The Well

by Catherine Chanter

  ‘Don’t walk out now,’ he ranted, but then he backed away, holding his hands out as if I were a vampire. ‘Don’t push me too far, Ruth,’ he said. ‘You push people too far . . .’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You put us together, me and Lucien, and pull us apart as if you’re a puppet-master. I love you too much, Ruth. I love him too much. It’s all gone wrong and there’ll be no going back now. Just like before.’

  ‘I don’t understand, please . . .’

  ‘You can’t understand anything any longer, I’ve said it before. You can’t have it all.’ Suddenly the threat was gone and he was crying, great gasps shaking his body, and I went to him, held him, put my head on his juddering chest. All I could do was pray and the Rose filled the room with petal-scented peace in much the same way that some people say ghosts do.

  He held me tighter and I felt him hard against my thigh. ‘One last night?’ he sobbed. ‘After so many years of loving you, just one last night. Please.’

  Twisting my body, I left his embrace and shook my head.

  ‘Enough!’ he said and moved away from me also. ‘Go. Things will be clearer in the morning.’

  As I was almost at the door, he suddenly shouted. ‘No, stop. You’ve got to stay.’ He opened the oven and presented an apple cake to me. ‘Lucien would never forgive us for forgetting his surprise. We’ve got to eat it, for his sake.’

  That was my last supper, the cake that Lucien made. Had I known, I would have taken an eternity to break off the corner with my spoon, to scoop the warm yellow custard onto the sponge and rest it on my tongue; I would have sold my soul for the lightness and the sweetness; I would have invited the eggs and the flour, the sugar and the apple to become part of me, dissolved into my body, mingled with my saliva, digested by my enzymes, transported by my blood until this cake that he had made was indistinguishable from each individual cell of my body.

  I didn’t know. Voice asked me what I was doing eating so much. I smeared it around my plate and left some lumps under my spoon, offering to wash up before Mark could notice. I scoured the pan in which it was made, letting the water run over it and wash away all trace of his small hands, the wooden spoon he had held, the tongue which had licked it. Mark wiped the table clean and I let the washing-up water carry all traces of him away.

  When I got back into the cottage, I pulled the back door behind me. I did not lock it; I never did. Having put a large log on the wood-burning stove to keep it going until the morning and turned out the lights, leaving just the sudden flare of the flames in the black room, I crept upstairs, went into the bathroom and noticed the bath where the water was now grey with a slight film of soap and a few strands of my hair. I didn’t drain it, knowing the noise might wake Lucien next door and I left the pile of wet clothes on the floor. I was so tired that I decided to sleep first and wake early to answer the prayers of the faithful and finish the blog for the penultimate day of our week of worship, so I clicked in the top right-hand corner of theSistersoftheRose.com and watched it shrink to nothing in far less than a second and confirmed that I wanted to shut down.

  The last thing I did, in a way the last thing I ever did, even after I had taken one final look at the full moon, even after I had closed the shutters in my bedroom, even after I had knelt and thanked the Rose for the day and blessing for the night to come, the last thing I did was to tiptoe onto the landing and peer through the half-open door to Lucien’s bedroom. His nightlight was on and the curtains, although thick, were allowing a slit of moonlight to cross the floor and catch the glint of the mirror on the opposite wall. I didn’t go in. I never did. I stood stock-still as always, riveted by the magic of a sleeping child, listening for the rhythmic rise and fall of his breath, watching for the slight shuffling of the duvet, the sucking of tongue on thumb. Then I went to bed and slept as I had not slept for a long time. It is because I know now what can happen while you sleep that I will never sleep again.

  There is no such thing as waking these days, just a blurring of different ways of being alive; after that morning, there would never be another awakening.

  That day, my resolution had been to get up at 4 a.m. to answer the prayers and prepare the readings which I had failed to do the evening before. Why did I sleep through that deadline that night? Maybe because my body had been busy, working with the devil in the bleakest hours of the night and I had not long been in bed. Sometimes I want to rip my skin apart just to see inside the real me and know what I am made of, but I lack the talons and have to make do with surface scratches on my arms, which barely bleed.

