Evil Water and Other Stories

by Ian Watson

  Alicia laughed. “Boys’ Night is every Friday night at the White Hart. Wives apparently excluded.”

  During the next couple of months Paul became a habitué who looked forward to Boys’ Night, though this kept him up late and involved drinking more beer than quite suited him, to judge by his head next morning. He’d never lived in a village before. Back in Lederbury, which was almost a city, whenever Alicia had switched on the radio soap opera about the daily lives of country folk Paul had scoffed at the way the characters never ordered more than half a pint at their local; this seemed like health education propaganda. Now he understood the reason. Unless you always ordered halves, given the number of rounds you’d never get through the night.

  It was gregarious Matthew Davies who guided Paul into the Friday-night ritual commencing around nine, concluding when the White Hart’s patrons felt so inclined. Since there was no police house in Easton Hampcote, at drinking up time landlord Ronnie Wilson simply latched the front door of his pub and closed the curtains. He rarely draped towels over the pump handles, of Everard’s, Fuller’s, and Bass, till half-eleven, not always then. The record was half-past midnight.

  Gangly, freckled, and red-headed, Matt Davies was a biochemistry graduate of twenty years vintage, an executive at Whitney’s, the agricultural research centre on the northern fringe of the village, which Paul drove past every morning and evening. A high chain-link fence surrounded the offices and labs but not the pastures and livestock sheds. The barrier at the gatehouse was generally left in the up position, though guard dogs patrolled at night. Whitney’s was researching new antibiotic additives for feed, and hormone boosters. The centre employed several villagers as cleaners, gardeners, and canteen staff; its salaried staff tended to live in Birdland—as did Matt, who often wittily mocked life in the aviary.

  Matt was no more a native of Easton Hampcote than Paul or the vicar or most of the other inhabitants. A couple of “aboriginal” families survived—the Tates, the Dingles—but Paul and Alicia had been surprised at what a melting-pot, or crossroads, the village was. One rural odd-job man proved to be a wartime evacuee from the East End of London. Another rustic gaffer hailed from the south coast, via the merchant navy.

  A melting pot—or a rich stew, after the blandness of Lederbury. … A lot of oddities lived in this village: a hippyish book illustrator, a professional conjuror, a retired submarine commander who had visited the North Pole, a retired, half-Russian lady gymnast, a lady potter, an expert pot-holer, a Dutch herbalist, an Australian husband and wife who ran a mail-order lingerie business.

  People still fell into sets, with a certain amount of cross-over. There was the church-going fraternity, the “smart set”, the farmers and Young Farmers, the Tories and fox-hunters, the Council House people, the Birdlanders, the beer and darts mob, and the Americans—two American families lived off base in Birdland, both white, both pilot grade.

  Paul supposed that Matt and he belonged to a mixture of smart set and beer set. Along with Bill Morrison, planning officer for the District Council; Conrad Golby, antiques exporter; and Adrian Waller who farmed in the village.

  In the White Hart of a Friday night there was farming talk and property talk, school talk and car talk, sports and beer and food talk, and misadventure talk.

  “Stuck his car in the ditch Tuesday night. Slept in the back. That’s the third time. Don’t know how he gets away with it …”

  “Took the family to the Boatman. Steak as big as my plate, I couldn’t finish …”

  “Bass? Needs to stand for three days before you tap a barrel …”

  “So the rain came down, and the centre court was a waterfall …”

  “Pearces are asking eighty grand.”

  “No, Becky got a ‘B’ in German.”

  “Wimbledon.”

  “Beef in Guinness.”

  “Ninety thousand? They’ll be lucky.”

  “It’s going to auction.”

  “Just a recall for the seat-belt mounting.”

  “Steroids for steers, as our Texan friends might put it. Lowers the fat content of the beef. We’re working on some pretty potent … Put a drop of that in your baby’s bottle! Deoxycorticosterone.”

  “Who?”

  “Water balance regulator.”

  “Bloody discos! Had to call the police to Fardley village hall last week. One lad got stabbed. You just can’t have a ticket-only do. Word gets round. Your Young Farmers want to raise funds but they don’t want the responsibility, do they?”

