The Ford
There was a moment of driving rain that forced him into a grouse butt for some semblance of shelter, and he huddled there, his woolly hat on under the hood of his waterproof jacket and his gloved hands tucked deep into coat pockets. As the rain battered down he kicked at a few spent cartridges.
There was an old cart track that ran in loops down the hillside and passed between two twinned lakes. A gaggle of Greylag geese began an infernal honking as he passed. Soon he could see down to the A road and the handful of houses huddled around the church that constituted the village. The clouds shifted and bathed the valley in golden sunlight, and as he came down off the higher ground, Blaine felt himself warming up, and soon he dropped his hood and took off his hat and unzipped his coat to his chest. At the farm gate he saw the golden crescent of the river sweeping past the old hall. It was only when the water levels were high that you could see the river from the farm gate.
He knew he shouldn’t really bother but the shortcut across the ford cut off a good two miles. Otherwise he had to walk all the way down to the footbridge and then come back again through the village. As Blaine approached the water he scrutinized the crossing point. He walked up and down the embankment and though he could see through the water to where the farmer had piled the bricks and stones it was too deep. On the opposite bank he could see the scars of the tractor tracks going up the bank, but they were old tracks, deep-grooved from years of use. There was a sign on the fence: ‘Private Fishing Only’.
‘Too deep!’ shouted a voice. ‘Go away! Too deep!’
Blaine looked around and saw a man that he had previously imagined to be his father. He stood in waders waist deep in the water with a golden line dipping from a rod into the river. He then started waving his hand in a motion that suggested Blaine move back.
‘I’ll fucking decide if it’s deep enough,’ Blaine muttered under his breath. He couldn’t be arsed shouting above the noise of the fast flowing water. Nobody owns the fucking river, thought Blaine, and he stood there staring at the man. Then he leaned against the fence post where it said ‘Private Fishing Only’ and took out his map to look at the point on it where the ford was marked. Hopefully that would shut him up.
There were always fisherman driving their 4×4’s behind the house to go night fishing. Even when it was totally freezing cold outside. This seemed like madness to Blaine, who had never been taught to fish.
Blaine had been on the booze and his whole face felt red from both that and sitting in the garden all afternoon. The old house was good for keeping cool in summer but it had been so hot for the last couple of weeks that he needed to go outside again. There was enough of a breeze to keep the midges off and he sat in the lawn chair drinking in the glow of the outside light. When he finished his bottle of Wainwright ale he stood up to go for another and then an idea took hold of him.
He made his way down the old road that went down to the railway track and followed the path under it into the field where all his neighbours walked their dogs. He made his way down to where the tractor tracks scarred the embankment. He could hear oystercatchers and curlews in the darkness. The coldness of the river water was blissful as it filled his shoes. The moonlit sweep of the river rippled and sighed. He made his way across and sat on the bank until a light breeze licked his wet pants and made him feel cold. He looked upriver and there was a blackened figure in the water, standing below the hills in the moonlight.
Neil Campbell has two collections of short stories, Broken Doll, and Pictures from Hopper, published by Salt, and two poetry chapbooks, Birds, and Bugsworth Diary, published by Knives, Forks and Spoons. Recent stories in Short Fiction and Tears in the Fence. Other stories in the anthologies, Murmurations, and Best British Short Stories 2012. Has a chapbook of short fiction, Ekphrasis, with Knives, Forks and Spoons.