The Well (9 page)

‘You know perfectly well that no one ever comes here, we couldn't be more isolated,' she added conscious of a slight tremble in her voice.

Mr Bird, inclining his grey head, looked away for a moment and, undaunted, looked up at Hester again. There's people,' he said, ‘as sometimes forget who their benefactors are.'

Miss Harper squinted down her long nose and made quick dismissing movements with her hands.

‘I was going to say you should lock up your doors of a night and in the day time too when you go into town.' Mr Bird, ignoring her impatience, persisted. ‘In town they all lock up now and they don't leave keys in cars, nor toys out overnight.'

Miss Harper remembered the little gardens on the edge of the township often scattered with broken toy scooters, shabby dolls' prams and bicycles. She snorted at the memory of this strewn poverty. It was just so much rubbish, people were welcome to take care of it if they wished.

‘People have their treasures,' Mr Bird, as if knowing her thought, reminded her. ‘And, if you'll forgive me saying this, there's some – not all but some who do forget who their benefactors are and it might in your case, only might I'm saying, be a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. Only in the circumstances I'm referring to the thing, and it's not a horse, the thing you might be needing to watch is already in the …'

Miss Harper interrupted Mr Bird by shrugging her thin shoulders almost up to her ears and turning her back on him.

The day of Borden's celebration came nearer. Hester wished that they need not go. Her own choice would have been to stay quietly at home. But Katherine, looking forward eagerly, was marking off the days on the kitchen calendar first to Mr Borden's party and then to the arrival of Joanna a few weeks later.

As the days went by Hester, who was planning extensive travelling in Europe and sending off for brochures, realized that she had promised Katherine things she did not feel equal to. She had the rolls of notes, a great deal of money she had insisted on keeping free from what she thought of as a burial in investment, Mr Bird having chosen and suggested which shares should be purchased for the highest and safest returns for her.

The thought of travelling frightened Hester. She was not used now to crowds of people. She knew from her childhood experience of travelling with Fräulein Hilde that people would be thronged, crushing against each other, in airports and on railway stations and even on pavements. Unused to traffic she would find crossing streets fearful. She knew she was afraid of being ill and feeling old and unable to manage in a strange hotel room. Though she had once been fluent in French and German she doubted that she would be able to understand either language if spoken by several people at once. And she knew how hard it was to compose a reply or a request in foreign words just when either were needed.

‘Trottel du Blöder! Aber Liebchen
say again
Ich möchte
. Make your mouth
Ö-so-Ich-möchte
… I wish … ‘Hilde, Fräulein Herzfeld, patient and sweet voiced, urging her to pronounce words and phrases. Hester smiled remembering some little wrought-iron tables and a fair-haired waitress, like a swan, pushing her high bosom between the customers taking orders and moving off slowly, swan like, to fetch coffee and cakes. Hilde always made Hester order and the swan-waitress paused attentively before turning away once more, graceful in spite of being so large, to pause at the next table to gently bend her neck to smile and to listen and to write down on the clean little pad the names of the cakes. It was not possible to know, only to imagine, the swan-waitress sitting down at one of the white painted tables when all the customers had gone and, all alone, bending over a little mountain of cream-filled pastries.

O
N THE
day of the Bordens' party Hester, straight after their early breakfast, listened to Mozart. She knew from listening alone that while she listened her mouth took on a different shape, the lips drawn together and pursed. Once, seeing her music-listening mouth in the rear mirror, while she was driving home with a string quartet in the cassette player she understood the possibility that her whole body was, during the music, different. Without meaning to she knew that it was not only her lips; it was all the seriousness and tenderness which entered and set the bones of her jaw and changed the movement of her eyebrows and the tilt of her head. The first time, the first time while driving home, she had been taken by surprise and mostly now she did not think of it.

This morning, removing herself from the preparations while Katherine was flying through the dishes and the poultry, she sat with the Mozart. For no special reason she remembered the four string quartets she had been to during the time at school. She remembered the dusty wooden platform, the stiff curtains looped back and the arrangement of potted palms and other green things in tubs on either side of the stage. The girls in their navy-blue Sunday dresses sat together in rows set aside for them. More important than these surroundings were the four performers themselves, the musicians, seated in quite an ordinary way on ordinary wooden chairs. It seemed as if they played in turn, one after the other, the first cautious notes gradually increasing in volume as each instrument invaded. They played towards each other leaning forward as if to make an emphasis and then pausing and leaning back allowing the phrases of music to follow one another and, in turn to meet and join, to climb and cascade.

