The Well (2 page)

Hester stops shrieking suddenly as something hits the Toyota with a dull heavy thud. Katherine stops at once, the engine is still running. ‘But there's never ever anyone on this track,' she wails, ‘there's never ever been anyone along here, not ever …'

Miss Hester grabs her stick and, with difficulty, she climbs out. Leaning heavily on the stick she makes her way to the front of the truck.

‘Turn off the lights,' she says. ‘We don't know if there's anybody on the track.' And then in a trembling low voice she calls softly, ‘It's not a roo, Katherine. It's not a roo. Don't come out, it's too horrible. We've caught something on the bar. Stay there where you are.'

Hester moves slowly round to Katherine's side, ‘there's only one thing to do,' she says in the same low voice which is like a hoarse breaking whisper. ‘Stop crying! Stop making that noise. I want you to listen carefully and do everything I tell you. We've no choice. We've not got much time. Heaven knows there may be someone else around. We can't know. Now come on. Drive slow. Slow as you can and as quiet as you can. We're nearly in the yard. I'll keep here alongside. When you get in the yard turn straight away and get the bar as close as you can to the well. Yes, I said the well. There's nothing wrong with the Toyota, not yet, just get as near to the well as you can. Yes. I said the well …

H
ESTER
H
ARPER
was no longer young when her father, old Harper, died. In spite of a lame leg which caused her to walk awkwardly leaning on a stick, and in spite of her own advancing years, she decided that she would continue to run the property.

Following her father's ways and wearing all the keys on a gold chain round her neck she concentrated on wheat and sheep; the sheep being able to feed extensively on the endless stretches of wheat stubble when there was very little else for them to eat.

The keys on their valuable mooring were not an ornament but were more of a reassurance. She wore them hidden beneath the bodice of her dress and was able to feel them, every minute of the day and night (when she was awake), nestling between her rather flat breasts. She did not wear rings or ornaments of any kind. Only the keys.

Some time before the death of her father Miss Harper had impulsively taken, partly out of pity and partly from fancy, a young girl, an orphan to live at the farm.

She thought she had never seen the girl in the shop before and was about to ask who she was. The fair-haired girl, though quite pretty, was thin and she had a white face with an anxious, almost squinting, expression. It was the sight of the white face in the gloomy back regions of the shop which caused Miss Harper to want to ask her question.

‘Exotic dancers!' Indignation burst from Mrs Grossman, the wife of the storekeeper. ‘I ask you! Just you take a look at that out there chalked up on the board for all to see,' she snorted. ‘Leather and lace counter lunches, I axe you, see-through bar maids, I axe you who wants to see through to that lot's underwear and worse. It's disgusting! Mr Grossman would rather sit hisself up in the back shed with his lunch in a bag nor have it looking at all that lot. I'll give them fashion revue counter lunches! Whatever next! Leather! Lace!' her face took on a purple shade.

‘Since Mr Grossman lives so close,' Miss Harper dismissed the pure-minded lunch eater from his upturned oil drum in the shed, ‘next to the hotel, in fact, surely,' she said, ‘surely he can have his lunch here at home. He doesn't need to go to the hotel.' She paused waiting till Mrs Grossman's surprised eyelids had stopped their rapid blinking and then asked her question.

‘Oh Kathy,' Mrs Grossman, turning her mind with force from the proposed entertainment next door, said, ‘yes, Kathy, she's a good girl, good as they come but she's to go back to the Home next week. The Orphanage. Mr Grossman hasn't the business, you see, to keep her.' She lowered her voice, ‘Orphans eat you out of the house, you see. And, well, we haven't the trade to keep on a girl.'

‘Why did you get her in the first place?' Miss Harper, the daughter of the largest surrounding landscape, demanded. It was her way to be brusque, she knew no other way, and, being kind hearted, she was generous to those less well off and she enjoyed, fully, the respect of the community.

