The Stream

by Brian Clarke

  The soil lay whorled in the backwaters like fallen smoke. The new, improved fertiliser that the machines had sprayed onto it added new stains to the others that were already in the water. The reeds and the sedges and the lank weeds absorbed them. The cells of chokeweed that always clung to life somewhere, inhaled them and stored them.

  It was because the drought had come and the boreholes had come that the stains in the water were so strong. It was because the drought had come and the boreholes were taking water faster than the plan was replacing it that the springs had not risen for three winters in a row and the stains in the water were so little diluted. Neither the trout with the scar nor the gaunt cock fish with the hooked jaw and the huge head nor any of the other fish could see the stains put into the water by the dead chokeweed and the insecticides and fertilisers and by the strange chemicals that seeped into the stream from the cracked pipe under the farm. The fish could not see the stains though the stains were everywhere about them and the fish could not feel the stains though they were everywhere passing through them.

  In the places where the chokeweed lay dark as fungus on the stream bed because the springs had not risen to sweep it away and in the piled-high silts that covered the margins for the same reason and in the new, still places that had decaying weed and the dead eggs of the Baetis flies and the caddis flies and the lank fish in them, silver bubbles wobbled up and burst with a foul smell and the soft-bodied things rejoiced.

  Year 4, December

  the trout with the scar moved forward.

  All the changes that the spawning time would make in him were made, all the changes that the stains in the water would begin in him were begun. There was inside him only the need to move forward that had long been written into him and a clenching in his gut and a dullness solid as a stone in his head.

  The need to move towards the gravels seized all the trout that were still in the stream and that were capable of movement, though many fish that had moved towards the gravels last time were not moving this time.

  The hen fish that had spawned with the trout with the scar last time was not there because she had been driven away from her lie by one of the great farmed trout that entered the stream and she had grown weak and sickened from parasites and died. It was the same for the hen fish above the shingle banks and the hen fish near the middle of the three old posts and the cock fish opposite the top post.

  The old cock fish that had lived near the bank where Picket Close had been was not there because a shoal of farmed trout had settled in about him and the little fish were so many and flashed and darted so quickly that they took everything that was edible before he could reach it and he starved. It was the same for the old cock fish opposite him and the hen fish behind him and the hen fish behind that.

  Though there were many fish not in the queue heading for the gravels that had been in it last time, the queue was still longer than before.

  All the little farmed trout in the shoal that had taken the food meant for the wild fish moved forward, even though they did not know why they moved forward. All the big farmed trout that had driven away the wild fish from their lies moved forward though the eggs and milt inside them were lifeless.

  Nearly all the wild trout were in the queue also, even the tiny cock fish that had lived near the place where the seepage from the broken pipes under the farm came in.

  The stains in the water that could not be seen or felt even though they were all around him and through him, had been working on the little cock fish since he had been in his egg. They had made changes in the little trout that the law of continuing had not planned for any trout.

  The little cock fish that joined the queue heading for the gravels no longer had the secret places inside him that a little cock fish should have inside. The secret places that should have been like the secret places in any other little cock trout had long begun to behave like the secrets hidden inside a female trout, so that the little cock fish was confused and went up to the gravels though he should have been too young to know anything about gravels and should have been going to them for a different reason, anyway.

  Wherever the little cock fish swam, a stream of thin odours seeped from his vent and told the other fish near him that the little cock fish had been made partly a hen fish and some of the ripe male fish began to approach him and harass him.

  Even the little hen trout that had the stains passing through her, the one that had somehow managed to survive in the desolate place near the old swans’ nest moved forward, though the eggs she had inside her were wrinkled and dead.

  The trout with the scar reached the gravels close to the falls the same day that David Hoffmeyer said he would be present when the Minister opened the development if he could and the heads of Top Oil and Ethical Pharmaceuticals and the flatpack furniture business and the paint laboratory and the food processing plant and the dye works and the printing works all said they would be there as well.

  Many of the farmed trout that had escaped were already on the gravels and the two that were almost as big as salmon had taken the one clean place left for spawning. The cock fish kept driving all the other fish away from it, even though the great hen was sterile and though the milt inside the cock fish could have fertilised nothing and though the stones beneath them both were so cemented in by silt that they could not be dug up no matter how hard the hen fish was flailed against them.

  Many wild trout were driven away from the gravels because there was no room and the escaped farm fish began to whirl and bite those around them because that was what they always did when they were jammed together and stressed.

  The escaped trout had known so many stresses when they were jammed tight together in the ponds on the fish farm that it was almost as though they had been conditioned to whirl and bite. They had even been stressed and conditioned when they were fed. Every time the man who fed them had gone near the tubs where the food made from pulped wild fish was kept, the fish had thrashed and churned at the sight of it as though a switch inside each of them had somehow been thrown. Every time the man had swung his arm and thrown scoops of food so that the small pieces of ground fish and meal smattered above them, the trout in the pools thrashed and churned and competed to get them. Even when the man amused his visitors by standing on the side of the pool and waving his arm as though throwing food, the fish thrashed and churned at the sight of it though he threw them nothing. Every time the trout in the fish farm had been made agitated by experiences like these, they had swum around and around in tight circles in their ponds and leapt and splashed until the water rocked and surged up the banks around them and they bit one another on the tail.

