Jon McGregor - Reservoir 13

In his studio Geoff Simmons threw a new batch of pots. Yesterday’s were drying slowly at the back of the workshop, and the kiln was beginning to warm. He pressed a ball of clay on to the wet wheel and centred it off. The whippet slept in the sun. He palmed the spinning clay and drew it taller and fingered it into a vessel. The wall worked thinner in his hands. Throw lines formed on the surface and the water flowed out from the wheel. There were years of learnt discretion in these moves. It couldn’t be shown. The pressure of his touch was exactly sufficient and this pot from the clay came to be. He slowed the wheel and shaped the brim. There was a bellying in and out that he liked to impose, and a curl at the lip. Customers sometimes asked if these were vases or jugs or drinking cups and he said only that they were vessels. He had been accused of being obtuse. On the rug the whippet kicked her back legs, dreaming of sprinting across fields. In the quarry by the main road the small coppers were mating again. There were swallows nesting high in the barns, the eggs glossy white and speckled red beneath the fluffed feathers of the mothers. In the woodland by the river the bluebells were massing. The clay for the well dressing was cut from the wet end of the Hunters’ land, and carried up to the village hall. The men puddled it in a tin bath, stomping up and down while Irene kept adding water until she declared the consistency just right. When it was done Gordon Jackson went back to the Hunter place and asked Jess if she wanted to go for a drive. This had been mentioned. There’d been talk of wind turbines on the high ground overlooking Reservoir no. 9, and she wanted to get the lie of the land. She said she had some concerns. He thought there might be something else. Stuart Hunter was away. She’d been baking and she asked him to hang on while she got cleaned up. When she was ready she got into the Land Rover with him and they drove out past the visitor centre along the track leading up to the ridge. Gordon had a key for the gates. The track was deeply rutted and she bounced in her seat a few times and once there was a quick, embarrassed laugh and she reached out to grab at his arm. Eye contact, careful silence. There was a pattern but it was never routine. This had been developing for a time. At the top of the hill they stood against the Land Rover and he let her think the first kiss was her idea. He’d scrubbed his nails. She talked a lot and she had no shame about what they were doing. She wanted to be looked at and he took his time. Afterwards he wondered whether for once there might be something in it and he could see by the way she buttoned her blouse that there wouldn’t. He was just catching his breath and she already wanted to leave. She offered him a smile that made him want to sit down. He wondered how much concrete they’d need for the wind-turbine foundations, and whether they would build a new road to bring it in.

Sophie Hunter and Lynsey Smith went to a party in town and made a mess of the arrangements for getting home. They had no money for a taxi so they decided to walk. It should only have been four miles but they took a wrong turn in the woods in the dark. It was funny for a time but then they were scared at the trouble they’d be in. You know what my dad’s like about being late, Sophie said. He’ll have already called the police. It’s not just your dad, Lynsey said, it’s all of them. Lynsey was carrying her shoes and the mud was coming thick between her toes. They’d seen some car headlights and were heading down towards the road. I wouldn’t mind but it was a shit party anyway, Sophie said. She tried to laugh but she heard Lynsey crying. She turned back and reached for her hand. She could barely see her face in the dark. It won’t be far now, come on, you. Sophie, fucking hell, Sophie. They’ll be so pleased to see us they’ll forget to tell us off. Come on. I just wish. Lynsey, no. I just wish we knew what had happened to her. Lynsey; Jesus, again? Leave it out. They came out on the road by the cement works, and walked up the hill towards the village without speaking. The fourth car that came past was Mike Jackson and he gave them a lift. They were both kept home for a fortnight, and soon afterwards were given their own mobile phones, paid for by Sophie’s parents and meant for emergency use only. Olivia immediately wanted one as well, but was told she was too young. Jess Hunter made Sophie help Irene with the cleaning work in the barn conversions for that fortnight, and Irene worked her hard. Irene took the work seriously. She was quick but she didn’t take shortcuts. People employed her because they knew they wouldn’t have to check. It was the same at home. One thing Ted had always said was she kept the place decent. If you knew Ted you knew that was high talk. He’d never been much help himself, bringing all that dust in on his clothes and his boots. And the bath, when he was done, at the end of a week in the quarry. Like someone had used it to mix cement. This had been how it was. He worked out of the house, she worked in the house. It was only fair. And that included Andrew. If the boy was up in the night it was only fair that she go to him. Ted was older than her by nearly a decade, and too old for that type of carry-on. She’d been close to forty herself when Andrew was born, and sometimes she didn’t know where the energy came from. If the boy was having one of his fits then Ted was entitled to stay in his chair, the days he’d had. This wasn’t something they’d negotiated. He liked the house to be quiet, and clean. It wasn’t too much to ask. But now that he wasn’t around she had more time to take on other cleaning work around the village. Cleaning was what she knew. She finished up and walked home the long way, cutting through the higher fields behind the Jackson place and the square. She had a little time before Andrew was back. The hard-baked footpath parted a way through the ripening grass. She felt the sun on her arms. She looked up to the moors. Years since the route of the Greystone Way had been moved and there were still deep ruts in the peat across the top of the moor, some of the walkers insisting on the original path, the eroded line widening steadily as people sidestepped the deepest mud. What was there to be done. The butterflies were out. The fieldfares were away, raising their young in the colder north.

