The Festering

by Guy N Smith

  The telephone interrupted her, screaming harshly at them, as if to say, Pack it up, you two!

  ‘I’ll get it.’ He strode across the kitchen. It would either be the police or Kemp. It was Kemp.

  ‘Afraid I’ve got bad news for you again, Mr Mannion.’ The Environmental Health inspector sounded genuinely sorry, ‘I’m afraid your water is still contaminated.’

  ‘Bloody hell! How bad this time?’ As if it mattered, he thought.

  ‘A little improvement, but I’m afraid it isn’t safe to drink. You seem to have got rid of the salmonella and animal matter. But there’s still this other contamination, which we’ll need a chemical test to identify.’

  ‘I’m surprised, in view of recent happenings, it hasn’t been done.’ Mike was terse, ‘I’d have thought it would have been the first step.’

  ‘So far, nobody has requested it,’ Kemp replied. ‘And I can’t authorize a test off my own bat. I’m afraid it’s expensive.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ Mike snapped.

  ‘You do that,’ Kemp said. ‘But in the meantime I’d continue to pump the water to waste, if I were you. See if you can clear it. You never know.’

  ‘I’m going to put this place on the market right now,’ Mike said to Holly as he began thumbing through the yellow pages. He propped the directory on his knee until he found the heading which said ‘estate agents’.

  ‘You can’t,’ she said, and felt her stomach churning because she realized that she spoke the truth.

  ‘Why not?’ Defiant, he clutched the pages as if he meant to rip them through in a show of strength and anger.

  ‘Nobody would buy it.’ She walked over to the window and stood looking out. ‘The only water we do have is contaminated. It’s a buyer’s market these days, that’s why we came here. Before we can do anything, go anywhere, we have to get that water pure. When we’ve done that we might stand a chance. It’s as simple as that.’ She caught her breath, thinking she could smell that stench again, but then it was gone. It was preying on her mind.

  ‘Then I’ll ring Bennion.’ Mike threw the directory on to the floor, ‘It’s his responsibility.’ Even if he had lost two of his workmen? He asked himself. But it couldn’t be anything to do with the borehole. Could it?

  Mike was hiding something from her, she sensed it. A woman’s intuition. But so was she hiding something from her husband. Nick Paton drifted back into her thoughts, and that was why she went outside and stood in the late afternoon sunshine.

  There was definitely something down there; she could hear it, even when standing here on the patio. Like … earth tremors. No, that wasn’t quite right, she decided. She didn’t want to listen, but it was as if she was compelled to, despite telling herself it was all in the mind, her overstretched nerves. It was really the roar of the water still pumping to waste in Hughes’ field beyond the shrubbery; the drone of a distant tractor; or the summer breeze rustling the shrivelled foliage. But she knew it was none of these. It was like a sighing that drifted up out of the well and was magnified at the top in the concrete pit, then escaped through the propped-up hatch with an angry hiss.

  She sniffed the air fearfully, but there was only the sweet-sour smell of the drought, no freshness, no lushness. Like a world that was slowly dying, being poisoned.

  ‘Bennion’s coming round right away.’ Mike’s voice made her start and her heart flipped. She had not heard him come outside. ‘Jumpy, aren’t you?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you be if you’d been here alone the last couple of days?’ She jerked her head away, and stiffened when he slipped an arm around her waist, ‘I’m sorry, Mike. It’s got on my nerves.’

  ‘Of course it has.’ He kissed the nape of her neck, and it was like some kind of guilt burn making her writhe inwardly, ‘I’m sorry, Holly.’ For what I’ve done, he added silently. ‘I must say, I didn’t expect Bennion to come on the run. I imagine he wants his money, and knows very well I won’t pay until the job’s put right. In the meantime, we’ve just got to stick it out. Let’s be practical; our only real problem is the contamination. Those deaths can’t be anything to do with the well.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ she answered, and was glad when he let her go. Suddenly she didn’t like him touching her. Because of Nick. Which was silly; nothing would come of her relationship with the plumber. She tried to convince herself of that, and it hurt.

  ‘You could always go and stay at your mother’s.’

  ‘You know I’ll never do that, Mike. No, there’s only one thing for it – we have to see it through.’