It was the slight movements which the players made towards each other which touched Hester deeply then and which she remembered now. She remembered too the deep concentration which was evident in the sensitive movement of the muscles of their faces, particularly round the mouth. It was this which gave each player an expression of serious devotion. There was too the almost imperceptible inclining of the head and the drooping of the wrist and the slender white hand, the back of the hand displayed in such a vulnerable way towards the audience. These things would still be the same, she thought, if they were travelling and able to go to concerts in Europe.

‘It's like going to the doctor's,' Katherine, glowing from the shower, partly covered in an expensive towel, interrupted Hester's quartet. ‘All clean from the skin out,' she called, her voice resounding with excitement.

Hester showed her teeth in a reluctant and twisted smile and went to her room to dress.

‘Who knows,' Katherine called, ‘we might meet someone real nice. A real nice guy might be there. P'haps I'll meet Mr Right! Groovy eh? Mint eh?'

‘Yes,' Hester said, selecting her clothes without pleasure. It crossed her mind all too often, though she tried not to let it, that she might have to give up Katherine.

‘Perhaps today, tonight I should say, I'm going to meet my better half!' Katherine said in the doorway of Hester's room. ‘How do I look Miss Harper, dear?' She skipped into the room. Hester who was saying ‘never' inside her head turned round.

Katherine's dress was made from a very light material, pale yellow, the palest yellow Miss Harper, dear, she had said when choosing the stuff. It had a ribbon embroidered with cornflowers at the waist and, for her hair, there was another similar little band. The blue embroidery matched her eyes. It had taken several evenings to make these decorations. Hester, regretting that she had to share Katherine's appearance with other people, pulled a dress from the wardrobe. She had decided to wear black as usual, a rusty black because the dress, though well made with hand-sewn covered buttons, was not new. The black exaggerated the pallor of her face. She put on too a woven jacket of natural wool. It was the only soft thing she ever allowed herself.

Katherine brushed and combed Hester's hair remarking that the streaks of grey at the temples were most attractive. ‘The belle of the ball,' she said in one of her film-star accents. ‘You're shivering Miss Harper, dear,' Katherine continued as they stood side by side to admire themselves in the handsome mirrors.

‘Only a goose walking on my grave,' Hester said, suddenly glad, as an old person might be, of the woven jacket. It was of pure wool, spun and woven and sewn by them both. It was soft and light and warm and, as they both appreciated while gazing at themselves, looked well on the good quality, if ancient, black.

Mr Bird met them as they were picking their way across the rough ground at the back of the hotel.

‘Borden could have had his affair up at the house,' Mr Bird said, ‘would have had a different tone to it altogether …'

‘I suppose he could,' Hester interrupted him in a cold voice. She was trying not to look at the hotel with the distaste she felt. She forced herself to smile.

‘It's because of the dancing,' Katherine said quickly, seeing that Mr Bird had given her a wished for look of approval.

‘Oh yes, the dancing. I was forgetting.' Mr Bird offered Hester his arm at the steps leading in to the verandah.

‘Oh look! Miss Harper, dear,' Katherine exclaimed, ‘there's the group, the band, real, it's all for real!'

Hester found herself immediately among people with whom she was not acquainted. This was something which, in earlier years, she had not been used to. The isolation of the last few years had been greater than she imagined. Perhaps she had not bothered to consider it. She realized without any effort on her part that these well-dressed, self-assured young couples – for they all were very self assured and they all were couples – were friends, naturally, of the new owners. They had come great distances to celebrate Borden's successful purchase. Hester thought of the airing of all the spare rooms at the farm house. She thought of her once well-cared-for stacks of blankets, the ends stitched and ribboned by herself. Though the deal had taken considerable time Harper's good reputation was, all at once, overnight it seemed, Borden's. A dull echo resounded in her head, not a headache exactly but a threat of one perhaps; the echo throbbed; Miss Harper's grand champion ewe, Miss Harper's prize-winning ram and Miss Harper's harvest. Harper's Place had become Borden's Place, the property of Mr Borden and his wife, Rosalie. Mr Borden said, she remembered, that he might keep the name Harpers Place. Hester knew that a place name came from what it, the place, was known by. She knew at once the place would be called Bordens. In her mind she saw the old house at dusk, closed up and secretive as she had seen it often, raised high on the slope facing west. She wished she had not come.

