Jon McGregor: Reservoir 13

At midnight when the year turned there were fireworks from the Hunter place. The sound carried suddenly to the village hall and for a moment people wondered what it was. Irene was called out from the kitchen and asked to take Andrew home as he’d become agitated. At the next parish council the Hunters were asked not to repeat the display. When term started Rohan Wright caught the bus to the secondary school in town with Liam and James and Lynsey and Sophie. They’d seen him around the village but they hadn’t yet spoken. There were nods and he told them his name. They asked where he’d moved from and he said south of London. Liam asked if his mum was the hippy who was going to run yoga classes, and the others told him to shut up. I’m not being funny, I’m just saying, he said. My mum’s well into yoga. She knows Yuri Gagarin and everything. There were so many ways this didn’t make sense that no one quite knew what to say. You know, he explained, incredulously. The spoon-bender! Your mum’s a bender, Lynsey said, and James gave her a high-five. The bus turned on to the main road by her parents’ farm-supplies place, and they asked Rohan questions about his old school all the way to town. Cathy Harris drove past the bus in the other direction, and when she got home she knocked on Mr Wilson’s door and asked whether Nelson needed a walk. He said that would be a great help, and asked whether she’d have a cup of tea first. A routine of theirs, this, to make the arrangement seem temporary, when in fact Cathy had been walking Nelson most days for years. Mr Wilson’s hip made it hard for him to get up the hill and as far as the shop, let alone the hour’s brisk stride that Nelson hankered after all day. A cup of tea would be lovely, she said, bracing herself for the thud of Nelson jumping up against her. Mr Wilson closed the door and walked slowly to the kettle. The Millennium Millstones were pushed off their plinths, and Sean Hooper was contracted to repair them. By the packhorse bridge a heron paced through the mud at the river’s edge, head bobbing, feet lifted awkwardly high. It stopped, and settled, and watched the water.

In February there was no snow but the frosts were hard. Ruth was sent a Valentine’s card and knew that it came from Martin. The best response would be silence, she decided. At Reservoir no. 7, the maintenance team checked the upstream face of the dam, looking for erosion along the edge of the crest. There were cracks of ice in the shallow puddles along the path. Susanna Wright held her first yoga class in the village hall. There were only three people there, and because the room was too cold for safe stretching she spent the session talking about What Yoga Is and What Yoga Isn’t. She said she’d speak to the caretaker about the heating, and then she asked who the caretaker was. The County sent someone to clear the old quarry down by the main road. The two burnt-out cars had been a beacon for every fly-tipper in the area, and it took three trucks to cart it away. Where’s it all come from? Martin asked Tony, as they stood up on the cliff above the quarry, watching. Where’s it all going is more the point, said Tony. They’re only going to stick it in some other hole in the ground. Might as well leave it here. Wait while the quarry’s full and then bury it all. Plant some fucking trees. Job done. There were gulls and crows circling overhead. Jones was with them but he had nothing to say. Martin headed off down the road to work. He’d taken a job on the meat counter in the new supermarket. He hadn’t told people but they found out soon enough. They all shopped there, after all. It felt like the final humiliation, after Bruce, and the shop, and Ruth. But the hours were fine and although the pay wasn’t great it was more in his pocket than he’d had when they were running the shop into the ground. They gave him a striped apron and a badge saying Master Butcher , but it wasn’t butchery. The meat came in ready-jointed, and he was just there to hand it over. He didn’t even have his good knives. They were locked in the shop, and the stroppy young bollock from the bank was refusing to let him have them back. He’d been in the job three months now, and his supervisor said there were no complaints as such but did he want to have a think about engaging with the customers a little more? Martin said he would certainly think about that, and went out to the loading bay for a smoke and a kick of the packing cases which were stacked there. The sun went down around half past four but it was already dark by then, the murky light blotted out by the high moors and the gathering clouds.

There was weather, and branches from the allotment sycamores blew on to the roof of the Tucker house next door to Jones. The place had been empty now for seven years. There was a dispute to be settled before it could be sold, but no one seemed to know what it was or who might be involved. Jones went up a ladder and took the branches down. He checked the slates. His sister watched from the front of the house. These things made her anxious. She would ask about them often until they were resolved. He told her the slates were fine and he put the ladder away. She went into the house. The woodpigeons built their nests in the trees by the river. The thin frame of sticks seemed barely enough to take the weight of one fat bird. But it was assumed they knew what they were doing. Cooper was seen working late on the magazine, hard up against the deadline once again. He enjoyed these last pressured hours. It reminded him of working on The Times , years back, before he’d come up here to do press for the National Park. There was that same sense of hurried exactitude, of getting one chance only to check everything through. There were differences, of course. The deadlines now were only a matter of his own pride, for one thing. And there was no one else in the office, which meant no one to go for drinks with once the issue was put to bed. The whole office was silent, in fact. He could hear the footsteps of the boys upstairs, hammering backwards and forwards, and Su’s muffled voice as she tried to get their pyjamas on. She sounded exhausted, and part of him wanted to go up and take over. But he knew it wouldn’t help, and that Su wouldn’t thank him for it. She hadn’t been in the mood for thanking him lately. He’d been getting things wrong, it seemed. Doing too much, or too little. She’d fallen behind on some projects at work, and been asked to take unpaid leave. A view had been taken about her home-working arrangements, and she seemed to hold him responsible in some way. It was stressful having young children. He understood this. It would pass. He printed off the final proof sheets, and leant over them with a poised red pen. Outside the wind was brisk through the trees. In the band of conifers above Reservoir no. 5 a pair of buzzards rebuilt their nest from the previous year, weaving in new sticks and lining the shallow bowl of it with fresh bracken and grass.

By April the first swallows were seen and the walkers were back on the hills. At the heronry high in the trees above the quarry there was a persistent unsettledness of wings. Night came down. At the allotments the water was turned back on for the year and Clive was the first to get his hose hooked up, the silvery water skidding across the ground before seeping into the cracks. There was blasting again at the quarry, and when the first siren came everyone ignored the long rising wail. The second siren came a few minutes later, and anyone with washing on the line was quick to bring it inside. The third siren went and the birds flung up from the trees in the quarry and scattered, and the air stilled for a moment before the deep thudding crack thundered out through the ground and was gone. At the first all-clear the birds settled in the trees. At the second the workers in the quarry went back. In the village the windows were kept closed for a few hours more until the dust had cleared. At the river the keeper dropped the cage of sample bottles into the water from the footbridge by the weir. Always the same spot, at the same time of day, on the same day of the month. Meanwhile there were two chaps who looked like they were scouting for fishing spots, and he wanted a word. He passed Irene on her way up to the church with two bags full of flowers. When she got there she heard singing from the vestry, and it kept on while she gathered the vases. She wasn’t much of a judge but it was quite a piece of singing. Took a few moments to realise it was the vicar, because you didn’t hear her singing like that in a morning service. She didn’t recognise the tune and she could barely make out the words but there was something capturing about it. The high bright windows and the dust in the air and the smell of wood polish and Irene standing there with her arms full of flowers not wanting to move. Faintly another siren sounded at the quarry, and the singing stopped. Late in the month the Spring Dance was held in aid of Amnesty, which was controversial for those who thought politics should be kept out of it but was pushed through by Jane Hughes. It was agreed that no publicity material would be displayed as it could detract from the mood of the event. Some folk do find that manner of talk puts them off the hog roast, Clive told the meeting. His remark was carefully minuted. The police did a presentation on crime prevention at the Gladstone, and while everyone was in there someone took off with a stock trailer the Jacksons had left on Top Road. There were some who thought this story was funny when they told it but they were soon set straight.