The Well (7 page)

Quietly Hester closed her door and, finding the matches she lit her candle. It was with relief that she found herself able to do these things. She was perfectly all right, after all, she told herself. And, with her usual honesty, she went on to tell herself that she was jealous. Actually jealous. At her age. All because Katherine wanted the company of this Joanna. Rubbish company, a girl who could do nothing but harm. Hester was vague in her mind about the life this other girl could have had but it was dirty and infected and should be kept away from the freshness and purity of their own lives. She tried to think of other things. Thinking of her endless paddocks should comfort her. She loved her land but recently had been forced to realize that the years of drought had now become several years. She was relieved that Mr Borden still wanted to live in the farmhouse. She never went across there. Days, weeks, months, years with Katherine made time go by very quickly. The farmhouse seemed a long way away.

That Katherine could have such a wish, Hester reasoned, was natural. She kept telling herself this but such reason did not help her. She dreaded the hovering loneliness.

She thought, in spite of loving the farm, how intolerable the black moonless nights in the wheat would be if she had all her days and nights alone. Katherine might well, she shivered at the idea, be tempted by Joanna's stories of her own life to want to leave. The quiet secluded old woman's life, for that is how it could be described, was not really the desired thing for a young woman like Katherine.

She found herself, without explanation, poking about in one of the cupboards in her room. One of the things she pulled out to study carefully in the soft light of her candle was an old photograph of herself when she was a little girl. A photograph taken by a professional photographer in a shop.

She had not looked at the photograph for years and now suddenly all sorts of memories of fondness and cherishing came back to her. Suddenly she wanted to be Hetty, the little lamb, Hetty, my lamb, again. She could, as she looked, almost feel the crêpe de chine of the new frock on her bare legs. The blue and fawn pattern was there in the picture. Now she remembered it clearly, the clinging material very soft and light. It was as though she could, even now, feel the white-ribbed silk socks tight round her legs. When she looked at the polished leather sandals she felt as if she possessed them and wore them still, so vividly did they come back to her from the picture.

The photograph was tinted, professionally, so that she had, as was thought pretty then for a little girl, a rosy pursed-up little mouth and rounded cheeks the colour of ripe peaches. Looking closely for several minutes she recalled the voices from her childhood and knew that she did not hear them, only longed to hear them as she was, without acknowledging it, longing to be cherished again in the way she once had been by her father and her grandmother and, for a few years, by Hilde Herzfeld. A rush of remembered fondness for her grandmother was like a pain. This pain was followed quickly by another as she thought of her father. Latterly, before he died, she was always escaping from him as he became more of an invalid and an increasingly tiresome bore. Sure, she said to herself then, to drive even sheep away. Only Mr Bird was faithful perhaps because of being such a bore himself he did not notice. But as a child she accompanied him everywhere, her little crutch dot dotting fast to keep up with his long stride. In those far off days she wore a red woollen hat knitted by her grandmother. This hat with its tassel Hester still had. She still used it, darned several times, as her father used it after it was considered too childish for her. Like her father she kept her money in it. Bank notes and change, often a great deal, rolled up, hidden in the soft wool and placed on the top shelf of the kitchen dresser next to the spikes for bills and receipts, the cheque book and the pen and ink. Hester paid for everything with cash, keeping the cheque book for distant payments, the city shops and the selected few charities which, fortunately, did not have to survive on her meagre contributions.

Hester had never known her mother. Neither had Katherine. They did not talk of this as the word seemed to have very little meaning for either of them. Katherine, lacking a father too, had quickly learned while Hester's father was alive how to behave with him, how to answer him and when to avoid him. She was very adaptable Hester noticed at once. She thought this was probably because of the kind of people she had had to be with at the Orphanage.

The lame leg had not shown on the photograph even though the low-waisted dress was short. The skilful photographer had arranged her to sit in such a way that the little body and limbs looked perfect, the lame foot was tucked in behind the good one. Perhaps that was why, when she became older and painfully aware of the disfigurement, she had removed the photograph from its place and put it away. Perhaps her father realizing the reason had refrained from mentioning the disappearance of the touched-up little Hester. Or, as she rebuked herself now in this long night for taking out the photograph, perhaps he had never noticed that the picture had gone from its accustomed place. Nothing could have covered the pale space left on the wall because it had been in the sitting room, or drawing room as her grandmother called it, where it would not have been possible to pin up one of the poultry-feed or farm machinery calendars they received every year.

