Unknown (13 page)

'I must insist that you keep what you've learned strictly to yourselves,' he finished, and his voice bit like an east wind. 'There's no point in creating unnecessary alarm among the inhabitants of the valley, when it's possible that my recommendation may be turned down.'

'I think he's right to ask that of us, Marion,' Miles Dorman said seriously, and she shrugged.

'Oh, very well, if you say so,' she conceded, 'but only because you say so.' She would not have Reeve think she was doing it because he commanded her. 'And by the time your precious recommendation is accepted, as you know it will be, it'll be too late then for anybody to do anything about it,' she sneered.

'Nonsense!' Reeve said shortly. 'If my report is accepted as it stands, there'll have to be a public enquiry for all the people involved. All points of view have to be taken into consideration.'

'Whitewash!' Marion debunked his explanation with scant ceremony. 'When big business decides it wants something, what chance has an ordinary person got?'

'This isn't big business,' he contradicted her evenly.

'This is a public authority, which has an obligation to its ratepayers to provide diem with an adequate supply of water. My firm is merely the one that has won the contract to give them what they require. We not only do the surveying and the building, we act as middlemen in the negotiations between the authority and the people involved, to come to an amicable agreement on matters of compensation and so on.'

'An amicable agreement?' Marion laughed without humour. 'And I suppose if the people in the valley don't agree, they'll have a compulsory purchase order made against them, and be paid minimum compensation. What choice have they got?' she exclaimed, and she did not know how near to despair her voice sounded.

'If it comes to a public enquiry, why not attend and find out?' he asked reasonably. 'And in the meantime,' his voice became brisk, 'none of us know what the outcome of my report will be, so the only thing to do is to try and forget it for now.' He dismissed the subject and turned to Miles Dorman. 'There was something else I came to see you about. Willy's going up in the 'copter this afternoon, I thought you might like to go with him while the weather holds good?'

'Indeed I would.' Her uncle accepted the offer with alacrity, and Marion stared at him in amazement. How could he even think of going up in the helicopter, now he knew what Reeve had come, to the valley for? She herself could not bear to think of remaining in the same room with the man, let alone accept a trip in his wretched flying machine, she thought stormily. She opened her mouth to protest, then closed it again with a shrug of resignation. It was useless to try and make her uncle any different from what he was. The historian in him lay uppermost, and even now the drovers' road was of paramount importance in his mind, far exceeding the threat to his home and livelihood.

'I must see the ancient road just once more, while I still have the opportunity,' he muttered, 'before it's covered with water.' So he, too, accepted the reservoir as inevitable, she thought hopelessly.

'The water won't touch the drovers' road, that's on the other side of the watershed, and too high anyway,' Reeve put his mind at rest. 'The height of the reservoir will come to about half way up the hillside, no more.' He sounded as if he had already put an invisible Plimsoll line across the fellsides, she realised with dismay, although reason told her such a survey would have to be thorough, even to the smallest detail. And in spite of his assurances, she noticed Reeve spoke as if the reservoir was already an accomplished fact.

'Ill go and fetch my maps and fieldglasses.' Miles Dorman hurried out of the room.

'And I'll let Willy know you're going with him.' Reeve followed, and Marion moved disconsolately kitchenwards with Mrs Pugh.

'How can Uncle Miles bother about an old drovers' road at a time like this?' she began hotly.

'It's a bombshell, I'll admit,' Mrs Pugh replied cautiously, 'but like Mr Harland says, it's not much good getting upset about it until we know whether his recommendation is accepted, and there's something to get upset about,' she reasoned practically.

'But think of the consequences '

'I am thinking about diem,' the older woman replied seriously, 'and I can best do that when I've got my kitchen to myself so I can finish off the rest of the ironing,' she added significantly.

Marion slipped reluctantly off the end of the table, and felt a soft touch on her knee. She looked down.

