The Well (16 page)

‘Katherine stop! Stop this. At once!' Fear. All the fear which Hester had often imagined could dissipate itself into the light gently moving air if she walked small and safe, low down close to the earth, along the road beneath the immense sky and between endless golden paddocks was in her voice when she spoke.

‘Oh but Miss Harper, dear, it's trew,' Katherine's imitation American accent irritated Hester. ‘Miss Harper, dear,' she insisted. ‘Do come out and talk to him when you've had some tea, he'd love that. I've bin telling him all about yew.'

‘Katherine! Stop all this nonsense.' Hester, though she had always encouraged the accent lovingly finding everything about Kathy charming and sweet, was almost screaming. ‘Stop all this nonsense!' She raised her voice even more, against her will. She wanted to remain calm.

‘It's not nonsense Miss Harper, dear, come outside and talk to him. I'll bring you tea out there. He wants to talk to you. He likes you heaps. He thinks you're great. The Greatest!'

Together they crouched, Hester as near to crouching as she could by the coping of the well. The familiar sound, a small rushing of air caught in the cylindrical shaft, came to them. They thought that faintly there was the drip dripping of a thin trickle of water somewhere far down. But, as before, this could have been imagination for it was, after all, a well. A place where the sound of water could be expected. They had often agreed about this.

Hester could feel the onset of a headache. There was a pounding in her left temple and a deep ache starting above and behind her left eye. The pain seemed accompanied by a feeling of nausea. When Katherine had made the tea and put a cup on a lace-edged tray cloth in front of her she had been unable to drink it. The tea, now cold, was on the low wall of the well.

They leaned over the ragged hole looking into the blackness but heard no singing or moaning or praying. The poultry were making their commotion before roosting. The noise, which Hester usually liked, annoyed her now. She sat up on the coping wall. ‘Go and shut up the hens,' she said to Katherine. The well cover creaked and rattled and Hester struck at it with her stick realizing at once how ineffectual the ash plant was against the aged iron and timber. Katherine, shutting up the hens, disturbed the geese who were standing nearby with their heads folded back into the feathers of their wings; some with one eye watchful.

They had to wait for silence before trying to listen again. It was already beginning to get dark.

‘If you've been putting things down, where's the old rope then?' Hester demanded. She really wished to be kind and loving to the one person she loved but, whenever she spoke, her words came out in a sort of sharp bark. Her voice seeming not in her control. This in itself was alarming. She longed to take Katherine in her arms and comfort her. The girl was clearly deranged by the experience. Apart from being unaccustomed to taking people in her arms in order to comfort them Hester was not sure it was the right way to deal with derangement.

But Katherine was laughing. ‘Why right here, Miss Harper, I have it all neat and ready. See? You can see it is all soft and frayed.' Sure enough in the shadow of the coping lay the old rope. Useless as she remembered it.

‘That's not a very long rope,' she seemed to accuse.

‘No,' Katherine said, ‘and I didn't need all of it, not all the length there is. The well's not as deep as you thought Miss Harper, dear. He says that's the maddening part. He's not all that far down but to all intents and purposes, that's how he said it, isn't it just the sweetest way of speaking! He's got a beautiful voice, Miss Harper, he's had a very good education, he told me, to all intents and purposes, doesn't that sound grand, Miss Harper, he might as well be in the middle of the earth for all he can get out. He says a man can't even get up his own height if there's nothing to catch a hold of. He wanted to try this rope but I said it would surely give way and then what! I told him, all through the day, I told him you were buying a good rope. You have got it haven't you Miss Harper, dear, you have brought back the rope?' Katherine turned from the opening in the well cover to look at Hester and Hester saw in her eyes an expression she had never seen there before. ‘I love him you see Miss Harper, dear, I love him and he says he loves me and he's glad I didn't kill him only knocked him out. When he's up from down there he's going to ask me to marry him and he says he'll ask you first, he'll ask your permission Miss Harper. Oh Miss Harper he's the sweetest sweetest person! When I threw him my blankets he said, you know what he said? Guess! Miss Harper, dear, guess!' She smiled, her teeth small and white in the dusk.

‘I – I can't guess,' Hester almost choked.

