The Well (4 page)

O
NE MORNING
when bird calls were echoing across the paddocks and the air was cold and a faint mist hung over the fresh earth Mr Harper, having unsuccessfully made a partial change over to beef, died. After the death of her father Hester considered very seriously Mr Bird's suggestion that she should continue to run the property with his help. There was every chance to put right, he said, any mistakes made in recent seasons. He was, after all, her father's closest friend and, in addition, was the stock and station agent for several districts. He knew a great deal about farming and about the uses of money and he knew a great many people. He was sure, he said, that Miss Harper could manage.

Everything went well except that Hester's interest in farm management and successful sales, temporarily rekindled on complete possession of the enormous property, was shortlived. In addition, after all the years of careful frugal housekeeping, she became extravagant and wasteful. It seemed that whenever she went with Katherine to the city she had to buy everything they saw. She bought clothes, foods, furniture, cassette players and transistors. They were always needing batteries, cassettes, cooking utensils, jewellery, materials and trimmings, oil paints – for they both fancied themselves as artists – guitars – for they thought they could create a group – and they chose a new piano, Hester declaring that the terrible heat of the previous summer (a record) had warped the strings or whatever it was pianos had inside. Also Katherine coveted gear from a boutique and Italian leather boots, soft and gracefully elegant, two pairs, one pair plum coloured and the other the colour of cream on fresh milk. Hester bought too another car, this time a sturdy little truck. There was no end to their wishes and to their shopping. They were hardly ever at the farm, always on the journey to and from the city, or on the shorter journey to and from the town. They were always excited, laden with purchases and looking forward to their next expedition.

Because of driving more at night Hester had enormous bars put on the front of the Toyota. A framework of metal, a roo bar, to catch anything foolish or slow enough to be in the way in the dark on the long lonely roads. The bars were thick and strong, welded to form a sort of cage in the middle of which was a spotlight. The light had a close-fitting cover which was never taken off as Hester did not go out at night shooting.

The truck, the Toyota, was a gleaming gun-metal, severe, high off the road giving an impression of capable safety. The back was covered with a neatly fastened new tarpaulin. The cabin of the truck was comfortable being both spacious and intimate. With the bar the truck was complete and formidable. The two women enjoyed travelling in it and there was ample space for all their shopping.

Two and even more years of drought with the topsoil drifting over the fences, Mr Bird warned Hester that, if she went on the way she was, her income would become very unhealthy indeed.

One evening Mr Bird stayed later than usual. He had been obliged to put off the hired men sooner than the arranged time and was upset about this especially as he, the previous week, had had to dismiss and send away from their small houses on the property two men and their wives and children.

‘Why couldn't you wait until after the harvest?' Hester demanded suddenly surprised at Mr Bird's late appearance in the kitchen and not liking his conversation.

She had always, since her earliest childhood, loved the harvest time and was happily baking scones and cakes, with Katherine's help, for the men.

‘You can't afford to keep and pay men when there isn't the work,' Mr Bird began, but apparently feeling this discussion was unprofitable, he changed the subject.

‘Mr Borden, you know him, young man across the paddock from you, would like to rent the big house,' he said.

‘What house?' Hester's large mouth about to sample, at one bite, a jam puff, stayed wide open.

‘Why this house,' Mr Bird shifted uneasily from one foot to the other before he sat down on his usual chair. ‘He'd pay a good rent – he's raisin' a big family, his property adjoins, he says the house would be just what he needs. He knows you don't want to sell but would you rent …? It would be possible,' Mr Bird added, taking the mug of tea Hester pushed towards him, ‘for you and Miss Katherine to have one of those transportable homes, very neat and new, you could have it way over by the trees, very private. The Bordens would keep to their side of the fence. Very neat and comfortable the transportables, labour saving, cut out all the polishings and repaintings that uses up your time …'

‘Never!' Hester Harper, struggled to her feet, grabbing at her clumsy stick quickly to support herself. ‘I am perfectly comfortable here, thank you, I enjoy looking after the house and the verandahs. I am used to the place. I have always lived here, it's my home.'