  “Whose round is it, anyway?”

  The White Hart was also the hang-out for the older boys and girls who had spurned the vicar’s youth club. They gossiped in whispers, giggled, sat in silence, cuddled, drank shandies, played the STOWAWAY gambling machine in the hall. The girls tended either to be overweight or punkishly, anorexically skinny, but one or two were attractive, particularly Sally Dingle who had left school and worked in the canteen at Whitney’s. Paul didn’t see her in the pub as often as the others, of a Friday night or Sunday lunchtime, though he spotted her wandering about the village solo and managed to say hullo several times.

  She was perhaps a bit on the buxom side, emphasized by tight jeans, and her breasts were ampler than he really cared for, but she had an air about her of … what? Not exactly sophistication, though she applied blushers and shaders to her pert oval face (with sparkling eyes of rain on slate) and highlights to her straw-blonde hair to good effect. Not exactly sensuality; she appeared to have no boyfriend (any more than she had a close girl-friend), nor much interest along those lines. Far from making a beeline, the local boys seemed to shy away. Perhaps, thought Paul, her potential challenged them beyond their present adolescent capacities.

  Yes, that was it: Sally Dingle had potential, and she knew it, but withheld it from her peers, who therefore resented her faintly. It was as though she was waiting, and despising. Waiting for what? Maybe she read romances and her head was fogged with illusions.

  Paul was more aware of Sally—only casually, to be sure—because Alicia still refrained from making love for one reason or another. One night she even said, “I can’t. I feel we’re being watched. Listened to. They’re so nosey in this village. They need to know everything. It’s all very well for you, away in Lederbury every day. If I wash my nightdress, someone’s staring at the clothes-line next morning looking for stains. I’m sure Mrs Badgot has X-ray eyes and can see through walls.”

  “Don’t you like it here, then?” he’d asked.

  “Oh yes. It’s idyllic after Lederbury.”

  What could he say to that?

  Another night she cried, “What’s that? Someone’s prowling in the garden.”

  No one was, though he went outside in his pyjamas with a torch. Alicia had gone to sleep when he got back.

  Sally Dingle. She did look at Paul with covert interest, as though she knew him. Well, obviously she did know him. Yet not exactly “know” in the ordinary sense. As though she … expected something, and despised whatever it was. Did she expect Paul to … ? It was ridiculous even to imagine.

  At the Life Mutual office Paul found himself paying compliments to one of the typists, then suggesting a lunchtime drink. She accepted; and over vodka and lemonade, plus smoked salmon sandwiches, the girl told him casually about her union’s stand on sexual harassment in the work place. His own secretary remarked pointedly that she and her boyfriend had nearly saved the down payment on a flat.

  Paul was working down in the wild garden, from where it looked to be a long way to the house. He was sorting a pile of ironstone which had been overgrown with nettles. Down at soil level he had just uncovered a perfect ring of stones neatly dovetailed together. He was trowelling rubbish out from inside the ring when a voice said close by, “You going to open the well up? You shouldn’t, lightly.”

  His heart jumped. Sally Dingle was standing behind him in her jeans and a floppy muslin blouse which sunlight shone through, outlining her.

  “Is that what i
t is, an old well? Did you want to speak to me, Sally?”

  She smiled. “That’s what I’m doing. Speaking.”

  “Did you want something special?”

  “What would be special then, Mr Philips?” She eyed him. “I’m just passing through, by Pook Pond.”

  “Excuse me, Sally, but aren’t you sort of trespassing on our property?” (Had it been her that Alicia thought she heard that night?)

  “There’s a right of way. Across this corner of your garden, round the pond, over the fields.”

  “A right? There was nothing in the deeds. There’s nothing on the district council’s large-scale map. It shows every tree.“

  “The right’s ancient.”

  “Why don’t the Ramblers use it? They were tramping by last week.” A party of giant garden gnomes in their laced-up boots, knee socks, green and red anoraks, and woolly hats. “I thought they made a point of crossing any scrap of land where there’s a right.” Adrian had told him so; a disputed right leading through the Wallers’ farmyard was a bone of contention between him and the Ramblers Association.

  “Too old for them to know.”

