The Well (21 page)

‘Down!' she said in a voice which she did not know was her own. ‘Go down!' Go on! Down! Go back down!'

Because of the lowest rung being so much further down and the gap between that rung and the next one up being so much greater, anyone hanging on by one hand there could not possibly reach up to the next one unless lifted by something; a tremendous upward surge of water perhaps. The hand reaching the next rung would enable the other hand to move to the rung above that. She did not want to consider the possibilities and she was not able to reach down far enough to bring about any change. If only she could find the hand and the head and then, reaching them, get rid of them for ever. ‘Down! Go back down!' She bit her lip till it bled, knowing with a hardly suppressed anger that the man, if he was there, was not anything more than a corpse. Helplessness and anger made her weak.

Suddenly the enormity of what she was trying to do made her stop.

If she turned the Toyota, and backed up close to the well she could simply pay out enough rope after fixing it firmly. She began to wonder in a confused and desperate way where to fix the end of the rope. All her sense could not have deserted her.

Turning the truck was simple. The sound of the engine starting and the rasping of the wet gravel was like her father's car turning in the night, years ago, when Hilde cried. That night when Hilde cried so much, blood-stained and frightened, in the candlelit bathroom.

Quickly it had become all too clear. The petted, nimble and courageous little crippled girl grew into a tall clumsy adolescent female. The father who had once hoped with what he knew to be his only chance for a son must have hoped again for a son, a healthy capable boy, a partner and a companion, without bargaining with the attitudes of his mother, Hester's grandmother, and not knowing fully her punishments. His shame and disappointment must have accompanied him through all the years as did the memory of the banishing of Hilde Herzfeld accompany Hester herself, having turned away – as she did then, not wanting to know – from the terrible and secret pain.

Not all that for Katherine. None of it for Kathy. How could she, Hester, Miss Harper dear, have ever considered it. How could she have suggested to Kathy that she make herself pretty and go down for what was cowshed and corner-of-the-paddock business. The mating of cattle for stock was all right for the beasts and for some people but it was not for Kathy. Not for her dainty innocence.

She did not want to bring this man out of the well. She had a very good reason for putting him there in the first place. To contradict one's own actions was, to say the least, a waste of valuable energy.

How would it be possible, she wondered, to hitch the rope under the sodden armpits of the man. She supposed that somehow it could be done. Against her own will she turned the sturdy little truck again and backed it right up to the stone coping. She tried to move quickly but knew that she was slow. The coil of rope on the floor of the cabin was strong and real. In her hands she felt it was powerful. Again and again as she felt the rope she wondered at its strength and at its clumsiness. It would be impossible to fix the rope to anything. She peered in the darkness as if a miraculous post could appear firmly in the paved part of the yard. She stood back from the truck, undecided, holding her fading torch so that she could see the dark, partly uncoiled, loops of rope. The well water gurgled and splashed slapping as it was forced upwards from below. She could imagine the holes in the rocks far down through which the water was making its way, trickling slowly in places and then gushing to fill caverns. As more water flowed underground and the small openings and channels became blocked with earth and stones, more water would be forced upwards in the wide shaft of the well. Perhaps the paths of the invisible streams were partially blocked by the pieces of china she had so light-heartedly tossed away.

Somewhere in that surging water was her money. Money weathered water. Perhaps it would surface wrinkled and encrusted on the desolate edges of the salt lakes, those ugly places, unvisited, somewhere further on, far off and lower down beyond the end of the track. Places where Hester had never wanted to go.

She could just make out in the distance over the far brow of the paddock two large yellow eyes. Two subdued tawny lights advancing slowly. Hester recognized them as tractor lights. She could hear the low pitch of the steady reliable engine and she knew how well the wheels would, in their strength, eat away the distance, however impassable the ground was for an ordinary car or truck. She wondered why anyone would be out at this time of night. She thought it must be Mr Borden.

