The Unseen(82)

After a better lunch of sandwiches and beer, they walked out into the water meadows. The rain had cleared and left the sky china blue, with fat white clouds bowling above their heads as they made their way along a footpath that ran beside a lake, away from the canal. The ground squelched beneath their boots, the turf seeming to bounce as if floating on liquid.

‘These lakes probably weren’t here when Hester wrote the letters, and the fairy pictures were taken,’ Mark told her, marching along with his hands thrust into his pockets.

‘How come?’

‘They’re flooded gravel pits, for the most part. There are still some gravel works around here, even today. It was big business at one point.’ He sniffed – the cold breeze was making both their noses run, and had brought a flush of colour to his cheeks, a shine to his eyes that made him look more alive.

‘I suppose it would have been more open, too – less footpaths and fields and more common land and water meadow?’ she asked. Mark shrugged.

‘Yes, I’d have thought so. Here’s a bit of the river. It weaves in and out of the canal all the way along here – between Newbury and Reading. Sometimes the river and the canal are the same thing, sometimes they’re separate. And all the way along there are these little streams and tributaries and lakes.’

‘I suppose the chances of the tree in the picture still being there are …’

‘Slim to nil, I’d say. It looks like an old tree in the photos, and if it was old a hundred years ago … well, even if it wasn’t chopped down to make way for something, it would have come down of its own accord,’ Mark said. He stopped to consult the photos again. In the study at his father’s house, they had found an original copy of a pamphlet written by his great-grandfather, Albert Canning, about the pictures and the circumstances of their production. In it were the two pictures Leah had seen online, and a couple more besides, in which the thin figure was less distinct. ‘Well, there are rows of tall trees like that here and there all along the canal and the river braids.’ He glanced up at her and shrugged one shoulder. ‘We’ll never know if we’re looking at the exact ones, but those over there are as like them as any, and there’s a hollow in front of this bit of the river, just like in the picture. It’s as good a guess as any,’ he said, handing Leah the pamphlet and gazing around at the landscape.

Leah studied the picture hard again and then looked up. Mark was right – the landscape was as similar to the picture as any they had seen that morning. The sun seemed preternaturally bright after so many wet days, and she shielded her eyes with the pamphlet. The stream by their feet was quick and clear, cutting through the cropped turf with keen efficiency as it hurried by. On its bottom were brown and orange pebbles, chips of grey and white flint and knots of green weed that streamed with the current. The short grass was peppered with pellets of sheep and rabbit shit, and the hedgerow beyond was pocked with burrows and rodent diggings. Suddenly it was spring, as though all it took was the sun to shine for Leah to see it. Dandelions with fat yellow manes; the little white daisies of childhood; tiny purple blooms with hairy leaves that she did not recognise. She crouched and picked up a stick from the ground, throwing it into the stream and watching it whisk away. On the other bank, a startled pheasant bolted away from them, legs pedalling comically. Leah smiled and took a deep breath. The breeze was damp and cool, and tasted of earthy minerals, soft rainwater; but the sun on the top of her head had warmth – a wonderful glow of heat she hadn’t felt since the September before. She tried to imagine the eerie light of the photograph, settled over the bright scene in front of her. Had the photographer used a filter of some kind? It didn’t appear to be misty, exactly, but there was some kind of unfamiliar, pallid glow, softening all the outlines just slightly, just enough to allow doubt to creep in. Doubt, or belief. Leah took another deep breath, all the way to the bottom of her lungs.

‘God! It’s nice to see a blue sky, isn’t it?’ she exclaimed, standing up again and wiping her hands on the seat of her jeans. She turned to Mark and found him watching her with an odd, wide-eyed intensity. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ he replied. He shook his head and the look was gone, the old troubled scowl back in its place. ‘I used to come here and play with my cousins as a kid. In summer we used to swim – not right here, a bit further along where there’s a big bend in the river and the water is slower. It was freezing.’ He shuddered at the thought. ‘Bone-achingly cold, every time. But I had to go in, of course. Couldn’t be the one left out.’ Leah put her hands in her back pockets and turned in a circle, surveying their surroundings. ‘What do you want to do now?’ Mark asked. He sounded genuinely interested, and slightly resigned; as if entirely at her disposal. She looked across at him, squinting in the sunshine, and realised that he didn’t have anything else to do. Small wonder, then, that he was such a prisoner to his moods and memories.