The Well

by Catherine Chanter

  Breathing very deeply, I dry my hands on a cloth, over and over, and manage just the one word more. ‘Who?’

  Three slaps the form on the table and I seize it, read it, there are no names, just small print and dates and timings. ‘Tell me who.’ I scream at him as he disappears up the drive, beyond my limit. ‘You must know who!’

  Back inside, the clock moves towards 1.05 p.m. The official slip gives nothing away, no matter how many times I re-read it. Boy would have told me if he knew, or if it was anyone interesting. That’s the thing about Three, he would break the news like that just to torture me with the hope that it was Angie, or Mark, knowing all the time it was some dreary official or a doctor. The hope that it is someone I love thunders inside me, but I hold tight to more rational explanations – Sam, for instance, come to see how the cow is – maybe she felt sorry for me and that leads me to think this might be a substitute priest they have dug up from somewhere.

  If somebody comes, what will I do with the cake?

  The smell of the baking cake fills the kitchen, makes me wonder if I might not one day bake again for somebody else, for children, someone else’s children, I don’t know whose. I could have cooked more with Angie and worked less and maybe it would have all turned out differently. It might be Angie. In some ways, I think I could manage if it was Angie. I know what I have to do when I see Angie again. But what if it’s Mark – the Mark I love or the Mark I hate?

  The timer sounds. I jump, but it is the cake, not the visitors. Bending down and opening the oven door, I take out the cake with shaking hands and, trembling, put it on the table. Perfect. It has risen, golden-topped, cracked but only enough to reveal the moist, steaming sponge inside. Even as it cools, it doesn’t collapse. There is plenty of jam left; damson, plum, apple jelly, crab-apple jelly . . . some are labelled Year 1 or Year 2 as if we might lose count. Lucien would have wanted strawberry jam, but that was never on offer. Mark made our first batch of damson jelly; Angie, she was a peanut butter kid so that is no good. I choose damson, I don’t know why, and back in the kitchen slice the cake horizontally in two. At last they have allowed me a decent knife. I pointed out to them that the sheds are full of beams to hang myself from or scythes or shears which I could steal in the night and creep up behind them and slit their throats with, so the lack of a decent kitchen knife seemed somewhat futile. I spread the jam over the cake. It crumbles slightly because I haven’t been able to wait for it to be ready, but thick with lumps of fruit I sandwich it together again, then run my finger along the blade and lick it, leaving my skin stained purple and crimson. Damson. Mark’s favourite.

  It is 1.45 p.m. The visitors are due in fifteen minutes. Scrutinising the paper again, I try to remember whether Three said visitor or visitors. What a difference a plural might make – when two or three are gathered – and then I realise it could be the Sisters. Would they really have given permission to Amelia to come back here, if she asked? There is no sign of anyone arriving down the drive. Anon is out there now, dealing cards for himself in the shade. I cannot imagine what I would say to Amelia. Sweat pours down my face, I lose focus and the room swims in the heat and my mind gasps for knowledge in an anarchy of unknowing.

  ‘Anon!’ I call from the doorway. ‘Do you know who is coming to visit me?’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not party to that information, but I’ll sure let you know as soon as someone turns up. I’m the one on duty. Sarge has gone up to the experimental plots for some top-secret security update, or something like that.’

  The Land Rover is not there and Anon confirms that Boy has headed into town.

  Our hedge by the gate has blackberries. I pick some, to commemorate blackberrying and Lucien. I arrange them on the icing with care, angry that I am at risk of losing sight of him in the midst of this impending invasion. I had not really thought what I was going to do with it when it was finished, but now I am faced with the prospect of sharing it. Some lines from Proverbs come to mind uninvited. ‘If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water.’ I shared them with Mark a long time ago, in a different context, in what seems like another country. I am trying to remember how the proverb ends when the buzzer sounds in the barn.

  ‘Looks like they’re here,’ calls Anon.

  They?

  An unfamiliar blue car bumps down the drive, does a three-point turn under the oak so it ends up parked facing away from the cottage as if ready for a quick getaway.

  Who wants to come to such a birthday party as this, with no invitations, no balloons, no birthday boy left to blow out the candles?

