The Well (2 page)

I mutter something like maybe or I don’t know. I have long ago ceased to trust people who seem to worship me.

She says, ‘I’m sorry about the van and the handcuffs and all that. About the whole thing. None of it should ever have happened. I hope you’ll be happy now you’re back and . . .’

‘And?’

‘And I hope it rains again, here, I really do and . . .’

‘And?’

‘And, if you still pray, pray for me.’

She tries to grasp my hand. I see she is crying. The tears and the prayers at The Well have been out of balance; there will rightly be more crying than praying from now on. I pull away and for a brief moment she is left staring at her own empty palms, then she turns abruptly and strides back to the van. She gets in, slams the door, leans over and blasts the horn. At the fence, the driver punches something into his phone and half-heartedly salutes the soldiers. Just as he is about to get back into the van, he bends down as if he has dropped something and scoops up a handful of earth to examine like a gardener. He looks up, sees the soldiers watching him and chucks it into the hedge, laughing out loud, then dusts his hands down on his khaki trousers, climbs in and starts the engine. The prison van beeps as he reverses towards the oak tree and he yells out of the window. ‘Don’t worry, lads! We’ll pray for you on your frontline duties!’

The guard sits in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead at the track which will take her away. The driver turns up the music and they are gone and then there is nothing except silence, three soldiers and me. They kick the fence with their heavy boots, one lights a cigarette and suddenly I think of a picture of Russia I saw once, taken during the Second World War: young men silhouetted against a barren landscape, staring at the horizon, waiting for relief. We face a different onslaught. I stand, halfway in and halfway out of the house, my legs shaking with exhaustion.

‘Shall I go in?’ I call and immediately regret my weakness. ‘I mean, are there any other formalities to be completed?’

All three turn, as if mildly surprised that I can speak. A sudden
officiousness seems to come over the short one, as it does for all people newly appointed to small amounts of power. He marches over; the other two hang back slightly.

‘There are a number of regulations and procedures we need to go through with you. I therefore suggest that we meet . . . er . . .’ He has a tight voice.

‘Around the kitchen table?’ I suggest.

‘That would be satisfactory, yes – there, in one hour.’

‘You may have to knock and remind me.’

‘We don’t need to knock,’ he replies.

The thinner of the other two tries to make some joke about drinks at six. I don’t quite catch it, but try to smile all the same.
Pour encourager les autres
.

What do I do now? I try to summon old habits. Like a frightened bride, I force myself over the threshold and then kick off my shoes and go into the kitchen. It is a sparse version of its former self, being robbed of its clutter and wiped down. I run the cold tap just to make sure and then fill the kettle. While it is boiling, I take down my favourite mug and trace the delicate painting of the grayling, trout and perch which swim the porcelain river and wind themselves around the handle, wipe the dust from the rim with the tip of my finger. Instinctively, I go to the fridge, which is working normally. There has been no shortage of wind in the last few years. For us, if our turbine is working, the pump is working and if the pump is working, we will have water from The Well. Water, but no milk. I loathe the powder substitute, it tastes of the city, but the drought has forced a lot of substitution one way or another: no rain, no grass, no grass, no cows, no cows, no milk. We were going to have a cow in Year Three of the dream, but we never got that far.

Most of what Mother Hubbard had in her cupboard is gone, but there is a half-empty box of teabags on the counter, so I use one of those. Sitting at the empty kitchen table, I trace the grain of the wood. Such silence. I shiver; the Rayburn is not lit. That would help, I think, I could warm the place up a bit, but the matches have
deserted their home in the top left-hand drawer of the dresser and I don’t know where they have gone. Easily defeated, I wander into the sitting room where the curtains are drawn, my hand hesitates at the window, but even tweaking them opens the way for a javelin of daylight and I leave them closed, for the time being. Moving to the stairs, I put one foot on the bottom step, but make the mistake of looking up. That is too high a mountain to climb now.

The sofa feels damp. Yesterday’s newspaper lies on the table, with the ring of a coffee mug over the face of a topless model. ‘Dress for drought!’ A pale, hollow-cheeked woman in the photo on the opposite page reminds me of Angie, although my daughter would not thank me for the comparison. Flicking through the pages, it is as though I am in a waiting room, regretting not having brought a friend with me to soften the blow.

My name is called, but I am slow to respond. For a few moments, I can’t remember who they are, these men I can see sprawling against the sink and spilling all over the kitchen as I sit obediently, rigid, feeling the wood of the kitchen chair hard against my fatless thighs. Have these men come because of the investigation? No, that was a long time ago and that was the police, not these oversized boy soldiers.

A ringless hand, cuffed in khaki, places a brown file with my name on it in front of me, then opens a laptop and hammers in a password. A voice says the purpose of the meeting is to remind me of my legal status, the reasons for that status, the nature of that status and my rights whilst subject to that status.

