Reservoir 13. Jon McGregor

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СКАЧАТЬ years. His sister was younger and was never seen. She was understood to be troubled in some way. Most of the parents in the village had known him when they were at school. He had his own way of doing things, which pre-dated the other staff. There were locks in the school for which he had the only keys. The other staff were senior to him but he wouldn’t be told and he worked to his own timetable. He had clear boundaries and some of these were known. The boilerhouse doubled as his staff room and no one else went in. Through the doorway occasionally an armchair was seen; a radio, a kettle, a stack of fishing magazines. But the door was almost always closed. The boiler itself was often breaking down. In the middle of December it broke down again and Mrs. Simpson went looking for Jones. She found him on the steep wooded bank behind the school, climbing up through the elder and hazel with a rubbish sack. He was reeling in a faded line of police cordon tape, which was snagged through the trees. It took him some time and she watched. Two years already and it seemed like no time at all. He saw her and he climbed up the bank. Must have blown in from the lane, he said. Folk are careless. She peered at the coiled tape, and nodded. Boiler? he asked. I’m afraid so, she said. There’s been no heat at all this morning. He headed over towards the bins and she walked with him. Inlets are probably clogged again, he said. Everything else all right? Yes, yes. Fine. He took out a pouch of tobacco and rolled a cigarette. She looked as though she had more to say. He nodded up at a bank of clouds over the moor, thickening. Weather, he said, and walked on. Mr. Jones, she called after him. Will you let me get someone in? He stopped. It’s a decent boiler, he said. I’ll sort it. A goldcrest moved through the tall firs at the far end of the playground, picking quickly at the insects feeding between the needles. From the hills behind the allotments a thick band of rain was moving in. The reservoirs were a flat metallic gray. There was carol singing in the church with candles, and children from the school playing their recorders and opening their mouths wide to sing. Be near me, Lord Jesus. The church was full. I ask thee to stay.

      Richard Clark came home between Christmas and New Year, after his sisters had left, and on New Year’s Eve he was seen going for a walk with Cathy Harris. They’d known each other at school, but had barely been in touch for years. They’d been as good as engaged, in fact, until he went to university and she didn’t. By the time he graduated she’d married Patrick, who had grown up alongside them and been their closest friend. Things would have been different if she’d come away to university with him. He’d barely spoken to either of them again. Patrick had been dead five years now. Richard had been out of the country at the time. The mist hung low over the moor and the ground was frozen hard. It had rained long into the night and the air was cold and damp. It was no kind of a day to be walking up on the hills but they’d made an agreement. Richard pulled his scarf over his mouth and walked behind Cathy, watching where he put his feet. The climb to the first ridge was steeper than he remembered. He was sweating already. He stopped to undo his jacket. Cathy turned back, waiting for him. She didn’t seem out of breath. She’d never left the village, and had kept the hill fitness he’d lost. The mist was beginning to clear. They walked on. She asked how long he was home this time and he said he was flying out in the morning; that he was due for a meeting at lunchtime, local time. He asked how her two boys were and she said they were well. The oldest one was starting his A levels next year. Ben. Nathan was just starting secondary school. They had coped okay, in the end. He told her how sorry he was that he hadn’t made it to Patrick’s funeral. She shook her head and said she hadn’t expected him to. It would have been a long way to come. She knew it was difficult. She changed the subject. She told him what it had been like coming up here with the search party, walking steadily across the ground, wanting to find something but dreading what it was they might find. Richard said he didn’t think he’d walked up here since they’d been teenagers. She told him he was talking about ancient history, and laughed. They walked on. They were thinking different things. The missing girl’s name was Rebecca, or Becky, or Bex. In the video that had recently been released the mother was using Bex. In the video the girl was laughing but it was difficult to hear what was said. It was strange to actually hear her voice. Some people said the video didn’t look much like her. Her hair was longer than in the photograph, pulled back from her face in a thick plait that swung around her head as she sang and spun towards the camera and pointed at whoever was doing the filming. The police were still treating the case as a missing-person inquiry.

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      At midnight when the year turned there were fireworks going up from all across the village. The dance at the hall was crowded and hot and there was steam in the light of the doorway. In the morning there were spent rockets lying in the street and sparklers jammed into the planters in the square. There was rain for most of the day and snow on the higher ground. The tips of the new-growth heather could just be reached through the snow. Wood pigeons came into the gardens where feed was put out and were often chased away. A contractor came out to the Jackson place with the ultrasound tackle and Gordon Jackson took her out to the ewes. They spent most of the morning doing the scans and the two of them had to work closely. The proportion of twins was decent and there were fewer barrens than in most years. Gordon felt good about the way the morning had gone. The woman’s name was Deborah and she knew how to handle the sheep. She had strong arms and a firm grip. He asked what she was doing at the weekend and she said she had family to see. There was an ambiguity in her use of the word family but he let it go. When he dropped her back at her van she left him with a smile that some would have taken for a dismissal. She stayed on his mind for some days. The parish council moved its meetings to the function room of the Gladstone, and there was an immediate improvement in attendance, which Brian later told Sally reflected poorly on all concerned. Martin and Ruth Fowler separated, which was more of a surprise to him than it was to some others. He was heading for an interview at the job center when Ruth stopped him by the door and said she was leaving. There was a winded feeling in his stomach but he didn’t let on. Christ, Ruth, you couldn’t have picked more of a moment? She held up her hands as though she was sorry and she told him there was never a good time, there was never the time to talk. He stood in the doorway and rubbed his face. There were words he wanted to say but they were muddled. If he started he would get there too late. He told her he’d got some good prospects for work, that things were on the mend. He stopped because there was no point. When Ruth made a decision. She touched the side of his face and he slapped her hand away. There were words but he couldn’t get started. He was going to be late. He wanted things to be different but they weren’t going to be different. Do what you feel like doing, he said. She stood in the doorway and watched him go. They had been married since they were twenty-two, a year after meeting each other at a Young Farmers dance. Neither of them had been young farmers, but it was known as a place for meeting. He’d bought her a drink, and there was a bluntness in the way he spoke that she knew was a cover for being shy. He couldn’t dance, but there was otherwise a grace in his gestures and especially in his hands which intrigued her. When they met for the second time he took her to see the butcher’s shop he was taking over from his father. He gave her a tour, and as they stood behind the counter he kissed her and she leaned back against the chopping block. For her this was when it was settled. The wood of the chopping block was bowled and smooth beneath her hands. When they married she moved into his house, and a few years after that, while she was pregnant with Bruce, his parents moved out to a sheltered-housing complex in town. They were happy for a long time, or comfortable, and when that changed Ruth had been hard-pressed to explain why.

      At the Ash Wednesday service Jane Hughes daubed the congregation’s foreheads with a thumbprint of ash in a way that hadn’t been done for years. There were only the very regulars there, and the service was short. But there was a hushed intimacy to it that made the ashy touch of Jane’s thumb seem quite in keeping with the moment, and when they came out into the cold sunshine they were each caught by the same moment of self-consciousness, reaching towards their foreheads. In the churchyard a pair of blackbirds courted, fanning their tails and fluffing their rumps and watching each other bright-eyed. There’d been a break in the frost, so Mr. Wilson went up to the allotments and put some new rhubarb crowns in the ground. The place was busy as it hadn’t been since autumn. Clive was potting up broad beans. Miriam Pearson was raking over a bed and sowing rows of early carrots. Jones was still digging. There was a short period in the afternoon when the heat of the work and the steady fall of the sun СКАЧАТЬ