by Brian Clarke
The otter that sometimes used the stream saw the commotion from her stone. She melted into the water and swam close to the bank, pushing a bow wave across the Cattle Drink and streaming bubbles behind.
By the time the foundations of the next part of the new road had been dug and the old man who could not bear the thought of change had argued with his son again, the great trout’s scales were drying on the Otter Stone and the otter that had left them had gone.
By the time the foundations for the Cogent Electronics site were being laid and the old man had received the new letter from the bank and the otter and the trout had both gone, the brown line had come.
It ran along the water’s edge down both sides of the stream. It ran past the willowherb and the purple loosestrife that were drooping. It ran past the places where the chokeweed was gathering. It ran past the Cattle Drink where the mud on the bank was baked as hard as stone and pitted with the impressions of remembered hooves.
The brown line, thin as a ribbon, wound around the water’s edge from the place where the springs gathered behind the farm. It wound around the curves of Top Bend and Middle Bend and all around the island and along the banks on either side of the trout with the scar and past the place where the fallen willow hinged in the water. It wound above the head of the salmon that lay close to the stream bed with the world closed over him and around the shingle banks and along Picket Close and Longate past the coot’s nest, all the way to the Clearwater. It wound all along the Clearwater to the Broadchalk and along the Broadchalk to the sea.
Year 2, October
when Simon Goode, the biologist, had told the inquiry of his fears for the Broadchalk and the Clearwater if they were abstracted or polluted, he had several times mentioned the nymphs that lived on stones. From the side or the front the ‘stoneclingers’, as he sometimes called them, looked as if they had been designed in a wind tunnel. They needed to be that way, he said, because of the niche they filled.
The small, smooth, grey stone exactly one-third of the way across the stream and directly in line with the rusted hinges on the door of the wooden hut, had once been the perfect place for a stoneclinging nymph because the water sleeking over it had been exactly the right speed and depth. Even though the currents raced and roared like a heavy wind above the stone and looked strong enough to sweep anything on the stone away, the law of continuing had taken every generation of nymphs that had ever lived into account. The law of continuing had decreed that no matter how fast a current was, there should always be a place close to the stream bed where the water was slow. It had decreed this in the same way it had decreed that no matter how strongly the wind blew, there should always be less wind near the ground. The law of continuing had decided the two things together because they were so closely related.
And so right on the bed of the stream, immediately above each stone and grain of held sand and piece of lodged shell and over all the depressions between them like a thin lain sheet, there was a space between the roaring current and the stock-still stones where the water moved slowly. The space was about a nymph’s height high, scarcely deeper than the smallest print in the agreement that the old man had signed with the bank. Because the law of continuing had created a niche for everything and put everything into its niche, it had shaped some nymphs to live and cling on there.
Because she had been designed for that space, the body of the stoneclinger on the small, smooth, grey stone was sleek and her head was low and her legs were braced out to either side to hold her stable. And so the nymph on the small, smooth, grey stone lived in comfort under the current that raged overhead and that looked as though it should be sweeping her away.
She had known of the changes in the water before the salmon had returned. She had almost been hit when the silt particle crashed down like a boulder near her head and she had long known of the cord of chokeweed that had taken hold beside her. She had felt the thin, lain sheet of water growing steadily thinner and the turbulence above it reaching down to unsteady her.
It was on the day that the young protesters in the tunnels began to worry about suffocating in the heat, just about the time Jim Hampton of Hamptons was warning his workforce there would have to be cuts if the business were to be saved from the cheap Asian imports, that the stoneclinging nymph on the small, smooth, grey stone began to edge sideways. She lifted her right foreleg and right hindleg and left middle leg all at the same time and reached them as far to her right as she could, traced and groped for a footing for each of them and set them down. Then she reached her left foreleg and left hindleg and right middle leg over to follow them. She repeated the movement again and again, all the time keeping a grip with three legs to keep herself stable, all the time keeping her sleek, sloping head into the current so the water could not reach under her and sweep her away. She moved right across the small, smooth, grey stone and down its side and up the side of the rough stone next to it and across the top of that stone and down its side and up the side of the stone beyond that and across it. She kept moving even after the rope of chokeweed had snaked around her left foreleg and she had to pull and tug and back a little downstream and pull and tug again before she could get herself free.
The stoneclinging nymph was five stones further out towards the middle when she settled. The water that had once been too deep for her there was now the right depth and the thin layer of slow water there that had once been wrong for her was now right.
All the nymphs that lived on stones opposite the wooden hut moved further towards the middle about the same time and so did the grubs of the brown-winged caddis flies near the place where, in ancient times, the elk had stumbled on his way to drown in the swamp. The nymphs of the dainty Baetis flies followed suit. The water caterpillar near the trout with the scar, the one that had already reached and looped the length of five grown mayflies along its strand of water crowfoot, looped further towards the end soon after.