'I'll take Gyp for a walk,' she succumbed to the silent pleading of the elderly border collie. 'Come on, you haven't had a lot of exercise for a couple of days. We'll go as far as the waterfall over the Scar.' She did not know if Mrs Pugh heard her. The capable fingers were already smoothing a sleeve across the top of the ironing board, and teaching for the iron, trying it gingerly to see if it was hot enough. It was, and she bent her grey head over her task, as if removing creases from the freshly washed garment was the most important thing in the world. Marion gave her a puzzled look. She started to say something, and thought better of it. It seemed little use talking to a bent head, and she closed the door quietly behind her.

'What's the matter with them both?' she asked Gyp, letting her exasperation escape with a rush once she was outside. 'First Uncle Miles, then Mrs Pugh. They act as if the reservoir isn't going to happen!'

Her only reply was a waving plume, and Marion smiled and rubbed the silky head. 'I'm glad Uncle Miles had you,' she told him affectionately, and lengthened her stride to keep pace with the collie. Despite his ten years, he was remarkably active, his life of herding on the hill had given him a wiry agility that stretched even Marion's energy at the beginning of the walk.

'Try and remember you're retired,' she protested at last, and paused for breath at the stepping stones over the beck, where the path touched the edge of the Wade holding. Gyp danced easily across the wet slabs, surefooted, but Marion proceeded with more care. She did not want a wetting to. cap the day, she decided ruefully, and paused for a moment to gaze down into the clear water. It would be icy cold, she knew without trying, fresh from who knew what depths in the timeless rocks of the Scar. And the beck was deep, too. No matter how hot the summer, the flow from the spring that fed it never slackened. When it was dammed, it would not take long to flood the valley.

'No!' She checked her thinking sharply.
'If
it's dammed.' Her chin set in a determined line.

'It's no good tha' looking for fish in the beck near the Scar. Water's too cold.'

She jerked upright and nearly lost her balance as a rough voice spoke from the bank behind her.

'Hello, Ben. You made me jump, I didn't hear you.' She saw vexedly from the grin on the youth's face that he had intended to startle her, and was enjoying her discomfiture.

No doubt he would have enjoyed it even more if she had lost her balance and received a ducking, she thought tardy. Ben Wade had inherited more than a little of his mother's malicious nature.

'Come on, Gyp. If we're going as far as the waterfall, we'll have to get on.' She did not feel in the mood to remain and talk with Ben, she still felt churned up inside herself from her clash with Reeve.

'It'd be better if your uncle had let that one be put down.' The youth gave Gyp a glowering look. For once he seemed inclined to linger and talk, she supposed it was too much to expect him to be amiable as well, Marion thought impatiently.

'Gyp is in perfectly good condition,' she answered firmly. 'He may be past working the hill, but he makes an excellent companion for my uncle.'

'Dogs is the same as folks,' Ben answered her dourly, 'when they've got nowt to do, they start looking for mischief. Mind you keep him away from the sheep. Herding ain't that different from harrying, an' he's as like to take to the one as he was to t'other,' he predicted darkly.

'Gyp's shown no sign of wanting to harry sheep,' Marion retorted sharply.

'See as he doan, not while he's by our flocks,' Ben warned her ill-humoredly. 'Heel, you!' he growled an order to his own collie, which skulked behind him, a snarl lifting its lips as it passed close to Gyp. The latter replied in kind, and Marion moved quickly towards the opposite bank of the beck.

'Come!' Hurriedly she set Gyp moving ahead of her. Really, Ben was impossible! she thought angrily. And his dog was as bad. A fight between the two collies was more than she felt she could endure in her present state of mind. She glanced back over her shoulder, but man and dog were already some way off, and heading in the opposite direction.

'If it was only the Wade holding that was affected, I don't think I'd put up any resistance to the reservoir,' she muttered crossly to herself.

She strode out behind Gyp, seeking relief in movement, but she could not outpace her own thoughts. What if Ben was right about the dog? she wondered uneasily. The possibility worried her more than she cared to admit. Miles Dorman had become fond of the dog, and she knew it was a concession by its master that had allowed it to live beyond its useful working span. Gyp came from the same farm as the sheep which Ben Wade had purchased. Its owner was selling up and moving out. Doubtless if he had remained to farm in the vicinity, self-interest in the form of concern for the safety of his own flocks, would have obliged him to follow the accepted norm and have the dog put down. Marion sighed. One problem seemed to pile on top of another, and there did not appear to be a ready solution to any of them.

