The Well (14 page)

On arrival, seeing some fencing wire in the side yard of the store, it occurred to her that it would be less questionable to order a roll of that. Wire, she knew, would be difficult to use. It would be better to ask for rope. If Mrs Grossman should ask her chattily what the rope was for she would say that she was thinking of hanging herself knowing that the people in the shop would laugh at Miss Harper's wit, accustomed as they were to her sharpness which often bordered on the severe.

Snippets of conversation sprinkled with
my dears
and
nevers
(the town was attracting artists and writers) reached her inhospitable ears – ‘of course I told him that he absolutely
needed
the proscenium arch,' and ‘I've got to prepare them for years of geriatrics – you see people all live so much longer now, these gels, d'you see, they come into their training with ideas about nursing handsome hernias and late circumcisions …'

Hester half listened. She would have given a greeting of sorts to a small bald man, a reverend doctor, if he had looked up from the revolving biscuit stand. He was picking up packets and studying them, one after another, as though some deep wisdom lurked in the lists of ingredients. She shrugged knowing that the finely printed promises were meaningless.

‘They're getting some square plastic bowls in,' said a woman perched on the spare chair next to Hester's. ‘An essential for the feet don't you think, but I see they haven't come in yet. Such a nuisance!' She stood up again displaying a restlessness not usual in a country store. ‘I'll have to come back later,' she muttered to Hester. ‘I'm writing a savage love poem and I've just got a line in my head. Frightened,' she said, ‘I'm frightened I'll forget it. Cheerio!'

It was enviable this concentration on biscuit packets and this rushing home, needing to be back quickly, simply to complete a poem.

A silence fell on the shop as Mrs Grossman resumed her bulletin apparently interrupted by Hester and her request. The robber, it seemed, had actually been in her shop.

‘Ever so pleasant spoken 'ee was,' she said. He had asked for a sandwich, she told them, ‘his car was broke down just outside the town.' He was lucky, he told Mrs Grossman, to have got this far. He was going to have to go back to the city by train to fetch his wife and baby. ‘Ever such nice people they are,' Mrs Grossman claimed more knowledge of the unknown. ‘Ever such nice people.' The customers in the shop paused in the selecting of newspapers and magazines, their hands hovering uncertainly over cartons of milk and loaves of sliced, wrapped bread. ‘He'd not got a cent on him,' Mrs Grossman's announcement accompanied the long-practised deft folding of pink ham in greaseproof paper, ‘left his wallet, he told me, in the car.' She looked at her audience. ‘ “That was very foolish,” I told him. I said, “Someone, not of this town, mind, but someone on the road'll be bound to stop by and help theirselves and take it. Not of this town,” I told him,' she set her lips in a reproving line, ‘but someone on the road travelling, passing through, as you might say. Ever so nice looking and got an education too, very nice speaking ways he had. Handsome. Well of course I said to him, “enjoy a bit of our country hospitality,” I said. He had an appetite on him, I can tell you. See this ham? Well there's very little of it left and he must 'ave ett a whole loaf. And to think he must have gone through Bordens helping himself when Mr Borden's been that good to him, offered him a house and rail fares for him and his wife. I had it from Mrs Borden when she come in this mawnin' for her groceries. Mr Borden gave him the job and all found and then …'

Hester bored and afraid, struggled to her feet, scraping the small chair on the floor slabs. She was impatient for the rope. She wanted the rope as soon as possible please. She had a long drive as Mrs Grossman knew. Would Mrs Grossman kindly ask Mr Grossman if the rope was ready.

‘Mr Grossman,' Mrs Grossman said, ‘will splice all in his own good time. He's putting up some stuff for Bordens. Mrs Borden is calling back in a little whiles but Mr Grossman will do yours the very next.' She turned to her little audience. ‘There I was,' she said, ‘with a thief right here, just about where you're standing Mrs Harriot, I'd say just there between you and Mrs Skeine.' She bestowed the honour of the position on two customers who, clutching their sliced loaves to their breasts, exchanged the happy smiles and glances of the chosen. ‘I could 'ave been murdered in my bed!' That Mrs Grossman's bed was in some more mysterious place above or behind the shop did not seem to worry either her or the audience. ‘Yous'll all have to lock up,' she said, ‘he's not been sighted. He's somewhere, you mark my words, nice spoken like that he'll be clever. Sharp as they come. I'll be bound!'

Hester, in her impatience, was hungry. Without shame she helped herself to a lamington roll and ate it whole. She was just finishing it and screwing up the wrapping when Mrs Borden came in. Mrs Grossman put her head through a convenient slot in the back door of the shop, ‘Borden's order! Willy!' she bawled. ‘Mr Grossman will be with you directly.' She came round the counter, on bent legs, anxious to enjoy once again Mrs Borden's loss of valuables. ‘Was it your tiara, dear, that went?' she asked, her red hands holding her own flesh beneath which it was supposed her heart kept up its faithful beating.

Mrs Borden said yes it was her tiara and her solid gold rings and her brooches in marcasite and her emeralds and her pearls and then, seeing Hester, she said, ‘Miss Harper, the very person I wanted to see, though I never expected you'd be in town today straight after our late late night! I'll come straight to the point.' Her clear loud voice filled the shop. Mrs Grossman forgot the contemplation of vanished jewels, perhaps at this very moment being valued, held, in the scrutiny of narrowed eyes, between the grimy thumb and forefinger which, despite their clumsiness, were capable of delicate restrained movement. She turned her attention to why Mrs Borden should want to see Miss Harper. Perhaps something dirty, private even, left behind and now discovered in the big house, her ears stretched in their eagerness.

‘Mr Borden and I,' Mrs Borden said, ‘are going to a wedding and I wondered if we could borrow Katherine for a couple of days, a week really? Do you think? I'd feel so much easier if she could stay in with the children. She won't be on her own of course. We have the yard houses full, well, practically full with married hands and their children, it's just, it's just …' she paused seeing Hester stiffen brushing bits of shredded coconut from her black lap. ‘You would be welcome too,' Mrs Borden smiled. ‘It might be quite a change for you to stay in the old homestead again. We've had quite a scare, you see, the children don't want us to go. I wouldn't go away just now but it's an old friend from my schooldays getting married, we never ever thought she would tie the knot, she's …'

Hester, not wanting to even consider Mrs Borden's idea, having far too much on her mind, was wishing that she could get away from the shop and be on the road at once, rattling over the bridge and on towards home. She did not hesitate. ‘It's not the kind of thing Katherine does,' was her reply, and ‘neither do I', she was going to add, but Mrs Borden was rushing on, ‘I hope you don't mind my asking. After all it would be nice, wouldn't it, for Katherine to feel she was earning some pocket money. Because, of course, Mr Borden would pay …'

Hester stopped listening. She sat like a piece of wood waiting for her purchase; her thoughts on the strength and the qualities of rescue in the rope. Mrs Borden forced a little grimace of a smile. She caught the gaze of one or two people in the shop and shrugged her shoulders. Mrs Grossman, opening the back door to give another shout in the direction of the shed, nearly deafened Mr Grossman for life as he was, with a load of bottles and tins, about to come through the door.

The relief of getting away from Mrs Grossman's endless talk and the added insult of being asked to pay for the lamington and the rope was short lived. With the road bridge and her own curt words of refusal (Mrs Borden) and a reminder (Mrs Grossman) that she had an account nicely behind her Hester was all at once filled with foreboding and dread. The quiet paddocks on either side of her did not provide the usual comfort.

Mr Grossman, muttering, had brought the rope from an obscure corner of his shed. It was coiled now, heavy and neat, on the floor below the passenger seat. Suppose the rope was not long enough or suppose the splice was inadequate. She had no right really, she knew, to send Katherine down, to force her to go down the well. Even if she were not lame, she would not want to make this descent herself. She had not really worked out either how to employ the rope. It would have to be secured firmly, she knew, to something which could not possibly give way. Wildly, in her mind, she searched the remembered walls of the woolshed, a metal ring or a post there would be safe but she could not recollect any such thing. And then the rope, to reach the side of the woolshed, would need to be longer. There was the block and tackle jutting from the gable of the shed but the rail was rusty and Hester could not remember ever seeing it in use. She dismissed it simply as apparatus belonging to a bygone age.

She pulled into the road house,
El Bandito
, for petrol thinking it was too far now to go back to town to her usual place. It was an irritation and an inconvenience not to have enough money. She was unused to restriction. She wished for tea, even for tea in a paper cup to take with her to drink later on when she had a longer distance between herself and the town.

El Bandito
, the place Kathy was looking forward to visiting every night with Joanna; both girls dressed in their gear. Kathy had described in detail the clothes Joanna wanted; there was a navy-blue velour hat trimmed with grosgrain, a cloche hat pulled well down and to one side, a long straight navy-blue coat; ‘she would have dead-white face powder Miss Harper, dear, and a blue chiffon scarf and no stockings Miss Harper, dear, but blue shoes pointy toes and thin thin stiletto heels and her lips very very red Miss Harper, dear, a deep red cherry red. Oh mint!'

Hester waited for her tea. The wheat paddocks came right up to the yard and up to the windows of the café. There was no other meeting place, she thought, except in town, and what there was would be the same as this. She tried to understand what it was which made Katherine want to be in this dreary place.

‘Take a look at them two chicks,' Joanna had written a remark overheard by herself and a friend. ‘Jeez, take a look willya, great pair of tits, d'ya reckon?' She was apparently relating compliments. ‘And this fella kept shouting, “Want to go for a burn round the block?” Honestly Katt we didn't know! Whistled us all the way down to the gig. Stupid bastard, but. Wow! Great!' Hester tried not to let the words from Joanna's letter keep sounding in her head. It was the roadside café
El Bandito
which made her recall the unforgettable strange language of the letter.
El Bandito
, perhaps he no longer existed. A disposed of bandit. She shuddered remembering the heavy warm body and the difficulty of keeping lifeless arms and legs in line with the necessary movement towards the hole in the well cover.

She tapped the counter with her coin and the girl, at length, appeared with the beaker of tea. Hester waited with impatience while a lid was pressed on. The café was deserted except for a blowfly trapped in the mesh of the net curtains. The two table tops shone with the sticky wetness from repeated wipings with an idle sponge. Hester almost bought a book from the stand of paperback books. The titles, suggesting escape, did not invite. She paused beside the cassettes, she would be able to afford one to take back for Kathy.

In her letters to Joanna, Katherine described in detail the road house and the drive to town but Hester was unable to remember what she had written. Joanna's letters were the more penetrating; ‘Check that arse on it willya, she's got fatter thighs than me. Yuk! Imagine! Excellent!'

Hester almost saying these alien words aloud settled herself to resume her journey. The tea was propped safely on the seat beside her. She had, at the last moment, squandered the last of her few coins on a cassette, ‘Buttoned up Beats'. She studied a few of the titles; ‘I can't let you go' and ‘Never Never Say Goodbye to me' and ‘Hold me Just a little longer.' She smiled, in a twisted way, one of her little smiles.

Often in the evenings they played a game of choosing as two little girls, sisters, might play. While they were sewing or embroidering they took it in turn, strictly in turn, to select a piece of music or a song to play. The rule, unspoken, in the game was to choose as if for oneself but in reality the choice was made for the pleasure of the other person. So Katherine would make her choice, ‘I'll have, Miss Harper, dear, I'll have Mahler, er, um
Abschied!
'

‘Ah! that's a lovely choice Kathy. I'm glad you like that.' After the song of farewell, Hester, fingering a cassette, would take up another and say, ‘It's a long time since I heard Neil Diamond, I'd like “I am, I said”.'

Sometimes the choosing was extended. The wood stove in the kitchen, after wanting ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful' and ‘There's a Home For Little Children Above the Bright Blue Sky' surprised them with ‘I rage I melt I burn', Polyphemus' aria from
Acis and Galatea
. And once, the Troll in the well chose ‘Fifteen men on A Dead Man's Chest', a curiously unfitting ending tacked on to a Mozart divertimento, Hester thought, by the record company wanting to make use of the space for extra grooves on the record.

There was too the pleasure of the discovery that often the other side of a record or a cassette bought for a specific song yielded unchosen music which turned out to be even better than the one they had chosen. A surprise, a sheer gift, Hester would exclaim forgetting that the price paid was for both sides. And they would, for a few evenings, play the discovery to death.