Iain Williamson

Circular Walk  

It must be herd behaviour. All of the cars are parked to the right as you drive into the nature reserve, even though there’s enough space for another row on the left. They are spaces, surely:  there are two posts with blue and white disabled signs about a car’s width apart. It’ll be fine to park along from them. There’re only two reserved signs and at least enough room for what, six cars?  
          Behind the signs are some outhouses painted in dark sea green. It’s the wrong shade: too blue for the grass and bushes that surround them. In front of the toilet block there are stacked hexagonal pipes set into a wooden frame. The pipes are big enough to put your whole hand through and deep enough to get in up to your elbow. 
          ‘Probably for bees,’ she says. 
          ‘How big are the bees?’ 
          Looking up, one clumsily makes its way into the gap in the panelling of the block. As your eyes attune to look for bees, you notice more and more of them flying in and out. Maybe the pipes are a disused hive after all. Why are the hexagons so big? 
          After consulting the map, you stride towards a path to the right of the outhouses. She double checks and you double back and exit left. The path is grassy and dead straight, with tall hedgerows on either side. There’s a noticeboard up ahead saying Stodmarsh Nature Reserve. It has a kingfisher perched on top of the first S. 
          ‘I hope we get to see one – a kingfisher,’ she says. 
          ‘I hope so.’  
          It might just be a generic sign that these sorts of places use but you hope not. She’s never seen one in the wild. Neither of you have but it’s her that would really like to. And for you to see her eyes widen as she spied it would make the early start on a Sunday morning worth it. 
          Dressed in immaculate black, a man paces ahead. His rucksack has two expensive camera cases swinging from thin braided metal tie loops. He must be on his way to one of the hides. Occasionally, he stops and looks back, perhaps checking for something that he might have dropped. You catch up with him before the hedgerows give way to more open ground beyond. He stops right in front of a greasy dark stile. 
          ‘You don’t look disabled?’ His voice is uncomfortably loud for the setting. 
          ‘Sorry?’ 
          ‘I said you don’t look very disabled.’ He might be smiling but looking closer, you realise that the rest of his face is blank. He just has too many lines around his eyes. You explain that you’re next to the priority bays. They’re still free. “Vacant” would have been a better word but something about his stance makes you decide against saying it. In any case, he disagrees strongly and at length. 
          On what might have been the second or third squeeze, you notice that she’s pulling you to walk on, ignoring the stile. The man continues to stand there and talk. It’s not clear if it’s to you.  

The raised path has marshland on either side: endless long pale sticks with American corn dogs on top. Your boots become twice the size they were, broadened by the grey mud. The shoes are made for this terrain you tell yourself. It’s pleasing. You don’t need to miss the puddles. You try a shallow one out for size and feel a weird sense of pride that your feet are still warm and dry. Trying a deeper one, you look up and see she’s watching, smiling. Her boots are made for it too and you squelch ahead together. 
          In voices hushed by the swishing wind, you both act out how the encounter with the camera man should have gone. The distance and your authentic footwear have given you confidence to start talking again. One of you might have had a prosthetic leg for all he knew. 
          She says you shouldn’t let him ruin it. She’s right.
          ‘The whole side can’t be disabled,’ you blurt. 
          ‘I know. And there are plenty of other disabled spaces.’ 
          ‘We’re not in a disabled space.’ 
          ‘I know.’  

She shushes you. The man again?  
          She points through some slate grey branches to a family of swans. Two parents and a cygnet in a sheltered niche. The baby is as big as the adults, bigger somehow with its fluffy, graceless feathers. Their beaks stirring and clapping in the stream is surprisingly noisy. When will the cygnet leave its mum and dad? It would have had brothers and sisters once.
          The baby flaps its wings in the water, as if your thoughts are disturbing her.  
          Neither of you make signs of moving off but it’s too early in the walk not to be walking. Leave the birds in peace. Soon the little family will be obscured by the branches. The bark now has an orange tinge, brushed by the sun.  

The sun makes your eyes narrow as you round the corner. A nameless lake on the left is rich with rose gold flecks on the up slope of each ripple. You check that your fleece is zipped up to the top but find that it already is. There are backlit clouds in the distance. It kind of looks like an explosion that will never reach you, only pretty and not scary.  
          There’s a marsh full of reeds on the other side of the path. She explains that the reeds are bulrushes and takes her time to single one out to touch. The brunette heads of the rushes will not stay like that, she says. As they start to seed, they will turn to white fluff, starting at the top and work down to the bottom. You say you assumed they were brown after their seeds had flown. She says that’s teasel. You nod as if you understand.
          The bulrushes sway eerily, making no sound. There is only the faint lapping from the water behind you. Turning back to the lake, you try to hold on to the moment before moving on. There is a mushroom-coloured foam by the shoreline. It looks unnatural, not moving as ripples disappear beneath it.  
          Time to walk again. 
          The dense but leafless trees that overhang the final portion of the lake come to an end and you’re conscious of your eyes watering in the sudden wind. You brush the tears away with the sleeve of your technical fleece.  