‘It's two houses you have really,' Mr Bird ventured to remark.

‘You don't need to tell me what my house is,' Hester snapped. ‘It's our home.' She nodded in the direction of Katherine who, seeming not to like seeing Miss Harper upset, bent her oven-red cheeks towards the white bosom of her apron. Before there was time for further talk Hester called Katherine telling her to please show Mr Bird into the hall and out.

Mr Bird stayed away for a few days. Meanwhile Hester's busy mind during some sleepless nights (she was unaccustomed to being sleepless) was thinking things over. She was far from stupid. Mr Bird had made a point with his suggestion, she allowed this. The farmhouse was in fact two substantial houses joined by wooden verandahs; the mellow boards, she reflected, took hours of work. It was work that she loved, her life consisting always of pattern and tradition and certain ritual. The smell of linseed oil and turpentine was one of the comforts belonging to the serenity she felt when working about the house caring for polished corners and ledges. The floorboards in all the rooms gave her pleasure as did the old carpet runners and rugs. She loved thick glossy paint and enjoyed the repetitive repaintings of the walls and doors and window frames of the out-buildings. There was too the careful pleasure of washing ancient curtains, tablecloths and cushion covers alternating with an equally careful washing of antique teasets and dinner services, bowls, cups and plates and jugs and saucers, things never used but cherished as being, like the glowing furniture, part of the treasure of the old farmhouse.

The house was big and very cold in winter. Some rooms, requiring constant cleaning, were damp because they were never used. She did not want to entertain guests and certainly never now considered guests who would stay a night or several nights. She was happier simply to be alone with Katherine, just two people in a big house. Mr Bird was really right. The money from the rent, Mr Borden's rent, would lift the dwindling income. But a transportable house. ‘Never!' she said aloud and, getting up early, she dressed quickly, waking Kathy quite roughly. ‘Get up!' she said, ‘we're going out for the day.'

An hour later they were driving in Hester's latest purchase. They drove across the paddocks so recently busy with the harvest machinery. Sheep, already feeding there, scattered and were soon hidden in the cloud of dust which accompanied the travellers.

‘It's much shorter this way, dear,' Hester explained to Katherine who sat jolting on the seat clutching a hastily put-together luncheon basket from which protruded a bottle of Hester's favourite wine. She always said she could smell freshly cut grass whenever she drank it. ‘We would be three times as long going round by the road,' Hester added. She explained to Katherine that there was an old cottage in the farthest corner of her land. It was a shepherd's cottage belonging to the days when men went about their work on foot or on horseback. ‘No one has lived at this end of the property since I was a small child. It must be one of the most isolated places.' She smiled as if remembering something. ‘If I recall properly,' she said, ‘it is quite pleasing there, a lovely old woolshed, a stable, sheep pens and a poultry yard. I'm wondering what sort of condition it's in.'

The stone cottage had four rooms with little windows looking out in four directions. There was a verandah on one side and a little porch by the yard door. The only way to approach it, apart from the rough ride over the paddocks, was by a long winding track which curved sharply immediately before coming to the yard of the cottage. The saltbush on both sides of the track, they discovered when they walked a little way along it, had grown over in places but it looked as if it would be possible to drive through.

‘We'll go back by the track to find out,' Hester announced. ‘The Toyota,' she added, ‘can get through anything.'

All the windows of the cottage were broken and the verandah was rotten but Hester declared it was all worth fixing. The landscape was stark, ugly even in its bareness. Near the boundary fence there were, at intervals, groups of trees making thin patches of shade.

Hester explained that a corner of Mr Borden's land came down to this corner of her land. ‘To get to his place,' she said, ‘would take a couple of hours – but not if you head straight across the paddocks.' Katherine, who wanted to have another look inside the cottage, was not concerned about Borden's land. ‘Just another quick look Miss Harper, dear. I just love the place. I could just see us sitting here at the back door. We'd make a little garden – ever so pretty.' Hester was amused, as usual, to hear a slightly different accent. She never corrected Katherine's idiom realizing that possibly life in an orphanage, a convent orphanage, might require a person to adopt a little method of defence. An accent was certainly that.