  The car door opens.

  The answer is Mark.

  The fact that it is Mark means that it is not Angie. Not Amelia. Not any of those other possibilities. It is Mark. Who it is and who it is not are equally debilitating.

  Back inside, I stare from the window, frozen like the doe deer at dusk that sees the marksman raise his rifle but cannot run. Part of me thinks that time has fragmented and reformed like a kaleidoscope and that Mark standing by the five-barred gate, looking up at the cottage, is quite normal and that he is about to come into the cottage, unpack his shopping and I will call down, how are things in town, and he will say, I’ll be up in a minute. Another part of me thinks that this is Mark, but at some point in the future, and I am the ghost come back to visit old haunts, to inspect the ruins.

  Whichever way I try to rationalise it, it cannot be now, unless of course he has changed his mind and he loves me again; unless he has news, unless he has evidence to share which will prove beyond doubt that it was me. Or him. Or her. It cannot be a mistake that he has chosen this day for his return; it used to be in Mark’s favour that he never forgot birthdays. He must know I am sad, but I have been sad for a long time and it has not prompted him to comfort me. Mark. Just to hold him, imagine that, for him to say I’ve come back, I can’t live without you. Suspicion corrupts that soft-focus picture. The truth is he has stayed away for far too long, does not love me, has not stopped punishing me, so again the question repeats itself: why come back here now? My mind is rapid cycling, rushing between the conscious thought and the hard-wired memories, trying to make sense of this unforeseen appearance. Slowly, an alternative reading of events occurs to me. A piece of received wisdom: that people are drawn back to the scene of their crimes. That special days act like a magnet to the murderer. Perhaps there is sense in this madness after all. It was Boy who said it out loud. Why don’t you ever think it was him?

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, my foot taps the floor as my knees shake uncontrollably. I am holding my breath; the only thing I can hear is my heart and then downstairs, the minute adjustments a house makes when someone walks through the door, the almost inaudible foot on the kitchen floor, the air moving to one side to let him pass.

  ‘Ruth, it’s Mark.’

  He calls up again, sounding closer still. He must be standing at the bottom of the stairs. I fix every muscle so I am motionless, as if it is a game of hide and seek and I am under the bed and he is prowling. I’m coming to get you.

  ‘Ruth? I know this is a shock. I’ll go for a walk for five minutes, then come back. Give you a chance to collect yourself.’

  Rage is useful to animals, it brings the blood back to the front of the brain: fight becomes the stronger of the two impulses. I follow him with my ears as he leaves via the back door. From the bathroom, I track him strolling out over the field, trying to avoid the crusted cowpats drying in the sun, then I lose sight of him and know that the only way I can spy on him is to look through the window in Lucien’s room. I never go in there, but I will now. I throw open the door, three strides is all it takes to get to the window. Mark is on the hill, his hair is shorter; he is tapping an unlit cigarette against the box. He is an unfamiliar man surveying all that he knew once – all that has been destroyed. To my right is the toy box trunk, behind me the empty bed and in the corner a black bin liner which has never been opened, not since the police returned it
.

  Enough.

  The black plastic rips easily and I reach my hand in as if this were some birthing beast. A red T-shirt. His hoody. Jeans. They are all clean and smell not of him but of washing powder; these were the clothes they took from the airing cupboard. My hand closes around some trainers and I put them on the floor beside me, recognising them as the ones he’d grown out of, with Velcro not laces. Pants, more T-shirts, an anorak he hated, a pillowcase. All of Lucien ironed out of them. I tear the bin liner further apart, expose its stillborn contents and pick up the fleece, bury my face in the buttercups and bees. This is Lucien, the Lucien who is gone in a way that is beyond metaphor, because metaphor would imply connection. I breathe in absence, undiluted by any secondary pain or conscious thought, the purity of this moment is all I need to convince myself that it could not have been me.

  ‘Enough,’ I say out loud.

  With clothes strewn all over the floor, this looks again like his room, so I leave the door open. Back in the bathroom, very calmly, I wash my face, brush my hair and look at myself in the new mirror which Boy has hung over the sink, and see someone capable.

