The Well (18 page)

‘Oh no Kathy don't go just yet.' Hester forced herself to prolong the conversation; anything to keep Kathy in the room, away from the well. ‘Do you think he might actually prefer me?' she asked. Die! she said inside herself. Die now! she urged in her heart, knowing that one human being should not wish death on another. Die dead like you were in the night and stay dead. Oh God, she prayed wordlessly help me to help Kathy, Dear God if you exist help me. She did not move her lips but fixed her eyes on Kathy.

‘Oh Miss Harper, dear,' Katherine laughed. ‘I do believe you are getting keen on him!' She placed a little rosebud kiss on Hester's pale damp forehead. ‘The only thing is, Miss Harper,' she teased, ‘he wants children. Two boys and a girl. The boys first and the girl last. I said to him if he does go for you when he sees us both that you, being through your change of life, you wouldn't be able to oblige.' She giggled. ‘But I did tell him you were good at adopting. And I told him at the Home there were lots of really little children.' She giggled again. ‘Oh Miss Harper, would I be aunty to your adopted children? Or would I be a sort of cousin. I've always wanted cousins; Joanna has fifteen cousins. Imagine! Relations to go and visit! Would your adopted children, Miss Harper, be related to me? Would they?'

‘I'm not sure Kathy,' Hester said as kindly as she could. It was one thing to read of these things in magazines and then, with common sense, discuss them with Kathy, say after dinner, when they were sitting with their sewing; to have such private matters discussed with a strange man was something very different. Hester was not sure what to say. ‘Now,' she added a forced brightness to her kindness, ‘if you'll help me, Kathy, perhaps I should try to get up. What a busy time you're having between the sick room and the …' Swallowing the last word she raised herself but had to flop back immediately as a feeling of nausea engulfed her.

Katherine disappeared as she poked under the bed for Hester's stout surgical boot and the caliper. Hester closed her eyes and gave herself up to the throbbing pain as it circled her head.

‘He says,' Katherine emerged dusting the high rounded shiny toe of the boot with her hand, ‘he says some women are in the change for years. His mother he told me was in her change for an age.' She giggled again.' Do you know Miss Harper, perhaps you'll be doing this too, his mother kept giving away her packets of you know what. That's how he said it, isn't he a sweety pie, he means pads. Anyway his mother kept giving these packets to his sisters, he had two sisters – they're both dead, so sad, anyway, when she'd given them away she'd have to ask for them back! Isn't he …'

‘Be quiet! Katherine!' Hester said clenching her teeth, ‘I'm going to have to lie flat for a bit longer. About an hour. I'll get up then. You'd better tidy the kitchen and see to the fowls.'

‘Yes Miss Harper.' Katherine went with the quick little steps of the reprimanded to the door where she said in a quiet voice, ‘Know this Miss Harper? I'm not going to give him up. Not for anyone!'

‘Miss Harper! Miss Harper!' Katherine was pulling back the curtains.

‘What is it now!' It seemed only five minutes since Katherine had left. Hester, opening her eyes, saw the change in the light. The afternoon was coming to an end.

‘Miss Harper what shall I do about his food? There's hardly anything left at all. I haven't been able to get a thing done either with you ill in bed and him calling I mean hollering out all the time. I mean we could …'

‘Calling is perfectly correct Katherine,' Hester interrupted in a cold voice. Perhaps that American accent could, with an effort, be corrected even now. Katherine was not beyond all teaching. ‘Not hollering,' she said, ‘that is not our English.'

‘Oh yes Miss Harper, dear, I must say,' Katherine hardly paused for breath, ‘he is trewly a kind man. I'm so glad I didn't kill him. I told him I'm glad I didn't kill him and he said he was glad too and that he couldn't wait to marry me. I told him we'd have a lovely wedding because you're so kind and generous Miss Harper, dear. We've been talking about our wedding. It takes his mind off being down there. I told him about our clothes. I described your dresses too,' she added.

‘That was kind of you Kathy,' Hester said, unsmiling.