‘Well Miss Harper it was this way,' Mrs Grossman said as her deft hands folded the tops of packets. ‘Kathy!' she called, ‘slip up the yard and ask Mr Grossman to get Miss Harper's kero.' She turned back to her customer. ‘As I said she's from the Home, the Orphanage and the Whites had her out at their place to help with the children. She's a good girl, Mrs White says so, but as you know Whites have sold up and they're leaving for England so I said I'd take Kathy but now Mr Grossman says no and when he says no he means it. I'm sorry about it but there it is, there's very little work Miss Harper, to be had in these parts. As it is, our young folk have to go to the city …' Mrs Grossman rumbled on. Hester Harper waited for her goods to be stowed in the compact little station wagon she drove and then said if this Kathy would get her things she would take her home with the shopping. ‘I will inform the Orphanage of my decision,' she said, ‘if Kathy suits me and if she agrees to it she can stay.'

Mrs Grossman was suitably deferential. She accompanied Miss Harper into the street.

‘Any time, Miss Harper,' she said, ‘if as you shouldn't feel like coming in to town. You have only to send in a note with one of the men and Mr Grossman will be only too pleased to oblige. Mr Grossman will bring you anything you need, just you …'

Thank you Mrs Grossman.' Miss Harper tossed her stick letting it leave her hand as if it were a spear into the long back of her station wagon. She drew on her leather gloves, ‘but I am quite able to come to town as often as I need,' she said.

‘There you are then Kathy, dear,' Mrs Grossman said quickly hiding her own slack blushing throat in capable hands. ‘Don't keep Miss Harper waiting. Jump in quick! There, hold your bag on your lap, that's a good girl.'

Before Katherine could make a suitable reply Miss Harper had started her engine and the roar made conversation impossible.

Old Mr Harper and Mr Bird, who was younger than Mr Harper, were sitting together on the west verandah of the house when Hester arrived home.

‘What have you brought me then?' her father, holding his whisky towards the setting sun, said as if asking for chocolate biscuits or sweets supposedly hidden in the groceries being unpacked.

‘I've brought Katherine, father,' Miss Harper said, indicating with a toss of her head where Katherine should put the sack of sugar she was dragging across the boards. ‘But she's for me,' she added.

‘Let's have a good look at you Kathy,' Mr Harper said, ‘let's see if your legs are good.' He poked his stick under her skirt flipping the material up. ‘Give her a pinch,' he said to Mr Bird, ‘on the bottom,' he added. Mr Bird, grinning, leaned forward making a pecking movement with his thumb and forefinger but Kathy, who was nimble, jumped aside.

The men laughed. ‘How old are you m'dear?' Mr Harper wanted to know.

‘I'll be sixteen in July,' Katherine, in a prim voice, replied.

‘It's only father's way,' Miss Harper said later, ‘never mind him! I hope you will be happy and comfortable,' she said as she showed Katherine the room she could have for herself.

‘Oh, Miss Harper I will. Thank you – thank you.' The girl turned from the room to the doorway where Hester Harper leaned sideways on her ugly stick and, skipping across the carpet towards her, she hugged and kissed her. Miss Harper, taken aback for no one had kissed her for more years than she could remember, said, ‘When you're ready I'll show you over the house and explain your duties.' She spoke stiffly because the kiss delivered in this calf-like manner had surprised, even shocked her. For some time afterwards she kept putting her hand to her cheek where the feeling of being kissed lingered pleasantly.

During the evening Hester wanted to enjoy her new acquisition. She felt a need to initiate the girl, to show her something of their life. She played the piano thumping the keys rather as that was her way of playing. She sang some Schubert Lieder in an untrained contralto. She loved these songs, they belonged to a happy time when she was a girl. In her head the songs were perfect. The sounds which emerged bore no relation to this perfection but she did not mind this. The perfection somewhere inside her was enough. She was pleased to see that Katherine sat as if transfixed by the music. It did not occur to her to question whether the girl really enjoyed the performance or whether she simply pretended to while old Mr Harper dozed and Mr Bird sat politely by the fire.

Carried away by the success of her little programme Hester embarked on Brahms, the four serious songs, explaining to Katherine with considerable fervour something of their source.

