Jon McGregor - Reservoir 13

The clocks went forward and the evenings opened up and the days stood a little straighter on their feet. The catkins came out on the willows by the river and swung wildly in the wind. The allotment sycamores dropped a branch on the old Tucker place and took off a dozen slates. The rain got in and soon afterwards a For Sale sign went up. In her back garden Su Cooper drank a coffee while the boys kicked a ball. They kept asking if they could go through the gate and into the woods, and she was telling them to just please wait until she’d finished her drink. She let the coffee sit cold in her mug. We won’t go far, Lee said. We’ll stay where you can see us. Just wait, she asked them again. Always asking them to wait, it felt like. Just a few minutes more. Let me finish my coffee. She was holding a trowel in one hand; she’d come out planning to deal with the plants that had been sitting around since she’d brought them back from the garden centre a fortnight ago. But really she needed to get on her laptop and answer a string of emails about the series proposal that was due in the next day. The early feedback hadn’t been great and the project felt sketchy. The idea of tracing the origins of urban dialect words was a good one, but they were lacking a narrative drive. She needed time to talk to her colleagues and develop the proposal further, but Austin would be out until after the boys were in bed. They’d been restless all morning, and had got into a fight when she’d tried to take ten minutes at the laptop. She’d have to work on it after they were asleep, and hope her colleagues would still be available to talk to by then. She needed a fresh coffee. The boys were opening the gate to the woods, and shouting something about wolves, looking back at her. She put the trowel down and ran towards them, howling and raising her hands like claws. They shrieked, and scattered into the trees, and she had to choose quickly which one to chase down and devour. There were fresh elections to the parish council, and Brian Fletcher was re-elected chair. Janice Green continued as secretary. Miriam Pearson stood down, and as usual was replaced by her husband, William. The lambing was coming to an end and the Jackson boys were worn out. There had been talk of bringing in help but there was no way of making it pay. These later ewes were all lambing outdoors and when the weather was fine there was some pleasure in watching them take care of themselves. The way one would circle and paw and take herself off to a corner of the field, the way the new lambs stood and looked about in surprise. But there were others who needed all manner of helping. They kept their sleeves rolled and the lubricant to hand.

In April the first swallows were seen and the walkers were back on the hills. Richard Clark’s mother had another fall while he was staying with her. He’d only been back for a few hours, and was upstairs writing an email. The woman he was seeing had wanted to come with him and meet his mother. This wasn’t how he saw things between them. There’d been some discontent and she’d sent another email. He was trying to straighten it out when he heard a thump from the kitchen. His mother was already picking herself up by the time he got downstairs, levering herself to her knees and pausing for breath, a toppled chair beside her. Oh, would you look at me, she said. Too much haste, rushing about. No harm done. Richard righted the chair and helped her into it, and asked if she’d been to the doctor about this. There’s no medicine for tripping over, she laughed, lightly. But do you feel dizzy? he asked. Faint? It’s nothing a cup of tea won’t fix, she insisted. Richard got her settled in the front room and took her some tea and cake. He texted his sister to tell her what had happened, and she texted back to say she couldn’t talk just then. He stood in the doorway, texting a reply, and looked at his mother. He wondered why none of them had yet moved back to live with her, to give her the care she needed. This wasn’t how she’d brought them up. Later he saw Cathy and they went walking through the woods with Mr Wilson’s dog. He apologised to her again for not going to Patrick’s funeral, and she stopped. There was an expression on her face that was halfway between laughter and irritation. Richard, she said. Why are you talking about this again? What are you trying to fix? I don’t know, he said. It’s just that I feel bad about it. I know I should have done something. But Richard, this is water under the bridge, you know that, don’t you? It was just impossible, he said, with work. They walked on through a clearing, and it took a moment for their eyes to adjust to the light. She didn’t understand where he was going with this. Patrick was a good man, he said; I never held a grudge. You could have written, she told him, and he nodded. We coped though, she said, if that’s what you’re worried about? I actually managed, can you believe it? I kept busy. There was plenty to deal with. Paperwork. Finances. People who came around wanting to make things better. I was Stuart Hunter’s new best friend for a while there. He was after the timber yard. I wanted to hang on to it. I thought the boys might be interested in taking it on once they were done at university, but they really weren’t. And it needed someone to keep it working straight off. Stuart offered us a good price. I’ve never liked the man, to be honest. But it was a good price. Nelson had got left behind somewhere, and when they called him he didn’t come back. Cathy went back to look for him, and found him fussing over an old walking jacket or body-warmer, navy blue, with the lining ripped and the stuffing spilling out. She pulled him away, and went to catch up with Richard.

At dusk the men from Culshaw Hall were out shooting pigeons. They’d been taking feed from the pheasant pens and were well up in number. Each time the shots cracked through the evening the pigeons in Mr Wilson’s garden spilled into the air. The areas of moorland that had been burnt back in February were already flush with new growth, green squares in the patchwork of heather. A full moon rose over the reservoirs and flooded them with pale light. The nights were warm and slow and the bats fed for hours on the flushed crops of insects which came up from the water. The female bats moved away from their winter roosts and gathered together to breed. The days started brightly and the village was humming with life. In the churchyard yew a male goldcrest sang with the urgency demanded by spring. Rohan Wright found out about Lynsey and James. He told them he understood but he didn’t. Neither of them saw him around for a while. He put a band together with some friends from town, and was using the village hall for rehearsals. There were complaints about the noise, but the committee felt strongly that the young people were entitled to make use of the facilities. They were asked to refrain from rehearsing any songs with language. Jackson hadn’t got much better, but nor was he getting any worse. A care nurse came in three times a week to help him do his exercises, and either his speech had improved or his family had got better at understanding what he wanted to say. He was able to take himself to the downstairs bathroom, and only needed a little help getting dressed. But he had to use the wheelchair if he wanted to go further than the yard, and that wasn’t often. Maisie had Molly at home two days a week to give Claire a break, and Jackson’s eyes always shone when she was in the room. At the village hall the puddled clay was pressed into the dressing boards, resting on trestles in the centre of the room, while everyone stood by with the mosses and petals and bark they’d been gathering all week. There was an expectant atmosphere, of people looking forward to a job they knew would be hard and long. There was a morning mist, milky and thick, burning off as the sun poured into the valley. From the river by the weir a heron hoisted itself upwards, its feet dragging limply behind. It climbed quickly over the trees towards the quarry. Along the roads and in the uncut edges of fields the first wildflowers were thriving.