Collected Short Stories. Patrick O’Brian

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The Return

      ALL DAY the fly had been hatching, and where the stream broadened into a deep pool between two falls the surface was continually broken by the rising of fish, broken with rings spreading perpetually, crossing and counter-crossing. It was a perfect day for the hatch, mild, gentle and full of life. Under the willows on the far side of the pool ephemerids drifted in their thousands, and the trout jostled one another in the shade of the willows, drunk with excitement and greed. Great heavy-headed cannibals with harsh, jutting under-jaws came from their stony fastnesses beneath the fall to rise at the fly; tender young trout rose beside them and took no harm.

      All down the length of the stream the trout made holiday: they added a fresh, water-borne note to the incessant, imperceptible noise of the country, a note quite distinct from the purl of the water over the big pebbles above the fall, and from the sharp punctuation of the splash of the diving kingfisher, who flashed up and down his beat, darting ever and again on some minnow or tittlebat, some half-transparent fishlet that strayed up into danger from the green, waving forests in the stream’s bed.

      The best part of the stream lay between the ruined mill and the bridge: a path, some little way from the water, but roughly parallel with it, ran through the grass from the mill to the bridge. On the other side the woods came down to the water’s edge, where huge pollard willows stood knee-deep in the stream, making deep quiet bays for chub and quiet-loving fish. Formerly the underbrush had been cut back for the comfort of fishermen, but now it was overgrown, and the riot of young fresh green was brave in the sun.

      Immediately below the pool the stream ran with a deeper note, flowing faster through a more narrow course, being constricted by worn rocks, which it could surmount only when the winter rains came down. Here the bridge spanned it in one leap: an ancient stone bridge it was, exquisitely lichened and its lines all rounded with age. There was an appearance of vast solidity about the bridge; it was massive and immovably firm, but it had a wonderful grace. A few self-sown wallflowers, tawny yellow, grew in its sides, and the sun was upon it now. The road that the bridge carried on its back ran clean a little way into the wood, but after the first bend it was lost and overgrown, for it was quite neglected.

      The kingfisher perched on a stump close by the bridge to preen itself in the sunlight. It took no heed of the trout, nor of any of the innumerable sounds that came from hidden places all around it, but all at once it froze motionless on the stump, with its head raised questioningly. Then it sped down the stream in a blur of blue-green light, low over the water.

      A little while after a man came down the lost road through the wood. At the bridge-head he paused, blinking in the sudden light. The trout stopped rising; a dabchick dived silently and swam fast away under the water. The pool held still to listen. Treading softly over the encroaching moss, the man came on to the bridge: he leaned over the coping and stared upstream. He was a tall, thick man, with a red face and black hair, quite gross to look at, and urbanized now: on his shoulders he carried a knapsack and a rod. After some minutes he looked down at the stones on which he leaned: initials and dates were scratched and cut into them. He knew almost to an inch where his own should be. They were there, J.S.B. in bold, swaggering letters, deeply carved, with a date of many years ago and a girl’s initials in the same hand coming after them. Mary Adams: how very clearly he remembered her. A glaze of sentiment came over his eyes. A pace along the bridge there was J.S.B. and E.R.L., more discreetly this time, and, lower down, J.S.B. and T.M. There was a little cushion of moss spreading over the T.M.: he flicked it off and stood up. She had always called him Jeremy in full.

      At the far end of the pool a trout rose, with a clear, round plop. The kingfisher flashed under the bridge and vanished upstream. The man walked on over the bridge to the path that led to the mill. From the path in the meadow he could see the stream, but from far enough away that he would not put the fish down.

      He sat down in the sweet, dry grass and threw off his knapsack. He put the joints of his rod together, and it quivered pleasantly in his hand: from the pockets of his knapsack he drew old tobacco tins, a reel with an agate ring, his fly box; his fingers seemed too coarse for the tiny, delicate knots in the translucent cast, but the knots formed and the fly was on – a grannom. At last he stood up and whipped the rod in the air: he worked the line out loop by loop; it whistled and sang. He cast his fly at a dandelion clock, and after a few casts the fly floated down and broke the white ball. Satisfied, he walked gently towards the stream: for some time there had been a recurrent heavy swirl under the alders on the far side. Kneeling down – for the day was bright and the water scarcely ruffled – he worked his line out across the stream and cast a little above the rise. His fly landed clumsily in a coil of the cast; the trout ignored it, but did not take fright. When it had floated down, Jeremy twitched it from the surface and cast again. This time it landed handsomely, well cocked on the surface, and as it came down his hand was tense with anticipation; but the trout took another fly immediately in front of it. The third cast was too short, and the next began to drag, and the fly was half-drowned. He switched tiny specks of water from the grannom and cast again: still the trout let the fly go by, and a snag bore it over to a sunken branch. Delicately he tweaked and manoeuvred with his outstretched rod, but the barb sank into the wood and held firm.

      Will it give? he said, or will I go round and free it? Come now, handsomely does it. He lowered the top of his rod and pulled through the rings. The line stretched and the branch stirred: all around the trout were rising. He gave it a sudden, brutal jerk and the fly shot back across the stream, carrying a white sliver of wood on its point.

      I did not deserve that, he said, taking the little piece off; I did not, indeed. He walked some way up the pool, waving his rod as he went. At haphazard, he cast to a small rise by the near bank, hardly pausing in his stride. At once the trout took the fly and went fast away with it in the corner of his mouth. The little fish was game enough, but he was finished in two mad rushes: he played himself, and came rolling in on his side, still defying the hook, but with no more power to fight it. The fisherman took another like the first a little higher up, beyond the pool. They were both about half a pound – small for that stream – cleanly run and game, but stupid.

      After he had put the second fish into his bag, he rested; there was a crick between his shoulders from the unaccustomed exercise. He squatted on his heels, and almost without knowing it he filled his pipe as he gazed over the water: the kingfisher passed again, and in the woods a garrulous jay betrayed a fox.

      It was just at this place that he had taken his first trout, tickling under the rill for them with Ralph, who was simple, but who could poach like an otter. The march of the years between those times and now effaced the unhappy days of his boyhood and adolescence, and now that he knew the value of the happiness of the days that remained to him that his former, smaller self had lived in a golden world. He had so little to show for all that he had lost; and sudden, intense regret for it took him by the throat for a moment.

      He took off his shoes and socks, laid down his coat, and rolled up his trousers. The water was surprisingly cold as he waded into the stream; he could feel its distinct movement between each toe and the edged stones hurt his feet. He walked on the beds of water plants, sinking his feet to the ankles in the brilliant green: at each step he could feel innumerable tiny hoppings against his soles. The last time he had walked that way the water had been well up his thighs, he remembered, and in the middle the current had sometimes plucked him off his feet. Above him there was a small pool, with a stone rill above and below it. A crayfish exploded before his white toes, shooting through a cloud of silver minnows. Three or four small trout flitted from the weed-beds as he walked, speeding up the open, clean lanes between the orderly weeds; there seemed to be no other fish, but he knew the ways of these trout, and he waded quietly to the bar of stones, where the water came through fast from the pool. The force of the current had washed out a deep hollow here, and the water was too deep to stand in.

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