‘Some verses in Ecclesiastes,' she said. ‘I expect you know them;
For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts
…' she sang, ‘
even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth, so dieth the other
.' She turned the page of the music, peering at it and humming while she tried to remember the words. Her fingers fumbled over the piano till she found the right notes. ‘
Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth
…
Unter die Erde
…' She began to remember the German, not sure if she had made a mistake, unable to remember if the earth was masculine, feminine or something between the two. She was surprised as she repeated
Unter die Erde
that her voice could reach such low notes and be so charged with emotion. Surprising too was the sudden memory of the pictures she had fitted to the song when she was a child. Unable then to understand completely she had made secret pictures for herself of water flowing far down under the ground; water seeping over smooth rocks and gathering in small underground pools to swell little rivulets moistening the dark soil in which the mysterious roots of the reeds and the trees found their nourishment. The same images came to her now after all the years in particular when she let her voice go down, as it were, under the earth.

Katherine's ability and willingness in the household gave Hester more time for attending to the business side of the property. But almost at once Hester, who enjoyed teaching Katherine to cook, began to avoid, whenever she could, the work of running the business. She enjoyed spinning and weaving and making clothes and, as in cooking, Katherine was quick to learn. Keeping up the ways of her grandmother Hester regularly made clothes for the children of poor families. The two of them working together were able to supply a double quantity, Katherine finding that she too loved sewing and was wonderfully neat with buttonholes and putting in zip fasteners.

They began to provide music together. Hester, peering short-sightedly at ancient copies of songs, played the piano and Katherine, who had a piping but sweet voice, sang. Often they were not in time with one another. Hester banged and crashed the keys together making the most grating discord and Katherine sang flat but neither Mr Harper nor Mr Bird, who often stayed on in the evenings, were critical.

Hester was completely happy having Katherine. She began to move more easily, swiftly even, on her English walking stick. It was imported specially having a singular gracefulness of its own, only becoming ugly, she realized, when in partnership with her own deformity. Without a stick, this stick, she was helpless. She never tried to do anything without it. She planned to herself how she would keep Katherine, perhaps travel with her sometime, educate her and leave her all her money when she died.

It had never been Hester's idea of pleasure to spend an evening at the drive-in cinema. The town boasted two which provided a repertory of extraordinarily old films. The compact little station wagon, known with reverence as ‘Miss Harper's other vehicle', soon had its regular place at both. She went in the first place to please Katherine who followed the lives of certain film stars as if they were saints. Devoutly she studied magazines saving all the recent photographs. She quoted amazing facts about their marriages and their divorces, their sets of teeth, their swimming pools, their friends and about all kinds of personal details – about habits which Hester thought should have been kept private. It amused her to see Katherine adopting yet another way of speaking or of holding her head. She was influenced in some way by every film they went to. At first Hester sat with a kind of tolerance, boredom even, through long drawn-out stories which featured mainly, so the magazines said, college campus romance. They seemed to be about shrill-voiced American high-school girls competing for the affection of one special neat-footed high-school youth, also American. Since the films were American Hester could see that the characters would be American. She supposed that the stories could fit high schools in any country, but this was beyond her experience. The love affairs seemed trivial and repetitive and the songs and dances crazy, stupid and dull. Every song had its dance and both were fronted, it seemed, by increasingly bizarre heroes. Hair was longer and wilder, expressions became more vacant and guitars more ornamental. However in spite of herself and her feelings towards the films she began to find herself looking forward to the twice-weekly outings.

They were always incredibly late home after these nights. Katherine, adding fresh words and accents to her already exaggerated speech, would amuse old Mr Harper with details from the pictures and she would, the next day, encourage Hester to have what she called ‘a lay in'. She took breakfast in bed to Hester and perched on the bed beside her to eat bacon and fried bread with her fingers. Often they did not really get up till lunch time. Later, as if to assert some kind of discipline, Hester would embark on a strenuous cleaning plan and would draw up programmes of work to be done by herself and Katherine. Sometimes these programmes would be torn up and burned in the kitchen stove. This burning often took the form of a little ceremony during which libations of fresh milk or wine would be poured into valuable cut glass and afterwards they would wash each other's hair with home-made infusions of rosemary.