  I woke late. Too late. I had already missed dawn worship, but if I hurried I could get to the Sisters for the readings. There was no sign of Lucien, but the day before had been long and these dark mornings smudged the edges between night and day. I was grateful to be able to get dressed in peace, Lucien had become so attention-seeking recently. I knelt briefly to pray. That day became a catalogue of firsts and lasts – this was the last time I prayed in faith rather than desperation. Downstairs, despite my clattering in the kitchen, Lucien had still not come down. I called upstairs; the last thing I wanted was to have to get Mark to look after him again and give him the excuse to summon Angie or the excuse to stay longer. The radio was on with its tedious catalogue of drought-fuelled misery, so I turned it down and called again and getting no reply, went halfway up the stairs and called again, then up to his room. I pushed open the door. The nightlight was still on, the curtains still closed. His bed was empty.

  ‘Lucien?’ I shouted, although where I thought he could be in a tiny two-bed cottage with only one staircase, I don’t know. I looked in the bathroom where last night’s water looked stagnant but undisturbed, and my gown lay to one side like a sodden shroud. At least he had not fallen in. I looked in our bedroom, pulling back the duvet, waiting for him to boo out on me. My chest tightened, but at the same time I told myself to breathe deeply and calm down: this was something all mothers felt at some point, the flutter of the unthinkable, that they had lost their child. But they never had – hardly ever.

  Back into the kitchen, as if somehow against the law of nature he could have come downstairs and got himself to the table and started his cereal without me having noticed him on the stairs. He was not there. It was obvious that he’d woken up early, when I was still asleep, and slipped outside. His brown coat and wellington boots were still in the back passage, as were his shoes, but I didn’t put it past him going out in bare feet even on such a day as this. The back door was unlocked and outside seemed to me a strange place, as if the frosted oak was an illustration and the pheasants a soundtrack. Of course, he would have gone to Mark! I could not deny he had been so pleased that Mark was back. I knocked and pushed the barn door simultaneously. Inside the main room, Mark had tidied a bit, the washing up put away, the colouring paper with all the Ms was gone, presumably into the wood-burning stove. Lucien’s jeans were still on the clothes horse, but Mark’s coat was not on the peg and it was only when I went outside again that I realised the Land Rover was gone. Logic. Rewind. Lucien had got up early, found me still asleep and gone over to the barn. Mark must have needed something in Middleton and taken Lucien with him for the ride. That was how it must be.

  I scanned the field in front, feeling its bleakness, the sheep huddled around the hay, two crows fighting off the buzzard over the Hedditch cover. I was cold, very cold, and the ground was hard beneath my feet. I went back inside, dithering and ineffectual, his mobile went to answerphone, but it would if he had just gone into Middleton, the reception was dreadful there. Overhead, a huge heron lazily flew up from the direction of the pond and headed towards the lane and away from The Well. Then I understood. The naked boy, the last laugh, the ‘pushed too far’. Something terrible had happened; he had taken Lucien from me and gone.

  You are all alone now, said Voice. I started to run up the empty track.

  ‘Come back!’ I screamed and then, there it was, the Land Rover coming towards me. I
felt so foolish for thinking what I had thought. I stopped, watching as the car swung up onto the gravel and Mark got out of the driver’s seat, carrying a newspaper: I remember thinking how he’d never gone to buy a paper in the morning before, how he had hated the media ever since the problems at work, even more since we moved here. Later I thought, why would he have gone into Middleton, faced all that all over again, just for a paper? But at the time it seemed irrelevant why, all that mattered was that he was going to go round and open the door for Lucien.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you had Lucien?’ I went towards the car to get him myself, because he had to be in the car, there was nowhere else he could be. ‘I’ve been worried sick.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ he asked.

  ‘Where is he, Mark?’ I shouted, opening the rear door and seeing a back seat that had nothing more than a heap of wood and nails and mallets. ‘What have you done with him?’