  The wild fish that dashed away from the gravels when the farmed trout started to whirl and bite hid anywhere they could, but still many of them died because they were given infections with their wounds that were nowhere in a wild fish’s plan.

  Year 5, January

  ‘we only have a few minutes left. I want to bring this week’s edition of Dilemmas to an end by asking each of our panellists to sum up what they see as the essential points.’

  Lisa Pearce turned to Sir John Plumpton. ‘Sir John, your family has owned the Hanger Hall estate for three hundred years. You’ve done well out of this personally by selling land for housing and the like. Remind us what the rest of the community has got.’

  As the camera swung towards him and Sir John nodded, the hen trout that was desperate to spawn was being thrashed at the gravels again in an attempt to loosen the stones that were embedded in the silt. More scales broke away from her flank but the stones did not move. ‘Well, as I say, it’s the old story. Until recently, the land employed pretty well everyone. Those who didn’t work on the land worked for one or another of the small, local companies. Then mechanisation came and farming became an industry in its own right. Farms got bigger – yes, my own among them – and the number of jobs fell. People began to drift away. The growth of large companies elsewhere, the influx of cheap products from abroad, tech
nology, the attractions of life and work in the city all combined to draw more young people away and put local businesses under pressure. For nearly half of my lifetime, this area has been bleeding to death.’

  As he paused and the cameras showed Earl Johnson, Director of the Cogent Electronics site nodding and Jo Hamilton making a note on her pad, the pressures inside the hen fish became too great. Her vent suddenly inverted and a pink rim showed and then waters tinged with red seeped out. ‘Today the picture is completely different. There is high investment in the area, there are as many jobs available as people to fill them, we have an influx of new, skilled young professionals and a level of spending that is pulling the entire region out of recession.’

  ‘Thank you, Sir John. Earl Johnson, tell us on behalf of a major multinational, what benefits your company has seen by investing here.’ Johnson nodded. The trout with the scar smelled the odours coming from his mate and moved towards her.

  ‘I’d rather tell you what brought us here, first. Cogent Electronics could have put this facility into several countries. If we hadn’t had a particular problem at our plant in Milan, Italy might have got it. It was touch-and-go whether or not we put it into Germany, so in that sense there was an element of chance in the decision to come here at all. There is an element of chance in all these things. However, we did see an opportunity here. We told your Government the kinds of things we were looking for – a level playing field for our products, among them. But we couldn’t have come without everything else – a port equipped with the kinds of facilities we needed, good roads with access to the motorway network, the kinds of housing and local environment that would be of interest to the skilled people we needed to attract, that kind of thing. Your Government bent over backwards to make it possible. It might well have taken a greenfield site to give us all of that, I don’t know. Either way, you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.’

  The trout with the scar quivered alongside the hen fish and her mouth was wrenched wide and his mouth was wrenched wide and both their dams burst and the first of her empty eggs spilled onto the flat stream bed. Pearce nodded. ‘And the end results are those Sir John spelled out?’

  ‘For the community, yes. For Cogent Electronics they were increased business volumes and profits. For the UK, in addition to the money and jobs we put directly into the economy, it meant increased exports, reduced imports and a fair degree of technological spin-off.’

  Pearce glanced at the clock on the wall and swung in her chair. ‘Jo Hamilton of SAVE, that sounds a pretty good package. What’s your problem?’

  Hamilton swallowed the sip of water she’d just taken from her glass. ‘My problem is the hidden cost. We’ve lost two historic sites and an area of outstanding natural beauty. I don’t mean how the statutory bodies define historic and beautiful and what’s worth preserving, I mean how ordinary people define them. Public bodies come and go with Governments and fashions. Their advice changes with the pressures upon them and the people chosen to lead them. They’re always looking over their shoulders.’

  The trout with the scar and his mate stopped quivering. They lay side by side as their high notes faded and the lights inside their heads became bleached and rinsed. Hamilton put her glass back on the table.

  ‘If the natural environment were a commodity, its price would be rocketing because it is fast running out – but we don’t even have a currency to value it in. We know the price of Mr Johnson’s products. Someone knows what was paid for Sir John’s land. Who could put a value on the view from Stinston Hill?’

  Pearce turned again. ‘Dame Vanessa Bennett, it was your letter to The Times that put this issue on the national agenda. You’ve got the last word.’ The trout with the scar began to back away from his mate. The hen fish moved a little upstream and began to drive down on the gravel again in an attempt to make it lift and cover her eggs and hide them, but the stones did not move and the eggs lifted and bounced in the turbulence she made.

  ‘Thank you. I’d like to make two points. Both follow from what Mrs Hamilton has said.