The trout with the scar rose up in the water and flared his gills about the same time and drove away the sick trout that had lived nearer the middle and that had no energy left for fighting. The trout with the scar took the place nearer the middle that he needed because the water in his old place had been growing shallow and he lifted and slid and forged and swirled, enjoying the plenty that had been sent there to feed him.
In the week David Hoffmeyer decided he would look at the new site when he was in the UK next and the trout with the scar moved, it seemed as if all life in the stream was on the move. It seemed as if every creature that relied on current had decided to edge towards the middle and that the silt in the margins was in pursuit.
Year 2, November
‘you’ll soon see what I mean.’ Paul Tyler had to shout to be heard. The helicopter was beginning to vibrate. The noise that had begun as a click and a whine rose to a roar. The yellow tips of the rotor blade blurred a circle around them. Johnson and the others on the ground backed away, shielding their eyes from the dust. The helicopter lifted like a gigantic gnat, stood on its nose and turned.
David Hoffmeyer peered down and nodded. It was a big development all right. And things were much further advanced than he’d expected.
Tyler half-turned to face him. ‘We’ve had a fraction of the rain we usually get. Very little last winter. It’s winter rain that fills up the ground around here so the water table stayed low and gave us a flying start on the footings.’ Tyler pointed to the sun blazing above the canopy. ‘Then a bone-dry summer. Forecast is for a second dry winter. We’ll break all records at this rate. If the protesters let us, that is.’
The helicopter headed up the Broadchalk valley, along the line of the Phase One new road. The concrete strip was lined with lorries travelling in a near-unbroken chain, each way.
‘The protesters are a bit of a problem. They slow things up, which is what they want. We’ve had to go to court three times, so far. They’ve got some heavy-duty lawyers helping them. You couldn’t buy the advice of some of their lawyers, but a couple of the best
will work for nothing on something like this.’
Hoffmeyer nodded. ‘Show me the site.’ He didn’t like helicopters much. He didn’t like having to shout much, either. In an aircraft, if you got in front of the engines, noise was no problem. In a chopper the rotor was right over your head.
Tyler tapped the pilot on the shoulder, leaned over and pointed. The helmeted head nodded. Tyler had been Whole-Site Director from the start and right now things were as busy as they could be. Still, if somebody like Hoffmeyer wanted thirty minutes of your time, you gave it. It had been the Ministry that had put the request through.
‘The Clearwater.’ Tyler indicated to his right. ‘Beautiful. Pristine. The only development on the whole river is a fish farm, believe it or not. Great land, very productive. Hence the size of the fields.’ He smiled, half-apologetically. ‘They’re big for us.’
The view directly beneath them was the one several newspapers had photographed. There had been a purple piece in the Guardian. He could remember the first paragraph because the cutting was on his noticeboard. It ended with something like ‘. . . gouged earth, shattered trees, blue smoke billowing up from the fires. Cables and pipes, concrete and steel, trenches and mounds. Everywhere the roar of engines and the pounding of piledrivers, the swirling dust and the baking heat. It looks like the ending of the world’. Something like that, anyway.
The woman from the Telegraph had taken a different approach. That’s why the two cuttings were side by side, to show how differently two people could view the same event. He could remember some of her first paragraph verbatim, no problem. It ended: ‘This is human endeavour on an heroic scale. This is what it must have been like when they were building the pyramids.’ Personally, he didn’t see it either way. Still, you pays your money and you takes your choice. So long as the job gets done.
‘The new bridge. There’s the old one beyond it. Your site is further up. Biggest of the lot.’
‘Ninety acres,’ Hoffmeyer shouted. ‘Ten acres of buildings, Stage One. More later. We’ll landscape the rest – water gardens, walks, that kind of thing. We’ll give the public some access. We always do. Helps local relations.’ Tyler nodded. He knew. And it was ninety-two acres, not ninety.
Hoffmeyer was still looking down, having to shout. ‘We’ll be putting a brand-new technology in here. We’re going to be manufacturing here for Europe and the Middle East. There’ll be a development lab as well.’
A few moments later, Tyler pointed straight ahead. ‘Those are the Hangers. That’s the Frontage on the right.’ Hoffmeyer had heard of both already. Brewster had mentioned the protests about them in one of his reports. Then there had been that guy in the airport lounge in Boston. He’d been a pain in the neck, going on about some ‘Shrinking Planet’ article in the New York Times. There had been a picture of Stinston and some demonstrations and a story saying how the Brits were in the front line of it all because the UK was so small but it would all be happening in the US before long. He’d gone on and on.
Tyler was saying something. ‘The dark vehicles are police vans. They’ve put a cordon around the tunnellers to stop supplies getting in. The stuff that looks like flotsam caught in the trees is tree houses. Some of the protesters are living in the trees to stop them being felled.’
Hoffmeyer looked down. Same views as the Boston rambler, probably. Maybe not the guys in the trees down there but the well-heeled professionals who joined them at weekends. Wanted it all, but at no cost. More food, more comfort, more possessions, more territory so to speak. The human animal all over. But total unreality about the price. Everything had a cost. Every product needed materials and materials needed a process. Big processes needed space and fuel and consumed all manner of resources but they closed their minds to that. Reminded him of people who salivated over steaks but wouldn’t think of the abattoir.