  The logical solutions were all gone. I started to run, just to run. Down the slope towards the lambing barn – he must be there, perhaps he’d made a house out of hay – but the lambing barn was all settled dust in the half-light and undisturbed. So I ran on to the tractor shed, he must be there, sitting on the tractor in his pyjamas, hands on the wheel, but I’d forgotten the tractor was down by the hay. So I shouted to Mark, I’m going down to the tractor, and started stumbling over the rutted mud.

  Mark held my arm like a vice. ‘What’s going on, Ruth?’

  ‘I woke up and he wasn’t in his bed. He’s gone, Mark. Gone!’

  Mark looked shocked – I am sure he was shocked. ‘Well, was he OK last night? Did you check on him when you got back to the cottage?’

  ‘Of course I checked on him. What do you think . . .?’

  ‘I don’t understand. Where can he be? He must be somewhere.’

  Mark’s composure was gone and when I spoke next it was to reassure him as much as myself. ‘It’s OK. We’ll find him. He’s just wandered off, that’s all. He’s used to doing that, isn’t he? He did that all the time when he was with Angie.’

  ‘You’re right.’ Mark threw the paper back onto the driver’s seat. ‘We need to be systematic. You need to get a coat, for a start.’

  He put his arms around me and held me very tight. His heart was beating fast, loudly, and I could tell from long experience that he was trying hard to control his breathing. Such enforced togetherness. So short-lived.

  ‘I’m going upstairs to get another jumper,’ I said, but when I got to my bedroom, I fell to my knees.

  ‘I have done so much for you,’ I said slowly, spitting the words out one by one. ‘I have given up everything for you: my husband, my dream, everything. I have never asked for anything in return, but now I am asking. Find Lucien. Give me back Lucien.’

  The echo of my words sounded blackmailing and threatening and Voice said I’d better repent, making demands like that, who did I think I was. Then I was so scared that I might offend this god of the drought who possessed me and about whom I knew so little.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I am so worried. I know that you love each and every one of us and that whatever happens is part of your plan. Help me to trust the Rose this morning. Amen.’

  The sound of that amen was very loud in the empty room. Where do you go after amen?

  I went to Mark. He was on the phone.

  ‘He wasn’t in his bed when she woke up this morning. We are sure he’s just wandered off somewhere on the farm . . .’

  To the police.

  ‘Why?’ I ranted. ‘He’s just somewhere out in the fields. It’s not like we’re in the middle of London and he’s going to get grabbed by some pervert or get lost. Why did you call the police without asking me? I have prayed.’ I screamed at him, ‘I hate the police snooping around The Well.’

  ‘This isn’t about you and The Well, Ruth; nothing to do with your sodding Sisters or the Rose or any other bullshit. It’s about finding Lucien, nothing else, no one else and I think the police might just be a little bit more helpful than your prayers.’

  For a second, we could hear the clock ticking and the squawk of one of the hens outside. Then he continued in a quieter voice, saying that in these cases it was always better to let the police know sooner rather than later. I agreed, although the whole thing seemed to be escalating into a film which was fast-forwarding without me in it. I told him I was going up to the Sisters, to see if he was with them. Mark was astonished that I hadn’t asked them already.

  We set off, calling as we went. Lucien. Lucien. Our voices were loud in the workless, waterless valleys that stretched beyond The Well. Dorothy was already making her way down the track before we reached them.

  ‘Is something wrong, Ruth? We missed you at prayers.’

  We ran to the caravans. It was obvious Lucien was not there. Eve said they had all been up since dawn – Jack hadn’t been well, difficult to manage, so Sister Amelia had moved her from Dorothy’s into her own caravan and it had taken some time to settle her. They would certainly have seen something if Lucien had been around. I’ll check the caravans, Mark said, just in case. Sister Ruth can check the caravans, interrupted Amelia, and Mark kicked the laundry basket and started back up the hill. Lucien adored Dorothy and Jack, was wary of Amelia and Eve, but loved all their caravans equally: the way the beds folded up into the walls, the way the tops of the bench seats opened up into secret chests, the way the toilet looked like a fridge. So the Sisters and I checked the caravans, with their steamed-up windows and smells of bodies and damp, their mystical writings laid out on the hinged tables and the smoke from the mugs of herbal tea rising up into the winter air. Jack was curled up in a foetal position on the bed in Sister Amelia’s caravan, oblivious to the creak of the opening door and the blast of cold air. Dorothy covered her with a blanket and she didn’t stir.

