Haweswater (9 page)

On the damp boards of the valley floor was a little village. The smallest of places.

For a moment, there was another silence, except for the trickling, cold river under the bridge. The man paused in his speech, suggesting that it would take a new turn. His face of many layers was now stacked with compassion, concern. He paused. The water trickled past, bringing finished snow from the hills. Not another sound. As he began speaking again, his forehead became overlaid with sadness, his voice was a song almost dying of it. Perhaps these pieces of language had been harder to move out and away than the rest, or perhaps the man was letting himself in on the meaning of being insignificant against the weight of a stone god. But at the same time his dark eyes were telling something else. It was magnificent, this blueprint of his words, this vision, an endeavour of capacious proportions. Moreover, it was progression, personal. It was somehow his, he had written the story. And his eyes were wholly filled with agitation and incense, amid his face of many layers, and he just could not invert their light.

The country desperately needed more water supplies, the cities of the mid-north were practically drying up, rainy country or no. Manchester needed more water for its ever-expanding mouth, for its thirsty people, for its industries which had tripled in size since the start of the century. This was a city leading the way of modernity in the north, a city of new industry, a city which would roar out metals for the manufacture of cars, buildings, ships and armaments in preparation for the forthcoming war, should there be one. And there would surely be one, said the man, bigger than the first. The city would be a defender of this country. Its growth was beneficial to the country entire. It should be nurtured, with pride, with sacrifice, hard though that may be.

Here was the village. Not insignificant but it was a small
place, with no more than thirty habitations, only four or five of which were owned outright. The land suitable for cultivation within its catchment area was almost negligible. And here was a scheme to benefit the whole nation.

The original proposal had outlined a scheme to trap and transport water south from the lakes. It had been met with the perfect location. And it had already been authorized by an Act of Parliament some years before, in the spring of 1921. The Haweswater Act. So yes, a name had already been decided upon for the project. The Haweswater reservoir. The lake and the surrounding land had been acquired by Manchester City Waterworks under Parliament’s backing, and the owned properties had had compulsory purchase orders placed upon them. There was no question of appeal. There was no higher authority. It was signed and sealed; a done deal, so to speak.

The proliferation of water which came down into the valley and was then lost to other, lower-lying, valleys, wasted in rivers, would soon be spilling into a bowl holding nearly twenty thousand million gallons. More. Imagine that. Water would be kept, used, driven. Water would be built. The water that presently sat in a little lake in the valley bottom was slothful, idle. Soon, it would be fattened to an enormous belly of water, it would be sucked up, and sent roaring in pipes down to the city. It was all fact, it was done and dusted. It was regrettably not within his control any more, nor theirs. This they must understand. He was simply a messenger.

At the side of the crowd stood Ella Lightburn, tall, gaining inches to her height, even. Her jaw began to work involuntarily. She knew about messengers. The Bible was full of them. They came in bright armour or in rags. She knew that the messengers of the Lord came in many forms. She understood that He, in His divine ways, often gave signs which needed lengthy interpretation, that His ways could be mysterious
and hard to fathom and that blind faith was sometimes required. Often as not, these prophets were thrown to the wolves. She also knew that the Devil had his messengers too. Black messengers who wrapped up their evil in beautiful words. Who were riddled with insects under their beautiful faces.

She stood to the side of the small group of villagers and listened to this man who was calling himself a messenger. Her mind worked quickly to come up with some conclusions. She sifted out the facts. He had on what was no doubt his best suit. It was not a Sunday. He was beautiful and she knew instinctively that this meant he was dangerous.

Ella closed her eyes momentarily. The man was speaking to the villagers gently, religiously, in a voice that could have calmed a storm on the Sea of Galilee. And it rose, steadily, becoming richer, fuller, spreading like a dome above them, then grew quiet. It was the voice she had waited for in the Sunday sermons which never came. As she opened her eyes she saw the man reach to the ground and pick up two objects. On the scales that he made out of his gloved hands he placed, consecutively, a small piece of blue slate and a large lump of frozen clay. He gave a speech about potential human equilibrium. He showed them with his hands that in this example there was no balance. There was spontaneity to the man, but also calculation. And something else. It was as if noise travelled at the back of the man, or he carried it ahead of him, out of sight. Noise like the wailing of inhuman voices, a loud, disparate chorus, shuddering through the air. Concentrating hard, she could almost hear it, almost feel it as the sound passed through her. Or was it only the whistle and groan of the
Hardwicke
, or the
Prince of Wales
, rattling its carriages and heaving up Shap summit, echoing from two valleys over? She reached up, touched the edge of her headscarf, close to her ear, as if to reassure herself that her hair was covered.

