The Well

by Catherine Chanter

  ‘I stood by him. I thought the whole thing was ludicrous at the time. Mark, for God’s sake.’ I pulled the pink petals off, one by one. ‘But when everything is stripped away, do we really know anyone, Hugh, or is that just your God’s privilege? Omniscience?’

  ‘There’s no hiding from him in the garden, that’s for sure, unless you happen to have a supply of fig leaves.’ Hugh is doing his best. ‘So why were you asking me about the internet?’

  Taking my place beside Hugh on the seat, I lower my voice. ‘I’d like you to find out some things for me. Will you?’

  ‘Searching is certainly part of the job description. But I’m not convinced the world wide web is a wholly benevolent force, so it depends slightly on what it is you want me to find out.’

  ‘I just want to know about my family. That’s not too much to ask, is it? I need to know if Angie is all right. And Mark.’

  Hugh shifts uncomfortably, fiddling in his pocket for a handkerchief. ‘If you don’t mind me asking, does Angie have contact with her biological father? Might she be with him?’

  ‘No.’ What else was there to say?

  Angie’s father. There was nothing wrong with him, as far as I could remember from the eight hours we had spent together when I was all of twenty-one, but not much right either. By the time Angie came to want to know about him, he was dead and she was angry. We had never pretended, but even so, was that when she changed the vocabulary from Daddy to Mark? Was that the only reason why? She blamed me, of course, although omnipotent as I was for a while I can hardly have been held responsible. Car crash in Kenya, aged twenty-eight. Turns out my one-night-stand nerd was a rally driver, a bit of an adrenalin junkie. Junkie. Maybe that was where she got it from.

  Hugh persists. ‘You have no idea then where either of them might be living?’

  ‘No. But I’m worried about Angie. She could be anywhere, you’ve no idea how low she can get.’ There are nettles now, growing tall alongside the bench. I reach out and grasp one to stop myself crying. ‘Maybe she and Mark are together. I haven’t heard from either of them since . . .’

  He waits to see if I can finish the sentence, then replies. ‘I’ll see what I can do, but I can’t see how the internet would be of much help.’

  ‘You’ll need it because I also want to know what has happened to the Sisters. To Sister Amelia, in particular. Where she is, what she’s doing, anything relevant about her. Would you search that for me? I have to know more about her, Hugh, if only to discount the possibility that it was one of them that did it. You could print things out and slip them in the Bible – or just in your bag. I don’t think they’ll search that again.’

  ‘So we didn’t come out here for the sunshine.’ He hands me a dock leaf to press against my nettle stings.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because you are asking me to do something which contravenes the rules of your imprisonment and therefore my visits.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And if they find out, my visits will be stopped.’

  I hadn’t thought it through as far as that. I look down at the bench and peel off the splinters, finding myself surprised at how thrown I am by the idea that Hugh would not come again. Perhaps he won’t come again anyway now I have asked this of him. There is no choice for me. My hair has grown, and as I look up, I pull it back off my face and fix it with a band so he can see me clearly.

  ‘Probably, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take. More than that, I’ll risk everything to know the truth.’

  ‘I will pray about it, Ruth. I can’t promise you more than that.’

  Pray for as long as you like, I thought. But Google for longer.

  The relief guard is gone, my boys are back: Three conducting the 7.30 a.m. alarm check which wailed across the valley, a cross between an air raid siren and a call to prayer; Anon slumping in front of the bank of screens playing computer games while ‘Sarge is out’; I find myself hoping to catch sight of Boy. Finally, he knocks on the door and I am so very, very pleased to see him.

  ‘Morning.’

  ‘You’re back. I didn’t even know the other lot were gone.’

  ‘Thieves in the night,’ he said. ‘You must be sleeping better. Actually I’ve brought you something. That’s not strictly true. In fact my mum sent you something.’

  ‘Your mum?’

  ‘Yes. I was telling her and my dad about you and Mum made up a sort of Red Cross parcel for you.’

  Boy hands me a shoebox-sized parcel, taped up. In one corner, in neat handwriting, I read ‘All the best, Andrew and Helen.’

  ‘Shall I open it now?’

  ‘Why not?’

  I sit on the doorstep and take off the lid.