The helicopter banked to starboard and flew along the top of the Frontage. ‘You were telling me how much water this new process of yours needs. You wouldn’t think it from here, but water has given us one of our problems.’ He pointed to the Clearwater on the right and the Broadchalk glinting to the left. ‘We’ve got to supply the entire development without taking a drop from either of the rivers, or from the springs that feed them. Outstanding wildlife and plants.’
He pointed past the pilot’s head, to the left of some woods on the middle horizon. ‘We’ve had to come much farther than we expected to make sure we do no harm to either. No harm to anything out here. The Broadchalk is fed from its west bank and the Clearwater is fed from the east. This central area is the one safe place. Quite a big pumping operation, but these hills get topped up every winter.’ He smiled. ‘Well, most winters.’
Hoffmeyer peered down at the parked vehicles and the mobile drills and the small figures moving between them. Tyler waved an arm to the right. ‘I guess you know you’re going to have to have your own dedicated supply because of this technology of yours. Sourced from over there, somewhere. Going to use enough water to supply a small town, your people say. We’re having to cut a few corners to do it. Pressure from the Minister himself, someone said.’ Hoffmeyer shrugged. ‘Okay. Let’s go.’
The roar from the helicopter unfurled over the development as it headed back to base, but in the valley in the woods where the small stream flowed and where the heron standing in the Cattle Drink was shaking the chokeweed from his foot, the sound was scarcely audible and going in a different direction.
Year 2, December
it was, when they mated, as though the whole of their lives had been aimed individually to that one purpose alone, as though the law of continuing had decreed that they would find one another and use one another on that exact day, for all the intervening separation of their lives.
The cock salmon had been in the stream a long time before the hen had arrived and the law of continuing had gradually made him ready. It had worked on him all the time he had been in the pool under the kingfisher’s nest at Bottom Bend and ever since he had moved up into the deep water close to the bank where the sand martins nested. All his gleaming silveriness had gone. The back that had once been as green as a high seas cavern, had darkened and dulled. His sides had become blotched with purples and reds. His skin had thickened and shrunken in on his skull and his lower jaw had turned up in a hook. His insides had filled with milt.
The hen fish had still been far along the coast when he was entering the Broadchalk. When he was turning from the Broadchalk into the Clearwater she had not even reached the place where the ferries chuntered or the water patted and lapped against the bright dinghies’ hulls. It was long after he had swum past the fallen willow and since the trout with the scar had moved aside and let him through that she had leapt the leap in Farley while the visitors were gasping and the cameras were clicking and the little girl was letting her lollipop fall into the water.
It was only after the hen fish had turned aside from the Broadchalk into the Clearwater and from the Clearwater into the stream and had passed the fallen willow and the trout with the scar that the cock fish sensed her near. It was only when she eased into the dip in the stream bed a little further out from him and a little way downstream, that he knew she was there.
It was, when he saw her, almost as if he could not believe what he had seen. It was almost as though the salmon could feel inside him what in ancient times the man in the deer pelt had felt when he saw the girl whose smile was like the sun coming out. The cock salmon pushed with his tail and angled his fins so the water caught him and lifted him and he soared like a swallow over the hen fish when he reached her and then soared back. At once the hen fish lifted and soared in the water as he lifted and soared; and they swam around and around in circles and upstream of one another and downstream of one another as though excited and knowing. They rode and soared and lifted like young things; and then they settled and lay side by side close to the stream bed while the law of continuing gripped their bodies and a bright light began to glow in the steel helmets of their heads.
The two salmon lay side by side in the pocket of deep water until the leaves on the beech trees were clinging as sparse as winter butterflies and Lisa Pearce had got the funding for her programme on climate change. And then, on the day when the first frost of winter closed its fist over the ground and the breath of the sleeping vole was hazing the air in his burrow, the hen salmon angled her fins and planed upwards and outwards until she could feel the draw of the current and the cock salmon moved upwards and outwards alongside her as though joined to her with strings.
The two of them, the hen salmon first and then the cock, eased their way beyond the place where the male trout from the three old posts was already waiting for a partner and past the eddy where the hen trout from near the coot’s nest and the cock trout from the shingle banks were showing an interest in one another. They swam straight through the shallower water where the trout always spawned and moved into the deeper water near the falls where the salmon had been told to mate. They found a place there where the water was as deep as they were long and where the light slid and melted over the stones and golden gravel and played back the images they had long carried in their heads.
That first day it was as though the fish were enjoying the familiarity and rightness of the place that the lights in their heads had brought them to, save for the silts that had settled there that had not been there before. On the second day while the cock fish whirled and snapped at the other males that tried to approach her and showed them his hooked jaw and teeth, the hen fish rolled onto her side close to the falls where no silt had settled and began to thrash down. The hen tested the gravels while the sun rose and fell, her body arching and driving, the water pushing and welling, the stones lifting and floating behind her.