  ‘The first is that nobody owns the earth. Every generation simply uses it and moves on – we’re time-squatters, if you like. Recent generations, above all our own, have not used the earth well. We have created huge problems for those who come after us, long-term problems. The only people who could address problems like these – politicians and businessmen – are both driven by short-term pressures. We blame them, but in a sense it is dishonest to blame either.’ The cameras cut away to show Sir John Plumpton and Earl Johnson nodding, then came back. ‘The truth is we all want a softer life and shareholders want profit. We want them today – and if we don’t get them, the politicians and the company directors are out on their necks. So they can’t afford to get out of step with the rest of us. It’s us who somehow have to change. The solutions we’re looking for are not out there, they’re inside you and me.’

  The eggs that were being moved by the way the hen trout was thrashing on the gravels were bouncing and rolling into the silt around them. Lisa Pearce pressed a finger to her earpiece, listened to the voice coming from it and gestured at Dame Vanessa. ‘I’m going to have to hurry you, I’m afraid. What was the other point you wanted to make?’

  Dame Vanessa nodded back. ‘My second point is that things don’t have to be big in their own right to be important.’ The egg that the hen trout caught with her tail wobbled up and caught the light before falling back to the silt.

  ‘Actions like the creation of this development, however badly needed from an economic point of view, are almost certainly leading to losses we don’t yet know about. We may well be producing small environmental changes which, although not significant in themselves, could one day become significant. All it would need would be for several minor events to compound one another or for something unexpected to change the context in which the smaller events take place. In either case we could suffer a loss we did not expect or start a chain of events we might not be able to control.’ She acknowledged Pearce’s signal to end. ‘In short, I fear that little by little we are damaging the earth irreparably … that one by one we are putting out the lights.’

  Earl Johnson was speaking before Lisa Pearce could cut in. Dark clouds lifted around the hen fish as she worked. The cameras hesitated for a moment between Pearce and Johnson. She gave him a brief nod. ‘Quickly, then.’

  Johnson leaned forward and spoke in taut, crisp sentences that seemed to accentuate the urgency of the point he wanted to make. ‘What Dame Vanessa is really saying is that she wants more caution, more balance, in our decision-making processes. At one level, I’m sure we’d all like that. But I suspect we’re getting about as close to them as the real world will allow. The fact is we live in a jungle. We survive by competing and winning. It’s sudden death out there. Others aren’t going to stand around and watch while the UK hums and hahs about everything. I’m all for the environment. I’m concerned about global warming, the risks of genetic modification, pollution, abstraction and everything else. I’ve got kids of my own, for heaven’s sake. But we can’t risk slowing up if others are steaming ahead. That’s the road to national ruin. Giving our children an economic future has to be part of our legacy to them, as well.’

  Pearce looked straight into the camera, speaking directly to the viewer. ‘I’m sorry. There we must end it. Another contentious subject and more strongly held views. But as ever in this series, no easy solutions. We would have no dilemma if there were. From all of us here in Farley, goodbye.’

  The hen trout that had been covering her eggs with silt in her attempt to cover them with gravel, drifted downstream. She kept shaking her head from side to side and opening her jaws as though coughing or retching. Lisa Pearce was home and the studio lights were out before the dirt trapped in the fish’s gills, worked free.

  Year 5, February

  the pheasant took the dog by surprise. She was moulded into the depression near the concrete bridge by the farm and had been dozing
since dawn. She was so still and camouflaged that she could have been a mound of small stones casting shadows about themselves. Only the faint, horizontal line of her back suggested anything at all and the dog had not noticed that. Nor had the dog noticed the wrinkled eyelid flicker when he approached, nor had he seen it lift like a secret door in the pheasant’s head so that the pheasant could watch him.

  It was only when the dog saw the rabbit and let out a low, joyous whine and bounded almost on top of her that the pheasant lifted and whirred over the stream. And it was only then that the dog saw her and leapt and whirled and his teeth clashed on the absence behind her. It was only then that the dog knocked over the drum.

  The young man at the farm would not be able to understand how the drum came to be on the bridge in the first place, never mind to have its top loose; but the drum fell sideways when the dog’s leg caught it and the top rolled in a wide circle on the edge of its rim. The brown liquid from the drum raced over the bridge in a thin, loosened spillage and began to stream into the water. Even the smallest drops bloomed white as milk flowers when they hit the surface and their whiteness spread downstream like a mist.

  It took no time for the mist to reach the last of the water crowfoot that survived upstream from Top Bend. The mist passed over the base of the plant and found only crawlers and sliders and soft-bodied things, but it took them. It swept through the middle of the plant and found only shrimps and a few caddis grubs and some soft-bodied things, but it took those also.

  When the mist reached the tips of the plant which were the only parts of the plant still moving fast enough to stay free of silt, the white mist found Baetis nymphs jostling and nudging and climbing over one another for want of room and water caterpillars packed so densely that no part of the stems beneath them could be seen. The nymphs of the Baetis flies tried to dart away when the white mist came but were not quick enough and the mist burned a grey film over their eyes. The water caterpillars let go their hold and thrashed like cut worms.