  There was a jar of marmalade, a CD of the Ten Greatest Classical Hits, some bath essence and several packets of seeds.

  ‘The bath essence isn’t new, but she said she didn’t know anyone else who could use it now, so you might as well have it,’ said Boy. He sits down beside me. ‘It was meant to cheer you up.’

  I nod, just about able to speak, and ask him to thank them for me.

  This is a terrifying awakening which embraces me like a wave that curls itself around the child at the edge of the beach and sweeps him off his feet. How much easier it is to believe that nobody cares and that I care about nobody, how much harder the truth that Boy matters to me now, and that maybe I matter to him and mothers matter to their children and children matter to them.

  ‘You’d like Angie,’ I said to Boy. ‘If she ever came back and met you, I think you’d like her.’ If.

  ‘She was a traveller?’ he asked.

  Oh yes, she was a traveller. I nodded.

  ‘And she sort of came and went?’

  Extra-ordinary, the comings and goings at The Well.

  Some sort of sixth sense woke me to the fact that we had visitors. Regardless of the age of their children, mothers have a particular way of sleeping, always on alert for the slightest of cries from the cot, the night-terror, the key in the front door and the click of heels on the staircase far later than the time we’d agreed she’d be home by. Tense, I strained my ears to hear what had woken me; I looked into the shapeless corners of the bedroom, nothing; nothing except my heartbeat and the steady breathing from Mark, curled away from me and sleeping soundly. It was constant and familiar, the thick darkness around me and I was on the point of accepting it for what it was when the room changed. A beam of light shone through the gap in the shutters, slowly sweeping the room like a searchlight and was gone. There was really only one explanation: a car at the top of the drive. Then it happened again, a son et lumière illuminating first the picture, then the mirror, then the crack where the wall and the ceiling meet, before leaving me in the audience with nothing but shadows, ill at ease and unsure if the show was over. I gave it half a minute, no more, before I shook Mark.

  ‘Mark! Mark! Wake up!’

  He woke instantly, startled. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘There’s someone out there!’

  Feeling my way around the end of the bed, I found my way to the window, opened the shutters just an inch or two and stared out into the night. There was no moon that I could see and it seemed as if the cloud must be low because even the trees were strangers.

  Mark came up behind me. ‘There’s nothing there, what are you talking about?’

  ‘Just wait a moment, will you? It was headlights, shining into the room, but I couldn’t hear anything so they can’t have driven down here.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m not making it up, am I?’

  ‘I don’t know, you’re a nervous wreck sometimes.’

  ‘I felt safer when we had Bru,’ I said. We stood together in the blackness, close but not touching, waiting. ‘There! What’s that?’

  There wasn’t anything or anyone on the drive, but there was an orange glow the other side of the rise in the field between us and the road; it grew, then went out as instantly, as if someone had flicked
a switch, then came on again.

  Mark opened the window and a gust of cold, damp air blew into the room. A few drops of water fell onto the window sill. It had been raining again.

  ‘Listen!’

  It was as if we had been suddenly blinded and expected to make sense of the world only through sound, random noises, devoid of context or clues. We named them as they found their way through the mist to us: a car engine, revving as if reversing or getting stuck in mud; a dog barking; a snatch of music, turned off abruptly; and finally voices, muffled and indecipherable human voices.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘How the fuck do I know?’ Mark reached for the light switch.

  ‘Don’t turn that on!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because they’ll know we’re here!’ I slammed the window closed, pulled the shutters together. Mark didn’t even bother to answer, but he left the light off. He sat on the edge of the bed, pulling on his jumper and jeans over his pyjamas.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I didn’t know why we were whispering.

  ‘I’m going out there!’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous! You don’t know anything about who it is. They might be dangerous. There’s obviously quite a few of them and there’s only two of us!’ I sat beside him. ‘Please, Mark. Unless we call the police – why don’t we call the police?’

  The breath sagged out of him, he put his head between his hands. ‘I don’t know. I can’t think in the dark,’ he said. ‘What’s the time?’

  I fumbled for my mobile. The illuminated screen said 12.43; my hand looked luminous under the glare. ‘What difference does that make?’

