The Well (12 page)

She turned over. She was restless. Her lame leg ached. Mrs Borden's remark about Katherine's dress was hurtful. Mrs Borden's voice came to her. She was keeping Katherine too young was she. But wasn't it just the youthfulness of the attractive girl, dressed up so sweetly, which brought everyone to the jams and pickles. Even the meanest men and women went away laden with jars. Hester turned over again and tried to recapture something safe and wholesome in the fragrance of the quinces.

‘The kitchen.' Hester was roused once more. Katherine was sitting up in bed. ‘The kitchen!' she seemed hardly able to whisper. ‘Miss Harper, there's a noise in the kitchen. Listen.'

Hester raised herself on one stiff elbow. Both women listened. From indoors came the drip drop of the kitchen tap and from outside the familiar tap tapping of the well cover as it stirred above the new inhabitant.

‘There's nothing there Kathy,' Hester said. The short sleep had made her feel heavy and her throat was dry. ‘I'll have a look,' she said, ‘I'll make us some tea.' Her head ached. She hoped she was not going to have one of her migraines. She hoped too, while the kettle rattled to the boil, that Katherine was not going to go all nervy. There were tonics, she thought, that could be bought, something to steady the nerves. She tried to think of names she had seen on advertisements but could only remember pictures of distressed faces and hands holding troubled heads. Katherine coming quietly on bare feet into the kitchen made her jump. ‘Nearly out of my skin! Kathy, you gave me a fright.' She laughed forgetting for a moment all that was so heavy on her mind. ‘I've made the tea, we'll take it back to bed and …'

‘Miss Harper!' Katherine screamed, bringing both hands up to her mouth as if to try to stop the scream. ‘Miss Harper! Look! There – behind –' she pointed to the floor beyond Hester's trailing shawl.

Hester turned to look and saw on the tiles of the floor the red woollen hat. There was nothing unreasonable about the red hat. Hester said so. ‘It's only the hat Kathy,' she said with a steady quietness in her voice. ‘I must have knocked it off the dresser. You put it back, dear, it's easier for you to bend down and …'

‘Miss Harper!' Katherine's next scream was even more piercing, ‘there's nothing in it, it's empty.' She held out the hat letting it dangle, without life, from her thin fingers. Hester grabbed it and turned it inside out. With a quick nervous movement she looked along the shelves of the dresser pushing the plates aside. She looked on the floor, under the table, she moved the chairs, scraping them in her agitation. She pulled open the cupboards. She looked at her own empty helpless hands. ‘He must have been in the house.' Disgust made her choke. The round tea tray on the edge of the table suddenly seemed shabby and pathetic. Hester cried at the sight of it. ‘Oh,' she moaned as if to herself, ‘what have I done. What have I done.'

‘He,' Katherine paused, the word seemed to make her self-conscious. Hester glanced at her sharply. ‘He,' Katherine said again, stammering, ‘he must have had the money on him when …' again she brought both hands up to her mouth as if to hold in the words.

‘Yes – yes – of course I realize that.' Hester's voice was ugly and loud, its loudness made them both silent. ‘We can't tell anyone Katherine,' she said, ‘we must not tell anyone, not one single person must know.' She turned the hat inside out. She twisted it over and over again as if the movement in some magic way could bring back the rolls of notes. Something would have to be done as quickly as possible. ‘We can't ask anyone, Katherine,' Hester said. Even if she still had reliable men working for her it would not have been possible to ask one of them to climb down to retrieve the money. The idea was ludicrous. She gave a short bark of laughter. The money must be got back straight away,' she said, spacing the words out for emphasis. ‘Katherine-I-do-not-wish-for-hysteria-of-any-sort. Listen to me!' She advanced towards Katherine steadying herself on one of the high-backed chairs. ‘You will have to go down the well and get the money.' They stood for a moment, in silence, looking at one another. Hester moved forward a step. ‘Kathy,' she said in a cajoling tone, ‘it will not be at all difficult. I'll get a rope, a good one, today. I'll go to town. Tonight, when it's dark we'll get our money back.'

‘It's your money, not mine,' Katherine said, ‘and I'm not going down there. I won't go. I can't! It's too horrible. I can't … I …'

‘Katherine!' Hester said, ‘do you want us to starve?'

‘That's not all the money you've got, Miss Harper.'

