HENRY BAGUELY'S LAKE
Henry Baguely looked out of his window one morning and decided he needed a lake.
It was just him and mummy left now in the big house. Well, and Ginny, but then Ginny was always off with her friends these days. And that’s when she wasn’t in London, which she usually was.
He picked out a place. The lawn beyond the rose garden. It was flat enough and hadn’t much going for it currently beyond a few old trees.
Historical, apparently. But what in this place isn’t?
He sought out a contractor. Mr Robinson of Wilbury. He’d done Sir Arthur’s toad pond.
The old man had wanted toads and boy did Mr Robinson give them to him. Dozens of the blighters. The air around Shaftesbury Hall was alive with croaking.
He’d come to Sir Arthur through the Merribolds, of course, and to them from some golf type. Henry Baguely detested golf. Took too long. Too much walking about. The way he played, at least.
Mr Robinson came for tea. Poor mummy being mostly deaf, Henry Baguely had to bellow Mr Robinson’s valuation down her ear trumpet. She blinked, disapprovingly.
It made little to no difference either way, as Henry Baugely now controlled her estate. Asking was not so much a necessity as a courtesy. Eventually mummy nodded, and the wheels were in motion.
*****
First there was the matter of the trees. Pater had always boasted of their great age. Around since Shakespeare, apparently.
Well, a few hearty blows from saw and axe put paid to that notion. Henry Baguely counted the rings himself. There were less than a hundred years even on the biggest.
Felling the trees was relatively easy.
Henry Baguely surveyed the stubbled field with pride. Soon enough it would all be water.
More difficult, however, were the stumps.
Mr Robinson brought in his men. Rough men with leather hands. Henry Baguely had seen them around the village. They doffed their caps to him as he went by. He had always found them rather shrunken and strange.
Now that they heaved at the craggy ground together, he saw what his mad cousin Herbert, the raging red, must have seen. Their bodies were built for these great labours. For the price of a meal at the Reform and the promise of firewood, the men hauled stump after stump from the heavy soil.
Henry Baguely watched as the stumps piled up. Like fossilised octopi, some of them. So many twists and turns, sprouts and clumpy bits. There seemed to be as much tree beneath the ground as there was above it.
Finally, with the stumps cleared and carted away, the field pockmarked and punctured, it was time to call in assistance.
*****
Henry Baguely had never met an Irishman, but according to Mr Robinson they were best fellows for the job.
He hired three wagons to pick them up from the nearby station. It was like a military operation. They climbed out and formed a great huddle. They were addressed by Mr Robinson, and then by the foremen. Spades were stacked up, leaning against each other like bundles of rifles. There was a lot of shouting and gesturing.
Henry Baguely steered clear of them.
He had helped to measure out the area to be dug. He’d held the tape and placed a few flags. But the digging itself was too rough for him. Even to look at it felt, somehow, tasteless.
He stayed inside and took tea with mummy. He wrote a few letters to Ginny; telling her about the lake project and warning her about the London smogs. He’d read about them in a book somewhere. Horrid things.
Every once in a while he’d join Mercury up on the roof. He’d lean on the old boy’s coade-stone shoulders and gaze through the binoculars. The hole was getting deeper. The lake was on its way.
*****
He picked out a few books about lakes from the library. Poetry mostly, classical; nymph and dryad type things. A book on Monet too, he took down, and something Oriental. He wondered what his finished lake should look like. Perhaps it needed a pagoda?
*****
A few weeks later, Mr Robinson came knocking. Standing there in his muddy boots, flat cap in hand, he announced that the digging was completed. Would Henry Baguely care to come see?
Henry Baguely realised that his absence had been read as disinterest on the part of Mr Robinson. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. He had spent the past weeks absorbed by the lake. It had brought out something new in him. He’d even tried his hand at poetry, and a couple of paintings, not that they amounted to much.
The Irishmen, however, had achieved great wonders. As he stood on the rim of the huge muddy pit, Henry Baguely felt a tear roll down his cheek. It was tremendous. To move the earth like that. A religious act, almost.
He insisted that the Irishmen must be rewarded before they go. He ordered champagne and a few barrels of stout. The house staff brought out the gazebos that Ginny used for her weekend parties. They popped some corks and everyone was paid double.
That’s a benefit of low wages, Mr Robinson nodded, taking an ale; it’s far easier to be generous.
Henry Baguely hadn’t thought much of the money. No matter what they’d been paid, he’d have doubled it. He was astounded by the hole. It was like a miracle to him.
He drank until he was red in the face and spoke to the few Irishmen he could understand. They regaled him with tales of beauties from Wexford to Donegal. He said he admired their accents. Those that he could parse, at least.