In July Will and Claire were married. The church was full of people who’d known them since childhood. Jackson was brought down in his wheelchair, dressed in a new suit he’d had bought for him on account of his changing size. There was food at the Gladstone, and dancing in the village hall. Gordon Jackson was seen dancing with Susanna Wright, but nothing seemed to come of it. Susanna and her children had become known about the place. She was volunteering at the playgroup in the village hall, and had kept going with the yoga class. She’d taken on an allotment, and put her name down for the pantomime. She was quick to talk to people, and even Irene had said it was likely she’d settle in. The boy Rohan had made a decent stab at his GCSEs despite the disruption, and had sparked up a romance with Lynsey Smith. They were seen walking together, down by the river or through the beech wood, but more often they were just in the bus shelter by the cricket ground, kissing until their faces were raw. There were jokes made in the Gladstone, and even Susanna wondered when they would find somewhere private. She’d long since put a condom in his wallet to be on the safe side, and happened to know it was still there. Ashleigh had made friends at school but there was only Olivia Hunter who was her age in the village. She spent a lot of time on the computer. At the allotments Martin sat on the bench at the top end of their plot. Ruth’s plot now, although she’d raised no objection to him spending a little time there. She was making a better job of the place on her own than the two of them had done together. He didn’t mind admitting that. It meant something. It said something about the two of them. Or perhaps she was getting help. From someone he didn’t know about. It could be that. It could have been that all along. They could be looking at him now — Mr Wilson stooping over his asparagus beds, Clive forking out his compost — and pitying him for what he didn’t know. This wasn’t a line of thinking that helped, of course. He’d been advised. There were steps he could take, to steer around this line of thinking. He straightened his back and lifted his head and made himself a larger vessel for the difficult feelings. He looked outside himself and took other sensory information on board. He listed the plants he could see. Gooseberries and strawberries and currants; sweetcorn and courgettes and beans; nasturtiums and marigolds, sweet william, sweet peas; spinach, lettuce, kale. Nettles, cow parsley, thistles, bindweed. Plenty of bloody bindweed. Whoever the bugger was he wasn’t much of a gardener after all, leaving all that weeding to be done. He opened the tap on the bottom of the water butt and set off down the hill. He had another go at being mindful but mostly he minded a drink. Tents were seen up at the Stone Sisters, and there was talk of an environmental group setting up a protest camp against the new quarry. Les Thompson walked his fields in the evening while the sun was still warm on the grass. The heads were up and the cut would come tomorrow. In the beech wood the fox cubs were taken away from their dens and taught to find food for themselves. A white hooded top was found in a clough on the top of the moor, oiled a deep peat-brown and fraying at the seams. The make and design were confirmed as a match by the missing girl’s mother. The forensic tests took weeks and were inconclusive. Extensive searches were conducted where the top had been found but nothing further was unearthed.