The Well (24 page)

‘I know,' Hester says and for the first time she thinks about the pain Mr Bird must have endured. And how, like Hilde, bloodstained and in pain, he must have thought about her and the things that would worry her and, hardly able to speak, he had left some words for her.

‘All ready with the jams and pickles Katherine was telling me,' Mrs Borden is saying. ‘We had quite a nice little chat about this and that. The herring-bone stitching on her sewing is very nicely done, very firm and even – I didn't think anyone did herring-bone these days.' As Hester makes no reply Mrs Borden changes the subject. ‘The fête should be good this year,' she says. ‘We've a great many newcomers to the town, brings business and money. I think we'll raise enough for the town pool we're hoping to have, don't you think so Miss Harper?'

‘Oh yes,' Hester manages to say. A town fête she thinks to herself, can provide money and money can do things to alleviate and ameliorate as people, doing all the things they do, move through life. Like moving a wood heap, log by log, to alter some detail of living. All the same, her thoughts continue, people have to endure. She also must endure.

‘Tell us about the roos you got Miss Harper.' Dobby Borden, unable to keep silence any longer, is spokesman for the restless little boys.

‘If you're very quiet and manage to sit quite still for the next three minutes till we get to the roadhouse,' Rosalie Borden says, ‘on the way back with the gas Miss Harper will tell you all about a Great – Big – Monster she caught on her roo bar One Dark Night!' She gives a rich laugh and dropping her voice, speaking out of the corner of her mouth, she says, ‘I said – “on the way back” – Miss Harper, to give you time to think up something.'

Hester is suddenly afraid. Afraid that Katherine will have blurted out something to Mrs Borden. She has not tried to extract from Katherine a promise of silence. She has simply said that the whole thing was over and cleared away and closed off and that there was no need to discuss any aspect of it ever again. Katherine's only reply was a quiet and dutiful, ‘Yes, Miss Harper,' a reply which came, Hester thought at the time, as if straight from the orphanage.

‘Oh dear,' Hester manages a forced little laugh. ‘I really know nothing about children. I am not used to telling stories to children.' As a passenger in the car, possibly an unwelcome one, she thinks, as Mrs Borden is always sure to be in a terrible hurry to get done all she has to get done, she ought to be able to amuse the children for a few minutes. Mrs Borden has plenty to do without going back and forth on the road just for her.

‘Miss Harper! Miss Harper! Make it real scary!' Dobby Borden yells through the gaps in his teeth.

What was it the woman on the other chair in Grossman's said about the story having to be a narrative fiction told by someone who has actually had the experience. Hester draws her lips together in one of her half smiles, the smallest smile a person can give.

‘I'll try and think. I'll have to decide which monster I'll tell you about,' she says.

‘Miss Harper, real scary! Make it real scary!'

‘Yes, Miss Harper, do that,' Rosalie Borden, spitting on one finger, smooths her eyebrows first one and then the other, approving of herself in the small reflection in the rear mirror. ‘Scare 'em witless. They'll love it!'

As they drive back with the petrol they can see the gun-metal colour of the Toyota gleaming on the slight rise. The immense landscape dwarfs all human life. Hester is grateful for the smallness of the Toyota. It is not possible from this distance to see the small figure within bent with devotion over her sewing. In a few years Hester thinks they will all be gone, even these children,
as the one dieth, so dieth the other
. Of course she cannot say this aloud and these children are so much alive, their life seems to come through their skin.

‘It was one dark night,' she tells them, ‘along this very road only much farther on … something … happened …'

She, while she is talking, hopes, she realizes that she is hoping that she will meet the woman the one who told her about the novel, again. Somewhere, she is sure, at home she has a plastic bowl, a square one, which might be large enough for feet.

‘Go on Miss Harper!' Dobby Borden says. ‘Along this road, now tell us what happened.'