  “You aren’t ancient, Sally. So how do you know?”

  “How old am I, then?” She smirked. “Old enough.”

  “What did you mean, I shouldn’t open the well lightly? Why not? It should look romantic.”

  “Romantic, is it?”

  “Rebuild the sides; put a pitched roof on. Bingo: wishing well. Cast-iron grille across. Use it as a barbecue.”

  “Use it for water-wishing. Water don’t like fire.”

  “Don’t it?” He realized that he was falling into her speech patterns, adapting to her, like peas in a pod, like the wedded in bed. “What?” he barked.

  “Dip a babe in the right water, wish; it’ll never die a natural death of body rot, only violence and treachery. Like a stab in the heel.” Obviously she was repeating something half-remembered from school about Achilles, whose mother dipped him in the Styx. “You got the water-touch; I know. Our bodies are mostly water, see? Ninety per cent or more. We’re walking bags of water. When the right water shifts itself, it shows you what’s underneath. You got the flow, but it’s dammed.” (Or did she say “damned”?) “Your water-sight’s pent up.” (Or did she say “site”?) “Some water’s alive, and dissolves illusions. Juice of the earth.”

  “You’re having me on, Sally.”

  “Am I? Come down to your well on Lammas at midnight, if you’ve dug it out, an’ you may see something; or may not.” She nodded towards the house. “On Lammas you keep her out of the way. An’ I’ll keep out of hers.”

  Paul looked towards the house, thinking that Alicia was watching them talk; but she wasn’t. When he turned back Sally was already by Pook Pond, outside of their boundary, staring at the muddy water which a Charolais had stirred up. She must have run away on tiptoe.

  “Who was that over by the pond earlier, Paul?”

  “What? Oh, the Dingle girl, what’s she called?”

  “Sally Dingle.”

  “Right. Listen, I’ve made a discovery—and I’ve an absolutely wonderful idea. We have a well down in the wild area …”

  Lammas proved to be the first of August, several weeks away.

  “That’s the old name for harvest festival,” Adrian told Paul on Boys’ Night. “Smythe and the faithful might still call it Lammas, for all I know. When all arable farmers give thanks for subsidies from the Common Market, and the grain mountain, and oilseed rape that paints our English fields bright yellow like Italy.”

  “Bit early for a harvest, isn’t it? End of July? I thought harvest festivals were in September.”

  “Wonders of technology,” remarked Matt.

  “I think Lammas was more to jolly the harvest along. Pagan thing. They probably fucked in the fields.”

  Paul’s heart beat quicker.

  “Personally,” Adrian went on, “I haven’t been inside a church for years. Bunch of hypocrites. It’s the bitches and gossips that go there. They need forgiving.”

  “Give thanks, too,” chipped in Matt, “for growth hormones. Steroids. Antibiotics. Oops, I believe my glass is empty.”

  “We can take a hint.” Conrad Golby drained his own mug, and waved it through the mob at a harried Mary Wilson. An outstretched arm was the closest he could get to the bar. Young Farmers packed it out, while in the other half of the room the rubber-matted pitch leading up to the dartsboard was deeply cordoned by team members and spectators; Easton Hampcote was playing a friendly with Fardley. A shifting of bodies briefly revealed the full frontal calendar on the far wall, published by a car accessories firm. Above hung the joke clock, where the hands turned anticlockwise.

  “I heard on the radio,” said Bill Morrison, “that all these antibiotics we eat in good old meat are knocking out our resistance to flu.”

  “Load of bollocks, Morry,” said Adrian.

  “Bullocks’ balls,” agreed Matt. “Heard this one? How do you get an Irishman to climb on the roof? … You tell him the drinks are on the house!”

  “There’s something I did want to ask you,” Paul heard himself saying to Adrian. “Is there anything funny about the Dingle clan?”

  “What kind of funny?”

  “Oh, inbreeding. Paganism. Madness.” Paul grinned loosely.

  “Usual rural stuff.”

  Matt dug him in the ribs. “I wouldn’t mind breeding with that Sally Dingle.”

  Paul did his best not to twitch. “I expected a village at least to boast a spot of ancient devilry.”