‘That's beside the point. It happens to be our ready money, we need it right away.'

‘Not ours, it's yours. Yours! I didn't put it down there.'

‘Katherine, you must surely understand, it's too much to simply lose like that. You will do as I say and go …'

‘I won't! He's dead. I'd have to touch a dead man. I might have to look for the money on him, I'd have to touch him,' Katherine began to cry. ‘I'm going to be sick. Miss Harper, he might have it next to his body, next to his skin, I couldn't do it.'

‘Yes I know he's dead, Katherine,' Hester's voice was low and grim, ‘and I'll remind you who killed him. Just remember who it was who killed him. Now, you stay here today while I go into town for a proper rope. If we don't do this thing as soon as possible I don't need to tell you it will be worse to do later. The rope we have is too old. We can't risk it.'

‘But Miss Harper, it was an accident. I didn't run over him on purpose. You know that.' Katherine clasped her thin fingers together. ‘Miss Harper, what if there's something else down there, it's enough that He's there. I can't, Miss Harper, I can't do it. I won't,' her voice rose and stayed on a hysterical note. She sank down on to the other chair.

‘Katherine be quiet!' Hester was like a monument in the small kitchen. ‘I'll have to remind you,' she said, ‘think will you, who killed him? Eh? Who? Also, I will ask you this. Do you want to go back to the Orphanage? Do you?'

‘The Home? Miss Harper?' Katherine stared up at Hester. ‘Miss Harper, I couldn't go back there. Miss Harper, I couldn't,' her voice was thin, almost a whisper, ‘I'm too old, Miss Harper, I couldn't go back now. They don't have grown-up people there, only girls. I'm not a girl any more Miss Harper.' She stood up. ‘You can't send me back there, Miss Harper, they wouldn't have me.'

Hester, keeping her lips together said, ‘The orphanage or prison.' Again there was a silence during which they stared at each other as if lost in a strange place. Katherine was no longer crying. ‘Now pull yourself together,' Hester said, ‘we must get dressed and have our breakfast. I'll make some fresh tea. Come along.' She put an arm out towards Katherine, ‘We'll manage, we have to. I'll be away all day, and you must go to bed. You need a good sleep.' Hester longed to take back her words and show fondness. She kept her voice low and steady and did not reveal her feelings.

‘Oh Miss Harper, dear, please don't go, don't leave me all alone here all day.' Katherine seemed to throw herself at Hester's stern body.

‘There, there,' Hester took her in her arms but quickly held her stiffly away at arm's length. ‘We must be sensible and calm,' she said, almost losing her balance. She wanted to say how she would go down the well herself but she was so hampered by the useless leg. She was not in the habit of mentioning the leg and did not know how to say what she would have liked to say. Instead she repeated in a gruff voice the same words, ‘There, there,' knowing that she must not show any weakening in her resolution. She would, she thought, remind Katherine time after time that no one must ever be told, not even a hint, that if there were marks or dents on the truck they had been made by stones flying up from the track. She would remind Katherine of the convent. There would be no harm in suggesting discipline. All the time she was thinking of the effort needed to make a show of preparing a meal and eating it. She knew she must make the effort.

Mr Bird's early-morning arrival was preceded by flocks of screeching cockatoos. These marauding pirates, on their way to other places, swooped and circled in their noisy ragged flight. They seemed to suggest the encompassing of spaciousness and freedom and an enjoyment of something known only to themselves. They seemed entirely without responsibility. Hester, seeing, in the distance, the advancing cloud of dust in which Mr Bird was making steady progress across Borden's dry paddocks, seized a basin and, when he clambered down from his small truck, she crossed the yard throwing grain to the poultry and hurrying towards him. He, because of this, stayed on the other side of the wire fence. After an exchange of comments on the celebration of the night before Mr Bird came straight to the point.

‘I've the papers on me.' he said. ‘You can invest more than half of what you've kept in the house. I've got everything we need, all you've got to do is sign.' He patted his breast pocket. ‘If you'll sign,' he said, ‘I'll come in for your signature and a quick look at the teapot, eh? I meant what I said last night, Miss Hester, I'm getting old and I'd like to see you safe. It's not right to live off any of your capital. You know that. I don't need to explain to you …'

‘Mr Bird,' Hester interrupted him, ‘I'll trouble you not to push down on the top wires like that. I could never stand seeing a fence take a man's weight. I should have thought that you of all people, you wouldn't …'

‘No harm meant, Miss Hester. I came across this way, rough though it is, to be quicker,' he paused. ‘Where's young Katherine then?' He shaded his eyes to look across the busy yard. Still in her bed is she? After all that dancing? Miss Hester,' he lowered his quiet voice, ‘Miss Hester, I'd like us to settle this in private.'

