Unknown (16 page)

'As I said, I only learned of it myself this morning, and if you keep quiet and listen,' she stilled a spate of mutters from the farmer, 'I'll tell you all I know.'

She accepted John Cornish's offer of a high bar stool with a grateful smile. Its height gave her a slight confidence, which helped her composure, and the seat attended to the sudden problem of trembling knees that affected her at the worst possible moment.

'I must be strong,' she whispered to herself. 'I mustn't weaken now.' She raised her head and let her glance rove across the faces in front of her, familiar each one of them, and the stillness in the bar room could be felt.

'To start with, when Mr Harland and his pilot booked in at the Fleece, we did not know the reason why they were in the district. We could not have refused them accommodation even if we had known,' she emphasised, and raised her voice above a disbelieving snort from the farmer. 'When we learned that they were here to survey the valley for the purpose of building a reservoir, Air Harland assured us that nothing definite had yet been decided. A survey has been carried out, and a recommendation made to the local authority, but that's all.' She sounded almost as if she was defending Reeve, she thought with amazement.

'And now tha' does know, what's tha' going to do about it?' Aaron Wade wanted to know.

'I can't do anything about it on my own,' Marion retorted sharply. 'If the recommendation is turned down, and they take their reservoir somewhere else, there'll be no need to do anything.' Her voice reflected her total lack of conviction, and with a sinking heart she saw her audience sensed it. 'If the recommendation is accepted, and they decide to use Fallbeck valley for their reservoir,' the expressions tensed, watching, waiting. From behind her she heard the click of a door opening and then shutting again. Perhaps her uncle had joined them, he always came to be with the barman for a while before closing time, and tonight he must have chosen to come in earlier than usual. Perhaps Mrs Pugh had sent for him, after all.

'We'll all have to make a stand together, and fight for the valley,' she concluded sturdily.

The continuing silence when she finished speaking puzzled her. She had expected an immediate buzz of conversation to break out. Argument, possibly suggestions. But not this awful silence. It seemed to go on and on. It was unnerving. She scanned the faces confronting her, and realised that they were no longer looking at her. The sea of eyes were fixed on something—someone—behind her. She swivelled round on her stool.

'Admirably put,' Reeve congratulated her icily. 'You didn't lose much time, did you?' His eyes bored into hers, ignoring the other people pressing about diem, and the contempt in his face lashed her like a whip.

'So this is how you keep your promise not to say anything until something definite is known?' he flung at her harshly.

'I didn't
say anything to anybody,' Marion protested indignantly. 'Jim called me to come....'

'Do you expect me to believe that?' He repeated Aaron Wade's question almost word for word. 'I saw you talking to Ben Wade this afternoon when I followed you up the hill. I don't doubt he made an efficient town crier,' he said sarcastically.

'I said nothing to Ben about the dam,' she denied hotly. 'He'll tell you what we were talking about when we saw one another by the beck.' She turned to the youth who stood near them, listening to the exchange with a sly grin on his face. 'You know I said nothing about the possibility of a reservoir being built here,' she appealed to him.

'Who's to say what we talked about by the beck?' Ben's black eyes roved insolently over her flushed face. 'There was only you and me to hear, and the dogs,' he gave a wink and his grin broadened, and Marion stared at him furiously. She should have known better than to appeal to him, his nature was as spiteful as his mother's. 'We all know about it now anyway,' he added maliciously, 'so that's that.'

'So now you know.' Reeve leaned against the bar and surveyed the room. In his manner was nothing of aggression, nor challenge—nor guilt, thought Marion angrily, at what he was doing to their small community. Just a calm confidence, and an air of authority that stilled the buzz of talk and brought every eye in the room on to him.

'Nothing can be done until the local authority have had time to study the report, and decide one way or the other,' he went on clearly.

'Was the recommendation yours?' John Cornish asked quietly.

'Yes.' He did not attempt to dodge the responsibility, thought Marion with reluctant admiration.

'And it was...?'

'That Fallbeck valley should be used for the reservoir,' he answered.

