‘No, I never have a problem,’ said the postman. ‘I know it’s there, all right, but they keep it shut up in the yard. They never let the dog out at the front of the house. Well, not unless they really don’t like the look of you.’
Cooper was surprised to find a Peak Park Ranger in the car park. Of course, the village was within the national park, though it was difficult to remember sometimes. He supposed the area was valued more for its surrounding habitat of peat bogs than for the village itself.
Cooper introduced himself and asked about the moorland fire that had been burning since Friday night.
There are still a few patches smouldering under the surface,’ said the Ranger. They might persist for another week or so. Some fires last for months in the peat, you know. We’re lucky it wasn’t
265
a summer one. But that’s another few acres we’ve lost up there. With fires and erosion, we’ll lose the whole bloody landscape in a few years.’
‘Is it that bad?’
‘Have you seen the erosion recently? The moor is eroding, the sphagnum moss is dying, the peat is disappearing down to the bedrock.’
‘Yes, I know.’
Many thousands of pairs of feet were wearing tracks across the plateaux of the Dark Peak every year, and water running through hundreds of groughs and channels was washing away yet more peat. In places it had been scoured away down to depths of twenty feet, creating deep valleys in the black crust and washing the peat away year by year. It ran down into the water catchment area and into the reservoirs, where the water was brown and tasted peaty.
‘Acid rain is the real problem though,’ said the ranger. ‘Long term/
‘Really?’
‘It’s been falling on us for decades - for centuries. It’s been falling on us ever since the factories in Manchester began to belch out their pollution over there. The prevailing wind blows all the pollution in this direction, and it falls in the rain when it reaches high ground. It’s the acid rain that’s killed the moss. And it was the moss that bound the surface. Now the moss is gone and the peat is exposed, so it gets washed away year by year, inch by inch. Eventually, the hills will be nothing but bare rock. No more banks of purple heather in the summer, no sheep, no grouse, no songbirds. No wildlife of any kind. That’s what acid rain means to us.’
‘The moors are a sitting target, I suppose?’
‘Absolutely. It’s only a matter of time before they’re gone. And fires like this one don’t help. Some fourteen- year-old kid on a school outing from Manchester started it. We don’t know whether he was smoking a fag and dropped it, or whether he lit a fire deliberately, which is just as likely, in my view. But a fire takes days to put out and longer to damp down, and this one has already destroyed thirty acres of moor. Another thirty acres gone. Maybe the acid rain isn’t quick enough. Now Manchester is sending its kids out here to destroy the moors faster.’
‘Long-term damage, I suppose?’
‘I said “destroyed”, didn’t I? How long do you think it takes peat to form?’
266
Cooper shook his head.
‘Two hundred thousand years. Even presuming we’re still around after all that time, would we see new peat? Well, the fact is that peat forms from the undecomposed remains of - guess what? - sphagnum moss. No, when this peat is gone, there won’t be any more.’
‘Do you know Withens? There’s a family down there at Waterloo Terrace I’m interested in - the Oxleys.’
‘Don’t tell me about the Oxleys. Their kids like to set fires, just so they can hear the sirens and see the flashing lights as the fire appliances arrive. It breaks the boredom a bit. When we turn up, there’s always a little crowd of excited youngsters. The ones that started the fire are probably among the spectators. But we’re never going to be able to prove it.’
There’s a burnt-out house at the top of the road,’ said Cooper.
‘I remember that. It was empty for years and getting derelict. It had got so bad that nobody wanted to spend money on repairing it, I suppose. The local kids broke in and were using it. Then it started getting fires. We were called out there several times. Each time, there was a bit less of the building left. The roof fell in quite early on, and it wasn’t really considered dangerous any more after that. But it still got set on fire regularly. I reckon the kids were dragging bits of wood up there to burn, once all the beams and doors and window frames had gone up in smoke.’
‘Whatever happened to saving up the wood for bonfire night?’ said Cooper.
‘You’re joking. What century are you living in?’
‘It’s what we did when I was kid. And that’s only ‘
‘Last century, I expect.’
‘Kids never did that where I lived,’ said Cooper. ‘They used to let other folk collect wood and pile up their bonfires, then they’d sneak in and set fire to them a few days before the fifth. They thought that was much more fun than collecting their own.’
The Ranger looked at him. ‘Do you have any children of your own?’
‘No.’
‘Let me know in a few years’ time, when you’ve managed it, and I’ll come and give them a talk about fire safety.’
‘Thanks a lot.’
The Ranger looked over Cooper’s shoulder and gestured at something behind him. ‘Well, look at him.’
267
Cooper turned and looked. It took him a moment to register what he was seeing. A small boy was walking past him, leaning forward to pull on a rope that was attached to a makeshift trolley. Its wheels rattled on the pavement as he passed. The trolley was full of sticks, perhaps a dozen of them, all a yard long and solid-fooking.
‘Hold on, son,’ said Cooper.
