Jon McGregor - Reservoir 13

At midnight when the year turned there were fireworks in the rain, and thunder in the next valley. The rain broke over the hill like a wave and blew straight into people’s faces. The river was high and thick and there were grayling in number feeding on the caddis larvae and shrimps. In the morning Ian Dowsett was out with a new box of flies and having a job to keep his footing in the current as he dropped the weighted nymphs into the water. Susanna’s ex-husband appeared again, and this time the altercation was seen. The police were called, and he was arrested. There was a new injunction. Susanna was embarrassed and she didn’t want to talk about it but in the end the story came out. When she’d first moved to the village it had been to get away from him. She’d been living in a refuge with the children, but he’d found out where they were. His threats hadn’t been enough to have him charged, but there was an injunction. She was offered support to move away from the area. She knew about this village because an aunt had once lived here, and it had seemed as good as any. She’d planned to keep this information to herself. She thought that part of building a new life involved not thinking about what had happened. She’d thought she could leave it behind. But now he’d shown up, and everyone knew. This came out in conversation with Cathy Harris one evening, when Cathy was helping clear up after yoga. Cathy had a way of waiting that made you want to say more, Susanna had found. When she nodded it was as though she already knew what Susanna was going to say. Few people, seeing her husband, had thought him capable of that sort of violence. He didn’t have the build for it; he didn’t seem the type. She’d heard people say this, even after they’d known some of what he was doing. There’d been a time when this had made her think it was her fault; that there must have been something she was doing to provoke such a well-mannered man into behaviour he wasn’t otherwise prone to. That there must have been something she could do to protect him from the storm of his own rages. He was always so apologetic afterwards. Careful to explain just what had gone wrong and what he wanted her to do differently in order to help him not do it again. He had always talked in terms of this loss of control, and yet he was so careful not to leave marks on her face. He had twice broken her arm, and once dislocated her shoulder. She had lied about these injuries at the hospital. He had told her she’d be nothing without him, that people thought she was brash and loud and awkward. He’d told her she needed to lose weight, build strength, dress differently, laugh less loudly, not eat in public, have different friends, be a better mother. When Rohan had asked why they didn’t leave it had been the first time such a thing had even felt possible. He was twelve at the time. He seemed to understand what was happening before she did. She’d told him that his father loved them and was just having a difficult time at work and things would be better soon, and he went and printed out an information sheet about domestic violence and the refuge network. When they left there’d been no relief, and no certainty that she’d done the right thing. Those feelings had only come gradually. But in the village she’d found herself ready for something new. She’d found herself standing taller. Straighter. The yoga had helped.

In February it snowed solidly for a week, and on the hills the drifts were eight feet deep. The road between the village and the town was ploughed, high banks of snow heaped on either side, but beyond the village it was blocked. Jackson’s boys had to go up on foot to pull out as many sheep as they could. Most of them were easy enough to find, pressed in the lee of a drystone wall or huddled around a tree, but the losses were high. On the estate the pheasants were moved from their winter enclosures to the smaller laying pens and their feed was enriched. At the allotment the last of the leeks were yellow against the snow, fat-bodied and toppling, their papery skins peeling away. By the river a willow came down in a storm and carried on growing as though nothing had changed, the branches all bending slowly towards the sky. Molly Jackson had her second birthday. At the party Maisie watched Will and Claire carefully, and afterwards she had questions Will didn’t want to answer. She knew things were going badly again and there was nothing she could do but look out for the children. Shrove Tuesday fell on the fourteenth, and in the kitchen at the Gladstone Olivia Hunter was having a hard time making heart-shaped pancakes. It had been Tony’s idea, and she didn’t think he’d tried it out himself. He’d given her a cookie-cutter to use as a mould, which was fine until it came time to flip them over. She kept burning the tips of her fingers. In the lounge there were jokes made about broken hearts, and Tony was careful to relay these to her when he came into the kitchen. It was a long evening. The next day there were only three people at the Ash Wednesday service, and one of those was Jane Hughes. She suggested they sit together in a circle by the altar, and she ran through the liturgy in a soft murmur that wouldn’t have carried much past the first row of pews. At the close she daubed Irene’s and Brian’s foreheads with ash, and asked Irene to daub hers, and they sat there with the cold marks on their faces. Outside in the late-winter sunlight Sally Fletcher was seen bringing down two mugs of tea from the house and talking to the man who’d been staying in the caravan. He was her brother, it turned out. He’d made a good job with the brambles and the general clearance and was starting to work on the trees. Brian Fletcher had told him to take out the dead wood first and they’d see where to go after that. It wasn’t clear what arrangement they had with the man, but there was an impression he never went into the house. He was sometimes seen standing in the doorway of the caravan, smoking. He had a sullen look about him. There were tattoos.

The widower was settling in at the old Tucker place. He’d done a lot of work in the garden. He’d taken out the paving and planted fruit trees and built up a number of raised beds. It looked more like an allotment than a front garden and there were some who thought words should be had. But under the circumstances it was felt he should be left alone. He’d not been much seen in the village and it was understood that his quietness might be part of the grieving. There was little known about the family he was said to have lost, and nobody wanted to ask. At the allotments Jones planted onions. His rows were straight and there would be no weeds. When he was done he carried his tools back to the house. At the school, heating engineers had gained access to the boilerhouse and condemned the boiler. There was talk of a modern system in the main building. Mrs Simpson told Jones he could still use the boilerhouse as a storeroom and he said nothing in reply. The clocks went forward and the evenings opened out. The buds on the branches were brightening. Irene was having trouble with Andrew. She’d tried talking to the vicar but it was never the right time. There were support groups at the day centre but they weren’t for her. They were for the parents who wanted things to be different, who wanted things fixed. She knew there was no fixing to be done. Just wanted a way of managing. A way of being safe in her house. That was putting it a bit strong, maybe. But he was a big lad now. And he had tempers that came on quick. Like his father. He’d called her terrible names. She didn’t know where he was learning these words. From the computer, it must be. No idea what he was doing on that computer most of the time. Only that when he sat there he was absorbed. Still. But there were days when he wouldn’t move away from it. Days he didn’t get dressed, wouldn’t come to the bus stop. There were dangers on the internet, she knew that; but she didn’t rightly know what they were. She was worried but she didn’t know what she was supposed to be worrying about. She could talk to Cooper. He knew computers. And she could always unplug the thing, if anything bad started happening. Although what would Andrew do then. He was a big lad now. At Reservoir no. 3 the maintenance team worked across the steep face of the embankment, looking for burrows or soggy ground or unexpected vegetation. So far they’d found nothing but they kept looking. The levels were falling quicker than they should be. There were losses that couldn’t be explained. There was a storm in the night and the rain came hard against the windows like gravel.