I find this funny, being the only subject in Her Majesty’s kingdom who appears to have unlimited access to water and who has no need to siphon it off for my own purposes. The judge and jury in front of me don’t seem to have a sense of humour. What is less amusing is that the period of detention is described as ‘indefinite but subject to judicial review at periodic intervals’ and my questions about what that means in practice are unanswered.

I put my hands over my ears. I will not listen to that. I will not have that said.

The small man drones on.

Despite the small print of my Faustian pact, they don’t own The Well – I won that much. It is still mine; underneath the wire and the helicopters and the men in brown, The Well is still mine. Half mine. It is not clear to me what has happened to Mark’s share.

‘That’s the legal status. Have you got any questions?’ he asks.

Sinking a little, I shrug. He hands over the file to the fat, anonymous man who is apparently going to deal with the ‘nitty-gritty’ of house imprisonment. He reads haltingly, finding it hard to make sense of the interminable regulations. It is as if I am listening to a foreign language, but the broad message is clear. They are my guards. This is my home. Words slide across the paperwork and set off randomly around the room, sliding down the sink, fluttering up the cold chimney, trying to crawl their way out like wasps from a jam jar. The photo we took of Heligan Gardens in the spring and hung to the side of the kitchen window is tilted and this makes it look as if the lake is flowing over the banks and about to trickle down the cream walls and onto the vegetable rack, empty except for the brittle brown flakes of the outer layer of an onion.

A sort of Kim’s Game, by which a large number of disparate things are being laid out before me and named in expectation that when they take the tray away, I will remember them.

‘No need to worry about all of this tonight.’ That is the first time the thin one with glasses has spoken since we sat down. He is also the only one who has looked me in the eye.

‘I won’t,’ I reply.

‘Goodnight then,’ he says, for apparently it is bedtime.

‘Goodnight,’ I reply.

I stare after them. ‘I’m sorry, where did you say you were sleeping?’ I ask.

The small one stops at the door. ‘We didn’t,’ he says and he and Mr Anonymous leave.

The thinner, short-sighted one lingers for a couple of seconds. ‘We’re in the barn,’ he says. ‘Not far away.’ He is just a boy. I shall call him Boy.

Little did I know when we ploughed our time and money into renovating the barn that we were building a barracks for my own guards. They’re not the first to move in there and try to control me; they are following in Mark’s footsteps and his footsteps went out of the gate and straight on till morning and I haven’t seen him since. I doubt the guards will forget me so easily.

These guards of mine, what will they do all day? What do they eat? What do I eat? Now their commands have receded, questions appear in their place: thousands of questions about blankets and the internet and food and telephones and children and tomato plants and sheep and baths and books and cutting the grass and, oh my God, everything. I am a toddler again. I want to run after them and hold onto their legs and ask them why, when, how, who. I am in my own house, but I have no idea how I am going to live.

Bedtime. It seems I am going to have to force myself to go upstairs. My fingers remember where the light switches are, but I prefer the dark. I find my way to my bed and, still fully dressed, slide stiffly between the sheets and the duvet which do not smell of prison, but do not smell of home either. Even though it is cold, I leave the shutters open just so I can see the moon over Montford Forest. I will lie here and ask The Well what it thinks of the day
just gone and we will reach our conclusions. I will count the sheep I have lost as a way of avoiding sleep, because sleep avoids me. I will compose letters to the ones who are no longer here, because they are no longer here. They no longer hear. I like that pun. I will allow myself the pleasure of the occasional pun. Mark, for instance. I say his name very loudly to confirm his absence. Mark my words. Marking time. And despite the silence, despite the fact that only a wall separates me from the fathomless emptiness of a dead child’s bedroom, I am suddenly knocked sideways with happiness because I am back.

I wonder if it will rain.

S
tiff in my stale clothes, I wake. I could lie here all day, all week, all year and the hairs on my skin would grow through the wool of my sweater, like the tendrils of ivy through a green knitted jumper, dropped in a wood. The sun would make its rounds, from the fairground picture above the bed, to the chest of drawers, to the blue, painted mirror and back again and I would still be here, thinking and getting thinner, until one day I would have found the answer, but by then there would be nothing left of me, just an imprint, the shell of a tall woman as brittle, straight and empty as the hollow stalks of the Queen Anne’s lace that lines the drive in summer . . .

Your search has found 83 matches
.

Click. ‘A little piece of paradise on the banks of the Severn . . .’

Click. ‘Want to get away from it all? Look no further than this 3 bed, 2 recep . . .’

Click. ‘Looking for a project? Turn this barn into your castle and be lord of all . . .’

That’s how it started. Mark and I in London, hunchbacked slaves
to the laptop, squabbling over control of the mouse, believing that the bricks and mortar and land just a virtual second away would eradicate the bickering and divisions which had increasingly become our coat of arms after twenty-two years of marriage.