Jon McGregor - Reservoir 13

At the end of his first year of university, James Broad drove his things back to the village and put them in the bedroom that had once been his. He’d been told he needed to do sorting out in preparation for the move. Neither of his parents could afford to buy the other out of the house, so they were selling up altogether. His mother was buying an ex-council flat at the end of the Close, and his father was moving away. James didn’t know what he would do. They’d told him he was free to choose. Sophie Hunter had failed her end-of-year exams, and come home unsure of what she needed to do to even qualify for her second year. Her mother told her she’d be able to resit them, surely, but that it wouldn’t be the end of the world to retake the year. Her father said that no matter what happened they were proud of her and they loved her. It was the obvious effort it took to say these things that stayed with Sophie. She felt as though she was the one who needed to make them feel better. Her mother was under the impression that a year of wild partying had got in the way of studying, but the truth was she had just found the work too hard. I do understand that this is a time for discovering yourself, her mother said; and if you can’t party out when you’re young then when can you? Sophie told her it wasn’t like that. There aren’t even that many parties, she said. I am doing the work, I’m just doing it badly. Her mother dropped her voice, and asked if Sophie was using protection. Sophie held up a hand and asked her to stop. It’s not like it was in my day. Just so long as you stay true to yourself. Sophie put her fingers in her ears and told her loudly that she couldn’t hear. Jess Hunter smiled fondly at her daughter. She could remember doing exactly the same thing to her own mother when she was that age. At the top of the meadows by the river the ox-eye daisies were thick through the knee-high grass. In the long grass around the cricket field the first skippers were emerging from their pupae and unfolding their wet wings. There were second clutches of swallows successfully fledged and their white flashing underbellies curved through the evening. The Workers’ Educational Association group took an IT-skills course. There was some awkwardness when a question was anonymously submitted about how to avoid stumbling on sites with excessively adult content. Brian Fletcher asked what the hell was meant by excessively adult, and nobody wanted to explain.

Susanna Wright opened a shop in the old Tucker hardware place, selling crafts and gifts and greetings cards. She stocked a good range of pottery and Geoff Simmons was known to have taken offence. His studio shop was further out of the village and he was always struggling for trade. Susanna offered to stock his work but he declined. His reasons were mumbled but she heard him say knick-knacks and took offence of her own. He wasn’t invited to the opening party and he wouldn’t have gone if he was. There was sparkling wine and bunting in the street, and a man in a waistcoat who stood outside playing an accordion and trying to catch someone’s eye. People took pleasure in a new business being opened, although it was assumed that only tourists would buy the manner of thing she was selling. Cooper took a picture of Susanna with Rohan and Ashleigh outside the shop, the accordion man leaning in to the shot and all of them raising their glasses. The picture went on the front cover of the Valley Echo , and Ashleigh posted it on her Facebook page. In the morning the sun was high by the time Thompson’s men had finished the milking and washed out the parlour. They scraped out the muck and hosed down the surfaces, the water running greenish-brown and then clear into the drains outside. They went back to the house for breakfast. They’d been up three hours already. There’d be more money in pouring the milk straight down the drain. If the prices didn’t pick up soon it would be impossible to carry on. But there was nothing else. The reservoirs were like beaten pewter. A caravan appeared in Brian Fletcher’s orchard, wedged between the brambles by the gateway. There was moss in the window frames and silver tape across a crack in the panelling. It wasn’t known what Fletcher had in mind. At the heronry the nests were almost abandoned and the ground was littered with fallen sticks. The heather was in full bloom and the purple of it spread across the hills. There was rain for a week before the cricket match and no chance of play but the Cardwell team were entertained at the Gladstone all the same. A darts match was played to settle the trophy, which Cardwell carried comfortably home yet again. Mike Jackson told his family he was planning to emigrate. This place is never going to split five ways, he said. Maisie waved at him to quieten down and Simon slipped through to the sun room to turn up the TV. Any normal family would have settled this by now, but we’re supposed to just hang on and see what surprises Dad’s got in his will? He thinks he can sit in there and run the farm by remote control, but he hasn’t got a clue. You know that. We should have diversified years ago, expanded, taken on loans. Maisie was watching him talk but she couldn’t really hear. She was thinking about how far Australia was, and the certainty that she’d never go. It’s just for a while then, is it? she asked. They’re crying out for experienced men down there, Mike said. It’s good money. You can save up enough to come back and set yourself up then, in a year or two? There’s cheap land in the northern territories, he said. Grants and everything. But it’ll just be temporary? Mike looked at her. He was her youngest. He was the last. It’s only Australia, Mum. It’s not the moon.

The summer had been wet but in September the skies cleared and the mud in the lanes was baked into thick-edged ruts. There were springtails under the beech trees behind the Close, burrowing and feeding on the fragments of fallen leaves, and somewhere deep in the pile a male laid a ring of sperm. A blackbird’s nest was blown from the elder tree at the entrance to the Hunter place, the mud mortar crumbled and the grasses scattered as chaff. Tony produced an arrangement of hops for the Harvest Festival display, and it was certainly striking but there were some who felt the pungent smell was out of place in a church. Jones’s sister was seen at the post office, buying packaging paper and string, and this was understood as some kind of a breakthrough. Irene sometimes told people that Jones’s sister had been at her wedding, and had been the very life and soul. Such a shame, what happened, she would say. As though anyone actually knew. On Sunday in the evening Brian and Sally Fletcher ate a meal together. Brian grilled lamb chops and boiled potatoes while Sally made a salad. It was a rule they had, to make sure they did this. For most of the week they kept different hours, and communicated through notes on the kitchen table. This suited them both. They had come to marriage late, and were each comfortable in their own company. But they’d decided they should always eat together on a Sunday night. I don’t want to go forgetting what you look like, Brian had said. A meal, and a conversation, and then settling down together to watch whatever was on television. It was something about a murder, on the whole. At the allotments Ruth was seen working alone, pulling handfuls of beans down from the overloaded canes. The leaves were covered in blackfly but this late in the season she wasn’t concerned. It was food for the ladybirds at least. She was letting the courgettes mature to marrows because even if no one really liked cooking them they did look good in baskets outside the shop. They made people think of harvest festivals, and that made them come into the shop and spend money. The blackberries were thick on the brambles growing up around the greenhouse, and she thumbed a few into her mouth each time she went past. There had been words with the allotment committee about the brambles. The matter was not yet settled. Her phone beeped, and when she read the text a smile opened on her face that she found herself hiding behind a berry-stained hand. She sat on the bench for a moment, watching the shadows lengthen across the valley and feeling the warmth and thinking carefully about her reply.