A hiss of expelled breath rippled across the room, like the portent of a storm to come.

'He don't try to duck out of the way of trouble, does he?' Jim the barman breathed in awe.

'It's as well he doesn't,' Marion retorted grimly, 'he's likely to get enough come his way over this.'

'Here's the first broadside coming up now.'

The last of Jim's prophecy was drowned by Aaron Wade's shout.

'No one's taking my farm away from me without a fight!' he blustered.

'What will become of the school, Mr Harland?'

'Aye, what about the kids?' The farmer took up John Cornish's question eagerly.

'And the church,' the vicar raised his voice amongst the others.

'One at a time.' Reeve followed suit, and gradually the uproar subsided. He spoke calmly into the ensuing silence. 'If it's decided to proceed with the reservoir,' he stressed the 'if', 'your farm will be the subject of individual negotiation, as will each of the separate homes and holdings,' he told the farmer straightly.

'Individual negotiation my foot!' came a voice from the back of the crowd—one of the local smallholders, Marion saw. 'Miss Dorman said we all had to make a stand together.'

'That wouldn't be possible as regards compensation.' Reeve seemed completely unruffled by the heckling, and Marion wondered what he was feeling underneath. He had probably met the same kind of opposition many times. And crushed it, she thought bitterly. 'Miss Dorman must know that each holding would command a different sum of money.' He paused slightly, then added deliberately, 'She read my recommendation.'

'I only read the first bit,' Marion cried indignantly, but Aaron Wade interrupted her angrily.

'You didn't tell us you've read what he's writ,' he snarled at her vengefully, and she shrank from the vindictive look he shot at her.

'As to the school,' Reeve quelled the farmer with a glance, and addressed John Cornish, 'I understand that it's already in danger of being closed for lack of pupils. There are two sets of twins due to be transferred to school in Dale End this autumn—isn't that what you told me, Marion?' He turned to her courteously for confirmation— on purpose, Marion felt sure, to impress the people in the room with the accuracy of his source of information.

She felt her colour begin to rise, then it flamed suddenly as Aaron Wade turned on her furiously.

'You're not content with keeping him and his pilot under your roof,' he gestured towards Reeve angrily, 'but you have to supply him with all the information he wants as well. I wonder what other favours you've shown him,' he hinted spitefully.

'Now, Aaron, there's no call for that... „.'

'Another remark like that,' Reeve straightened away from his leaning post on the bar, and towered over the farmer, and his voice cut like a rapier, 'another remark like that, and you'll find yourself outside the door,' he promised evenly.

'When you asked me all those questions, I'd no idea why you wanted the information.' Marion dissociated herself angrily from such Quisling activity. Aaron Wade was an offensive boor, but she did not need Reeve to defend her, she thought passionately. He was an excellent strategist, though, she acknowledged caustically. By one well-timed remark he had managed to implant doubt in the minds of the very people who would have listened to her: who would have been welded together by her in a common interest. And now the doubt was there it would be impossible to eradicate it, she realised that, too. With one master stroke, he had succeeded in alienating her from the rest of the crowd.

His action reminded her irresistibly of the words of a tall, sun-bronzed ranger whom she had met in the South African bush on one of her copy-searching missions. Noticing her interest, he gave her the benefit of his knowledge of the habits of various predators, hunting game often larger than themselves.

'There isn't much they can do against a united herd,' he explained, 'the hunters would probably only get themselves trampled for their pains. But they're wily, they try to scatter the herd if they can, and then they're able to pick diem off one by one at their leisure.'

That was exactly what Reeve was doing now. Splitting the crowd, and taking on one at a time. And if he negotiated with each one separately, in their own houses, and behind closed doors where the others could not hear, she knew what would happen, she thought despairingly. The offer of a large sum of money in compensation—perhaps the fear that it might be reduced if they remained until they were forced out—and self-interest would do the rest. It would only need one or two to lose their nerve and pack up and leave, for the defences of the others to crumble at a touch. And Reeve would provide the touch.