  “You’ll be lucky. Old Ned Dingle’s a Baptist. So’s his missus. When they bother.”

  Baptist? Was that how Sally got her strange notions about the power of water?

  “Funny thing did happen ten, twelve years ago,” said Adrian. “When my oldest had just started school. We had our own primary school in the village then, before the kids got bussed. Commander Potter’s place: that’s the old school house. Bought it for twelve and a half. We thought he was crazy.”

  “What do you reckon it’s worth now?” asked Morry.

  “Ooh, a good ninety.”

  “What type of funny thing?” Paul reminded Adrian.

  “Some playground brawl. They said that little Sally Dingle spat in a lad’s eyes—he wanted her to show him you-know-what, and she did, but then she spat—and he went stone-blind. The Merricks’ son; they moved soon after, to get near a special school.”

  “She blinded him by spitting!”

  “Hospital said it was hysterical blindness, since they couldn’t find anything physically wrong.” Adrian tapped his temple. “That’s why they needed a special school.”

  Conrad began hauling fresh half-pints of Everard’s shoulder high from the bar, like an angler reeling in his catch.

  By the end of July Paul had finished building the wishing well-cum-barbecue. The well had proved to be blocked off with spongy old timbers under a few inches of soil and rubble. He’d easily torn the rotting rubbish out, revealing a deep shaft. A torch lowered on a string showed the stones to be large and unmortared. The soil in Easton Hampcote, even in their own garden, varied wildly. Here it seemed to be solid yellow clay, which could explain how the shaft had been cut and had survived—for goodness knows how many centuries—without collapsing. To Paul’s surprise a bucket on a rope brought up water clear as gin. He felt relieved once he had completed a stout circular curtain wall and had fitted a heavy iron grille over the top, removable so that he could water the garden in the event of drought. A dovecote-style roof on rustic poles followed. Next year, when the wilderness had been further tamed, they would throw an outdoor party for the Wallers, the Davies, the Morrisons, the Golbys, whose wives Alicia had met through the Women’s Institute.

  Her pregnancy—their pregnancy—followed its course, and her belly was plumping. The foetus had been scanned acoustically, a needle had been poked in to her womb to sample the water; no abnormalities apparent, though she did complain
of back pain and a varicose vein. In the circumstances she didn’t wish him to lie on top of her, nor did she fancy squatting impaled on him.

  On the first of August Paul brought home a bottle of fine champagne and insisted on a celebration.

  When he refilled her glass for the third time she gave him a peculiar look. “What are you trying to do, souse the baby? Get it drunk in charge of a womb? I’ll be all acidic in the morning.”

  In fact two-and-a-bit glasses were ample; Alicia slept soundly.

  Paul stayed awake in bed by meditating about mortgages. At quarter to twelve he slipped from the sheets, from the room. Downstairs he pulled a raincoat over his pyjamas and climbed into rubber boots.

  It was a hot, still, dark night with a yellow sickle moon only intermittently visible through cloud. He debated taking the torch, but knew the way and had no wish to signal his presence. Walking down the lawn, through the wild garden to the well, he kept his eyes peeled. He waited.

  A movement in the field? One of the cows?

  The moon broke through, no longer meagre yellow but forged of white-hot steel that silvered Pook Pond. Sally was standing on the far bank, also dressed in a raincoat, not that any rain threatened. She opened the coat, let it fall. She had been naked underneath.

  As she stepped nude into the pond, he was no longer seeing a muddy watering hole and a fringe of ruins. He saw a large bath with gleaming stone steps, stone surrounds, marble benches, sculptures of nymphs and satyrs, a hint of pillars rising. Sally stood thigh-deep, water lapping at her pubic hair, gazing across at him expressionlessly. His erection pushed at his raincoat, having thrust through his pyjamas. Then she submerged herself.

  Cloud ate the moon, and for a few disconcerting moments he could see nothing; was blind. He clutched at the larch pole of the well for reassurance, felt the rutted cracking bark. When his night vision returned there was only the dim outline of the pond, no bather evident.

  Trot along Sally’s “right” to the bank? Discover her standing ankle-deep in mud among the cow pats? He doubted it. Find her coat cast down on the grass as bedding? Hardly.