‘There's no need,' Hester replied quickly. ‘I've invested all I mean to, thank you. I thought I'd made this perfectly plain. There's no more to say about it.'

Mr Bird seemed to understand. Slowly he handled the papers he had started to bring out of his pocket. He began to fold them and put them back. ‘Well, if that's the story,' he said, ‘but I can tell you a mate of mine, the other side of town, made exactly the same mistake you're making. You have to have the money make money for your living. This mate, he made a great mistake – lived off his capital …'

‘Thank you Mr Bird I'm in a hurry today,' Hester threw the remaining grain and the basin hard in the direction of an elderly rooster. ‘I am sure,' she said, ‘that what happened to your mate is incredibly interesting gripping and horrifying but I really haven't time now. Katherine and I are going –'

‘Miss Katherine all right, is she, after last night? Is she?' Mr Bird did not give up. ‘After all that dancing?'

‘Katherine is very fit and well thank you. She's cleaning the car.' Hester tried hard not to let the impatience, which she knew sprang from fear, show.

‘I'll have a word with her then while you pop the kettle on. There's a thirst in all that dust and I wouldn't say no to a bit of coaxing to a scone if there's one going begging.' He had one leg over the fence. At the sight of the wires being pushed down even more Hester flinched. She was surprised to welcome the feeling of anger over something like a fence. ‘No,' her voice rose, ‘you can't see her just now, she's not dressed and we're in a hurry, we're going to town, we've appointments to keep and –' She tried to push Mr Bird back with her abrupt explanations.

‘Anything I can do then? Can I give a hand?' he paused, one leg on either side of the wires. ‘I'm not afraid of petticoats,' he added, ‘you know that!'

‘Nothing thank you. And there's no petticoat as you call it.' Hester tried a grim laugh.

‘Ha! in the nuddy eh?' It was Mr Bird's turn, in the ritual of conversation, to laugh, ‘Aw!' he said, ‘you're very secluded here. Nice little neck o' the woods. You can do as you please here. Er,' he paused again his face close, opposite Hester's lips which were stretched across her teeth. ‘Er,' he said again, ‘no harm meant, Miss Hester. You know me. Just my little joke about the petticoats. You know me. All I want is to see you settled and comfortable.'

‘Thank you, Mr Bird, now if you'll excuse me –' Hester did not say more as, coming across the paddock was another dust cloud which rejuvenated Mr Bird's.

‘More company.' Mr Bird, following Hester's gaze, turned to look. ‘Just take a look at that dust,' he shook his head. ‘The weather's over-due, for sure. Need the rain – that last little drop!' he dismissed it with a slight toss of his head.

‘Isn't that your dust not settled,' Hester tried not to sound either impatient or hopeful. Another visitor now would be far from welcome.

‘It's Borden,' Mr Bird said. ‘I'm just come from there. P'raps I left summat.' He patted all his pockets as if making sure, Hester thought, that he had all his boring bits of paper. ‘P'raps he's changed his mind,' Mr Bird was muttering to himself, ‘or else I've left summat behind.'

‘Good morning, Mr Borden,' Hester challenged as the young man drew up alongside. ‘The gate's farther up. There's no way through here.'

‘That's all right, Miss Harper,' Mr Borden called, ‘I'm not stopping. I'm after someone. Any strangers about? Have you seen anyone? Had a man come yesterday. Said he wanted a place to work and I took him on, said he could have the end house, you know the one I mean and he said he'd be back when he'd fetched his wife and baby. Seemed all right, but to cut things short, he's nicked off with Rosalie's stuff. Diamonds, rings, the lot and a few other bits, worth quite a bit, all small stuff …'

‘No, Mr Borden,' Hester's clear voice rang out. ‘No one's been here. No one at all. But I'll keep a look out. I hope you find him,' she added. ‘We can see a long way from here. I'll let you know if anyone comes.'