Authors: Catherine Chanter
The Well (39 page)
Not even now.
Wordless, Angie left me at the graveside. I turned around and she was gone, leaving no promises or forgiveness behind her. A doctor and a policeman took me back to The Well. Mark apparently managed the wake in the village hall and then left without ever coming back here again. The doctor was a kind man. He stayed with me, told me later that the statement had been a good idea; he hoped it might put an end to the queues of people waiting to pay their respects.
Statement?
The family would like to thank everyone for their kindness and sympathy expressed over recent weeks. They cannot find the words to say what a gap the death of Lucien has left behind in their lives. He was the most wonderful son and grandson anyone could hope for and loved by everyone who ever met him. They know that there has been a lot of speculation throughout the country about The Well and about the family’s future plans for the farm. What is important to
the family is that this special land is now used in such a way as will best benefit the rest of the country suffering so terribly as a result of the drought and then Lucien’s death may not have been in vain. They will therefore be leaving the land shortly and making legal arrangements for the change of ownership to a charitable trust.
The family now ask to be left to grieve their terrible loss in private.
‘It was sensible of Mark to write it,’ said the doctor. ‘He said he thought you had enough on your plate without having to write statements for the press.’
That was his public valedictory speech; for me he had a different message.
Dear Ruth
This is the hardest letter I shall ever have to write, but I cannot put it off any longer. I am leaving. By the time you read this, I will have left and this time I will not be coming back. I am sorry.
I wanted to stay. The Well was a dream for both of us to start with. It didn’t belong to you or me, but it has driven us apart. We’ve tried every permutation now. Together in the house, then separate bedrooms, then separate houses, the next logical step was always going to be for one of us to go, but then all this. The last few weeks I kidded myself that you needed me again, but I was wrong. You have not needed me for a long time. You have had your daughter, your grandson, your sisters, your god – I have been way down your list for a very long time. Since Lucien’s death you have allowed me to feed you and count your pills, but that is not enough and I am going.
If I could share your beliefs, I would, but I can’t. I don’t
have any other answers, as you so often remind me, but I think that to rely on some God-centric explanation of how and why we have ended up at The Well is weakness, not strength. It is delusional. As I have tried to tell you so many times, out of love not malice, you are being exploited by Sister Amelia. I hope you stay away from her. You need medical help. Unlike Angie, I do not think the Sisters are harmless.
I think we agree on one thing – that The Well is bigger than us. I’ve invested everything in it as our smallholding, but it’s not a small thing, is it? It is not and never really has been ours to own – if it offers answers to the drought, they belong to everyone. So I have signed my half of the Government Temporary Lease Order and lodged it with our solicitors. I have not received any money for this yet. It never was to do with the money. Surely you know me well enough to believe that. This March would have been our wedding anniversary. You have meant everything to me and perhaps that is why it has been impossible to accept anything less than all of you.
Do you remember those lists you used to write for me and Angie, if you were away for a conference? Jazz dance on Thursday, don’t forget the lasagne in the freezer, Angie’s reading book due back Friday – all that. I want to write one for you – check the sheep every day for footrot, the supplement for the Tamworths is running out, the brake lights on the trailer need fixing . . . I want to remind you to look after yourself, to eat properly, to lock the back door, not to use jump leads on the Land Rover, to steer clear of the internet . . . but you haven’t done any of these things for months, so what’s the point in me saying it now. So what if they all die? For my own sanity I need to be able to walk away, so I will stop now. I need to look after my own grief. You can look after yourself.
I have left all the paperwork, financial information etc. in my desk. I’ve downloaded all The Well paperwork onto your laptop in a file called Leaving. There is some money in the bank, but it won’t last forever – at some point we will need to talk about that. Maybe I will ask the solicitor to get in touch. Do not try to contact me. I will not reply. It is over.
I don’t know what I’m going to do. Will says he knows someone who may need some law work done, but my heart will not be in it.
You have left me as surely as I have left you. I am sorry I hit you. I am not a violent man, but you have punched me so hard that there are times when I can no longer breathe. Maybe this will all be over soon. Maybe it will start to rain. But until we know who murdered our grandson, it is impossible to think of forgiveness. I hope against hope it was not you.
You can have all my love, I will never need it for anyone else.
Mark
R
emembrance comes at a cost and does not travel alone. I wake up with its companion beside me, its cold body spooned against mine despite the heat of the day, its rancid breath against the back of my neck causing me to pull my knees up to my chest and howl like a dog. Before Hugh’s death, I was beginning to think it might have packed up its leaden suitcases, laden with grief and deceit, and dragged them down the stairs and out. But it was hiding all along, biding its time and here it is again.
Staring at the ceiling, I mock my small steps forward with my strides backwards. At some point during the morning I turn onto my side, look out of the window and see the wheat sprouting amongst the thistles in First Field and the regimented experimental crops on the government plots. Here are the functions of all living things. Be born. Feed. Defecate. Grow. Reproduce. Die. The rats which scuttle near the compost heap are more accomplished at all of these functions than I will ever be. They do not, as far as I know, kill themselves.
My hand reaches for my thigh and feels the raised welt of the branded pattern there; it does this often, my hand, as if it is worried I might forget something. At this moment it strikes me as likely that I could have killed Lucien. His face appears from the knot and twist of the grain of the floorboards and confirms my guilt, not some
abstract moral responsibility, but the physical act: waking him up in the early hours of the morning, putting my finger over his mouth to sshh him, whispering in his ear about a dawn adventure. I lace his trainers for him, double bows and ends tucked in. He is sleepy. I hang the rose around his neck and in the dim light my fingers know how to tie the knot by heart. I search for his hand hidden under the long sleeve of the green jumper and then lead him down the stairs. He is awake now and excited.
