The Well (20 page)

The words are cackling like jackdaws, disorientating me. ‘I do not have the addresses of everyone I would like to write to. I would like to request permission to e-mail my contact list – or some of them and you could view it, edit it if needs be – simply to inform them that I am allowed to receive post and to remind them of my address.’

Slapping the Land Rover bonnet, Three doubles up laughing. ‘Sorry.’ He makes a show of wiping his eyes. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh. Not professional, but do you really think they could have forgotten your address?’

In the same way that a child writes to Father Christmas at the North Pole, anyone, anywhere could probably scribble my name on the front of an envelope and send it to The Well, England, and it would get here. As I retreat to the house, Three calls after me. ‘I also have some issues around communication which need to be addressed.’

I look back. Boy has gone.

‘I may need to make some changes to your permissions. Let’s talk later.’ Three slams the door of the Land Rover and, wiping his hands, smirks at me.

There used to be a woman somewhere out in the Far East who was under house arrest. From time to time her case would appear
on the news, prompted by protest marches or elections. It didn’t occur to me then that the photo of this resolute and passionate woman must have been from the archives. No one could have eyes like that after twelve years staring at walls. If you took a picture of me now, after just twelve weeks, even if it was taken somewhere open, like in the garden, then once developed you would see the white roses, the gate half open behind me, the handle of the wheel-barrow jutting into the bottom left-hand corner by mistake, the fallen branch on which I am sitting, but there would be little trace of me, just the hint of a blur, as if the photographer was trying to convince you that ghosts have faces.

What is it doing to me, this peculiar imprisonment? Sometimes, I pause halfway up the stairs, close my eyes and stretch out my arms so my flat hands push against the damp walls on either side of me. Then I weaken and softly, so softly, feel the flaking skin of paint peel from under my fingertips, an explorer in the primeval cave of my own history, searching for signs of earlier civilisations. At other times, if it is a clear night, I wait here at this kitchen table in the dark until the moonlight is shining straight through the window behind me, creating for five minutes only a silver screen all of my own on the wall in front of me. Once, the shadow of a glove which I’d hung from the nail on the window sill grew grotesque and threatening and reached for the hairs on the back of my neck and I thought to myself, this is a strangling hand. Another time, the silhouette of one of the guards patrolling outside the cottage came to life in a black and white story, and I told myself, there is a puppet who knows me well. But tonight was the worst: an owl swept low over the house and a sudden great spread of wings flew in and feathered the room. With animal instinct I covered my face to protect myself from its beating and I covered my ears so I could not hear it haunting me. I am a caveman, entertained by shadows. One day, I have to believe, one day, I will turn round and that will be the day I have the answer. But for now, all I can do is look at the wall and call it home.

There is no doubt that Three knows about the moment with Boy, that Boy knows that Three knows; he has been busying himself with data and rain gauges and seems to have little time for talking, averting his eyes if our paths cross. Whatever the truth, Three is planning to punish me and all I can do is wait for it to happen and feel the sand running through my egg-timer days in the fields, so I walk while I still can and think. Checking doors, walking and tapping three times have become my therapy. If he takes the walking away, I will be back to pacing which is different. I wander all the way around the perimeter of First Field, marking my territory, noting the poppies which have flowered among last year’s crop and picking the red campion from the hedgerow. So much red, I think, but I never noticed the warning flags, nor did I listen to the people shouting from the shore. Looking back, Dorothy was one of those, waving her arms and cupping her hands to her mouth, in the hope that I’d hear her.

I was painting the downstairs windows. Looking at them now, I can’t believe how quickly the woodwork has deteriorated, testament to the fact that I never put the hard work in, didn’t bother with the sanding down, the wire brush, the undercoats. At that time the Sisters almost never came up to the cottage, so it was unusual to see Dorothy passing the house, waving and holding up a bag of something, so I called her over. Of all the Sisters, I admired her the most, it seemed to me that she had lived long enough not to have to bother with what other people thought of her and therefore she was someone to be trusted.

‘Feverfew,’ she explained and held out the leaves to me. ‘For Jack. It helps her migraine. There’s a lot of it beyond the old pheasantry.’

‘I’d heard it was a womb stimulant,’ I joked.

She laughed. ‘It’s powerful stuff, but it’s more likely to cure my
arthritis than make me fall pregnant at my time of life. Why, do you want some?’

‘At my age? You’re joking.’ It wasn’t what I thought, just what I said.

Dorothy didn’t reply. She just sat on the front doorstep as I continued painting, allowing the time to pass. ‘Steady work,’ she said eventually, indicating the pots and brushes.

‘That’s the thing about rain,’ I said, ‘it rots the windows so quickly.’

‘I don’t know, the things we have to put up with living in paradise.’

That was another thing about Dorothy; she had a sense of humour about our peculiar situation, although she was careful not to let it loose when Amelia was around. Typical of her, she offered to start on the other side for me. We talked our way through the morning, dipping and painting, running our brushes slowly down the narrow edges and fluted sills, the paint bubbling up and popping, drips running slowly down the bars, leaving a raised mark against the fresh new coat. Dorothy worked carefully and I remembered that she painted watercolours of The Well down in her caravan. She wrapped an old rag over the top of her finger, dipped it in the turps and cleaned up the drips as she went as if it was the Sistine Chapel.

