The Well (44 page)

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.

Boy drags me from the kitchen.

‘
H
e wants to talk.’

‘You shouldn’t have stopped me.’

Boy has brought me into the orchard and sat me on the stone bench. Some time has passed – I am not sure how much. It is incredibly hot and the sweat is inching down my shivering back.

Boy suggests we move into the shade – mad dogs and Englishmen – but I am rooted to the bench by my failure. He takes a deep breath as if he is trying to keep control of himself. ‘For the past six months you have said that all you want is answers. The truth. Mark must have a reason for coming and you won’t talk to him.’

This is a pointless argument. Disguised, the answer walked into The Well this afternoon, all wrapped up in self-pity and excuses. It is my failure that the answer will drive away again.

‘Ruth, you could have killed him. I’d never forgive myself if it was because of what I said the other day.’

‘Don’t apologise, that was very helpful.’ If it is possible, I am both frozen still and shaking.

‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here when he came.’

‘I didn’t need you for this, Boy. This has nothing to do with you and I wish you hadn’t shown up. If you hadn’t interfered it would all be over now.’

‘Listen. I’m not going anywhere now. You’ll be OK. I’ll stay here with you, if you’re frightened of him . . .’

‘Frightened?’ I burst out laughing. ‘The only thing we’re ever truly frightened of in life, Boy, is the unknown. What have I left to be frightened of? I have finally allowed myself to think the impossible. You’re too young to know.’

In this heat, nothing moves. No wind rustles the branches, there are no birds; in the field even our lovely cow cannot be bothered to eat, but stands sleeping in the shade. Flies. I can hear flies. There must be something dead, somewhere.

A car engine starts somewhere over by the house.

Boy jumps up. ‘We’ve got to stop him, Ruth. He’ll report what’s happened.’ He pounds across the orchard. ‘Mark, wait!’ he is shouting, crashing through the gate, before he disappears. A moment later the engine is turned off and I move towards the house like an automaton, directed there, with no conscious purpose possible. Boy is standing beside the car, the driver door open. Anon is hovering by the barn, looking up the drive. He will want Three to come back and rescue him from the out of the ordinary. Inside the car, Mark has his head on the wheel. There are scuffs and smudges all over the back of his shirt and his elbow is grazed like a child who has been in a fight in the playground. When he lifts his head, he notices blood on his cheek and touches it.