He Asked For A Lift To A Village That Was Demolished In 1965

He was standing where the lane meets the main road, which is a stupid place to stand, and he had a bag on his shoulder, and it was February and it was dark at five.

He asked for a lift to Thornhaugh.

There is no Thornhaugh. There has not been a Thornhaugh since 1965, when they flooded the valley and made the reservoir, and my grandmother, who was born there, used to talk about the church tower being visible in a dry summer.

I said, "There's no Thornhaugh, mate."

He said, pleasantly, "Then take me as far as the crossroads and I'll walk."

I want to tell you why I let him in. I let him in because he was completely, boringly normal. Fifties. A donkey jacket. A canvas bag. A tired man at the end of a shift. If he had been strange, I would have driven on.

He gave me directions. He said, "Left at the top, then the second right, past the chapel."

There is no chapel. There is a bend and a bus shelter.

But he said it like a man saying something obvious, and — this is the bit — the second right IS where the old road used to go. I know that because there is a bit of tarmac in the hedge, a stub, and my grandmother once pointed at it from this exact car, when she was very old, and said, "That was our road."

He got out at the crossroads. He thanked me. He said, "It's not far now."

And then he walked, not up the road, but down the field, in the dark, toward the water.

I sat there with the engine running and I watched him until the hedge took him.

I did not follow. I did not get out. I turned round in a gateway, and I drove home, and I have never told my mother, because she would want to go and look, and I do not want anybody in my family standing at the edge of that reservoir in the dark, calling a name.