‘He must be mad!' she said to herself fondling the thick rope, turning it over in her usually capable hands, knowing that any farmer would be out as soon as he could after the storm to see as quickly as possible the damage, and to see what needed doing and in what order …

The rope suggesting rescue as she uncoiled more of it made her consider the man's place in the house. There was a spare bed, the one prepared for Joanna. It was in Kathy's room. That would not do. But that was what they would want. A small shudder went through her. They would close the door …

The idea of Kathy bearing a child could not be thought about and the idea of some man, that man, touching or handling her perfectly made and childlike body was repulsive. The man would make demands. He would want Kathy's time and she, Hester, was no longer of an age to be sent to bed leaving the long evenings free for other people. Kathy would be completely absorbed by him. She would want to look after him, to cherish him. Hester thought of the new pretty curtains and the bed coverlet prepared for the other unwanted guest. She bent down, groaning, to see if the rope could in some way be wound round some part of the body of the Toyota. Perhaps the three of them – Joanna and the man who said to call him Jacob and Kathy – would want to live in the house. ‘Miss Harper, dear,' she could hear the purring voice, ‘we have found the darlingest rest-home for yew – in town – yes we'll be able to visit yew, Miss Harper, dear …'

The rope began to fall in heavy unwieldy curves, it was getting wet.

The throbbing of the tractor engine seemed to be a part of a nightmare, yet she was not asleep. She wondered if she was ill. She could not bring herself to look again into the darkness of the well. The morning was coming quickly, all the familiar buildings and the stunted trees of the small orchard were taking shape. She longed to hear the usual singing sound of emptiness, the wind moaning and the faint, partly imagined suggestion of water somewhere a long way down the well.

The tractor was alongside the wire fence. She thought of the white hand, knuckles scraped bare to the bone, grasping the rung, and of the head soaked and vulnerable … She felt herself trembling.

‘How you making out over there Miss Harper?' a voice called out. Looking up Hester saw young Mr Borden leap from the tractor. Hester straightened up letting the rope lie in the wet.

‘What a night of it, Miss Harper!' Mr Borden called from the fence. ‘Thought I'd creep over to see how you're making out. Everything okay?'

‘We seem to be fine thank you, Mr Borden,' Hester called back, surprised at herself. ‘I hope all's well at your end,' she forced herself to be as gracious as she could. She had not come home, at sixteen, from boarding school, in the middle of a term, to keep house for her father, her grandmother having died suddenly, and not learned how to speak to the men.

‘Big wash away!' he called. ‘Lot of damage can't size it up all at once.'

‘No,' Hester said. ‘I'm sorry,' she added.

‘Anything there you need help with?' Mr Borden stepped, with powerful thighs, over the wires. Hester noticed with approval that he did not press them down, his long legs cleared them beautifully.

‘Well cover's slipped has it?' he said crossing the yard.

‘It's been like that for years now,' Hester began.

‘No worries.' Mr Borden bent down and dragged, it seemed without effort, the well cover into its proper position.

‘It's very old,' Hester said, staring at the ragged hole and tapping the exposed timber with her stick.

‘How about I send someone over,' Mr Borden said breaking off a small piece of rusted iron, ‘patch this up in no time.' He tossed the rusty fragment into the hole.

‘If you can spare a man …' Hester said.

‘No worries,' Mr Borden said, ‘I'll send one over later today.'

‘I'd like it closed over completely,' Hester said, ‘and fixed all the way round.'

‘Will do,' Mr Borden said. He stepped back over the fence and waved his hand as he climbed back on to the tractor.

Hester gave a small wave, the smallest wave one person can give to another …

‘G
OOSE
,' M
RS
Grossman, wonderfully florid with conversation, was saying, ‘if I at this very minute was to cook a goose for Mr Grossman's tea I am not a liar if he'd sooner be dead.'

The shop was crowded. The town's new creative population and the more recent landowners (small parcels mainly) were fetching cartons of skimmed milk and selecting wrapped sliced bread. Mrs Grossman, enjoying her audience, drew breath to enlarge on what happened inside Mr Grossman when he ate a goose.

The reverend doctor, studying detergents as if for a postgraduate thesis, moved aside hardly nodding to Hester as she sat down on one of the bentwood chairs. She, as before, envied his ability to concentrate. It was some years since they had exchanged greetings. She wondered what his subjects of conversation were now, wondering too if she would have anything to offer if he did speak to her.