‘He said,' Katherine squirmed on the wall, ‘he said he was cuddling my blanket, even though it had got a bit wet at one end, and kissing it because it had been near my body. Oh Miss Harper! No one has ever said anything like that to me before. It's, it's like being in a film and with me as the star.' She sighed and clasped her thin fingers. Hester noticed that she had revarnished her nails. She must have made time during the day for them.

Hester could see that she must be very careful, perhaps even play along with the hallucinations. She checked an angry reprimand about throwing bedclothes down the well. She had, herself, thrown perfectly sound dishes down she admitted with honesty to herself. One, a valuable one, she remembered, had even been repaired years ago with narrow bands of silver and tiny jewelled clamps. For a moment she recalled the travelling tinker and his shifty eyes, eyes like Katherine's were just now, she thought. She wondered how Kathy could suddenly look dishonest. She had to realize that it was not sudden, that she had always dreaded a revelation of something not quite truthful. She remembered her grandmother thought the tinker looked sly and her father said that was not so, that the way he looked was the way in which he was being regarded. He said people often judged by what they feared or knew existed in themselves. He told Hester and her grandmother to watch the tinker when he was intent on his delicate work with the soldering iron …

Katherine was leaning over the coping calling in a soft voice which returned only the slightest reverberation. They, though straining to listen, heard no answering voice, no human murmur, no man's voice singing or moaning or praying. Simply the sounds of the hollow well came to them.

‘I guess he's gone to sleep,' Katherine said at last. ‘He said he ached dreadfully all over and his head hurt. I sent him down the brandy and the aspirin Miss Harper, dear, he asked for them and he said he would make himself comfy and wait till you came …' She giggled, ‘Oh Miss Harper,' she said, ‘he said, know what he said? He said he liked the smell of my pillow. I threw that down too, he asked me, did I smell like that!'

Hester, who was astounded by the quality of Katherine's invention, said dryly with the hint of a smile, painful, because of her headache. ‘Well firstly, he has no choice but to wait. As for liking your perfume that is perfectly natural isn't it, it is meant to be liked.'

‘Oh Miss Harper, dear, then yew do believe me!' Katherine tried to hug Hester's awkward body. ‘And I haven't to go down there after all because he can come up here.'

To Hester when she placed a hand on Katherine's brow it seemed hot. Katherine was decidedly feverish.

‘There,' Hester said as soothingly as she could. ‘There, there, Kathy. Come indoors to bed. We'll have to use the spare-bed blankets and pillow for you. Let's hurry! I have one of my heads coming on I'll have to get to bed and lie down before …' she groaned and retched, ‘before I'm sick.' She groaned again. It was degrading to be sick, especially out in the yard.

‘Oh Miss Harper, dear, I am so sorry you're not well.' Katherine put an arm round Hester and walked carefully guiding the bent and limping figure across the yard to the open door of the kitchen.

In order to enforce some kind of order in Katherine's mind Hester, in spite of the malice of the threatened migraine, helped to clear the dishes from the supper she had been unable to eat. Katherine ate a great deal with unconcealed pleasure, Hester noticed, and afterwards seemed sleepy like a child. Hester felt that the discipline of sewing would help to settle them both. She wanted to do what was best for Kathy. Though almost blinded by the advancing headache she went with meticulous care through the steps of drafting a pattern and cutting out a tiny dress for a baby. Kathy had expressed a wish to make baby clothes so, Hester decided, that was what they would make for the fête even though, up to the present, Miss Harper's jam and pickle shed had not included them. It was true too that baby clothes always sold well. There was enough of the dainty yellow stuff left from Kathy's frock.

Hester, taking her hand from her throbbing head, guided the needle in Kathy's fingers to demonstrate the necessary regularity of the stitches for smocking.

‘Just to get you started,' she said as kindly as she could thinking that tomorrow evening, without fail, Katherine must be made to go down the well to retrieve the money and, while she was about it, she could bring up the bed clothes and any of the dishes if they were not quite smashed to bits.

Yawning and stitching and admiring the effect of the quick embroidery Katherine laid it for a moment in her lap.

‘Oh Miss Harper, dear, just think of it! I might be at this very moment making the first dress for my very own little baby.' Her blue eyes were very bright and Hester, thinking that her cheeks were flushed, said perhaps it was time to put away the sewing for the night. They were both very tired she said.

