by Brian Clarke
All the way from the bridge where the empty drum was soon recovered and having its top screwed tightly back on to the deeper water around Top Bend, the nymphs of the grey-winged Baetis flies and the larvae of the brown-winged caddis flies and the alder larvae and the shrimps and every other vital thing let go and were carried away. Only the water caterpillars stayed behind, spinning like propellers on the ends of the threads that had once held them safe beyond all planned dangers.
Downstream, where the mist had lost its fire, the trout that were spent from spawning and that were lank and dark for want of food, tilted and lifted and slid and turned, absorbing the food drifting inertly towards them.
That evening, when the light had begun to ebb, the trout that had fed well on the plenty so suddenly offered in spite of its sharp taste, felt cramps beginning to seize their guts and one by one obeyed the spasms that wracked and bent them and drove them awkwardly through the water.
Before daylight came again, all the great fish that had fought for the special places in those parts of the stream and the next biggest fish that had won the next-best places and all the smaller fish and the older fish and the fish that had already been sick anyway, drifted and tumbled and turned stiffly on the water and were lost in the emptiness of the drop over the falls.
Year 5, March
new buildings were racing up, even though as much rain had fallen through the winter as used to fall in winter. The maisonettes in Hanger Close were nearly finished. The last house in Frontage Fields had been occupied for weeks. The clubhouse for the new golf course already had its roof on and was vibrating like a drum skin to the scrapings and bangings going on inside.
Though the weather seemed back to normal and the Broadchalk and the Clearwater had risen because so many of the springs that fed them from the west and the east had also risen, the stream was still low.
The water in the ground that was so far away from the two rivers that it definitely had no links with either had already been drained lower than it was drained in the lifetime of the young man or the old man or his father or his father. It was drained lower than it had been in the lifetimes of the Fletchers or the Coopers or of anyone else who had farmed the land before them. It was drained lower than it had been in the lifetimes of Henry de Montfort and his feckless dog or in the lifetime of Claudius Nepos or in the lifetime of the man in the deer pelt who had given the perfectly round stone to the girl whose smile had been like the sun coming out. The water in the hills that gave rise to the springs that fed the stream was drained lower than it had been before the wolves had prowled there or the bears had roared there or the wild pigs had truffled in the loose-littered ground.
The springs that fed the stream were this low when the Baetis nymph clinging to the tip of the little water crowfoot plant near the fallen willow, let go because silt so fine that it could settle into every fold and dip and crevice of every stem had finally left nowhere for a nymph to move.
The hills were this empty and the springs were this low at the time the water caterpillar that lived not far from the place where the elk had eventually drowned in the swamp, died because the fine silts that were settling out from the slow water caught in her vital places and some other places and clogged them.
By the time work on the community centre was under way, the mayfly nymphs that had survived from the year before were constantly having to push and bundle away silt so fine that it wanted to float into their burrows and block them.
By the time the new shopping arcade was begun, the stoneclinger that had constantly been edging sideways from the east side of the old spawning gravels towards the middle had met the stoneclinger moving towards the middle from the west side. By the time the new health centre was being opened and the doctors were settling in, the two nymphs were side by side together on one of the few stones near the middle that were still free of silt. Even then they could get no food or peace because all the other stoneclingers that survived below the falls had edged out to the same small place and were jammed side-by-side together because there was nowhere else to go.
By the time the silt and chokeweed had laid a blanket over them all, the leech had arrived.
Year 5, April
the leech was still and outstretched. The green tinge in her flank blended perfectly into the chokeweed to her left and the brown tinge merged her perfectly into the side of the old tree stump that the flood had dropped.
She had spent a long time reaching that place and waited for a while as though resting. Then the leech unfurled the whole length of herself and stretched straight out from the side of the stump close to the fallen willow until she lay almost horizontal in the water. She held herself quite still save for the occasional slow, circling movements that her upper half made. The movements made her look as if she were scanning all around her, almost as if she were searching for something in particular.
At about the time Paul Tyler, the Whole-Site Director, was greeting the Minister’s public relations man, the leech registered the distant images that her four eyes were detecting.
Geoffrey Billings had insisted on coming to see everything for himself. He always did when the Minister was involved personally. The two men did not talk long. Tyler went through the history of the development, from the origins of the plans that had been dreamed up a generation before to the way the Government had wooed multi-nationals like Cogent Electronics, though it turned out Billings knew a lot more about that than he did. They talked through the protests and the legal hiccups and the latest on Lincoln and the problem at Durham that was soon to hit the fan. Tyler showed the graphs and tables that had charted progress over the years and talked of how lucky they had been with the weather. Billings asked about job numbers and community facilities and if there were any problems the Minister should be aware of, but Tyler said no.