  Frank Bennion showed no outward sign of being perturbed by recent events. He looked fresh-faced and dapper, and the smile was back on his lips. His previous irritation had evaporated. He was a good businessman, Mike decided – he knew how to put on an act.

  ‘I think I know what the trouble is.’ Bennion strode down to the well, pulled the steel cover to one side, produced a torch and shone it down the liner. ‘Yes, there’s still a bit of a smell, but nothing like so bad as it was before.’

  Mike and Holly had kept their distance; that square of concrete with its raised cover was like some awful snake pit from which a seething mass of deadly reptiles might wriggle to freedom at any second.

  ‘Our fault, Mr Mannion.’ Bennion straightened up. ‘We rectified the leak of surface water by sealing the liner down to twenty feet. Which did the trick. But, of course, the existing bugs were still in there, weren’t they?’ He laughed as though to reassure his customers. ‘All we have to do is to flush them out. A gallon of chlorine, pump to waste for a couple of days, and I’ll guarantee the job this time. It was Fitzpatrick’s fault, he forgot to clean out the well when he put the liner back.’

  Holly felt a twinge of contempt for this man. His workman had died a horrible death before her own eyes and here was Bennion using him as a scapegoat. No mention of the tragedies; as far as he was concerned, they were over and done with, forgotten.

  ‘We’ll get that put right first thing in the morning.’ Bennion glanced at his watch, ‘I’ll send somebody round to do it. Now, I must dash, I’ve got another appointment.’

  ‘Always a bloody excuse.’ Mike stood watching the BMW disappearing down the lane. ‘But surely he’s going to run out of excuses before long. Either that, or we’ll have drinkable water eventually.’

  Holly had been aware of the soreness at the base of her spine for the past few hours, like an adolescent spot that was screaming out to be squeezed. She rubbed it through her scanty underwear. It was quite sore, a kind of blind boil that had troubled her twice before in her life, the last time about ten years ago. It was an aggravation that made sitting down painful. She recalled the uncomfortable experience that resulted when she had visited her local GP. He had given her some tablets to bring it to a head, a nasty yellowish ulcer tinged with white. Then he had lanced it. Christ, it had hurt, and the stuff that he had got out of it stank enough to make her throw up. Every morning for a week she had had to go back to the doctor to have the dressing changed. Undignified, embarrassing, she walked with a shuffle and people in the street gave her strange sideways glances. Now the boil had returned, probably brought on by the stress of the last few days.

  She went up to the bathroom, closed and bolted the door, and kicked her shorts off. God, you needed to be a bloody contortionist, she thought as, with the small mirror clasped in one hand behind her, she tried to view the sore area of her body. She pulled the top of the cheeks apart, noted a patch of skin that was slightly red and breathed a sigh of relief. At least it wasn’t … don’t think about it, she told herself. There was no head, and it might not even come to one. The first time it had just disappeared after a few days. She certainly wasn’t going to the doctor to be put to all that discomfort again.

  A sudden idea made her go back downstairs. She was relieved that there was no sign of Mike. He was probably working in his studio, she thought. She reached down a dog-eared book off the shelf in the kitchen; a sudden idea
gave her a glimmer of hope. Flicking through the pages of homeopathic remedies. Hepar sulph. That had to be the one – anything was worth a try.

  She recalled that there was a homeopathic chemist in town – she had bought some arnica from there once. She was sweating, trembling with relief; her mounting fear had been allayed. Tomorrow she would go and buy some hepar sulph; it might do the trick. But even if it didn’t, then at least her sore wasn’t one of … those.

  11

  It was after ten o’clock before Bill Cole arrived at Garth Cottage in the Land Rover. Holly was standing in the window, impatiently awaiting the arrival of Bennion’s workforce, and had made up her mind half an hour ago that they were not going to come today.

  Bill Cole was nearing retirement age, tall and lanky with stooped shoulders, and a shock of grey hair which was usually only combed at weekends. His features might have belonged to a mortician. He rarely smiled, principally because for most of his waking hours there was a cigarette stuck in the centre of his lips. He never removed it until it was finished, when it began to scorch his lips; if there was sufficient butt remaining to light the next, then he held the soggy, glowing, nicotine-saturated remains to the next cigarette. Otherwise he leaned forward, spat the end on to the ground and extinguished it beneath his working boot. His perpetual cough ensured that a frequent supply of ash showered down the front of his greasy blue overalls. He experienced equal difficulty in talking through his cigarette, and when he spoke he invariably coughed, so he said as little as possible.