She stood gaunt and odd, pausing partly on her stick but mostly on Mr Bird's frail arm. She had not noticed before how thin he was now. It seemed impossible for her to feel that she was one of the guests in the crowded room. She could not recollect ever having felt quite like this. Mr Bird, seeing someone he knew, introduced her. The younger woman, scarcely looking, said, ‘Pleased to meet you I'm sure,' in a cheerful voice and, reaching forward to clutch another guest by the arm, entered into an exciting conversation immediately, unavoidably turning a youthful chubby shoulder towards Miss Harper.

Both the Bordens hurried forward to greet Hester, Rosalie Borden telling Katherine that the dancing was about to start and couldn't she hear the drummer, a perfect pest he was and had she seen the disc jockey, ‘So good looking my dear, you'll rave about him. Sure!'

‘Oh Mrs Borden,' Katherine said, ‘it's all beautiful, all the decorations and the lovely clothes. Do you like Miss Harper's dress?' she rushed on, ‘It's not new but we made it from a Vogue pattern, didn't we Miss Harper, dear. It had to be done in eighty steps, my, it was an exercise! Every night Miss Harper said, “this is an exercise.” The lapels are feathered, Mrs Borden, and we made welted pockets and see the button cuffs,' she held up Hester's hand – now free from Mr Bird's arm. ‘When the lapels are turned back,' Katherine continued, ‘the feathering is underneath, and can you imagine covering a million tiny buttons!'

‘A work of art, I'm sure Kathy,' Mrs Borden said laughing and glancing with tucked-in chin approval down her own simple maternity smock. ‘Now just you go and see, Kathy, the dancers. You will be dancing yourself in a minute.' Mrs Borden turned to Hester. ‘That girl is so old fashioned!' she continued. ‘She's out of this world, quite delightful!' She shook her head as if doubting her own words and laughed again. Comfortable and rich Mr Borden, with the firm grip of the large landowner, shook hands with Hester.

Hester continued to wish that she had not come. Mrs Borden sighed with her lips drawn back over her polished teeth and pointed to the sofa.

‘Let's be comfortable,' she said. ‘Mr Borden will bring us drinks, won't you darl?'

‘No need hon,' Mr Borden said as a pert waitress approached with a tray laden with brimming glasses.

‘Ooo! I'm dying for a beer. Beer for you Miss Harper?' Rosalie Borden asked, her hand, sheathed in a cream glove, reaching to the tray.

‘No thank you,' Hester replied more coldly than she intended.

‘Ah! I remember, it's mozzle for you,' Mrs Borden said, ‘I remember you like the sweet wines. Quite a lot of people do,' she added kindly. ‘Ah! here's Mr Bird, he's bringing a glass for you. He knows what you drink. I must say I like a sweet wine myself even though the hoy polloy, or whatever, express a preference for dry.' Rosalie Borden's flat voice went on. It seemed to Hester that whatever Mrs Borden said it would turn out to be either spiteful or incredibly dull.

Mr Borden, seeing his chance, escaped to a group of prosperous looking men who were grouped like cattle at the far end of the room. Looking across at him Hester could not help thinking of the fleshy shoulders of the mating bulls. Mr Borden gave the impression of setting about the male task of servicing frequently and thoroughly with a view to enriching his property with a number of sons. The Bordens already had six little boys being raised to reward the farm in the way that well-bred cattle reward. Rearing cattle and children, Hester knew, was a part of farming. Her maidenly mind was quite capable of vividly imagining Mr Borden in performance. She did not blush at her own thoughts as Mrs Borden would have done if she had known exactly what was in the mind of her elderly guest who knew too that there was a certain obligation on the part of the new landowner's wife to take care of her during the horrible evening.