  ‘She’s been vomiting,’ whispered Amelia. ‘I’ve given her something to help her get some sleep. We mustn’t wake her. The stress of all this will be too much for her.’ Sister Amelia took a glass from the table and put it in the sink, felt Jack’s forehead with the back of her hand, picked a robe up off the floor and took it outside to dry in the winter sun. ‘She’ll be all right,’ she said and blessed her with the sign of the Rose.

  Lucien was not there, but there was nothing else to do but look. Dorothy rang the prayer bell three times and it tolled its unusual call to arms like a death knell over the quiet morning. She said the Sisters should organise themselves to walk the woods and she asked for the blessing of the Rose on their search, but Sister Amelia insisted that Eve stay in the hub and reconfigure the site so that a pre-recorded reading could be shared with the followers expecting the seventh day of preparation.

  ‘We need everyone to help,’ I said.

  ‘So does the Rose,’ she replied. ‘I’ll search the Wellwood. The Rose is with us. She won’t let anything happen to Lucien.’

  ‘What you said,’ I sobbed, ‘about the Rose not letting anything happen. How do you know? You of all people – you said that the Rose doesn’t want men any longer. You want him gone anyway, so why would she save my grandson?’

  Sister Amelia laid her arm on mine and spoke quietly. ‘Remember whatever has happened, it is her plan and it is a good plan. God himself, the first time, lost his only son.’

  I remember asking: ‘Do you know something, Amelia? Because if you do, you must tell me.’ And she said, ‘Why are you asking me, Ruth, why aren’t you asking Mark?’ Then she was embracing me and confirming how she loved me, that everything she did and had ever done was because I was her chosen one.

  ‘He wouldn’t have gone onto the lane, would he?’ asked Dorothy, meeting back at the house, having gone through Smithy’s Holt and found nothing. He wouldn’t have willingly gone anywhere else now. We had looked in all the places he would have gone and he wasn’t there.

  ‘I drove that way this morning to get a paper,’ said Mark, going on to explain rather elaborately that he’d heard the early morning
news and mention of a rainstorm in Yorkshire and he’d wanted the details. ‘It doesn’t seem quite so important now,’ he concluded, adding that he hadn’t seen anything. By which I suppose he meant he hadn’t seen my grandson in his great big green jumper walking down the main road. I was beginning to think that someone might have taken him, someone with a grudge against The Well, or the press, or one of those mad people who wrote to us and offered us millions to sell.

  ‘He’d still be alive, though, there’d be no point in someone like that harming him,’ I was saying, but Voice was reminding me what the car looked like when they found it – burnt out and mutilated – and what Bru looked like when I found him, saliva and poison dripping from his soft muzzle. ‘They wouldn’t harm him, would they?’ I was asking when we heard the sirens.

  Blue lights and sirens across this quiet land. The 360-degree view which had sold us this place started to rotate as evenly as the flashing light, mocking me with its expanse and our irrelevance; we had always been nothing more than fleas crawling on its skin, ever since we first dreamed of owning it.

  The arrival of the police made everything real, but unreal. The kitchen became a sort of headquarters, invaded by strangers in boots coming in and going out and making tea, more tea, talking about rustling undergrowth and footprints and broken-down hedges and dropped gloves and the sound of crying that turned out to be the mewing of the buzzards – the words falling all over the floor and being swept into the bin with every other used-up possibility. The policemen seemed huge and black, overwhelming the space with their synthetic voices on the radios and talk of scrambling a helicopter. The rest of the Sisters came back, empty-handed. I went through the morning and the night before with the police over and over again and the more I repeated it, the less I knew that I had ever lived before this moment, that anything was real.

  Had I locked the back door?