  He had worked for Frank Bennion for the last couple of years, ever since the quarry had closed down. Bennion had bought the rig and Bill had gone with it. A slow-thinking man, Bill Cole did not understand the technicalities of well-drilling; he just carried out instructions. A labourer, he was given the straightforward jobs. He knew that all he had to do here was to turn the pump off, pour a can of chlorine down the liner and set it pumping to waste. It was not quite as simple as it sounded, because the odds were that when he turned the stopcock nothing would happen – the pump would either continue to operate or else it wouldn’t come back on when he wanted it to. The whole business was hit-and-miss, he decided, money for old rope, ripping off customers like these folks who had got bad water and weren’t likely to get anything better.

  ‘Good morning.’

  He turned slowly and saw the attractive young woman coming down the well-trodden track towards him. He nodded, coughed and dislodged an inch of ash from his cigarette. His cough rumbled on, and he waited for it to subside before he spoke. ‘Mornin’.’ What else was there to say? Embarrassed, he wished that she had kept away and left him to do the job he had come here for.

  ‘We’re having a lot of trouble with the well.’ Holly was not complaining directly, just stating a grievance. ‘Do you normally have all this trouble getting wells right?’

  ‘Depends,’ he mumbled through his cigarette, and started off the cough again, a vibration in his lungs as if he was going to heave. ‘Some work, some don’t. The luck o’ the draw. Trouble is’ – he let his eyes rove furtively in case there might be an eavesdropper nearby – ‘This lot’s in too much of a bloody hurry to get on to the next job. Drill and ’ope, and ’ope again that we can put it right if it don’t work. At the moment there’s a gang of us followin’ ’em round patchin’ up, doin’ what oughta bin done in the first place. No logic to it, it costs the firm more money than if they done the job right in the first place, if you understand me.’

  ‘I do,’ she smiled, thinking that she liked this simple labourer because he spoke the truth, ‘It’s been a nightmare, literally.’ She paused, not wanting to broach the subject of Eaton and Fitzpatrick, just curious to know if it could be anything to do with this borehole.

  ‘Them two, you mean?’ He was whispering now, his words almost smothered by the continuous cough. ‘Bloody ’orrible, by all accounts. Nobody knows what caused it. I ’ear they’re still doin’ tests and they’ve postponed the funerals. If you ask me, they oughta cremate ’em, burn whatever it is, get rid of it for good. Some kind o’ brain cancer, the boss reckons. ’E says it’s nothin’ to do with the job. For once I agreed with ’im. I wouldn’t be ’ere now if I thought otherwise. I mean, you ain’t gonna catch a disease like that from water, are you?’

  ‘No.’ Holly was keeping her distance from the well. ‘But it has been giving off a very nasty smell.’

  ‘That’ll be the surface contamination.’ He reached in to the back of the Land Rover and dragged out a gallon can. ‘See this stuff? Chlorine, it is – like they put in swimmin’ baths to kill the germs. A gallon’s far too much for this job, but it won’t hurt, just cost the firm a bob or two extra.’ He laughed, a low rumbling in his throat. ‘But it’ll kill any germs that are goin’. Now, I’d better get cracking. First I’ll ’ave to turn the pump off. Perhaps you’d do it for me, just flick the switch in that box on the wall of the ’ouse, will you?’

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea or coffee?’

  ‘Not at the moment, ta.’ He loosened the screw top on the can, grunting at the exertion necessary. ‘But p’raps in about half an hour when I ’ave me bait.’

  ‘I’ll see to it.’ Holly turned away, walked back towards the cottage, opened up the control box and depressed the switch. She heard the swish of water in the adjoining field stop almost immediately, ‘I’ll bring you one out in about half an hour,’ she called.