‘So, now Mark wants to sell,’ she said.

‘That’s the first I’ve heard of it.’

‘Sorry. It’s just that Sister Amelia told me that the two of you had been talking about him leaving.’

‘People are offering a lot of money. Lottery numbers. It is tempting. The Well hasn’t quite worked out as we thought it would.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘How long have you got?’ I asked her. ‘The isolation, the publicity, the security, the pressure, the bureaucracy, the legal threats . . . this was meant to be our second honeymoon, Dorothy, but it’s turning into one grand divorce court.’

‘Mark loves you very much; at least that’s how it seems to me when you talk about him.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘I do.’

‘I think you’re right. But I’m not so sure how I feel about him. He’s changing. It’s like living with a beautiful mountain that’s just woken up to the fact that really it’s a volcano.’

‘He doesn’t really have anyone to talk to apart from you. That must be really hard for him.’

‘Do you know . . .?’ I hesitated. Dorothy rested her paintbrush on the tin, wiped her hands on her trousers. ‘Sometimes I used to wish it wouldn’t rain,’ I continued. ‘That we had drought like everyone else. Then we could be desperate like the rest of the country, but at least we’d be desperate together.’

‘Used to?’ she asked.

‘Until all of you came along and I experienced the Rose. I do believe, Dorothy, like you . . .’ I looked from the window sill at the handful of fresh herbs, heard the rainwater dripping from the gutter into the water butt and repeated the words to myself. I do believe. It was the first time I had said it out loud and it was true. I was a believer.

‘But . . .?’ Dorothy prompted me, intuitive as always.

‘But it can’t be right that I have to choose between The Well and Mark.’

‘Who says you have to?’

‘Sister Amelia. Because it’s a place sacred for women. Because Mark doesn’t believe. Because the Rose demands complete dedication, because, thousands of reasons . . .’

I am not someone who cries easily. My lack of tears have been interpreted in many ways, particularly the fact that I have not cried since they found Lucien, but I cried then, with Dorothy to hold me, her paint-stained fingers making handprints on the back of my shirt as she hugged me and leaving traces of white as she pushed my hair out of my eyes.

‘We’ll pray about it,’ she said. ‘I am sure there is an answer. Trust the Rose.’

I did. Trust the Rose, that is. If you say that word enough, you end up with just the rust. The flaking paint and the rust.

Memories like this punctuate my walks, but my search gives them purpose, the search not only for Lucien’s rose necklace, but for the green jumper that was never found. Police dogs may have crisscrossed these fields, noses down, tails up, but no one knows this place like I do, its hidden alleys and camouflaged passageways. Today I make my way through the old pheasant pens – each rotten sack beneath a sheet of corrugated iron is a sleeve, each piece of baler twine caught on barbed wire, a thread. When I walk, I no longer look up to the grand sky, but peer in on the minutiae which mock me: the green of the reeds, the shape of the hanging jacket in the shadow, the empty feed sack flapping in the wind. But perspective depends on purpose and mine is a close-up lens with just the one focus: a man’s green jumper.

It is in this mindset that I reach the bottom of the field, where the guards have been clearing low boughs brought down on the electric fence by George’s Wood. They have sawn them off and dragged them a little way into the field, ready to be cleared, but there is no one working here now. Sitting on one of them, facing south, catching the full warmth of the sun, scuffing the earth with my foot and sending the ants scurrying, I imagine how Mark would have been eyeing up next year’s logs. There is a lot of life in dead trees, Mark used to say. He became so knowledgeable about how it all works, from the sparrow hawk winging into its nest in the Douglas fir, down to the earwig feeding on mould from the fallen branch. I miss that understanding; I became so reliant on experience. A hundred yards away, a hare has emerged from the scrub at the edge of the field. It is motionless as a statue amongst the shifting grass, alert to the
slightest change in the vibrations under its paws, to the variations in the sound waves carried across the hillside by the southerly breeze. The hare cannot see well when it is looking straight ahead and so it runs in circles. Dorothy told me that. Sister Amelia told me something else: that it used to be believed you could only kill a hare with a silver cross or by drowning it, because they were witches in disguise.

The hare spies something and then, suddenly, Boy is behind me. The hare is gone. He stands there with his chainsaw, helmet on his head, visor pushed up above his eyes and heavy gloves on his hands. ‘Seventy miles an hour, that’s how fast they can go. Did you know that?’

‘No.’ I look at the place where the hare once was.

‘Fast enough,’ he says.

‘Not always,’ I reply. ‘There are always things like foxes, predators who make the most of their weaknesses.’

‘Do you think he’ll come back?’

‘Not while you’re here. You didn’t post the letter, did you?’

He puts the chainsaw and the helmet down, pulling off the gloves. ‘I am sorry,’ he says.

‘You do what you are paid to do. I expect you all had a good time laughing at it. You’re a bastard, Boy. I trusted you. You’d think I would have learned that lesson by now.’

‘Sarge watched the whole thing played back. He made me hand it over. I’ve said I’m sorry.’

Sick in my stomach at the idea of Three watching that moment and not understanding it, I take my anger out on Boy. ‘You have no idea what it cost me, that letter. To write it. To ask you to post it. And afterwards – what happened between us, I wanted to explain, but I haven’t had a chance.’

There is a flicker of movement in the far hedge, but it is a rabbit, not a hare.