Gathering the Water
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Authors: Robert Edric
the Water
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ROBERT EDRIC
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Copyright © Robert Edric 2006
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All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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ISBN 0385603126
9780385603126 (Jan 07)
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For Hilary Aikman
WINTER GARDEN
A NEW ICE AGE
A LUNAR ECLIPSE
IN THE DAYS OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM
THE BROKEN LANDS
HALLOWED GROUND
THE EARTH MADE OF GLASS
ELYSIUM
IN DESOLATE HEAVEN
THE SWORD CABINET
THE BOOK OF THE HEATHEN
PEACETIME
CRADLE SONG
SIREN SONG
SWAN SONG
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The appointment was announced yesterday of Mr Charles Weightman, formerly of the Hampshire Water Company, to act as overseer to the drowning of the Forge Valley. The Forge Valley Reservoir has been three years in preparation, and its dam was completed in April of this year. It is anticipated that fully another half year will elapse before the greater effects of the scheme become apparent and its benefits reaped. It is expected that Mr Weightman will lodge in the district, better able there to account for any business arising in connection with the removal of the inhabitants and the gathering of the water.
Leeds Intelligencer
Thursday, 27 October 1848
 | 1 |
I was surprised upon my arrival here to find so many of the dwellings still inhabited. Surprised, too, and disappointed, to see so great a number of buildings where I had expected only a few, and those empty and awaiting the water. To hear the Board men speak, you might think I had been bound for a wilderness of unmapped moor crying out only for the civilizing of their scheme. To hear those men speak, you might think I had been handed the crown and sceptre of a fabulous kingdom, as yet unexplored, and over which I exercised sole and absolute dominion. I see now, looking about me, why they might have encouraged me in such a belief.
From where I stand I can see thirty smoking chimneys â signifying what? A hundred, two hundred people, where I
had anticipated only a resentful and stubborn handful. The smoke from the stacks seldom rises more than a few feet before being drawn off and dispersed by the constant winds which are a chronic feature of the region.
Study the appearance of the remaining specimens, they told me. See how they are moulded by those cold winds just as an exposed tree might be twisted and stunted by them. And from what little I have so far seen of these people â their latest misfortune notwithstanding â they are undoubtedly formed in constant expectation of some hardship or other, of which, judging by the history and the stark, sour look of the place, there is a constant and never-ending supply.
It is a sooty smoke, the sign of poor or mixed fuel, fine and pale one moment, and then billowing and filled with black the next, with glowing embers rising and vanishing as they are caught in the currents of air.
An hour of daylight remained to me upon my arrival, during which I waited for the carter with my cases. He came two hours after darkness, seemingly unconcerned by the length of his return journey or by the impenetrable night through which he would make it. I asked him if he were a local man, or if he knew of anyone close by with whom he might stay, but he shook his head to both questions. It did not occur to me to offer him the use of my own ample lodgings.
He left me, and carrying no light he was quickly lost to the darkness.
I looked up, and because the moon was full and close, I saw clearly Cain and his thorns. The Fish glittered on the horizon, and the Bear sat directly over Caurus, whose presence I felt to my bones.
With regard to warmth and comfort there was little to
choose between indoors and out. I stamped and banged around the empty house as though I were a small crowd.
This writing is thirty minutes' work, and I wish only that I were more wearied by it and by my long journey and better able to sleep.
| 2 | Â |
My first visitor came today. It has been a clear, fine day, but rather than begin my outdoor work, I have been occupied in unpacking and investigating further my new home. I cannot question why the house was chosen for me â the views from its front are extensive â but a man used to the diversions and amenities of city living or a more sociable existence might wish for a better appointed place.
You are chosen in part for your tact and adaptability, I was told, already swollen with flattery and gilded with distant authority.
My visitor came up the hillside and stopped in front of the house, where the entrance gate once stood. He had with him four rangy hounds, which settled themselves around him where he waited. I had seen him coming from
a great distance because of the slope. He neither knocked nor called, and it occurred to me that he had come believing the house still to be empty. I had been looking out all morning for my first delegation, the salvo of my opening speech â Caesar-like in its tact â long since primed.
After several minutes, and because my visitor showed no sign of either leaving or approaching closer, I went out to him.
I introduced myself, and was about to say more when he interrupted me and said he knew already why I was there. The largest of his dogs bared its teeth and growled at me. He silenced it with a word. Slaver hung in strings from the creature's mouth.
âThen you have been waiting for me,' I said boldly, hoping to learn more by this directness than by other means. Here, I guessed, was a messenger, whose knowledge of me might spread like a fire.
âI have come to show you something,' he said, each word emphatically pronounced. I saw then that his own careful preparations had also been made. Much of his face was hidden by his beard, and by the grey side-whiskers which grew unchecked across his cheeks.
âShow me what?' I had been told to expect land claims and property deeds thrust in my face, disputed mining and grazing rights, rights of forage and turbage. But this man had none of those things. He took several paces back from me. âI'm a very busy man,' I said. âAs I'm sure you can appreciate.'
âWe are all busy men here,' he said. If he was insulted by my remark then he was little dissuaded by it, and he continued to savour the moment of his coming revelation.
He proceeded to take off his boots. He wore nothing beneath them and his shins and feet were as dark and scarred as his hands. He laid his boots on the wall and came closer to me, grinning broadly.
Then he shouted at me â a cry which surprised me â and pointed down at his feet with both hands. âLook! Look!' he shouted, stepping from the grass on to the stone slabs of the path. The closest of his dogs shied away from him. At first I could see nothing, but then he raised one foot, grabbed it in both hands and pulled wide his toes. âRaise your flood as high as you like, for I shall not drown,' he shouted.
âWhat in God's name are you talking about?' I said, and for the first time I felt myself threatened by his presence.
âYour flood, your water. I shall not drown. Look! Look!' He nodded to the foot he still held. âSee.' And he pulled his toes even further apart, revealing the membrane which stretched between them and joined them like the foot of a giant frog. And seeing my surprise at this â though in truth it was surprise more at the manner of the revelation than the thing itself, and as much at the animal-like stripes of clean and dirty skin as at the webbing â he lowered the one foot and raised the other to reveal the same thing there.
âWhat?' I said, wanting to let him know that I was not so impressed as he had hoped. âWhat do you want me to say? It surely isn't such a rare occurrence.'
But he refused to be pricked into defeat. âI shall swim,' he shouted. âYour water shall come and I shall carry on living here, swimming from place to place just as easily as a man might now walk.' There was by then an excessive wetness on his lips.
âBut everything here, all these places, will eventually be
beneath the water. How will you swim to them? The whole of the land will be changed. There will be nowhere to swim
to
.'