Jon McGregor: Reservoir 13

In June it was Austin Cooper’s sixty-fifth birthday, and for a treat Su agreed to walk the first three days of the Greystone Way with him, while the boys stayed with a schoolfriend in town. He’d been trying to talk her into it for years, but now she’d agreed he seemed more nervous than she did. In the morning he checked through their bags for a third time, and asked if she was sure she felt up to it. She laughed and said she should be asking him that question. She told him he wasn’t getting any younger, and pushed him out the door. At the visitor centre they stopped for a photograph, and then set off up the long low hill. They held hands for a while, but Austin soon found he needed to use both the walking poles he’d brought with him. It took them an hour to reach the top of the first climb, and they stopped to take more pictures. The light was clear and they could see the village and the river and the woods along the main road. Ahead of them a line of flagstones stretched right across the moor, the reservoirs off to one side, the motorway along the horizon, a line of wind turbines turning over on a distant ridge. After you, old man, Su said, smiling and prodding him in the back, and for a moment Cooper wanted to pick her up and carry her into a heathery hollow. But they had a good distance to make before dusk, and there wasn’t the time for that manner of thing. He wasn’t sure his back would hold. For the first time in a decade there was grazing at the Stone Sisters, the new grass heavy and green and no sign now that this had ever been home to all those young people with their banners and fires and dancing. Lynsey Smith got engaged, which surprised even her. Things were going well but she hadn’t been thinking that far ahead. But she was so comfortable around him, and when he proposed she could see he had no expectation of her saying no, which was enough to make her want to say yes. There was a lot of talk about the wedding, which was coming up soon. The thing was happening very quickly, was the feeling. Very little was known of Guy, but Lynsey was thought of as a level-headed woman who wouldn’t do anything daft. Do you have fun together? Sophie asked, when Lynsey worried that it was happening too soon. He’s very kind, Lynsey said. He’s thoughtful. The well-dressing boards were taken down and scraped clean, the clay and dressing materials dumped in a corner of the meadow. The boards were washed and dried, and two of Jackson’s boys hauled them up to the barn at the Hunter place and put them away for the year. Olivia Hunter finished her A levels, with no party to mark the fact. She already knew she was going to fail, and had kept her parents off her back by talking about a year’s volunteering overseas. In truth she had no intention of going abroad, but hadn’t yet found a better plan. She was spending a lot of time in her bedroom, making YouTube videos. On Thompson’s land the bales were finished and dotted the fields in their pale green rounds.

The reservoirs were dry and the spillways rose into the air like chimneys, reaching for a volume of water it was difficult to imagine ever returning. The sun was hot and unrelenting and cracked open the soil. In the beech wood a boar badger stood and watched as a sow turned circles in front of him. They both made low feeding sounds. The boar covered the sow for some minutes, biting the nape of her neck. There was a flurry of scrape-marks in the bare soil. The fledgling woodpigeons were falling from the nests. There were first attempts at flight. In the old quarry by the main road the toadflax was in full flower, low to the ground and buttery yellow in the pale evening sun. Rohan Wright left home for the second time. He’d been looking for work for months, apparently, but it was only once Susanna sat down with him and went through some applications that a job materialised. He asked if she was trying to get rid of him, and she said he knew she loved him to bits but she didn’t want him to be the sort of weirdo who still lived with his mother. When Susanna told Cathy about this they both laughed and then Susanna changed the subject abruptly to ask about Richard. Cathy dipped her head to hide a smile and said it was fine. It was good. It was going well. Susanna waited for more. What? Cathy asked. That’s it. It’s going well. He’s a good man. But it’s not a big deal. Although. Susanna waited. Although what? she asked. I think he’s making more of it than he needs to, Cathy said. I mean, it’s all good fun, he’s lovely, but I feel like he’s on the verge of doing something daft, like proposing or something. Would that be so bad? asked Susanna. Cathy rolled her eyes. I’ve done being married, she said. I don’t want to get into that again. I like not being answerable to anyone, you know? Like, this is my house, these are my boys, this is my time. I feel like he might have something different in mind. Rohan went for the interview, and got the job, and moved in with some friends in Manchester. Swiftly along the river and down the lane the adult bats flew in deft quietness and were gone by the time they were seen.

In August Lynsey Smith was married at the registry office in town. The reception was held at the Culshaw Hall Hotel. James and Rohan and Sophie were all there, and after the photographs they stood on the lawn trying to work out when they’d last been together. Must have been that summer after graduation, Rohan decided. I never graduated, Sophie pointed out. True fact, he said. And look at you now, new-media hotshot. Natural talent; there’s no degree certificate for natural talent. Is that what they call it now? They saw Liam heading indoors with a toddler in one arm and an older child holding his hand. He nodded in their direction but didn’t come over to say hello. They had to wait for the speeches before they could have any food, and at one point Sophie put her hand on James’s glass to suggest he slowed down. The look he gave her was unfamiliar and sharp. He drank on, quickly, and later in the evening Sophie had to ask Will Jackson to take him back to Rohan’s house, where he was staying. In Cardwell the cricket match was played right through for the first time in three years, and tradition restored with a win for the home team. Jackson’s boys went out and took the lambs away from their mothers and put them in a field out of sight and for three days and nights the racket they made carried over the village. By the middle of the month the evenings were earlier, and chill. The dew that rose in the morning brought with it a smell of must. Richard’s mother’s house still hadn’t been put on the market, and Richard was trying to explain to his sisters that if they wanted a good price they should wait until things picked up. They’d come for a long weekend with their husbands, the children old enough now to be left with friends, and after an evening of eating and drinking and catching up the subject of the house finally arose. Rachel gave out the same heartfelt sigh Richard remembered her developing as a twelve-year-old and her husband, Tim, told the room that everyone was tired of tiptoeing around all this bullshit. Richard asked could he be a little more frank and for a moment Tim didn’t hear the sarcasm. Sarah said there was no need for this kind of thing, and Tim said rather sharply that in actual fact there was. Where will I live? Richard asked them. Where will I go? This has always been my home. No one’s turfing you out, Tim said. But it’s time to talk about money. You were never here anyway, Sarah murmured. They all knew what the house was worth, inflated beyond sense by wealthy commuters and the second-homes market; and he assumed they knew that as a freelancer he’d never get a mortgage of that size. Why are you doing this to me? he said. He left the house and walked up through the square towards the beech wood. He wanted to talk to Cathy but he wanted to calm down first. If they could just leave it a bit longer. A few months, a year. If he and Cathy kept going the way they were they would move in together. It seemed inevitable. After all these years. But it was too soon to mention it now. He didn’t want her thinking it was only because of the house. He wanted her to know how much she meant to him. He thought she was ready to hear that. She’d as good as said something along those lines. If his sisters could just back off about the house. He’d said nothing about Cathy, of course. They wouldn’t take him seriously if he told them about that.