Free Gathering the Water by Robert Edric Page B

climb exhausted me further and I paused frequently. Eventually, the pain became excruciating again, and the noises I made as I panted up the final yards to my door sounded more and more animal-like.
    It was several hours before I was able to reapply a bandage and then contrive a soft slipper from sacking and twine in which to cushion my injury.
    I slept well and woke late the following morning. The pain still lingered, but much decreased, and so long as I kept my weight from the injured foot I found I could move around easily with the help of a stick.
    Because any further excursion was out of the question, I chose to continue with several unfinished reports, and to compile the one upon which I had embarked the previous day. I completed my observations on the streams I had visited. I predicted nothing that anyone in possession of an understanding of the situation would not also have predicted, but there was substance to the work; it revealed the expertise of a man familiar with his enquiry; there was a measure of pride involved.
    And then I grew frustrated that the report must remain of necessity incomplete, that its most significant part – the streams closest to the dam – must remain excluded. By early afternoon I had come to a standstill. I did not want to return to my other outstanding work, and so instead I went on with my report to include the tributaries I had not visited.
    I did not allow myself to become over-imaginative in my fabrications; I merely addressed each stream through anunderstanding of its morphology, its flow and its gradients, and made predictions which, eventually, the rising water would allow to be neither proved nor disproved.

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    â€˜When we were girls we were occasionally allowed to accompany our father on his business trips to what seemed to us then the most distant places. We went with him to Leeds and York, Richmond and Darlington. We even went with him once to Carlisle and Whitehaven.’
    â€˜What business was it?’
    â€˜I cannot say for certain. Except that in addition to his doctoring he had some interest in several pharmaceutical firms. Knowing him even as I did then, I imagine he took his duties seriously. Perhaps he travelled to attend meetings. Perhaps he travelled only to be somewhere other than here. My mother was firm that she would not accompany him – I think that perhaps she alone saw the folly in all this moving around – but she was graciousenough to allow Martha and myself to go with him. They were such great adventures for us. We stayed in hotels, and in boarding houses on the way. I think I knew even then that I would not remain here, would not live here for ever.’
    â€˜And Martha?’
    â€˜She was always more of a home-bird. She relished the travelling to begin with, but as she grew older – remember, she cannot have been much older than eleven or twelve when all this started – she declined more and more often to come with us.’
    â€˜And so you accompanied him alone.’
    â€˜I did. And they were the most memorable occasions of my young life. Do you remember your own father well?’
    I told her that I did, even though he had died when I was sixteen. She heard the reluctance in my voice and did not pursue the matter.
    We stood at the door to her home. It was a clear day and there was some real warmth in the sun where we faced it. We turned into it and closed our eyes against its brilliance, as though we were lizards or some other cold-blooded creatures dependent on it for our energy. We both knew these were rare days, soon gone.
    Martha stood at a short distance from us. She washed clothes in a bowl and then wrung these out, making a pool at her feet. I had spoken to her upon my arrival and she had seemed lucid and clear-headed. She had told me the whereabouts of her sister and returned to her work.
    â€˜Did these early travels encourage you to look beyond this valley, once you were grown?’
    â€˜They