The Well (28 page)

‘This is a land for women, Ruth. The women shall inherit the earth.’

Angie and the campers wanted to leave mid-afternoon. I ran home and went straight upstairs to the little bedroom; it was cold, but even so I opened the window to breathe new life into the space and the hessian curtains flapped, almost knocking over the lamp on the table under the window. Mark’s pyjamas were on the bed along with a couple of his books, so I swept all that away and dumped it
back in our room. Then I stripped the bed and remade it with Lucien’s favourite bee duvet, took the junk out of the drawers in the bottom of the wardrobe so he’d have somewhere for this things and got to my knees and thanked the Rose for giving me Lucien.

After lunch, Mark and I walked up the track together to fetch Lucien, just a little apart from each other, but joined for once by a common pleasure. He seemed as thrilled as I was that Lucien was going to stay. Two of the vans had already left by the time we reached them and it seemed a rather pathetic group that stood huddled for shelter, waiting for us. Lucien ran towards us and hugged Mark.

‘I’m coming to live with you,’ he cried. ‘Mum says I can be your helper.’

He was a boy who was used to swapping adults and the wholehearted way he attached himself to whoever was entrusted with him next was both endearing and disturbing.

‘Give Mummy a hug,’ said Angie.

A sculptor could capture it, maybe, these two bodies hewn from the same rock, his arms around her neck, fiddling with her stone necklace, her arms around his waist so slight that they went all the way round and touched the other side; his hair against her hair, his feet just off the ground for a moment. Words move, but a sculpture could make that moment into stone, the first of the autumn leaves caught forever in mid-air, the red kite captured on the same circling current and the half-shrouded shafts of light from the sun falling always on the poplars, shot through with silver.

That is the point at which it should have rained. Not just at The Well, but down in the valley, rainwater running in the gutters in
Middleton, the owner of the second-hand furniture shop rescuing his four matching painted chairs and a stripped pine bookcase; not just in the valley, but over the hills to Wales where the walkers would pull their waterproofs out of the day-bags and stride just a little bit faster, bent just a little bit lower against the storm, back down to the harbour for chips in newspaper and mugs of tea; not just in Wales, but in London where the photos of tourists would show rain bouncing off the high-tide Thames, or in northern Spain where the steep gullies of the Picos would send torrents down to the Ribadesella; and on into North Africa, where the girls would walk back to the villages, water-carriers full on their heads, leaving damp footprints in the dust as they go.

However, there was not even enough water in the world for tears: we should have all been crying, but we were dry-eyed and ignorant. Angie waved goodbye with promises of letters and Mark said she should renege on her principles and get a mobile, but she said not to worry, she’d keep in touch. Lucien blew kisses on the wind, interspersed with reminders about penny whistles and chocolate. I wanted so much to hug her, but somehow Charley was starting the engine and she was in the front seat and we managed a stupid sort of touching of fingers as she struggled to wind down the old-fashioned window. I remembered I had something for her and ran alongside the van, saying wait a moment, I’ve got something for you.

But the van bumped off over the rough ground, up onto the track and she called out of the window, ‘I’ll follow the Rose when I can, Mum.’

Ahead, the policeman had seen them coming and had already unlocked the padlock on the main gate, so there was the briefest pause as they looked left and right onto the lane, a toot of the horn, a hand waving through the window, and they were gone. I kept my distance from the lane in those days. Sister Amelia told me it was probably better for me not to encounter the followers camped out on the roadside, waiting for a glimpse of the chosen one, and I
agreed with her, though probably for different reasons. So I gave up the chase and retreated.

‘What was it, Granny R, that you wanted to give Mummy?’ Thank God for Lucien, I thought and turned all my attention to him.

‘It was just this, a little thing to wish her well on her travels, that’s all.’ I showed Lucien the tiny rose I had whittled with a knife from a piece of yew and polished with oil and resin, threaded with a long strand of leather.

‘It’s beautiful.’

‘I made it myself,’ I said.

‘I could have it for her.’

‘Of course you could.’ So I gave it to him, bending down to tie it around his neck, tucking it under his T-shirt. ‘That’ll keep you safe,’ I promised. I stood up quickly as Mark came back from chatting to the policeman, put my finger to my lips and winked at Lucien, who tried, unsuccessfully, to wink back.

Mark pushed the bike with one hand, I swung the little bag over my shoulder and we walked back down the track, swinging Lucien between us. Sister Dorothy waved from the water trough and behind her stood Sister Amelia like a statue, hands clasped closed in front of her.

‘I’ve got lots of friends here, haven’t I, Granny?’ asked Lucien.

The gale blew itself out without bringing any rain and I chose not to join the Sisters for vespers, but to meditate on my own in the orchard. Voice was silenced as my thoughts flowered from the deep content that Lucien was safe and asleep inside with me. I invoked the Spirit of the Rose and I heard the Rose reply that all would be well. I thanked the Rose for lending me Lucien.

I did not know she would want him back so soon.

The guards are talking about me, but I don’t know what they are saying – the words are distorted as though I am listening through
water. It seems Anon found me, crawling up the track on all fours, soaked from the driving rain, insisting that Angie and Lucien were leaving today and I had to say goodbye. Somehow, Anon and Boy got me upstairs and put me to bed. My head clears. Boy is telling Anon that there is no need to inform Three, or call the doctor.