‘And another thing! Just take a look willya at them exotic dancers. I'll give them Fur and Feathers!' Snorting, Mrs Grossman moved on to other subjects on which she enjoyed holding opinions.

‘But
my deah
! Such
beautiful
bards, one simply cannot
eat
them! They are so
intelligent
too!'

‘Excuse me!' Mrs Grossman accused some slices of ham before folding them in grease-proof paper. ‘People do, but,' she said, ‘I know a woman – couldn't set eyes on a goose but she'd have to cook it. My own mother, believe you me, was the same. Show her a goose and she'd have its neck broke before you could say “knife” …'

Hester, perched stiffly on the uncomfortable little chair, waited for Mr Grossman to finish putting up her groceries. For a few moments Miss Harper was customer number one; Mrs Borden had not yet appeared. Hester was reflecting on this good fortune when another customer, entering the shop, took the other bentwood chair. ‘Mind if I take a pew?' Hester recognized the woman whose quest a few days earlier had been a square bowl, plastic but square for feet. ‘I'm working on a book, that's why we bought a little property out here, to get away, as they say, from it all.'

‘Yes,' Hester said, ‘you told me about your poem last time.'

‘Did I?' the writer said, her eyes keen. ‘I think it's going to be an epic,' she said. ‘A sort of contemporary
Song of Solomon
.'

‘I see,' Hester said. She was suddenly overcome with hunger. Unable to battle with the pangs she selected a lamington roll from the edge of the counter. Tearing off its clear wrapper she ate the whole cake enjoying every large mouthful and letting the white shreds of coconut litter her black bodice.

The other woman watched with admiration. ‘I say,' she said, ‘do you often do that?'

Hester, with her mouth too full, nodded.

‘Sort of eat now and pay later.'

Hester nodded again.

‘D'you think that I –?

Hester swallowed. ‘Of course,' she said. Quickly the woman, without hesitating in her choice, took a chocolate swiss roll and with a skill nearly as great as Hester's demolished it. ‘To get back to my book,' she said licking her fingers, ‘I'm writing a perfectly horrific little drama set, do you see, in a remote corner of the wheat. Very regional. It's strictly a novella. In writing it I have to keep to certain rules which have been accepted in literary circles. I'm in trouble already …'

‘Oh?' Hester tried to look concerned.

‘Yes, the tradition is that the story has a narrator who has gone through all the experiences in the novella and is relating them. I simply have no narrator!' She sighed.

‘Oh what a shame!' Hester was not accustomed to being at a complete loss for words.

‘Yes, the novella has to be a narrative, fiction of course, longer than a short story but can be quite short for all that.'

‘I see,' Hester said again.

‘The characters can have names but they are mainly known by what they do in life – in their everyday life …'

‘Like,' Hester was inspired, ‘the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker …'

‘Yes, that's the sort of thing and we do have such a wide canvas here in town, the potter, the painter, the carpenter, the shopkeeper, the landowner, the orphan, the stock and station agent and the intruder. As a novelist,' the new acquaintance continued, ‘I need an intruder to distort a relationship. The action goes forward but is governed by the events of everyday life. Perhaps using the seasons as a kind of hinge of fate and with an understanding of events being inevitable because that's what life's all about isn't it – the rich dark fruit cake of life.' She sighed again.

‘You mean,' Hester said, becoming interested in spite of herself, ‘that people go on making the best of things.'

‘It's not quite so simple, not so simple in fiction …'

‘It's not simple in ordinary life surely,' Hester said.

‘That's so,' her temporary companion on the other chair said. ‘I am looking for a narrator with experiences.' She snatched off her spectacles and, putting her face close, she peered through her long hair at Hester. ‘The novella,' she continued, ‘could contain too a detailed, a fairly detailed, description of a contemporary illness, anorexia nervosa for example, and there's always herpes and AIDS to fall back on. There are certain things people like to read about, you know, misfortunes, conflicts, passions and emotions – all rather heightened … I'd also put in …'