Hester's headache was accompanied by that total lack of dignity suffered during bouts of vomiting, not once or twice but several times, first undigested food, of which she was deeply ashamed and then painfully and with difficulty, bile. She wanted to tell Katherine how dreadfully sorry she was about it all but she could only groan and keep her eyes closed. She felt Katherine's small hands as they patted her forehead gently and she felt the cold compresses which were dutifully laid across her pain. Katherine kept the room dark and emptied the basin repeatedly as she had learned to do during previous headaches. Bilious attacks, Hester called them if she had to explain an absence to anyone.

‘What time is it,' Hester managed to ask in a weary voice in the darkened room.

‘Why Miss Harper dear, it's four o'clock. Should you feel like some tea and toast?' Katherine, who was sitting by the bed, stood up and leaned over, smoothing the sheet and the pillow and Hester's hair with her cool little hands.

‘No thank you Kathy,' Hester said. She felt weak and tired and tearful. ‘I'll try and sleep. You go out in the air a bit. You can't sit by me all day.'

The headache lasted two days. Hester felt the pain go away during the afternoon of the second day. She lay in the bed hardly daring to move. Tears of relief squeezed out from the corners of her eyes and spilled, trickling down her cheeks. How sweet and kind Katherine always was during this recurring nuisance. She must be feeding the poultry, it was the kind of noise she could hear now from the yard.

As she felt better thoughts and words formed in her mind. She thought about grass, the west paddock by the farmhouse came right up to the bedroom windows which opened like narrow doors on to the verandah. At a certain time of the year the grass was rich and sweet smelling. She thought about the word meadow, a grassy paradise – someone had written that about a meadow. Somewhere in her childhood reading there were daisy chains and buttercups and the idea of crawling through a hole in a hedge into some magic place, a meadow it was called, deep with long grass and yellow flowers. Hester, for a moment, recalled her father and thought of him dismissing the flowers, cape weed, with disgust. Grass, she remembered more words in the spreading freedom as the pain seemed to be lifted from her brow;
a fragrant garment of the earth filled with ripe summer to the edge
. And more words;
all spring and summer is in the fields silent scented paths
. Was that Ruskin she wondered. She had all these words copied out in her neat schoolgirl writing. Some lines were even translated into French and German, Fräulein Herzfeld made her translate everything …

No headache at all now. She tried to remember where the apostrophe in
fields
should go.

‘It doesn't matter,' she said aloud and was startled by her own voice, ‘there are only two possible places. Katherine!' she called, ‘Katherine!', knowing that her voice could not be heard over the raucous insane cackling from the yard. ‘Katherine!'

But Katherine heard and came. ‘Yes, Miss Harper, dear?'

‘Kathy. I think I could take some tea now, very weak and no milk.'

‘Oh yes, Miss Harper, dear, of course I'll make it at once.'

Joanna replied to the invitation, accepting it, and at once they began suitable preparations for the visit. Joanna's letter, decorated with
Snoopy
and the paper made to look like denim, lay on the corner of the dresser. It was impossible while passing not to look at the letter; the large unformed handwriting was compelling, it seemed full of life and the expectation of happiness. From time to time Katherine picked up the letter and re-read it though she must have known its contents by heart. Hester noticing the quick re-readings bit her lip and said nothing. It seemed to her that the pages of the letter had a sweet heavy scent, something powerful which she could not define. Sometimes she thought Katherine smelled like the letter but perhaps that was because she was so often holding it. Hester could not bring herself to speak about it. She had read once, in a magazine, an article, a heart-breaking article about a mother detecting drugs used by her daughter because she, the mother, had noticed a smell. The awful part was that the mother's nose had been too slow and the daughter had gone blind. When discussing the article with Katherine at the time, Katherine, assuming an air of importance, had said that she knew a lot of people who were stoned wild regularly and not one of them was blind or had anything wrong with them at all. ‘Perhaps the lady is a foreign lady Miss Harper, dear,' she said. They write awful stuff in places like England and America to scare the kids.' But Hester, holding the scent of the letter in her large nose, was not at all sure.