‘He’ll see from the alarm record that she was out of area,’ Anon says.

‘He won’t. He’s playing with the others up at the experiment plots. He thinks they’re real soldiers.’

Anon is looking out of the window. ‘He notices everything.’

Boy closes the shutters. ‘I’ll record it as a breach, but not a serious incident. Leave it to me. I’ll stay here and make sure she doesn’t get ill.’

‘You’re sailing close to the wind, brother.’ But Anon leaves all the same. He doesn’t want a hand on the tiller when the boat goes down.

Boy sits in a chair in the corner of the room, at a distance from me, conscious of the camera’s red eye recording everything, but his being there anchors me and even if I can’t lie my head on his shoulder, even if I can’t ask him to hug me or hold me, I know that his physical presence is enough to prevent me from slipping under the surface.

‘Thank you,’ I whisper.

Boy stays awake for me. My chaotic thoughts still, like a quietening pool, and I go back to those memories, to the first nights with Lucien.

Mark and I put him to bed. We tucked him up tight and sat together as we read him
The Sleepy Water Vole
, and then we went downstairs and the two of us had a drink together. Slightly drunk on more than alcohol, Mark came back to our bed and we made love. For the last time.

If you were to draw a graph, the night of Lucien’s coming to
stay would be an unpredicted spike in the otherwise relentless downward trajectory which mapped our marriage. The high would seem all the more unlikely because of the trough which followed, with only a few days between spent on an even line at a normal point on the scale. Our routine changed – it had to – you don’t have a small boy come to live with you and expect everything to remain the same. Mark said the early lunch and high tea were incompatible with work needing to be done on the farm with the days shortening. He put the ‘new timetable’ down to my desire to spend more time with Sister Amelia, with Lucien, with anyone but him. I pointed out that Lucien was starving by noon and half-asleep by seven. It didn’t matter much who was right or wrong, the result was the same: we spent our days as if we lived in two different time zones, neither prepared to put the clocks back. The nights were no easier. Lucien was unsettled and had been with us a few days when he woke again, crying.

‘I’m going to bring him in here,’ I said.

‘If you do that once, he’ll be in here every night.’

Looking at Mark across the unruffled sheet between us, I pointed out the obvious. ‘It wouldn’t be as though he was interrupting anything,’ I said.

Lucien snuggled into our bed, his warm body close to mine, his hand resting on my chest so lightly, so full of faith that I dared not move all night for fear of breaking the spell. I lay like that, pretending to be asleep, even as I felt the bed move and saw Mark’s shadow leaving.

‘Did you sleep in my bed, Mark?’

‘I did.’

Breakfast. Lucien and Mark at the kitchen table. I was putting ham in some rolls for Mark to take down to the Hedditch field where he was clearing brambles. ‘That was kind of Mark, wasn’t it?’ I commented.

‘Will you sleep there again tonight?’ Lucien turned the empty shell from his boiled egg upside down and started battering it with
his spoon. The bread fell apart as I spread the butter, holding my breath for Mark’s answer.

‘No,’ I heard Mark reply. I breathed out slowly, warily.

‘Where will you sleep then?’ Lucien persisted. ‘We could both cuddle up, we’re good at hugging, aren’t we? There’s room for two of us in my bed.’

‘No!’ But that shout was from me, not Mark, and I don’t know where it came from.

He stood up, very slowly, very silently, just the scrape of plate on the table as he pushed it away, the scratch of the chair on the stone floor and Lucien staring up at him, sensing something, not sure what.

‘That troubles you, does it, Granny R? The idea of me and Lucien sharing a bed? Do you want to say why? Perhaps you ought to warn him?’

‘Shut up, Mark.’ I leant over Lucien and cut up his toast. ‘Grandpa’s being a silly-billy,’ I said, the hand holding the knife shaking visibly.

‘How about I move out to the barn, to a safe distance, how about that?’

Now with my back to him, standing at the kitchen counter, I returned to fiddling in the cupboard over my head and muttered something about whatever you think is best.

‘Then you and Granny can be together, Lucien. That’s what you want, isn’t it, Granny? Just you and Lucien. And we mustn’t forget Amelia, of course.’

Here he comes
, screamed Voice,
run
. But I didn’t run and I didn’t reply.

‘Is Amelia coming to live with us too?’ asked Lucien quietly.

Without turning round, I took a jar from the shelf and put it on the counter, tried to think about the chutney, about apple chutney, if only I could open that, that would be something, but Voice was relentless, shouting at me about fire and knives. ‘Has anyone seen the thing that opens jars?’ I asked, controlling my words, praying wildly in my head for the Rose to still the storm.

‘I didn’t quite catch that.’ Mark was close to me, close enough to disturb the air around me.

Behind me, Lucien was kicking the table leg over and over again; the kettle spat its boiling displeasure and the tap dripped the seconds away. I heard all that, but I didn’t hear him come at me. Mark grabbed my shoulder, swung me round so I was looking at him, our faces inches apart, his possessed and stretched across the canvas of his skull. Instinctively, I raised my hand to protect myself, but he grabbed that wrist, then the other, forced my hands high in his makeshift handcuffs, reading me my rights in a whisper, close to my ear and hissing. Then, when he had finished, he threw me across the room, my head catching the edge of the cupboard door and bleeding, my ribcage cracking against the counter. When I pulled myself up, he was gone and Lucien was crying at the table.