muttered.

  ‘I thought that early morning was the best time for rabbits, or maybe at dusk,’ Freddy volunteered. ‘But I don’t know much about shooting, as you well know.’

  ‘Who’s going to get up early?’ Guy scoffed. ‘I’m not. This is such a boring place, there’s nothing to get up for. I only come here when I have to.’

  ‘It was about time we came here, you’ve been to my home for most school holidays for years,’ Freddy pointed out. ‘Just because my pa used to know your father and your folks were in India.’

  ‘But you’re near London, it’s much more interesting. None of these boring green fields and cold moors. Here, there’s no theatres, no girls and no gaming. I hate this place, I tell you. Be glad when it’s sold … did you know they’re going to flood the estate to make a reservoir? I can’t wait for the day when I can get my hands on some of the money. Otherwise, debts will catch up and they’ll push me into taking a job … they mentioned law, how boring! Money’s the thing, I need lots of it.’ He licked his lips.

  ‘Don’t start moaning about your debts again, you’ve only got yourself to blame.’ Freddy glared at Guy. ‘It’s time you faced reality, you know. We’re not children now.’

  They trudged across a field, holding the guns awkwardly. ‘You’re as bad as my mother. It was my bad luck in the first place that got me adopted by the Potts. I should’ve had better parents – who wouldn’t pick my friends for me.’ Guy glared back. ‘Oh well, we’re stuck with each other again.’

  ‘Not for long, we’re not,’ Freddy told him. ‘My folks have written, they want me back in London as soon as I can catch a train, to see about getting into the army. I’m off as soon as I can get a ride to Masham. I’m looking forward to it, I’m sick of waiting.’