'I hate you for this!' she whispered passionately. She loved him, but she hated him too, with all the fiery force of her nature that longed to strike aside the hand which threatened to tear apart the very fabric of their valley. He heard her words. She could tell by the way he stiffened, and half turned towards her, and then the vicar repeated his question.

'What about the church?'

'I haven't seen it close to yet,' Reeve answered him frankly, 'but I'm told on good authority,' this time he did turn, and slanted a glance directly at Marion, continuing his tactics of scattering the herd, she thought caustically, 'I'm told on good authority that the building itself is architecturally uninteresting.' He repeated her own words with sarcastic emphasis.

She felt, rather than saw, the vicar's shocked look, straight across the room at her. Accusing. She paled with anger.

'What are you trying to do?' she whispered to Reeve furiously. 'Make them hate me?' Sensitive to atmospheres, she could feel an almost tangible change towards her in the room. The easy acceptance of her as one of themselves, which she was accorded when she first joined the crowd in the bar, had disappeared, and in its place was a wary withdrawal, a barrier of mistrust put there, she realised angrily, by Reeve's insidious barbs, each one of which had found its intended target.

'You can't touch a church,' Aaron Wade shouted triumphantly. 'Whether it's archi—archi—whatever you said or not, you can't touch a church. No one'd stand for it,' he concluded confidently.

'People fight for what they value.' Reeve's eyes bored into the farmer's, and Marion noticed Wade
pere's
look falter and drop away beneath the undisguised contempt on his face.

'Do you go to church?' he enquired silkily. 'Well, do you?' when no response was forthcoming.

'I—er—well….' The uneasy mutter trailed into confused silence.

'What, Dad go to church?' Ben had no inhibitions about speaking the truth this time, if only to aggravate his father. 'He ain't been near the place since the day I was christened,' he jeered derisively.

'And because of the scattered community, the same probably applies to half the valley,' Reeve thrust his point home. 'There just aren't that many people left in Fallbeck valley any more, there's only a quarter of the population here now that it supported fifty years ago. And only a third of those actually live in the village, within reasonable reach of the church. The rest are scattered at a distance far enough away to make them think twice before coming into the village for a service, particularly in the winter, and if they've got milking to attend to.' He had a valid point there, Marion admitted reluctantly. All the farms were family concerns, invariably shorthanded, and cows had no respect for the timing of church services.

'There's weddings and christenings and such.' Aaron Wade was determined not to give in.

'There hasn't been a wedding in the church for the last five years.' Reeve had the attention of the room on him now, Marion could feel the stiffening of interest at the cut and thrust of the exchange. 'And what's worse,' he paused, and his glance flicked over the raised faces, 'at least to me it seems worse,' he commented grimly, 'there hasn't been a christening in the church for eleven years.'

'There's kids at the school younger'n eleven,' the farmer began.

'You're out of touch,' Reeve assured him coldly. 'The last babies christened in Fallbeck were the younger of the two sets of twins. The other children came to the valley when they were older, with their parents. They belong to two families,' he let the facts drop one by one like a stone into a deepening pool of silence. 'Their fathers are brothers who both came back to live in the valley so that they could help on their own father's smallholding when he got too old to work it himself. They're both quarrymen by trade, with no real interest in the farm beyond a filial loyalty, and they work it in their spare time between them. How long do you think they're likely to remain in the valley when they're no longer obliged to, by family ties?' Reeve asked, leaning forward to emphasise his point. 'They'll do the same as the other young couples who've married in Fallbeck,' he prophesied, 'they'll leave the valley to find work and a life for themselves outside. Somewhere where there's a bus service, so that the schools and churches and shops can be reached easily, without half a day's journey to get there, and no matter what the weather. And that will take the last of the pupils from the school, he thrust his point home.

Marion could see from the expression of his audience that in this one thing at least, most of them agreed with him.

'You've been thorough, haven't you?' Her bitter comment sliced across the following silence, and evoked a response from Aaron Wade.