  Mark’s idea was to wait until first light and then he would go up there and see what was going on. ‘They don’t seem to want to rape and pillage straight away,’ he said.

  Part of me was relieved that we weren’t joining battle with this unknown enemy in the middle of the night; the other half of me knew that it was going to be a very, very long time until dawn.

  2.11 a.m. 2.56 a.m. 3.42 a.m. 4.29 a.m.

  ‘Ruth, where’s the phone? For Christ’s sake, where’s the bloody phone?’

  Under the duvet, that’s where it was, my hand wrapped around it, warm and safe like a new baby checked on the hour, every hour. I must have finally fallen asleep, but here was Mark, in the bedroom in his coat, yelling at me, clumps of mud falling on the floorboards, it didn’t make sense. And then I remembered the night visitors.

  I sat up in bed. ‘Oh God, have you been up there? Who are they?’

  ‘I need to phone the police!’ He chucked the pile of books from the bedside table onto the floor, turned over the heap of clothes on the chair. ‘Bloody travellers, it’s travellers parked up beyond the drive, against the hedge up there. It must have been them in the night, breaking in!’

  ‘Travellers? What sort of travellers? How many?’

  My heart gathered pace – fear of these travellers, fear of Mark, fear for Mark. His voice was rising, ‘Where’s the phone?’ He turned back to me. ‘Travellers, about a dozen, I don’t know what sort, I didn’t stop for coffee and a chat.’

  ‘How did they get in?’ I began.

  Mark interrupted. ‘God knows! I didn’t think it was possible. I haven’t checked.’

  ‘Didn’t you ask them?’

  ‘They weren’t up, were they? Because they don’t have jobs to go to, do they? But there they are, with their flower-power tents and eco-warrior Dormobiles, not to mention the dogs, just waiting to attack my lambs. Just find the phone, Ruth, we need the police to help us get rid of them now.’

  New age travellers, then, from his description, probably totally peaceful people. Probably quite good company. It was the fear of the unknown I couldn’t cope with any longer, but Angie had hung around with people like that before, so my breathing slowed and, feeling a great wave of relief, I got out of bed and the phone slid to the floor.

  Mark lunged for it, but I got there first and snatched it back. ‘Wait! Calm down! It doesn’t sound half as bad as we thought it was last night,’ I said. ‘Why don’t we just talk to them? Ask them to move on? It doesn’t need to be some massive confrontation.’ Holding tight to the phone, I stepped out of my pyjamas and reached for a towel. Mark followed me into the bathroom. He wanted the phone and he wanted it now. I held the towel tight in front of me; he held his hand out with a sarcastic sneer on his face. Our eyes met.

  Then he turned away to the door. ‘Have your shower, get dressed, bring the phone downstairs. This whole thing is ridiculous.’

  There was a time when me getting up in the morning, sleepy and standing by the shower with nothing but a towel between us, would have brought him closer, not driven him away. Alone in front of the mirror, I dropped the towel on the floor and naked, studied myself. Thinner than before, that much must be good, surely. And browner, at least around the edges. But sort of dry, brittle. I cupped my empty breasts, noting to myself that I didn’t even check them any longer. I couldn’t remember when I last wore make-up. Scrunching my hair up into a bun, I held it above my head, exposing my white neck. I couldn’t remember when I had last gone to a hairdresser, either. We never saw anyone else, it never seemed worth the effort, but maybe I owed it to Mark to do something about myself for him. Take myself in hand, that was my mother’s expression, although pot, kettle and black spring to mind. And, for that matter, it wasn’t as if Mark was doing a hell of a lot for me. I washed quickly and in the same unwashed jeans as yesterday, the same shapeless fleece as every day before that, I picked up the phone and went downstairs. At least I wouldn’t have to dress up for our visitors – the travellers wouldn’t mind what I looked like.

  In the kitchen, Mark had made tea. I broke the silence. ‘What’s wrong with just walking up there, explaining our situation, giving them a timescale for when we’d want them gone?’

  ‘A timescale? We want them gone now.’

  ‘Why?’