‘Where are we going, Granny R, and why?’
‘Look how dark it is, Granny R.’
It is very dark and very cold. There are no stars. There is no moon. We hold hands, Lucien so he cannot get lost in the night, me all the better to lose him. At the top of the field, we look out over Cadogan Hill; there are no lights on in the distant farmhouses, no one wants to wake to see this.
Voice tells us to hurry. Dawn will break soon.
‘Are we going to The Well, Granny R, is that where we’re going?’
We are going to The Well.
He is frightened now, climbing the stile into the wood. I can feel the tightness of his grip on my hand as he clutches on to the one thing that will harm him. We arrive at the black water and Lucien bends down and touches the surface with his hand. It is slow to wake up and recoils drowsily to the edges of the pond where it cowers in the reeds; the water itself does not want to shake hands with evil.
‘You’re not going to leave me here, are you, Granny R?’
Yes and no.
‘How deep it is, Granny R. Can you touch the bottom?’
Yes, and rise again.
We sit on the cold earth and he leans against me, saying he feels a little sick and can we go home now, come again another time, but I tell him the water makes everything all right.
‘Will we see the magic?’
Yes, I say, but we have to do things properly for the magic to work. Follow me.
Hand in hand, we stand in the cold waters of the Wellspring, the mud sludge sucking us in, Lucien giggling and shivering. One more step. One more step along the road we go, one more step along the world I know. From the old things to the new, keep me travelling along with you. I start to sing to him, quietly, and he joins in because he knows this song. He sings like a girl. He has hair like a girl, I feel it in my fingers. But he has the genitals of a boy. Deeper, says Voice, go deeper.
‘How cold it is, Granny R.’
I tell him that when you are cold, the best thing is to go deeper. The cold, the pain you have in your tummy, the fear you feel in your fists, when you are in deep enough, they all disappear with the magic. You just have to believe.
‘I do believe, Granny R, honestly. I do believe, but I’m very cold.’
Trust me.
He lies back against my arms, but when the water splashes on his face, he screams. Suddenly he has a thousand arms and fingers and they are scratching at my clothes and pulling my hair. Stumbling in the dark, I lurch into him, he beats me, kicks me in the breast, we fight like drunks, he half stands, half slips and his head flies backwards, crack, against the old moss steps and then he slumps, slides into the water. I hold his perfect, bleeding head under the surface. Just once, feebly, his hands reach out for something to cling to, but finding nothing they open to float like flowers. He stills, becomes beautiful again and I allow his pale face to surface to meet the moonlight, his lips puckered like a rosebud.
Voice says I have done well and then I am home in my bed and the house itself is weightless and outside the dawn is coloured like a rainbow.
‘Ruth, are you OK?’
‘I didn’t know you were back.’
Boy feels my forehead. ‘You’re very hot.’
Rolling away from him, I huddle under the duvet, shaking. He thinks I am ill. He is right, I am sick to the core.
‘What’s been going on this last week? I read the log; you’ve hardly got up . . .’
‘You need to leave me.’
‘I’ll go and get you some paracetamol. You need a doctor.’
‘No. And I don’t want your paracetamol. And, you know what, Boy, I don’t want you either. Go back to your barracks.’
Boy puts his head in his hands. Grabbing his arm, I lean forward and press my advantage. ‘For God’s sake, go. It’s pathetic – me a menopausal headcase and you, nothing but an adolescent looking for a cause. You’ve picked the wrong one. And do you know what, sooner or later you’ll conform, get a house and a job and wife and kids and all this will be a story you tell at supper parties.’
My fists pummel him as hard as my words, beating against his ‘oh so traditional’ successful youth, his ordinariness, his future, hating him because he has so little to lose, so much life left to live and I have lost it all already – and Lucien never even got to try. But he does not flinch under my blows and he does not leave and I cannot carry on so I collapse, exhausted, and turn away from him. Sit there, I think, if you must, and catch my disease. In the silence which follows, the thing that really needs to be said stirs in my stomach and organises itself into words.
‘I have spent the week remembering the worst times. But it’s been worth it. I think I killed Lucien,’ I tell him. ‘I think I have remembered it all.’
Still, he won’t leave. His shoulders are a little lower, his chest rises a little higher when he breathes. He doesn’t look at me when he speaks.
‘What do you remember?’
‘Details. How I tied his laces, how he hit his head, how I held him under, my footprints in the mud.’ I sit up, cross-legged. ‘It’s a relief. I can tell everyone now, be charged, go to prison. It will all be so straightforward. And no –’ I stop him interrupting – ‘don’t say
I didn’t do it, because you have never quite got it, how mad I am, how miserable, how delusional. Actually’ – it seems I have been searching a lifetime for the right word and suddenly I find it – ‘how selfish.’
Boy moves away and sits on the broad window sill where the light behind silhouettes him and his shadow falls across the bed. It means I cannot see his face very well, but his voice gives away the fact that he is struggling.
Boy speaks slowly, in a measured tone. ‘I think you are a very beautiful woman – not like that, I don’t mean physically, I mean all of you. I don’t know if you murdered Lucien, I’ve never been sure. You never tied his laces in a double bow, did you? He hated that, it said so in the press – that you would never have tied his laces in a double bow. Then there’s the jumper and the wooden rose, you’ve never remembered where they are. And footprints mean nothing, everyone – Amelia, all the Sisters, Mark, Lucien, you – the world and his wife were at the Wellspring that evening.’