Downstream

girl in homely pinafore
dipping a foot in the water as
it gushes forth’, Harper found
a buried well under ‘fallen
masses of the dull, ochre-
coloured earth’. Nearby
pumping stations had
‘greedily sucked up all the
water in summer’ when the
place was parched, although
in winter the spring could still
burst out three feet high and
the meadow was a water-
logged morass and often a