‘Yes, Miss Harper I described all your dresses. I told him,' Katherine rushed on, ‘I told him you had all those dresses in the wardrobe that you tried on sometimes but never wore. He says that makes him trewly sad and at our wedding you must wear at least two of them, you could change he says after the ceremony and then wear something else for the reception. Isn't that a cutey of an idea! He particularly wants you to wear the Princess Margaret tartan because of all the little pleats we made – it's a dashing dress Miss Harper, dear …'

‘Oh Katherine – Katherine,' a moan escaped from Hester's tight lips. ‘I've had enough of all this.' She wanted to wail aloud. Hilde! She felt the cry somewhere inside her but did not cry out. ‘I know he's down there Katherine,' she said in the most sensible voice she could make from the suppressed cry, ‘but it's a dead man we put down there and it is our money, you understand, our money that's down there with him and tonight you are,' she made her voice firm, ‘you are going down there to get that money.'

Hester sat on the side of the bed and began to put on her boot and caliper. She felt ill and slow and clumsy. Katherine, kneeling, began to help her to dress. ‘Miss Harper, dear,' she said, ‘as I've said, there's no need for me to go down the well. If we put the rope down he can climb up to those metal rungs, you understand? Then he can climb out. It's so easy. Please when you're dressed let's go right out there and rescue him. Please. And tonight we can write to Joanna and tell her about the wedding and ask her to be my bridesmaid and tomorrow we can fix up a booking at the hotel and buy little invitation cards and …'

‘That's enough Katherine,' Hester stood up and twitched her dress straight. ‘Whoever it is down there is dead – D. E.A.D. – dead,' she said, ‘otherwise he would not be down there.'

‘Oh no Miss Harper, dear.' Katherine's voice was soft like honey. ‘Oh no,' she said again, ‘he sent this up just now for our shopping. He says he's sorry he took your money Miss Harper and he says to tell you here's a hundred dollars for you to go to town – he wants oysters. He doesn't mind tinned oysters seeing as it's the country.' She held out a crumpled note. Hester stared at it in disbelief.

‘I tied the little flower basket to the old rope,' Katherine said, her voice seemed to falter when Hester did not take the money. ‘Like I told you,' she said, ‘it's only money Miss Harper, some of your own money.' She pushed the note into Hester's hand which hung as if without life at her side. ‘I must fix us something to eat,' Katherine said and, with a nervous little laugh, she left the room.

Staring at the money Hester's first thought was that Katherine must be telling the truth after all. Here in her hand was some of the money. There had been a great many of these rolled up tight, secured by elastic bands, and tucked in the soft folds of the red knitted hat. She frowned and set her mouth in an even grimmer line. ‘He'll stay down there,' she said to her dishevelled bed. ‘If he wants oysters he shall have them.' Plans began to form in her mind. She would have to use Katherine to get the money from him. And when she had the money she would have to deal with him in the only way she knew.

Hester began to tidy her bed in a half-hearted way partly because she felt ill and weak and partly because her mind was busy elsewhere. She thought of the well and what it might be like down there on an underground bank of earth and crumbled rock. Dark and damp. Quite unimaginable and yet in her imagination she seemed to see the world of the well quite clearly. In ordinary circumstances there was a fairy-tale enchantment about the idea of secret streams and caves beneath the ordinary world of wheat paddocks, roads and towns. The streams would trickle through crevices in the rocks and flow more swiftly in channels and even through tunnels in some places. In the rocks themselves there would be faces of dwarfs and other fairyland creatures, there would be battlements and turrets of silent castles and little steps and slides leading from one cavern to another. Some caves might be lined with jewels. Her father had been right, as she herself had believed, about the underground water feeding the line of trees. If the water flowed down there finding ways through the earth and the rock then naturally there could be no water level in the well. He, the man in the well, had told Katherine there was water, he had said it was bitter. She suddenly stopped tidying her counterpane, irritatingly it was not on properly and, try as she would, she could not neaten it. She stood upright by the bed how could she even think about what he, the man in the well, was supposed to have said when he was not alive.