  ‘You can do it,’ I say out loud to the woman in the mirror and she believes me, I can see it in the way her eyes are resolute now, the way she is biting her lip. Downstairs, I take up my position on the sofa in the sitting room and wait. It is slightly cooler in here than anywhere else, being darker and facing east. Although my palms are warm and damp, I focus on looking ice-cold calm. I have waited to see Mark face to face for a long time, only now do I know why.

  He calls from the back door. ‘Ruth?’

  ‘Hello, Mark.’

  ‘There you are. You made me jump. I thought I saw you at the upstairs window.’

  He looks as though he wants to step forward, to hug me even, but he stops. The funeral stoop is gone; this man walks a little taller, but his face is taut and the tension he carries with him is palpable.

  ‘You were wrong.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I was.’ We are fiddling awkwardly with the space and time between us. ‘Did you get my letter?’ he continues.

  ‘Yes. Just the one.’

  He perches next to me on the edge of the sofa and I allow him to take my hand, weighing up the risk. He swallows, audibly. ‘I’m so sorry, Ruth. I really am.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I wanted to be in touch, to visit you, but I couldn’t face it. But . . .’ My hand is dropped again and I reclaim it, using it to push my hair out of my face so I can see more clearly.

  I am proud that I am still sitting. He is the one pacing now. I am taut like a tiger. ‘You’re here now. Don’t get me wrong. There’s so much to talk about. So much I want to know. But why today, Mark?’

  ‘Aren’t you pleased to see me at all, Ruth?’

  ‘I don’t know what I feel, I just don’t know. I asked you a question.’

  He replies with his back to me, a familiar shape framed by the window, the curtain half closed to keep out the light and the heat. ‘There is a reason,’ he says, then clears his throat. ‘It’s been hard,’ he continues, ‘ever since Lucien’s, well, Lucien’s death, ever since that . . .’

  Now is the time for me to go to him. I put my hand on the back of his neck, massage it slightly, stand close with my breath, causing him to flinch and his shoulders to rise, causing the hairs on my bare arms to prickle. ‘I have missed you,’ I whisper. ‘It must have been so difficult for you too. You probably did what you had to do.’

  He stiffens against me, we know each other too well and the very muscles in our bodies recognise dishonesty. He continues talking to the glass. ‘I hope today will be the day when . . .’

  My hands drop from his neck and clasp him in an embrace from behind and I rest my head on his jacket; he smells of hay and poorly selected aftershave and what might have been, and this undermines me. I struggle against the siren voice of the way we were, once.

  ‘There’s no hurry,’ I reassure him. ‘I’m not going anywhere. There’s only Anon on duty, I am not sure he can even tell the time. Let’s sit at the kitchen table, like we used to.’ Turning him to face me compounds my error. In front of me is the Mark I loved and trusted implicitly and it is impossible, almost impossible, to believe he is the wolf in sheep’s clothing. I so nearly falter, but with very few words he makes it easy for me.

  ‘You’ve been baking,’ he says. ‘I could smell a cake when I came in. Have I interrupted a special occasion?’

  He speaks as if it is a joke, but I know now. It is no coincidence, this timing. The rest of the proverb comes back to me. ‘You will heap burning coals on his head and the Lord will reward you.’ He will know what guilt tastes like.

  In the kitchen, I get a couple of plates out and put them on the table. The Rayburn has combined with the searing August temperatures to create a furnace, so he takes off his jacket and puts it over the back of the chair. His checked shirt is sticking slightly to his back and when he rolls up his sleeves, his arms are still strong and tanned and although he is slumped in the chair, it is clear he is still fit from working the land. He wipes the sweat from his forehead and rubs his red eyes.

  ‘Of course. Lucien’s birthday.’ He keeps his eyes closed for a few moments.

  ‘You couldn’t have forgotten,’ I say, but he shakes his head slowly and I don’t know what that means. ‘Water?’ I offer.

  ‘Yes, please.’

  He drinks sip by sip, sitting in silence before whispering as if to himself. ‘It’s still so beautiful here,’ he says, ‘the most beautiful place in the world.’ He puts the glass down on the table gently, tips it, watches the water circle and settle. ‘And it still rains. You know, I don’t think we ever really got what that meant. I didn’t. Not until I left and lived like the rest of the world. I can understand the madness now.’