*****
A hangover or two later and they were on to the technical part. The Irishmen had left and it was just the old hands now. Mr Robinson had plans drawn up and strutted between foremen, pointing his finger and peering.
Heavy wooden sleepers were sunk into the mud. These were built up and bolted together to form tiers. They would stop the sides from falling in, Mr Robinson explained, and would make for a range of depths, which would be good for the fish.
Henry Baguely hadn’t even thought of the fish. He wandered around the pit in his waders, thinking how wondrous it was that here, where he stood now, would soon be underwater. Fish would swim by, just where he was now. There would be reeds and lilies and perhaps even a toad or two.
After the sleepers came the clay. This would make it watertight. Cart after cart trundled up the drive. Each carried its load of thick, grey sludge.
Mr Robinson directed them. Men with spades and barrows emptied the carts. Weary foremen pointed and waved. It would take another few weeks, but Henry Baguely would watch the whole thing.
*****
At last the time had come for water. Mr Robinson had made plans. It was a relatively simple matter. Water could be redirected from the stream that ran through the rose garden. It would only take a few days and, once they’d reached a certain level, the rain would take care of the rest.
At that point, the roses could have their stream back.
Henry Baguely was thrilled at the plan, but there was one major obstacle. Not an earthwork, nor a sinkhole, but his mother.
Mummy loved her rose garden everso. It was in that garden where she had met Pater. She had listened to young Henry recite his first Latin there. It had been her consolation in widowhood, and her strength in old age.
To mummy, heaven could have nothing on that rose garden.
And so things were put on hold for a short while. Henry Baguely made a plan, and proceeded to write letters in earnest. Four a day, minimum, he told himself. Some days he even managed it.
Before the month was out, a motorcar bumped its way up the family drive. Parker stepped out of it and took in the lady’s things. Ginny followed behind. She wore dark glasses and a strange pillbox contraption on her head. Poufs of wire and jewelled flowers.
Henry Baguely walked her round the perimeter of the hole. She was mildly perturbed, but smiled and paid it a compliment or two. Very slimy, she agreed, yes. And most deep as well. It must have been a lot of effort.
He ran her through the plan over a game of billiards. It had been over a hundred years since the last promenade, and so the great hall had been turned into a games room. Between the darts and the croquet, the wiffle bats, roller-skates and shuttlecocks, Henry Baguely leaned on his cue and explained the whole thing.
I suppose I must do my part, Ginny sighed.
And so the next afternoon, Ginny and mummy had tea in the rose garden. Parker was recruited as interpreter; shouting Ginny’s words into mummy’s trumpet. At a signal, Mr Robinson stepped forward.
Cap in hand and his face stoical, he explained through a series of slashing gestures the process of rerouting. At a nod of his head, five women stepped forward with watering cans.
These were the wives of the horny-handed building men. They would be responsible for keeping the roses watered while the stream was busy elsewhere. Everything, Ginny assured her, was accounted for.
Mummy smiled. A rare act. Permission granted.
*****
After all of the great fuss that preceded it, the rerouting was positively effortless. Just like switching a great tap on and off. In two days the lake was full. The stream set back on its course and the rain, as predicted, took care of the rest.
Now it was merely the finishing touches. Fish shipped in from Windermere, and some waterlilies from France. Sir Arthur sent a box of his best toads. Trees were planted, including Ginny’s favourite, the willows, and a couple of ancient-looking oaks to replace the old ones.
As an old man, Henry Baguely would say they predated Shakespeare. The lake, however, he would always claim as his own.
A jetty was built. A boathouse. A couple of Dianas Bathing for the shrubbery. A pagoda was placed on the island with a red maple beside it. Finally, Henry Baguely planted a rosebush. A thank you to the river gods who had brought them the stream.
*****
When the boats arrived Henry Baguely held a public opening. He gave a speech, commending the labourers for their magnificent graft. Each was paid double. Mr Robinson too.
The Great Robinson came in for his fair share of praises. His name would be passed to Lord Newport, Ginny assured him, for it was well-known that the Newports were in need of a water feature.
As the crowds thronged the jetty, in shirtsleeves and caps, Henry Baguely took to the water.
Parker rowed them out. Ginny was in the back with mummy. Henry stood at the prow.
It was a hot summer day and the sky was jet blue above them. The waters were cool; green and sparkling. As the boat glided smoothly over the waters, Henry Baguely looked out over his lake. It was perfect.
On the bank was Mr Robinson. He stood silent, peaceful; watching. Henry Baguely saw him and waved, the sun in his eyes.
Joseph Darlington is the co-editor of the Manchester Review of Books. He was nominated for the Dinesh Allirajah Prize for Short Fiction in 2018 and his latest novel is Quiz Night (copies available at www.josefadarlington.co.uk). His novel The Girl Beneath the Ice is forthcoming from Northodox Press.