  We might as well have been speaking different languages: Mark speaking loudly and slowly, gesticulating at me, the foreigner in my own country. ‘Because they are trespassing. Because we have spent the last weeks trying to keep people out, not inviting people in. Because they have no right to be here. Because once we’ve let them in, then the rest of the world will follow. Because, because, because . . .’

  ‘The Wizard of Oz?’ I tried to joke.

  ‘Yes, and let’s get our traveller friends to do a bit of paving for a yellow brick road while we’re about it, shall we? That’s what they’re good at, isn’t it?’

  ‘You never used to be such a bigot.’

  ‘No, you’re right, I didn’t. If you remember, I was too busy fighting the bigots off to have time to be one myself.’

  Change tack, that used to be a behaviour management strategy advocated at school for angry adolescents. ‘Have you had any breakfast?’ He shook his head, so I put some bacon in the frying pan, cut some bread, got the butter out of the fridge, found the honey, talked with my back to him, watching the toaster. ‘I’m sure you’re right, but we don’t lose anything by meeting them. And you never know, it might even be nice to have them around for a bit.’

  ‘Nice?’

  To talk to. To share things with. To change the landscape around here just a little. Two pieces of toast, two plates, two knives – I put them all on the table and thought I could think of a thousand ways in which it might be ‘nice’ to have some company at The Well, but I suggested just the one. ‘Not nice, I didn’t really mean that. I was thinking they might help out, odd jobs that sort of thing, there’s so much to do.’

  ‘We don’t need help, Ruth. We’ve proved that. We can do it on our own if we work together.’

  Sitting opposite him at the table, passing the spoon over the net, receiving the butter on the baseline, I wondered how long this game of singles could go on. I tried one last time. ‘The other thing, though,’ I said, ‘is that we can do without the police coming here again. The last thing we want is to draw any m
ore attention to The Well. We’ve got all those legal letters outstanding and they’ll start asking questions about more than the travellers.’

  Game, set and match. Mark agreed I was right. If we could avoid the law, that would be better. I volunteered to go up there, check them out and report back; he said it was probably better if he kept out of the way, given how he was feeling. He’d clear up breakfast and hoover up in the bedroom.

  The rest of the bacon was going begging and we had a load of rolls which needed eating, so I heated them up, squirted some ketchup in them and made a thermos of coffee. Just as I was setting off, it occurred to me that they were probably veggies, so I went back and grabbed a handful of apples from the store before heading up the drive. With no news from Angie, I had a sort of karma theory that if I looked after these people, then someone might be looking after her and Lucien. What goes around comes around. The sheep scattered, nagging their lambs as I crossed the field towards the tents and vans which splattered lurid oranges and yellows against the spring grass, reminding myself that if it wasn’t for the wet grass these people, whoever they were, probably wouldn’t be here at all. The tents were arranged haphazardly at the bottom of the field, close to the hedge, as Mark had said. A lurcher appeared from behind a rusty van and ran towards me, howling, followed by a young man also apparently from the 1960s, limping after it.

  ‘So this is the barking dog,’ I said.

  The man grabbed its collar and pulled it back. ‘Sorry, did she wake you up last night? I tried to get her to shut up.’

  ‘I heard you,’ I said. ‘Is she OK with sheep?’

  ‘Yeah, she’d never attack anything, just got no manners.’

  I made some comment about having lost our dog recently and he said sorry about that, the two of us standing there with my bacon butties dripping and my flask and the dog looking hopeful from a distance.

  ‘Are those for Angie?’ he asked.

  ‘Sorry?’

  He smiled. ‘You must be Angie’s mum. I’m Charley. I’ll give her a shout.’

  Before I had time to understand what was happening, the man had gone over to a small green tunnel tent. It bulged, lurched a little and the sagging guy ropes tightened and loosened and raindrops showered from the door flap and then there was Angie, struggling out, pulling on a jumper over her cotton pyjamas. Her blonde hair, always curly, was a total mess, her nails were black, she smelled of smoke and her jumper had holes, yet I knew the moment I saw her that she was well. It was something about the fact her eyes could meet mine without flinching, the honesty of her hug, how it wore its heart on its sleeve and did not conceal requests for money or loans or ‘just this once’ or ‘I’ll pay you back’; something about the way she didn’t mind looking dirty, because she was not having to pretend to be clean.