‘Oh yes Miss Harper, dear,' Katherine's face disappeared into an enormous yawn, ‘it's so cosy to sit here thinking about him. He must be asleep or he would have called up to us. I love sitting here having a rave about him. I shall so enjoy making my wedding dress, something simple with a square of heavy white lace over the bodice – and – d'you know what he said Miss Harper, dear? He said I must keep the old rope and have some of it looped round the hem of my dress. Isn't that cute?' She paused. ‘And for you, Miss Harper, we could make something really splendid. Lilac! I know you prefer black but I couldn't have black at my wedding Miss Harper, dear, trewly lilac would be great. Do you think, Miss Harper, we could have the reception at the hotel like Mr Borden's party? We could have …'

‘Katherine, Kathy' Hester's voice was abrupt. ‘I'm going to bed. I have to lie down. Not well. Put out the lamp. Must go – bed –' the words jerked from her mouth as she clenched her teeth. ‘Bed,' she managed one more word.

As the night wore on Hester, between bouts of dizziness and painful vomiting, was convinced that Mrs Borden had contrived to talk to Katherine during the party, putting frivolous and disgustingly flirtatious ideas into a head only too ready, being fed on romantic films and reading, for them. Mrs Borden probably suggested they come to town for the Bingo nights too. As if Hester had educated Katherine all these years for Bingo! And what if her clothes were a bit childish, they suited her and she liked wearing them. Hester wept in her pain and her trouble, silently. She faced the truth that she did not want to lose Kathy especially not into vulgarity and loss of innocence.

There was too the awful truth about a dead body pushed ruthlessly down the well. Something about this might emerge at any time. But even if it never did and she was, for the most part, able to keep it out of her mind, she knew it would return time and again. She would have it on her conscience forever.

In addition there was the unthinkable prospect of Katherine and a wedding; not to be married to the dead man of course but to some oaf who was bound to come like a stupid and probably poverty-stricken prince (on social security, she almost snorted) into their lives. And who would, in spite of the great affection they – she and Kathy – had for each other, sweep her away, off her silly feet, to stock up his parent's miserable failing farm with children alongside the stocking up of his inferior cattle. All people, especially people like the Bordens, had only one idea in their heads and that was to make couples of people and to follow this coupling with reproducing.

The trouble with Kathy's prince would be that, now Hester had no land, a suitor would not come galloping from his father's rolling paddocks, only the unemployed son of a small farmer would come forward. Hester, almost moaning aloud, said over and over to herself she did not want a husband for Kathy. She was sure too when Kathy thought about it in her sensible way, she would not want to …

‘Will Hilde, will Fräulein Hilde write to me? She will write won't she?' Hester asked her grandmother. The old lady dusted flour from her hands and began breaking eggs into a bowl. ‘She will write? Say she will please.' Hester's fingers were white at the knuckles as she picked up the leather folder containing her writing things. She did not like her white bones showing through the skin, they were ugly, she would hide them in the pleats of her skirt.

‘She might,' her grandmother pursed her lips, ‘and she might not. Those sort of people don't write as a rule as there's nothing for them to say.' She searched along the dresser for the fork she used for beating eggs.

‘Oh but there's so much for us to tell each other …' Hester, seeing her grandmother frown, stopped speaking and tried to look pleased to see one of the dogs. Bending down, letting her case slide to the floor, she fondled the soft ears so that her grandmother should not see her tears.

When Hilde Herzfeld first came as governess to the little girl, Hester, she exclaimed at once that the child had the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen.

‘Such large eyes, so deep, brown and thoughtful,' she said holding Hester's face between her rather plump hands. ‘And the eye lashes, so long and the fine brow, very handsome!' Drawing attention to the eyes of her pupil took away any glances towards her ungainly movements. Hester's father had the same eyes though no one had noticed until Fräulein Herzfeld made the somewhat unexpected personal remark. He was very polite, perhaps shy, and always called Hilde Fräulein as she requested. Hester moved from his close companionship towards hers, and they were hardly ever separated until Hilde disappeared suddenly and the grandmother, without any real explanation except that Miss was ill and had to go home to her people, packed Hester off to a boarding school for girls of good families.