Jon McGregor - Reservoir 13

Martin told Tony he wouldn’t send Ruth a Valentine’s card. He knew it was over between them, he said, although he didn’t fully understand what had actually gone wrong. She’d said nothing about the card the previous year. He knew that trying to fix things between them only gave her a chance to feel sorry for him. He definitely wouldn’t send her a card. On the fourteenth he bought a card and posted it to her house, and on the back of the envelope he said he hoped she didn’t mind it being late. The quarry was busy again for a time. They were working a new face, and blasting frequently. The trees along the road were all heavily dusted, and no one had hung washing outside for weeks. There was a want of rain to clear the air. If Andrew was home when the siren went Irene had to be sure to be with him. There was an anxiety it brought out in him that seemed more in keeping with the way the birds flew away or the sheep lunged over to the far side of the field. As a boy he’d just covered his ears and screamed. Now it was more of the headshaking and yelping to himself, but if she stood near him that seemed to be enough. She wondered if his head held the sound in the same place as it held his father. She wasn’t sure what he remembered of his father. But it was never simple. What he knew and didn’t know. People explained things to her, about what they said was his capacity, and often they turned out to be wrong. When the siren went at the quarry she wanted to hold him but he wouldn’t be held. She could only stand nearby. He’d been strong enough to throw her off for years. Some days the siren sounded five or six times. From the eaves of the church the first bats were seen leaving at dusk, hungry from a long winter’s sleep and listening for food.

On the moors the gamekeepers from the estate were burning off squares of heather. It was hot, vigilant work. They’d waited for a day when the heather was dry but the peat still damp, and for a low wind blowing downhill, and then they’d marked out their squares and were walking behind a line of fire, damping it down with flat rubber shovels, pushing the flame down the hill until it reached the break they’d already cut. The smell of the smoke carried down to the village. Cooper opened the windows in the flat above the converted stables and let it blow in. The place was empty. Su had taken the twins to her parents in Manchester. There’d been a lot of talk and when it finally happened she’d made the decision sound mutual. There were practical reasons. It would be temporary. She was exhausted and she needed the rest. Her parents would enjoy spending time with the boys. She had to commit to projects at the BBC before the door closed on her career for good, and this way her mother could have the boys while she worked. Austin was too busy with the village magazine, she knew that, he couldn’t deny that. There wasn’t room for him to stay with her parents as well. They could both do with some space. It would only be temporary. He wanted to believe her but he wasn’t stupid. He stood in the empty flat. She had the boys’ clothes, their nappies, their toys. It was difficult for him to take on board. The flat seemed much bigger. This didn’t have to be about them, she’d said. She wasn’t leaving him, she wanted to see him soon. She just needed a rest. She needed someone to look after her for a while. They would find a way through this. His first wife had said these same things, and she’d never come back. He wasn’t going to let that happen all over again. He knew how much was at stake. He slept very little and in the morning he was outside the estate agent’s office in town before nine o’clock, waiting for them to open.

After a week of rains there were warm still days and the plots at the allotment went wild. The nettles and cow parsley came up in swathes, the bindweed trumpeting through the hedges, and the regulars on the committee took note. In his greenhouse Clive potted courgettes and French beans, and watched Susanna Wright go at her plot with a pair of garden shears. Ashleigh was running round with a stick, scything the heads off the nettles and making more headway than her mother. Susanna stopped often to stretch her back, pulling her hair away from her face and tying it up. She had a very straight back, when she stretched like that. On one such occasion she caught sight of him and waved enthusiastically. He nodded. The greenhouse was hot in the long afternoon sun, and he gave the pots a good misting. Later she came over to say hello and talk about how much weeding she had to do. She was looking for sympathy, it seemed. Last time I was here there was nothing to worry about, she said. And look at it now, it’s like a jungle. She was laughing, apparently with surprise. Clive nodded. Weeds will do that, he said. It’ll not take long. It was two weeks since her last visit and what did she expect. She’d spent that whole afternoon painting a bench. So. Cooper was spending more time in the Gladstone, while Su and the twins were in Manchester. He’d been trying to downplay the situation, saying it was understandable that she wanted to be with her mother at a difficult time, saying there was no doubt they’d be back soon enough, but it was generally understood that the man was in bits. He finally conceded to Tony at the bar one evening that he was finding things tough. There was a constant churning in his stomach, he said, a dread that things might stay like this. Martin asked if he’d tried Rennie’s for the churning, and Tony told him to knock it off. I don’t even know what it is, Cooper said. Adrenalin? I can’t relax. I can’t think of anything else. Have you tried yoga? Martin said, and Tony gave him a final-warning look. That’s very good, Cooper said. Thank you. But really though. This is new to me. I never felt like this with my first wife. When she said she was leaving. I don’t remember feeling like this. I know I just need to give her time, okay, people say that, give her time. But what if the time’s not enough? What if she doesn’t come back? What if she’s already met someone else? Martin signalled to Tony to pour a whisky, and passed it along to Cooper. Get this down you, lad, he said. You think that’s going to help, Cooper asked; honestly? Not really, Martin said. But it’ll shut you up for a bit. There was some laughter, and Cooper tipped the whisky into his mouth, sitting in silence for a few minutes, rubbing at his churning stomach. In the evenings there were showers that came and went, flashing across the valley with the promise of bright sun always behind. There was the sound of a freight train, edging around the bend through the silver birch trees, the empty wagons clattering over the bridge.

The girl had been looked for at the flooded quarry. The fence had been checked for damage or signs of being climbed. The divers had roped up and slipped into the dark. She had been looked for in the caves along the river, and in those cramped spaces only cans and bottles and wadded tissues had been found. On the high embankment the river keeper cleared out a drainage ditch. Where it ran under the road someone had gone to the trouble of bagging up their rubbish before dumping it in. There was the usual mess of brambles to cut back. The rain was heavy and the work was wet, but the sound of the water passing through the pipes under the road was a welcome one. Come summer and the river would be in fine condition. The keeper wasn’t a man for whistling while he worked but his mood was good. In the evening Susanna got the hall ready for yoga. It had taken a while but by now the classes were more popular than some had assumed they might be. She kept saying it was open to everyone, but whenever a man showed up he found himself the only one there and soon decided not to come back. Most of the women were regulars, and after a few months some of them were disappointed by how few poses they could hold. Susanna tried to tell them yoga wasn’t about goals. There are no badges or certificates here, she said; it’s all about finding your own point of stretch. Her voice always softened when she spoke like this, when she moved among them making small adjustments to their arms, their shoulders, their legs. Her touch was gentle and firm. To be adjusted by Susanna meant being the centre of her attention for a moment, and some of the women suspected the others of holding an incorrect posture on purpose. In the woodland by the river there were yellow pimpernels spreading along the banks, their glossy green leaves drinking in the shade and their small yellow flowers like spots of light. At the heronry there were new chicks high in the nests and a flap of parents fetching food back to the gaping mouths. Cooper had spent a lot of time in Manchester with Su while she stayed at her parents’, and after two months of driving backwards and forwards he persuaded her to come home with the boys. From the way Su talked about it later it didn’t sound as though he’d persuaded her so much as that he simply hadn’t given up. Sometimes reliability can be very attractive, she told Cathy. And my mum was doing my nut in to be honest. They found a buyer for their flat almost immediately, but had trouble finding a place they could afford. In the end they went for an ex-council house on the Close, which had none of the character of the stables but did have an extra bedroom and a garden with a swing and a washing line and a gate opening into the woods. They borrowed money from her family to make up the difference, and Cooper moved the magazine office into a side room at the church. By the river the bright young leaves of the willows flashed with light.