Another thought, an appalling one came into her mind. She remembered Mr Bird's warning. Perhaps he had been right after all. She could have laughed if she was not so bitterly hurt. Katherine must have the money. She had stolen it and now to make her believe that the man was alive had given a note back. Also Katherine liked food and knew that they would need to purchase their stocks of fresh food immediately (her trip to town had been solely for the rope), and so was prepared to give up some of the stolen money. She wondered what was the best way of behaving now. It was something that, because of the headache, was not easy to think about and do.

‘Is your young man settled for the night?' she called in a cheerful voice aware, as she went down the passage, of the false tones. Katherine was bent over the sink.

‘What, by the way, is your young man's name?' Hester settled herself on the edge of a kitchen chair. Her head throbbed but the ache was dull. She thought she was not going to have to endure a three-day migraine after all. Ordinarily this would have made her light-hearted, full of laughter and on the point of doing something extravagant. Ordinarily too she would have been able to think with pleasure of a drive into town to replenish the pantry. It was stupid that on a day when she should have been fetching provisions she had spent the whole time in purchasing the rope. She thought now that she could fancy something to eat. It was clear that Katherine had not prepared anything tasty to attract the capricious appetite of an invalid.

‘I asked,' she repeated, ‘what is his name.'

‘He says to call him Jacob,' Katherine said, half turning from the sink. ‘He says, Miss Harper, to tell you to roll the stone from the well's mouth; he says you will know what he means.' Katherine dried her hands. ‘Oh Miss Harper, dear, while you were fixing your bed he had a terrible fit, shouting and screaming. He says he can't stay down there another minute and he must be fetched up. He wants out, Miss Harper this very minute, at once. He keeps on like this and when he's up he's going to get us, kill us he means it he says. And then straight after he cried and begged my pardon and yours too of course and now he says he didn't mean a word of what he'd said. He says it's because he gets this terrible hopeless feeling down there Miss Harper.' Katherine was very white faced. Hester noticed too that she trembled. ‘Miss Harper,' Katherine said, ‘he's hit his head on a rock.' She paused. ‘On purpose, Miss Harper, because he's losing faith, he says, in the milk of human kindness and he's scraped all the skin off his hands …'

‘I asked you,' Hester interrupted, ‘if you had settled your boyfriend for the night because, if you have, I think that I deserve a little attention after my headache.'

‘Oh yes, of course Miss Harper, dear.' Katherine was concerned. ‘What could you fancy Miss Harper, dear, I could …'

‘Do my hair first Kathy please,' Hester said in a complaining tone, ‘and then I'll try some toast and perhaps an egg.'

Katherine brushed Hester's long hair. With gentle patience she began to untangle the knots. Because of feeling ill Hester had not put it in a net before going to bed. Katherine pressed the hairbrush in long slow sweeps downwards and then, dividing the hair, she began to plait it.

Hester, partly soothed, began to feel irritated as she felt the thin, nimble and, as she thought, thieving fingers moving over her scalp and in her hair.

‘Come along, don't be all night!' she jerked her head. In reply it seemed that Katherine made an equally impatient movement with the brush tugging unnecessarily at a tangle. Hester felt at once that this answering impatience was an indication that Kathy had stolen the money and thoughts of possession gave her an upper hand. It was, she thought, the feeling of ownership, even if wrongly achieved. She, Hester, would soon show Katherine that the time of being in possession would be brief.

It was painful to know that Kathy could steal from her when, during the years, she had loved and cherished her possibly more than a mother or an aunt might. It had always been taken for granted that Katherine loved Miss Harper. This was what their lives together had been and it was shown in all sorts of little ways.

The dead man, the intruder, had distorted their relationship. He had brought disaster and a remedy must be found.

‘Kathy you're plaiting too tight, much too tight, stop pulling do! It'll make my head worse. You know that!' Hester, disliking her own voice, put her hands up to hold her great lengths of hair. There was no point in a remedy when faith between them was lost. Money was the only answer.

‘Kathy,' she said, still holding her hair against the pull of the plaiting, ‘would you like some investments of your own?'

‘Why yes Miss Harper, dear, if yew think that's best,' Katherine replied in a purring voice.

Not even a ‘thank you', Hester thought. It must be because she felt secure enough with the stolen money or it might be that she did not fully appreciate that she was being offered a considerable amount of money to be her own for ever. Hester thought to carry the test even further.