‘See here, Miss Harper, dear,' Katherine was scraping at the earth, ‘there's been a garden here once, you can see the edging stones.'

‘Yes,' Hester said, ‘and over there is an orchard.' She shaded her eyes to look across the yard at some gnarled almond trees. ‘I think some of them are apricots,' she said, ‘and the one nearest is an apple and right behind look like pears and quinces.' An ancient and faithful legacy, she thought, the trees might still blossom and bear fruit. It gave her pleasure to think of the planting done by an honest and hard-working shepherd who wanted to grow fruit in the time spared from tending his flocks.

Hester, looking again at the line of big trees in their groups along the boundary fence, remembered her father explaining to her once that trees growing like that suggested that there was water flowing under the earth, probably over a rock face a long way down. These old trees, he said, more than likely had their feet deep in sweet water. He said this and other things so often that Hester, long ago, stopped listening, though today she told Katherine about the trees reaching water that was often beyond the reach of men.

Across the yard at the side of the substantial shearing and woolshed was a well. It had been dry for years and was partly covered with a lid made of sections of corrugated iron fastened on to timber. The well was very wide and was built up with a coping of hand-hewn stone. The coping wall was a comfortable height for anyone wishing to sit down and rest.

Hester and Kathy sat in the sun on the wall of the well and ate their lunch and agreed readily with each other about moving out from the farmhouse and into the shepherd's cottage. They talked happily imagining how they would make a little garden, a border each with bright flowers and attractive weeds. It would be possible, they thought, to coax a little lawn and a vegetable plot. They pictured the yard alive with long-legged hens and a particularly heavy type of cat. Hester thought a rooster, a magnificent Rhode Island Red, should be included. She liked to think, she said, that he would flap his wings on the highest point of the well cover and herald the bright mornings with his crowing.

‘I'll get Mr Bird to see that we have new water tanks. We'll get the run off from the house and the sheds and we'll have the poultry pens fixed and the stable door repaired. We might keep a horse.' She gave one of her loud braying laughs. ‘I'll see to it all at once,' she said.

They found the gate and brought the Toyota through and, when it was time to leave, they drove back along the track which was rough but passable. Hester remarked that the drive to town would be a lot longer but they would manage she said. They would not feel lonely, she said, they had each other. All the way home Katherine chattered about red and blue checked gingham; ‘so pretty for the little windows Miss Harper, dear'. Hester, listening, had her own thoughts remembering unwillingly something about loneliness. It was a memory from before Katherine came to live with her. One day the young wife of one of the farm men, dressing up her baby, had come across from the farm cottage pushing the shabby little pram over the rough ground to visit her, to talk to her and have her admire the child. Not understanding nor caring about the young mother's need, Hester had merely, from her lofty place on the verandah, dismissed the visitor watching with a superior detachment as she made her slow way back to the loneliness of the long day while her husband was somewhere out in the paddocks.

Mr Borden was pleased to pay extra rent and have the furniture which Hester said she did not need. Mrs Borden, going round the farm-house, tried to persuade Hester to take more things. She was a noisy vigorous woman and was, as always, pregnant. Certainly the house with so many rooms and the deep verandahs all round was ideal for a large family. They were accompanied during their tour by several young Bordens moving loosely in their clothes and running everywhere on thin sun-burned feet. Hester chose some of her favourite pieces of the smaller furniture. She selected china and ornaments together with most of the books which she and her father had, over the years, gathered. As soon as the cottage was ready she removed herself and Katherine and their possessions to the remote corner of the property.

The new water tanks filled with the first rains. Both women knew how to be economical with water and it did not take them long to become accustomed to kerosene lamps and a wood stove. Hester declared she liked candlelight and, surveying the wood heap, said it would attract snakes but, she added, she would kill any that showed themselves.