  She went back inside. If this latest ploy worked, then she would let Mike put Garth Cottage up for sale. The end of a short-lived era, the dashing of her hopes. Instinctively she felt at the sore place on her tail bone, winced and snatched her hand away. It was damnably painful; the sooner she went into town and got a homeopathic remedy, the better. There still wasn’t anything more than a red patch showing on the skin, she had checked again this morning, using the hand mirror in conjunction with the dressing table one and tilting the latter to give her an unrestricted view. After this fellow had fixed the borehole, she would take the car and fetch her hepar sulph.

  Last night had been difficult. She had been forced to sleep on her stomach, for what little sleep she had got. Mike had not slept much, either: she had been aware of him tossing restlessly. She knew him well enough to know when he had something on his mind. The meeting, the deal, had gone well enough, and for the first time for a long time they had some money – so what was bothering him? What had happened in between the official business?

  ‘Are you sure you’re okay, Mike?’ she had asked around dawn, feeling that it was time one of them spoke.

  ‘I’m fine.’ He had not sounded convincing. ‘Just restless. Overtired, I think. London never did suit me.’

  Which, she realized, was as far as she was going to get. Her guilt was plaguing her. If it had just been a one-off adulterous relationship, maybe she could have lived with it. But it wasn’t. She was experiencing an indescribable urge to see Nick again, excited by the memories of what had happened, desperate to mate with him again. It was a kind of carnal urge – nymphomania. She winced at the thought but it was true. Even in her present state of discomfort her thoughts were sexual ones, and she had never had a strong libido. Sex was something you did to please your man, she had always thought; she had never got wildly excited about it, as a lot of women did. She had not lost her virginity until she was twenty-two. Now all that had changed, and in the space of a couple of days she was craving for a man. One man – Nick Paton, the plumber. But she knew well enough that if it had not been for him then it would have been somebody else; her body was telling her that much. Once she found her fingers straying to sensuous parts, but she forced them away. This was no time to indulge in selfish delights; she was worried about Mike, what he had done in London. Hypocrite! Some time after dawn she had fallen into an uneasy doze.

  Holly put the kettle on the stove. By the time it boiled, the workman outside would be just about ready for his ‘bait’. Maybe she would take her own coffee out there and chat to him – for no other r
eason than that she was lonely, needed company, and Mike would not emerge from his studio until he felt like eating, which might not be until evening. Damn, she hadn’t asked Bennion’s man whether he preferred tea or coffee. She would have to give him a shout.

  At that moment she heard the Land Rover start up, with a kind of frenzied urgency rather than the usual sluggish diesel noise to which she had become accustomed these past few days. She moved to the door and opened it. He was behind the wheel and the vehicle was starting to move. Perhaps he had finished the job, she thought, and was not going to stay for bait. It didn’t really matter; she had no reason to run forward and shout to him.

  His face turned in her direction, and she stopped, aghast, cold fingers clutching at her heart. There was a wildness in his eyes, his complexion was ashen and there was no sign of the perpetual cigarette in his mouth. The lips were moving; she could not hear him above the roar of the engine, but he was mouthing frantically at her. Behind the Land Rover she saw his tool bag, its contents strewn from the mouth of the well, an array of spanners and screwdrivers.

  ‘Hey, you’ve forgotten your tools,’ she yelled, feeling an urge to flee indoors, slam the door and lock it. She recoiled as her nostrils detected that awful stench of putrefaction, so strong that it was almost asphyxiating. Gasping for breath, she wanted to scream. Oh, no, not again!

  ‘Get the hell out of here, like I’m doing!’ She could hear him now; he had momentarily relaxed his foot on the throttle. ‘Don’t go near the well. Oh, Christ, it came right up at me! Run!’

  Helpless, trapped there in the hot summer sunshine, clawing with her hands as if to ward off an invisible fog that reeked of stinking evil, she tried to scream to him to help her, but he was already moving off, crashing the gears in his terror. The lumbering Land Rover shot forward and took an erratic course towards the gateway as the driver slumped over the wheel, trying to steer. There was a solid thump as the steel bumper clipped the gatepost, knocked it at an angle and scraped it with its tailboard on the way out. Like a roaring monster fleeing from some conflict, it skidded momentarily in the dry soil of the steep drive that led up to the lane.