  Lifting the cloth which is covering Lucien’s birthday cake, protecting it from the flies that buzz continuously nowadays, I am close to collapse. This would have been his birthday cake and he is dead and there is only that one unforgiving, unforgivable truth: I will never ever see him again.

  ‘Ruth.’

  Except that Mark is sitting at my table, unworthy even to gather up the crumbs.

  ‘Sorry. I was remembering. Here.’

  The cake sits between us, whole. I pierce the icing with the candles. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. There is one more in my hand. ‘What do you think? Should I put the sixth candle on, because that is how old he would have been? Or should I leave it at five, because that is how old he was when he was murdered?’

  Mark turns the plate around as if to circle the question. Finally he answers, tight-throated. ‘I would leave him at five, as he was, our happy, five-year-old grandson. Let’s keep that memory.’

  ‘I am not allowed matches. You haven’t taken up smoking again, have you?’

  ‘No.’ His eyes slide immediately to his jacket.

  ‘I can’t blame you.’ I reach into the pocket and pull out the cigarettes and a slim book of matches, with the logo of a Manchester hotel on the front. ‘No need for lies now, Mark.’

  He mutters something about how he can explain everything, but I know my script. Nothing is stopping me now.

  I invite him to light the candles. He is going to cry, but I won’t. The first match fails to light. His hand fixates me – the hand that led me up the aisle; the same hand that led the boy to The Well. He tries again and one by one the candles hesitate into life. The hand that brought me pleasure; the same hand that purchased pleasure of a wholly different kind with a pin number and a credit card. The flame reaches his fingers before he gets to the last one. The hand that held the head under the water . . .

  ‘Give them to me.’ I light the last candle myself and, sitting back down on the other side of the table, we watch them burn.

  Mark speaks first. ‘How are you? Really?’

  ‘I’m fine now, Mark. Shall we sing Happy Birthday?’

  ‘For God’s sake, Ruth, what is this?’
He slams the table and everything flickers, but these are perpetual candles which never go out.

  ‘You came here, Mark. You just happened to arrive in the middle of a birthday party. If you’d called ahead . . .’

  ‘Fine. For Christ’s sake, Ruth, I told you to get help.’

  ‘I don’t need help any more. I know what I am doing. What’s more, Mark, I know what you’re doing.’

  ‘I’m here for a reason!’ he shouts. ‘Because of Angie.’

  ‘Don’t bring her into it. Not now it’s just the two of us at last.’

  I pick up the large, sharp knife and make as if to put the point in the very centre of the cake – but pause. The table is between us. I walk round and stand behind his chair so that I am leaning over him, put his hands on the knife, my hands over his hands and say, ‘Let’s do this together, Mark, like we did at our wedding.’

  I am sure he thinks I am mad again and he needs to humour me, but he is wrong. I have never been as sane as this. Just as the knife is going to slice through the cake, I kick the chair. He lurches, caught off-guard, grabs at the table, but his fingers slip, he falls to the ground and the chair crashes on top of him. I push it out of the way and stand over him, with the knife in my hand.

  ‘What the hell? Ruth! Put it down. I was about to tell you that Angie . . .’

  He will have the lines and he will have the moves. I am not taking any risks. Kick. Kick him in the head.

  ‘I hate you. I hate you. I know it was you, I know!’

  He grabs my leg, but I have kept my left hand on the rail of the Rayburn and he cannot pull me down.

  ‘Murderer! Pervert!’

  I stumble. The chair smashes into his face. I am falling towards him, knife raised, stab, stab again, no blood, screaming, yes, but there is no blood. Someone has hold of my arm, forcing it towards the ceiling. I am scratching at them to get off, that he needs to pay, but Mark is up off the floor now, pinning my arms to my side. My fingers are prised open, I am subdued, I am knifeless, I am held. There is no blood, just damson jam on the lino and the purple stain of blackberries leaking onto white icing. The plate is cracked, the cake split, but the candles still burn.