The Dale Heron

Part 1 - Bridbydale

The Bonners were new to Bridbydale. London blow-ins, most of the villagers thought, or otherwise originating far enough south of Sheffield to qualify as foreign for all intents and purposes in the north of England, exotic terrarium specimens to be set in glass and turned this way and that, indirect beams of interested scrutiny to be cast over them. The husband had taken a job at the government office for rural affairs eight miles away in Sand Hutton, as rumour had it, something to do with rhubarb and national food security – a fearful future for gut-sensitive Brits nonetheless. Often, he was out during the day. The wife stayed at home in Cowslip Cottage, which sat on the edge of the village next to one of the two farms that bookended the single stretch of road containing the village's 24 houses strung along it like bunting.

None of them could recall a For Sale sign appearing at any point that Spring last year, but they had little interest in questioning this. Cowslip Cottage had been empty since the sad old Burns woman had died months before, leaving the village bereft (so to speak), so the existing residents were overjoyed at the idea of such a young and attractive couple moving into their little wold-bound oasis and bringing new life to it, not least because it was fresh meat to pick over, bereft no longer. There was no heavy-jumpered country matron without a quiche or garden-ripped bouquet in her arms who failed to knock at the Bonner door with prying generosity; no wellied gent back from beating without a brace of pheasants to hang off a post of the Bonner porch "just being friendly"; no scooter-borne child passing without a sustained stare over the post and rail fencing, over the hydrangeas, up the sandstone walk toward the door, a perilous disregard for poorly maintained pavement beneath their wheels. The whole village could be confident in their magnanimity, their resolute belief that neither Bonner could say that they weren't welcomed with open arms by the new neighbours. Bridbydale residents prided themselves on a convivial, community-minded philosophy after all.

Still, no door-framed exchange of pleasantries with the Bonner husband – it was always him – sated the natter-deprived and isolated populace. He always seemed to be in the middle of something, too busy for a proper chat/interrogation. Inevitably, one arm would resolutely affix itself across his skinny abdomen as the door opened, as though cradling something inside himself he feared would spill out on the porch, his other arm bent back on itself upwards to his mouth, as he busied and chewed at his fingers covered in, they assumed, the leftovers of DIY, or nervously pushed back the fallen strands of blue-black fringe that would occasionally stripe his excessively pale forehead. Any digging for gossipy seams were unsuccessful, as the door was (not rudely but too quickly) closed, time after time, to each miner's dissatisfaction with nothing more to say than "Didn't he look tired" or "The missus has him doing too much" or "Must be his work with the rhubarb."

Months began drifting by without happenstance run-ins typical, even expected, in such a demographically mature community, for most were more mid-December than May in years. Neither were counter-invitations given nor even a begged cup of sugar sought by the Bonners, raising more curious suspicion about the couple than would otherwise have been obvious in the seeing of them. The threshold at Cowslip Cottage remained the Rubicon between Birdbydale's questions and Bonner-extracted answers, and the tittle-tattle ran rife behind the backs of the Bonners.

How the couple had come to purchase a detached four-bedroom house, and in Bridbydale of all places, fuelled the gossip over flowering hedgerows, behind slashes of daffodils at the post box or, uncomfortably sat, a lukewarm over-milked and under-tea-d mug in hand, in the parish reading room at (optional?) biweekly socials. The subject was endlessly parsed, taken in stages as you would in dressing your once-best chook for the table once her eggs have stopped.

You'd perhaps hear some older man pipe up knowingly to his neighbours about higher cost-of-living in the south, a notion that the Bonners were really economic migrants of a kind, freeing themselves of some inflationary, gentrified golden coop and running heedlessly to hectares of free-range natural beauty, worth so much more than £3,000 a month for 24 square metres in Shoreditch or Battersea or Tottenham, surely. He was known to pick up the Financial Times from the paper shop – officially defunct since 1978 but run by tradition out of the front porch of the unwitting villager now residing there – and hence, the collective agreed he knew about such things. Concurring Ayes rewarded this view, tinged as it was with a modest smugness common to those up north in God's Own Country. So the "London prices" theory took root.