She heard the engine of the helicopter just before she reached the waterfall. She turned to pinpoint it against the blue of the sky. It was following its original route through the gap in the hills at the other end of Merevale, and tracing the line of the ridge dividing the two valleys. She quickened her pace. If she could gain the waterfall in time, she could climb up among its rocks and watch the activities of the helicopter while remaining unobserved herself. She saw the machine pause over where, the rocky outcrop lay, probably to enable Miles Dorman to study more closely the controversial section of the drovers' road.

'I hope he finds it goes to the left of the rocks,' she wished fervently. 'He must find it goes to the left of the rocks ....' It was unthinkable that it should be otherwise after the stand she had taken against Reeve. She closed her mind resolutely to any possibility of Reeve being in the right, and continued doggedly upwards. Gyp went on ahead, as surefooted as a mountain goat. Once he disturbed a huddle of sheep from behind a rock. They jumped up, protesting, and Marion caught her breath sharply, but the dog ignored them and continued on its course, and she relaxed again.

'I'm just being silly,' she scolded herself. But she knew there was logic behind Ben's warning, and she confessed it had made her nervous, as he no doubt meant it to. She thrust the thought of Ben from her mind and concentrated on climbing high enough to see both the valleys. From such a vantage point she could watch every move the helicopter made, and remain invisible herself.

Gyp found a spot for her. He stopped and waited for her to catch up, and when she joined him she saw just ahead of them a patch of green turf at the bottom of a smooth slab of rock, out of the way of the spray from the waterfall. It was not unlike the spot from which she had done her sketching, further along the ridge, and it looked cool and inviting after her long climb.

'This is as far as I go,' she told the dog, and sank down thankfully. Gyp did the same, as glad to rest as she, and a wave of relief passed over her as he settled unbidden at her feet.

'This is ridiculous,' she told herself. If she was not careful she would find herself watching every move Gyp made, from now on. But wasn't that what Ben intended? She leaned back against the rock, willing herself to relax. The sound of the waterfall blotted out the drone of the helicopter, and imperceptibly her tension lessened. The soothing roar of the fall had a soporific effect, and it gradually quietened the turmoil in her mind until Reeve and Ben and the helicopter became things apart, for the moment anyway of less importance. She watched the machine lazily. One part of her noticed that the shadow lay behind it. It was later in the day than the first time she saw it across the fellside, and the sun was in a different position, throwing the darkness on its other side.

She wondered if the hare was there, perhaps come back again to feed, and even now crouching, fearful of the shadow. The helicopter did not seem to be hovering quite so low this time, and because of this the shade it cast was not so black, but it was still there, symptomatic of the shadow that hovered over the whole valley. She could imagine Reeve in the cabin of the machine, looking down, his hawk face intent, his eyes on his prey. For surely, she thought passionately, that this was what the valley was, to him? And he was waiting, biding his time until he stooped, as an eagle would stoop, to grasp his chosen with the concrete talons of his dam.

She shivered, and felt cravenly glad that the shadow, this time, came nowhere near to where she sat. And then—quite suddenly—it did. But it was not cast by the helicopter. Black and menacing, a long bar of darkness strode without warning straight across the grassy spot where she sat. It blotted out the sunshine, and seemed infinitely darker than the shade from the helicopter. It was totally unexpected, and to Marion's startled senses it seemed inexplicably threatening. The shadow of an eagle.... She sat up abruptly, and instinct guided her eyes to seek the sky. They met instead the dark, aquiline visage of Reeve, standing behind her. His face was impassive, his grey eyes half hooded, and he watched her without speaking. How long had he been standing there? She had no means of knowing. He must have moved, for his shadow to fall across her. A thrill of something like fear shot through her, as it had on the day she watched the hare. And as on that day, anger followed the fear.

'I thought you were in the helicopter with Willy.' She said the first thing that came into her head.

'I said Willy was taking the 'copter up. I didn't say anything about going with him myself.'