Joanna's visit was still a little time off as she was in a typing pool and had to wait for her appointed holiday. The letter on the dresser caused a small deep frown to appear at the fleshy bridge of Hester's nose. Since she did not look in the mirror at moments like this she had no idea how much more severe the frown made her look.

One morning while they were eating an early breakfast Hester, suddenly disturbed by the too close crowing of their most handsome rooster, tilted her chair back and, putting an arm round the edge of the flywire door, caught the bird by the neck and, with a twist of her strong fingers, she broke his neck.

‘Oh Miss Harper, dear,' Katherine began.

‘Hang him up in the shed, Katherine,' Hester said going on with her meal. ‘We'll deal with him later. A good dinner!' She laughed her loud braying laugh. ‘In mid-crow,' she said. ‘He's been getting on my nerves lately.'

Hester knew she could not ask Katherine about the scent on the letter, the pages still smelled or seemed to smell. What could Katherine say to any question about the scent of a letter. I don't notice anything Miss Harper, dear, or, in one of her film-star voices, oh Miss Harper, dear, it's my perfume. Remember the French perfume spray,
Chloe
, you bought me? I've just started to use it. Joanna will love it. She'll rave about it.

But Katherine was talking, ‘We'll be able, Joanna and me … we'll be able to go to town in our gear.'

Hester was too slow to correct as she usually did. ‘We'll be able, Miss Harper, dear, to wear our boots in town I've always felt too shy to wear them going out but with Joanna,' she paused, ‘it'll be just great, but. The only trouble is …' Katherine said, ‘how will we get to town from here. I mean how shall we get to the café …'

‘I shall drive you there of course,' Hester's reply was prompt. They looked at each other across the table. Katherine's expression suggested a dismay which she was attempting to conceal. Hester, seeing herself through the eyes of Katherine and Joanna when they were together, imagined herself sitting like a poker, a black one, at one of the laminex tables, probably one with a messy top, while the two girls, overdressed and self-conscious in their high boots, put coins in the juke box at the same time eyeing the few youths and tossing their heads at the stringy-haired country girls who would also be eyeing the heroes of the wheat as they gathered in their one meeting place, the road house,
El Bandito
.

‘Oh Miss Harper, dear, you couldn't,' Katherine whispered.

‘I could wait in the car,' Hester said with her grim little smile.

‘I could take my sewing with me and sit in the car.'

‘Oh Miss Harper, dear, you couldn't!' Katherine cried. ‘I wouldn't hear of such a thing.' She paused. ‘Miss Harper, dear,' she said, ‘could I learn to drive? Please?'

‘Perhaps,' Hester began with reluctance. Remembering her sick headache she tried not to be too grudging. ‘I'll think about it,' she said.

It was more than possible, she was thinking, that Joanna could drive. She was able, in her mind, already able to hear Joanna's voice calling: ‘All right if we take the car Miss Harper? O.K. if we have the car tonight Miss Harper? We'll need the car, Miss Harper, all day.' My car, Hester said to herself, her frown deepening. Katherine, now busy at the sink, did not see Hester's face. ‘Hurry up with those dishes, Katherine,' she said, ‘if you must drive, you must! We'll go out today, straight away.'

‘Oh thank you Miss Harper, dear, thank you. I'll get my test first pop, you'll see! Give me five minutes and I'm finished here.' Katherine washed and dried the last dishes while Hester limped out into the yard where she stood waiting, unwilling and wooden, beside the Toyota.

M
R
B
IRD
called to see Hester. His visit was sooner than expected. Hester preferred to have the farm discussion at specific times and she usually arranged these times to suit herself. An enormous tea drinker, Mr Bird sat to drink tea with them. He was, Hester said privately to Katherine in the kitchen while they were splitting scones and spreading them with strawberry jam and cream, quite kind but an utter bore. She often felt, she said, like screaming with boredom when he was there. She did not scream however. A recurring painful memory prevented any showing of hysterical or true feelings. It was not so long ago that time could blur entirely a farm-management conversation when Mr Bird had come directly to the point and warned Hester that with the death of her father she would become a very well-to-do woman and that there was always the possibility that some man, out for land and money, might make up to her with a view to marriage. He had spoken as gently as he could but the very truth that he uttered was one which Hester knew and understood all too well; the awful fact that a man, if one should come, would not want her in her ugliness for herself but want her only as a means to the possession of her land.