Because you want to seem mature, you stop and look at an information board next to the path. It’s oddly high, like a pulpit. It tells you that Stodmarsh was used by Augustinian monks in “medieval times.” They dug ditches, creating the lowland that surrounds the path. They dug them so the mineral-rich… 
          There’s another paragraph saying that it used to be called “Studmarsh” but you don’t read that bit either. There’s too much writing. It must be something to do with horses – there’s a pastel coloured picture of monks near some horses. She continues to read and you pretend to read too. Like in an art gallery where you act like you’re still appreciating a painting long after you’d started to think about lunch.  

If they were all for disabled people, they’d mark each space, wouldn’t they?  

She says to mind the ‘poo’ up ahead. It must be from a horse but there’re no hoof prints. You should have read more about the horses. 
          She twirls around: ‘It would be nice to ride a horse here.’ 
          A blackbird flies low across the path. She flinches as it flies at shin height from one bush to another. It causes a chain reaction and a blue tit flutters overhead in the opposite direction. It lands in the tallest branch of a tree. You both stop and stare. The yellows and the blues are brighter than the blue tits in your garden. Here, it’s magnificent and you think of saying “the macaw of the marshes” but decide against it.  

Eventually, you come across a bench that’s a bit like a squat Stonehenge. Though it must be wood, it looks as cold as stone with a lichen gilt. Sitting down, it’s in the shadow of the trees but its view out to the corn-coloured reed bed is glorious. The reeds sway in the breeze. Not like anything else, they just sway. 
          She finds a laminated note held by a white plant label holder. She passes it:  

          I Miss My Dad. 
          He loved me for who I was 
          And accepted me for who
I was striving to become. 
          Dads are strong for a reason. 
          Their strength gives us a 
          Sense of protection. 
Now that you are in heaven dad,  I know
you will continue to protect me. 
          Thank you for being MY dad. 
          I will always love and miss you. 
          Until we meet again.  

          She notices something on the other side. Turning it over, you look at it together. It’s a picture of the man, of the dad. He’s smiling into the camera. He has a dark blue polo shirt on with a jumper of the same colour tied around his shoulders. He is sat here. He is sat where you are sat. 
          You look at the reeds again: you are still, they sway. 
She replaces the note, being careful to fit it safely back into its holder.  

During a stop at the Grove Ferry Inn, she’d decided on a different route home. Going this way, you have to keep squinting because the sun is in your eyes. There are reed beds on both sides of the path. The stems begin below you and the bulrushes are up to your chest. Apart from the reeds, the only feature is a round black tree floating in the distance.
          No, not just a tree. There’s a figure beneath it. A man dressed in black. You are tired and refuse for the walk to be ruined. Slowing, you search for an answer of what to do. Up ahead there’s a path that might take you out of his way. You both run between the reeds and wait. The ground is damp and uneven and you both have to be careful not to make any squelching sounds. 
          She giggles and you shush her with a finger to your lips and a smile behind it. 
          It feels like you both wait there for a long time. Her face is very close to yours. Faces aren’t usually this close and still next to each other. It’s fun and odd. Her eyes look blue today, but sometimes they’re grey with flecks of hazel. You can see her pupils flickering as she looks back at you. They’re never quite still. 
          He must be gone by now. You check. He hasn’t moved but now he’s next to a couple. They look to be in their late twenties in dark clothes like him. The man with the cameras might be talking to them. No. All three of them are looking in the same direction, at something out of sight beyond the tree. 
‘Is he still there?’ 
          ‘Yeah. Let’s go anyway.’ 
          As you get closer, walking hand-in-hand while trying not to slouch, you see that the couple aren’t in dark clothes, and neither is the other man. Both of you sigh as you seem to realise in unison: it isn’t the camera man. But the man does have a camera and the couple both have their phones poised. They’re by a weir with branches that hang over the water. Being careful not to disturb the gravel underfoot, you sidle up to them and quietly watch the murmuring weir.  
          The man with the camera whispers: ‘There’s a kingfisher.’ 
          You look away from the weir and watch her. Waiting.

Bio: