The Well (50 page)

‘A time to kill and a time to heal,’ I say out loud, ‘a time to mourn and a time to dance.’ These verses are another of Hugh’s presents. I know them by heart now, if not in the right order, and another springs to mind. ‘A time to scatter stones and a time to gather them in.’ So that is what I do: I gather mossed stones from the wood and shining stones from the water’s edge, choosing each one carefully for the way it feels in my hand and for the way it fits with the others and with these stones I build a small cairn to be a resting place for a silk butterfly.

Later, I sit on the gate by the house where we used to watch the sunsets in the early days, when the sunsets were worth watching. Then, they were part of our routine. Lock away the tools, shut up the hens, put Lucien to bed, check the supper in the oven and then that space of time, a glass of homemade wine and some silence between the working day and the rest. Each evening would be different. Sometimes in high summer, the sun would slide on its mathematically perfect parabola towards Cadogan, until it met the uneven silhouettes of the forest. Earlier in the year, it set further round, waving white hankies of wispy cirrus before sinking behind Edward’s Castle. Other times, she would not go so gracefully, but bold and aggressive clouds would barge in from the south-west on a wind and a half and shove her aside, and her last stand would be made all the brighter by her dark assailants. The best was when we
were surprised, the plain sky promising little, the sun hesitant all day, just retreating after a poor performance, and then suddenly a final surge of flecked beauty before the dusk. Hopkins was our poet then, with his grandeur and ‘shook foil’. There were as many ways for the sun to set as there were evenings on the gate together. There are still sunsets, like this one, flickering silver and pink like sea trout, and always have been. It’s just that I have neither had eyes to see nor memory left to hold things, until now.

My solitary confinement, if that is the right name for this exquisite freedom, is almost total. The noise is my head is stilled. There is one visitor, the constable, who comes up here every morning to check on me and he asked if he could get anything for me. Last night, I was wondering about a laptop, but although my finances would probably stretch to it, I’m not sure I am ready. By this morning a much better idea has half-formed in my mind. I ask him if he can get an italic pen, some watercolour paints and a large book, like an album. He makes a second visit, just to bring them to me, saying he hoped I didn’t mind but he’d spent a bit, thought I’d like a nice book from what I’d said. We talk a little about what’s going on in town, about how the Lenn has subsided and how they are repairing the bridge whose ancient stonework foundations had become unstable in the dried-out earth and then undermined by such flooding.

‘The same all over,’ he comments and goes on to recount an umbrella parade which took place last Saturday, the whole town turning out and spiralling their way up the main street, like a carnival, he said, what with all the different coloured umbrellas and the Lenford Town Band as well.

‘They say they’ll make it a regular thing,’ he says, ‘every year, the same date, so people won’t forget.’

‘We’re all a little bit of history,’ I agree.

He even says that he has noticed the Taylors have started ploughing Tenacre.

‘Tom’s son, then,’ I venture.

‘That or his brother,’ replies the policeman. ‘Sad he didn’t live to see the day himself, but nice for his widow that things go on.’

So it is we philosophise as day-to-day people do and I feel quite proud of my ordinariness. Finally, I pay him from the weekly allowance I hardly ever use and he says he looks forward to seeing whatever it is I’m writing. He has done well and bought a beautiful embroidered book of plain paper and I smooth my hands over it, preparing. He is halfway up the track, before he reverses and knocks again on the window. There is something else which he forgot to give me, a newspaper already a couple of days out of date, folded to page eight: ‘Deadly Nightshade Suicide for Nun Accused of Child Murder’. The small article, pushed aside by forecasts and floods and statements from the government, this blurred photo and two square inches of hieroglyphics, might as well be in a foreign language given the sense of bewilderment I feel, laying it on the kitchen table, weighting it down against the autumn wind with a bowl of plums. If – when – I am asked to give evidence at the inquest, I will not know what to say. It does not seem right to keep the cutting; it does not seem right to burn it as if none of this ever happened. One day, I will know what to do with it.

Like a child with a new exercise book at the beginning of the school year, I return to my album and write ‘The Well’ and the date at the top of the first page, in the middle, and underline it. I will spend my waiting weeks cataloguing this place. Who knows what it’s really like out there, what has been lost in the years of drought, what species, what names, what images? And no one will ever know what it was really like here unless I become a scribe. The readings from the boreholes, the graphs, data and samples gathered by the government analysts, they say something, but in a different language.

I work systematically, trying to recall the birds that have circled on thermals and held tight to our water, the buzzard and the swallows, the sparrow hawk and the wren, the crested grebe carrying her babies on her back across the pond, the kingfisher, the heron and the nightjar. Then I let my tongue roll over the names of the
flowers that grow here and I work late into the nights illuminating them with my watercolours, curling stems up the consonants, flowers around the vowels like a medieval monk: purple aramanth, bleeding heart, buttercups, red campion, on through the alphabet – deadly nightshade, feverfew, foxgloves, harebells, love lies bleeding, leopard marsh orchid, sweet violet. In the evenings, with the curtains closed against the dusk and the fire roaring, I record the fox, the stoat that danced on the lawn, my hare and the butterflies, and even the insects and the bees whose hum kept me company and moved the pollen from tree to tree in the orchard. The trees. So many trees, so much blossom. And the mushrooms, I will not leave them out, not any of them, not even the deathcap because all living things have their place here. It seems my work will never be done and my days pass fruitfully. I sleep well at night.

The constable has promised to find me a book of British wild flowers because I think I may not know the right names for some of the things I have seen, so I am looking out of the window, hoping he might come soon when I see a familiar red van, splattered in mud. It is as if nothing had ever changed – the postman gets out, leaving his door open and the engine running, pushes several letters into the rusted blue box hanging by one hinge on the gate and then revs away again. He must be new. I can’t remember the last time we had post delivered all the way down here at the house and I have lost the little key, so I spend a ridiculous half-hour with a bent piece of wire coat-hanger, fishing for letters, beside myself with anticipation. My first catch is from my solicitor, the second is junk mail offering me interest-free credit on a new sofa, so perhaps the economy will get moving again after all, and the third fish is the greatest prize of all – a letter from Angie. It is so precious, not only because she says again she is sorry she ever thought it was me, not only because she gives me news of Mark, but mostly because she puts PTO at the bottom and ‘one more thing . . .’ With Angie, there was always one more thing.

‘Charley and I were wondering if you would mind if we spent
the winter at The Well. We could live in the barn? We could help out and who knows, maybe our baby will be born there – due at the beginning of April!’

It has taken me most of the night, but my reply to Angie is written, as is the much harder letter to Mark. At the top of First Field, I stand and listen to the church bell tolling in the valley, distant but not impossibly far away. It must be a Sunday, ten minutes to Matins, if I set off now, cut through Smithy’s Holt, down the sheep track past the Taylors, cross the lane, through the wrought-iron gates of the churchyard, to the heavy oak door which whispers against the flagstones and into the sun-dusted pews and silence – if I set off now I could be there in time, and afterwards I could walk between the yew trees and the headstones to that smallest of graves with a penny-whistle and pray there. Or I could fall to my knees here, on this hill, which Hugh called the most beautiful altar this side of purgatory. With no words of my own left, I recall the verses he chose once, standing at this place, in the rain, with me and a fistful of corn. In pastures green He leadeth me the quiet waters by . . . a start, I tell myself, it is at least a start.

Back at the cottage, I tuck my letter to Mark inside the front of my illuminated manuscript and prepare to post the parcel tomorrow. That will be my first act in the new world.

Acknowledgements

There are so many people who, knowingly or unknowingly, have helped me over the years in so many different ways, this page can only acknowledge a tiny proportion of them.

At the start, there were my parents, who chose me, loved me and read to me and my wonderful brother, Christopher, a true Renaissance man.

Later, at various times, there were some inspirational teachers and fellow students at Clifton, St. Anne’s College Oxford, Oxford University Department of Continuing Education and Oxford Brookes University, all of whom helped me learn to read and write.

Next came a plethora of independent publishers who do so much to support new writers, particularly Jan Fortune-Wood at Cinnamon Press. They accepted my short stories and poetry and thereby gave me the confidence to continue writing.

As
The Well
took shape, some people were kind enough to read it and help it on its way, including, amongst others: the trusty members of my book club; the Elephant Rock writing quartet; Anna Davis; and Rachel Phipps from The Woodstock Bookshop. There was also Bella who, being a dog, was unconditionally positive about the whole thing.

Thank you to Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge for their prize for unpublished women’s fiction; winning this made all the difference.

As a result – an agent. My heartfelt thanks to Janelle Andrew and the
fantastic team at Peter, Fraser, Dunlop including Rachel, Marilia and Alexandra. Nelle’s unbounded enthusiasm, astute critical eye and straight talking have been invaluable and I strongly believe she should be cloned.

And then the inestimable Canongate and the privilege of working with Jamie, Jenny, Natasha, Vicki and Rafi, who designed the beautiful cover. Particular thanks to my editor, Louisa Joyner, who has brought me gifts of wisdom, experience, knowledge and kindness in equal measure.

In April 2014, Jamie Byng gathered many of the foreign publishers of
The Well
at The Shed in Notting Hill. I asked them all to sign the menu for me because I was not sure that I would ever again be in the company of so many gifted people who make it their business to bring beautiful books to life. To each and every one of them (and to those who could not make it) – thank you.

Finally, from the world to home. To Christopher, Jeremy and Jessica who have managed the acrobatic act of being endlessly loving, supportive and tolerant of neglect whilst keeping their mother’s feet firmly on the ground. And to Simon. I hope he knows already that I would have been as nothing in this world if I had not met and married him, but it is worth saying again. And again. Thank you.