Reservoir 13. Jon McGregor

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СКАЧАТЬ family had stayed at the Hunter place for a fortnight, and they’d spent more time with her than people seemed to know. It made them feel involved. By midday their pace had faltered in the heat and they stopped at a fork in the track. At the bottom of the hill there was a ruined barn where Jackson stored feed and equipment. They were thirsty and they shared the only two cans of lager they’d managed to get hold of. There were crickets in the heather and a beetle moving on Lynsey’s hand. The sheep pushed in and out of the barn, looking for shade. Did they search that place? Deepak asked. Obviously, Liam said. I searched it myself. I borrowed one of those thermal-imaging cameras; nothing. Deepak gave him the standard slap for bullshitting. They searched everywhere, said James; so what are we doing? No one answered. Lynsey and Sophie had their eyes closed already, and in the midday sun Sophie’s skin was starting to burn. There were butterflies feeding on the heather. An airplane went overhead. What time is it? asked Liam. About twelve, James said, his eyes closed, guessing. The heather sprang firmly beneath him. They were all lying closer to each other than they were used to. Someone’s stomach gurgled and no one acknowledged. There was a distant sound of traffic and farm machinery. They slept. At some point James saw a man walking up the path towards them, poking at the heather with a stick, and as he came past he didn’t seem to see the five of them lying there. He was wearing a charcoal-gray anorak. James stood up and the two of them nodded, and James meant to say he was sorry about the man’s daughter but all that came out was sorry. The man nodded again and kept walking. Later James wondered if this had happened at all. It would have been too hot to wear an anorak. In the afternoon the five of them made it to the top of the hill overlooking Reservoir no. 8, and it turned out that Liam had brought vodka. They found a mine entrance they hadn’t seen before and went in with torches, scratching a line in the mud behind them and putting the wind up one another. When she was very scared Lynsey grabbed on to Deepak’s arm. By the time they came out again it was dark, and in their confusion they went down the wrong side of the hill. When they finally got home they were in more trouble than they thought possible. Their parents were furious and held them close, and there were police officers waiting to have words.

      Su Cooper redecorated the small bedroom in their flat above the converted stables, ready for the twins. Austin had offered to help, but she’d told him he had too much on with the Echo and she wanted to just get it done. He’d asked if there was something she meant by this. She hung animal-print curtains at the windows, and assembled the second cot more easily than the first, and fixed hooks in the ceiling to hang mobiles from. She folded the tiny white clothes into the drawers, and stacked nappies on top of the wardrobe, and arranged toys along a shelf. It was a small room, but everything the babies would need seemed to fit. It was a small flat. The space had once been sleeping quarters for the stable lads. It had never been meant for a family to live in. But Su and Austin had loved it since they’d first moved in, and they were determined to make it work. She’d bought storage baskets that slid neatly beneath both cots. She knew there was a danger in preparing the room so thoroughly, so soon. There were people who had superstitions about this kind of thing. She knew her mother wouldn’t approve. But she wanted it done. She wanted to be ready. She didn’t yet know people well enough to assume they would help. She didn’t know how Austin would rise to the challenge. She suspected he might not. She suspected he was the kind of man who would gaze lovingly at his infant without realizing it needed a nappy change, or another feed. He would provide for them, she knew. She had waited until she was sure of that. But he would have no idea what to do. This she was prepared for. He was a sentimental man and, when it came to anything besides the business of writing and editing and printing, completely unpractical. She wound the babies’ mobiles, and listened to the whirring tunes, watching the snails and frogs turning circles in the sunlight. She’d closed the door behind her before the music stopped. The badgers in the beech wood fed quickly, laying down fat for the winter ahead. They moved through the leaf litter in a snuffling, bumping pack, turning up earthworms and fallen berries. Their coats were thickening. The river turned over beneath the packhorse bridge and ran on towards the millpond weir.

      The clocks went back and the nights overtook the short days. The teenagers walked home from the bus stop in the dark. A man fitting the missing girl’s father’s description was seen walking farther and farther away from the village; at the far side of Ashbrook Forest, past the last of the thirteen reservoirs. There were reports of a man in a charcoal-gray anorak walking on the hard shoulder of the motorway. The bracken was rusting in swathes across the hill. There were dreams about the missing girl being found facedown in pools of water, and dreams about her being driven safely away. Mischief Night passed and it wasn’t what it had been in recent years. No one quite had the spirit, besides whoever filled the telephone box with balloons. Jackson’s boys brought the flock down to the bye field and spent the day clipping around the tails, getting ready for tupping. At the school the lights were seen on early, and there was black smoke rising from the boilerhouse. In the staffroom Miss Carter was running through the week’s lesson plans with Mrs. Simpson. When they were done Mrs. Simpson asked Miss Carter how she was settling in. Miss Carter nodded quickly and said it was fine, she was just finding it hard to get to know people. Mrs. Simpson laughed and said she knew what Miss Carter meant, and had she tried marking up the register with little portraits to jog her memory? Miss Carter said she hadn’t meant the children. I thought you meant settling into the area, she said. Mrs. Simpson apologized and said that to avoid confusion Miss Carter should know she’d never ask anything about a teacher’s private life. We’re only worried about what happens within these gates, she said. At the reservoirs the dams were inspected again, and areas of concern were noted. In the dusk the wood pigeons gathered to roost.

      In November, Austin Cooper and his wife came home with twins, and carried them up the steps to their flat above the converted stables. When he turned to close the door he stood on the threshold for a moment, looking down at the street, as if expecting or perhaps even hearing applause. It would have been deserved, was his feeling. He’d never imagined finding the kind of deep friendship he’d found with Su, and ten years later the twins’ arrival was the kind of extra he’d long trained himself not to expect. At some point, in some life, he must have done something right. Irene saw him closing the door, saw the deep glowing light from their windows, and remembered bringing her own Andrew home some fourteen years before. But when she got to the Gladstone and told people there, all anyone could say was Sweet buggering hell, those steps; how’s she going to get a twin buggy up and down those steps? Austin didn’t sleep that first night. He made hot drinks for Su while she phoned her parents and friends and told them the news all over again, and later he walked in and out of the bedroom to look at the rest of his family sleeping, and finally he lay down beside Su and listened to the different sounds of breathing in the room: Su’s long and measured; the twins’ fast and shallow, as though they’d only just come up for air. In the night there was crying and waking and feeding and changing, but among it all there were moments when the breathing was the only sound in the room and Austin felt he had only to stay awake to keep them safe. That this was the only thing required of him now. In the evening when Su had been on the phone to her parents he’d tried to pick out some of what she said. He knew the words for mother and father and children, but beyond that he was lost. He thought he knew the word for happy, but Su spoke so quickly to her parents that he could never be quite sure. He assumed she was happy. Mostly she just seemed tired. It was so long they’d been hoping for this; she’d been trying so hard and now all the strain in her body had nowhere useful to go. It looked a comfortable sort of tiredness, a relief. He could tell already, from the way she held the twins and the way she moved around them, or leaned across and made small adjustments while he was holding them, that she knew exactly what she needed to do. And that she knew without even being surprised. It was one of the things that kept delighting him about Su, this equanimity. As though she’d known all along that life would be like this. The very first night they’d spent together, the look on her face in the morning had seemed to say, Well, now, of course this has happened. What else did you expect? Early in the morning the lights were seen on downstairs, where Austin had converted the stables to an office for the Valley Echo. The white office lighting was stark against the dawn and the dome of his head was just visible through the window as he worked on the last few pages of the next issue, adding something to the announcements column while being careful not to exploit his position. And when the issue appeared through letterboxes СКАЧАТЬ