Ella could tell that the village was in confusion. Its members
stared at the man in the green suit. Their eyes said that his idea was ridiculous, beyond reality; many looked fit to laugh out loud. And so they were unaffected by personal upset. Not so Ella. She felt her blood lift against her skin and her jaw began to work. There was a slight grind to her teeth. She kept her head up, concentrated on what the audacious stranger was telling her. The tone of the man’s voice was quiet but invested with passion, like that of a prophet, and there was something about the set of his face which suggested that he knew the future. She did not speak because of it, did not interrupt him as she would dearly have liked to.

Ella knew something else. At times, the region of her birth and dwelling is covered with peculiar long shadows because the sun doesn’t always throw its lines properly in the north and there can be strange interference from the water in the sky. The effect is like chiaroscuro, and under the weird, deep shadowing a human body might look spiritual, meaningful. As if Caravaggio has made a person and set it out on the world.

But Ella knew this was not one of those times. The lines of the setting sun were true. The man in the green suit was no Caravaggio Jesus. His face was beautiful in its own right. And his voice had a spirit unto itself. She felt if she were to speak out against him the strange noise on the periphery might increase, horribly, though only she would hear it and it would collect inside her head and remain there. She waited until he stopped speaking. She moved over to where her husband stood and put a hand firmly on to his shoulder, moved him forward.

There was a movement within the crowd and one man took two steps away from the rest. The sound of his corduroy trouser legs rubbing as he moved forward was like the sound of sawing wood. The man in the suit smiled. The village had
elected its spokesman, as he suspected it would at first, before other voices chipped in with comment and disapproval. He was one of the huge, blond-haired farmers with eyelashes so pale that they could hardly be seen, and the eyes themselves took on a sculpted, inorganic quality. He must be heard so that the village would know that it was to be a civilized invasion, the valley annexed with great sympathy, dignity. Let them show their anger and that anger will use itself up instead of breeding within itself, he supposed.

Samuel Lightburn cleared his throat. In abbreviated terms he made his stand.

– Yer tellin’ us there’s a dam to be built and the dale’s t’be flooded. That’s all well and good. But what of us? We cannot live underwater. Our children cannot swim t’class and t’church. Well, except maybe young Isaac, but that’s beside point.

A little laughter came from the crowd, from the children who did not understand much of what they had heard but knew about Isaac Lightburn and his odd attraction to the Mardale rivers. The stranger used this to his advantage and he laughed also. A moderate, inclusive laugh, like apples rolling down a gentle bank towards a harvester’s basket. He was a reasonable man, he said, and he did not think that they were fish. He understood that Parliament was a long way south, remote from the valleys of the north of England, and its workings were seldom this far-reaching. But its law was final. He ventured to suggest that the tenant farmers might seek compensation from the Lowther Estate, to which all rents were paid, or relocation. But, as he had come to understand it, their tenancies here would not be renewed beyond Midsummer Day of this year. He suggested that the men might stay on to work at the dam, there would be plenty of such positions for labourers. He waited for the multitude of voices which did not come, and so in some small way his expectations for the response of the crowd had been formed inaccurately. Instead of hot debate, the group was emitting
absolute cold, a mossy, greenish aura hung over his audience as the air might be affected over a forest pool. He waited until the silence became uncomfortable for him, though he suspected the sombre gathering might have been able to hold out a little longer.

Then he commented on the chilly evening. He would be going to the Dun Bull for a warming brandy if anyone would care to join him, to discuss matters further. There was a slight bow of his head and upper body, as if the orchestra had finished and now, imaginary applause. A scuff of his city heel as he turned and he was gone.

The crowd broke. One man spat on the ground and left to return to his sheep.