It was as Billings was putting his papers back into his briefcase and was closing the lid with its upholstered click that the hen trout that had begun her journey from below the three posts and that had steadily moved upstream to find deep water, shrugged her way into the pool below the fallen willow.
All the fish in the pool saw the lank fish arrive, but they did not rise up and flare their gills because they were as weak as she was and some of them anyway had just arrived themselves. Even the trout with the scar that owned the pool and that had the place at the head of it had stopped whirling and flaring his gills when a new fish came in because of the clutches in his empty gut and because of the great stone that filled his head.
And so all the trout in the pool below the fallen willow edged aside and moved a little upstream to make way when the hen fish from below the three posts arrived. The trout with the scar moved the necessary distance forward and a little to the side before Billings had even reached the door and said he had some time to kill and planned to drive up the valley to see things for himself.
It was about the time that the gaunt cock fish with the hooked jaw and the huge head moved close to the pool below the willow because he was seeking deeper water as well, that Tyler and Billings shook hands and parted.
It was as Tyler was ringing his wife to say he would be home early for once, just after Billings had passed the slip-road on the new motorway north of Stinston, that the gaunt cock fish with the hooked jaw and the huge head slid into the pool. It was when the gaunt cock fish with the hooked jaw arrived that all the other fish in the pool rearranged themselves again to make way and the images that had resolved into a known shape in each of the leech’s four eyes came clearly into focus and the leech held herself tense and still.
While Geoffrey Billings was driving along the new motorway north of Stinston so that he could see everything for himself, though he was so far away from the stream that he could not see it at all, the trout with the scar edged a little nearer the lank weed and the old brown stump and the fish leech that had lain so perfectly camouflaged and still, clamped herself to him.
By the time Billings had returned to his office and Tyler and his
wife were enjoying their best talk in months over a drink before dinner, the leech that had attached herself to the trout with the scar was boring through the skin where the scale had come off and sensing the goodness of the juices beneath it.
Even as the leech was boring and drinking, the flukes were enjoying the wide, free waters of the right eye of the gaunt cock fish with the hooked jaw and the huge head and the fading sight, and the tapeworm in the gut of the hen fish from the three posts was appreciating the rich darkness of the home he had found and the larva of the spiny-headed worm was beginning to glow bright orange through the sides of the shrimp he was using as a host because that was what the law of continuing had required him to do.
It was all happening as finer silts than ever were settling out everywhere and as dead matter was gathering in the dark places and as the crawlers and the sliders and the soft-bodied things were multiplying beyond imagining and as the things that lived head-down in tubes with their back ends protruding were swaying as though dancing at the wonder of it all.
It all happened a little after the sun had returned hotter than ever and as the spring behind the farm began to falter.
Year 5, May
it was as though the plan had been completely ignored.
It was as though the water that had once flowed too quickly for chokeweed had been made to flow slowly for the chokeweed’s sake. It was as though the water that had once been too cold to encourage chokeweed had deliberately been warmed. It was as though the water that had once had in it too few of the nutrients that chokeweed needed, had been deliberately given them in abundance. It was almost as if the stream had been deliberately ordered to sink into its bed so that what chemicals were in it should have less water to dilute them. Even the water that had once been too shaded for chokeweed had chokeweed in it because the trees had been felled and the sun now reached everywhere.
The chokeweed curved and wound in the water. The bends and bays and dips in the bed might have been shaped in readiness for each strand and thread.
The chokeweed grew and the sun burned all through the time that the mayfly nymphs were trying to leave their burrows in the stream bed but could not. The only mayfly nymphs left anywhere lived alongside the island and opposite the shingle banks and downstream from the fallen willow and most of these were trapped in their tunnels by the tangled threads that grew over each entrance like a lain snare. Even the nymphs that managed to leave their tunnels died because they got caught in the threads and webs and the stabbers and the biters and the things that rejoiced were able to clamber up and reach them.
The sun burned hot as a brazier on the day that the old man moved to the village because of the young man’s coming wedding, though it cast only a cool light through the blue glass roof above the new arcade where the old man sometimes sat on a bench and saw the convenience of the supermarket and the doctor’s surgery and the chemist’s shop and the leisure centre for the youngsters and all the other new facilities that had been built in no time.
The sun put rainbows in the spray that arched over the wide, flat fields from the pipes the young man had linked to boreholes of his own. It cast long, tilting shadows across the wall of the room where the family that only seemed to get together for weddings and funerals was talking after the young man and his bride and the other guests had gone.
The sun streamed in while they all talked about the wedding and the wonderful weather, then the old man said there was something unnatural about the heat and his bronzed young niece said it could stay unnatural forever as far as she was concerned.
The sun slipped behind the small, white cloud while the old man’s brother said everyone was saying it was to do with gases in the atmosphere or something and while his other brother was saying at least governments were getting together and talking about things now. The sun slid from behind the small cloud as the half-cousin from Australia who had to fly back the next day was saying that talking was all some governments ever would do and that there was masses of pollution to come yet because who believed China or India or anyone else would hold back their own growth while the west went on polluting to achieve growth of its own.
The sun dazzled the young woman in the corner so much that she had to shield her own eyes with one hand and the eyes of the little girl on her knee with the other. She said that if it really was something to do with changes in the climate because of gases in the atmosphere, the gases were already up there and could not be brought down and it was probably too late to change anything now. Nobody smiled when she said ‘thank you one and all on behalf of my children’ or when the spring behind the farm suddenly dropped.
Year 5, June
it was soon after the spring behind the farm dropped suddenly that the trout with the scar moved forward again; soon after the low water in the hills must have been drained below some critical point so that the stream seemed to sink softly into its bed and the brown line that wound down the whole of its length to the river widened noticeably and the top of the gnarled log where the salmon used to meet and lift and soar like young things, rose up through the surface like a dinosaur’s back.
The trout with the scar moved so suddenly that the leeches seemed taken by surprise. The leech that was trying to get into his gills nearly lost her grip and the two holding themselves straight out from between his eyes like pointing antennae were swept back along his head in the slipstream he created.
When the trout with the scar and the huge head and the thin body and the leeches all over him moved forward, all the fish behind him moved forward as though attached to him by strings and towed.
There seemed a leadenness in them all. It was as though the hollowness in their long, thin flanks and the dullness in their eyes and the stones that every fish seemed to have in its head weighed them down; or that the water had somehow become thicker or more resistant when they moved their gills.
The gaunt trout that had been the first among the male fish to have a hooked jaw and a huge head and become blind in one eye followed the trout with the scar. The hen fish from below the three posts, the one that was beginning to look more like an eel, went after them.
Some other fish moved in behind the three big fish and then the little cock fish that was leaking fluids and odours he should not have had inside him followed, even though the threads of chokeweed kept reaching for him and stroking him. The little hen fish that carried the seeds of eggs that could never mature moved forward behind the little cock fish, even though the chokeweed here and there draped itself over her eyes and fingered her gills and tried to get into her mouth when she opened it. The tiniest of the fish in the stream followed, keeping low.
It was, when they moved, as though the stream had been reduced to grottos and caves. It was as though the world had been draped with green rags and brown rags and was closing in; as though everywhere the fish went, tentacles explored them and sly fingers caressed.
All the fish that had gathered in the pool by the willow moved towards the falls on the day that the main landscaping began in readiness for the Minister’s visit. It was the thing in the water that made them go: the thing in the water and the pressure on their gills and the clutches that kept catching at their hearts at night. It was the images that the law of continuing had put inside them when they were young that drew them on. The big fish saw in their heads again the boiling whiteness of the falls and the coolness of the water and the lightness that the fizzing bubbles made. The younger fish followed because the big fish went.
When all the fish had passed around the end of the stump where the leech had lain in ambush; when they had passed through the shaft of sunlight that slanted through the space in the webbed roof and they had all seen the mites and the fleas and the small creatures that pedalled through it wondrously lit; when they had forced their way through the places on the stream bed where the water raced as though through tunnels because the chokeweed hemmed it in and pressed it down; when they had edged around the stiff fish that was jammed sideways in front of them
with its wide eyes grey and with its jaws gagged open and with the threads of chokeweed caught on its teeth; when they had eventually entered the dim grotto beneath the place where the martins used to nest and had settled again among the webs and the torn rags and the tentacles that explored and the fingers that caressed, the little cock fish that was partly a hen fish, wobbled.
It was not a great movement. It was simply that the little fish that had for a long time seemed to be finding the thickness of the water too much and the pressure on his gills too great, moved a little forward and wobbled a little and righted himself.
All the fish in the long line ahead of him caught the flash from the little trout’s flank and some tilted around the dishes of their eyes to see what it was, but most looked straight ahead as though their eyes were leaden.
The little trout lay still for a long time after that, pressing out with his gills as hard as he could against the thing in the water that seemed to press them in. Then, as evening approached and the gloom about him deepened, the little cock fish that had been changed in his secret places in a way no fish should have been changed and that had been putting confusing odours into the water since he had been born, wobbled again and became agitated.
The little cock fish moved as though seized and used. He dashed forward and whirled around and around and looped and spiralled near the trout with the scar, though neither the trout with the scar nor any of the fish behind him turned to look.