The Well Page 20

  ‘Look at me, Granny R. Watch me!’ shouted Lucien from the top of the hill.

  ‘Watch me, Granny R,’ called Henni.

  Turning away at the point at which they decided to try three on a bike, I put the bag of potatoes I’d brought with me down next to where Angie and Lucien’s tent had been, now just a rectangle of yellow grass, and went over to help her with the washing line, pulling on the branch so she could reach the wire.

  ‘Are we the only people in England who have trouble getting the washing dry?’ she laughed above the wind.

  ‘Why are you taking it down?’ I asked, unnecessarily.

  ‘Leave only footprints; take only photographs,’ shouted Angie. It takes a certain mentality to move on, to enjoy the space left empty as much as the one occupied.

  ‘You didn’t say you were leaving.’ I hadn’t had Angie back long, and even then the connection between us had been tenuous. I couldn’t help thinking that it had held this long because she had her tent and I had mine and because The Well had given us a common cause. Love alone had not been enough for a very long time.

  She protested that she wasn’t going to just up sticks and let me come up here with my soup and find a set of tyre tracks and a thank you letter.

  I have it still, that second thank you letter, signed by all of them, signed by Lucien. It’s not so much a card as a collage. They had taken a large piece of card and covered it with a geometric design made entirely out of things from The Well: half acorn shells and the petals of wild roses, plaited reeds from the Hedditch brook and five crimson balsam poplar leaves spread out symmetrically like jewels. Some of the pieces have fallen off now. I put my finger in a gap where a beech nut once was and feel nothing but the dried glue which kept it all together once. If nothing else it reminds me that I am imprisoned in a world not only of infinite loss, but of infinite beauty.

  Angie’s mind was made up. They had been offered work at a late festival, setting up and taking it down afterwards somewhere in Norfolk. Then they reckoned a friend of Charley’s could get some seasonal work for quite a few of them at a Christmas factory in Scotland, cutting trees, making holly wreaths, that sort of thing.

  ‘You don’t need to leave here to find work,’ I protested, but she could hardly hear. ‘Let’s get out of this dreadful wind.’

  We climbed into Charley’s van and slammed the door, letting the slightly damp warmth calm things down. ‘I was saying you don’t need to go to some hideous Christmas rip-off factory, for God’s sake, making wreaths with plastic berries. We’ve got the real thing here. Every tree in the orchard is weighed down with mistletoe. Harvest it. I can pay you, if you need money. Mistletoe from The Well could spread great thoughtfulness.’ There was me, justifying turning my paradise into a commercial enterprise, for my own profit.

  But the Norfolk job would be fun, the line-up was unbelievable and it paid well. The Scottish job had accommodation, two large mobile homes and a barn. She had to admit it was just too cold to spend the winter under canvas at The Well. I told her I’d thought about that and got the barn all ready for her and Lucien and Charley if he wanted to stay, but she said, ‘We are a group, Mum, we need to stay together, because by staying together then we stay clean.’

  Can’t your mother do that for you? That was what I wanted to ask, but the years had already answered that question. ‘We’ll be back,’ she said, jangling the keys in the ignition.

  I took a deep breath, preparing to bring out from deep inside me what I had been fantasising about ever since they arrived. ‘Lucien could stay here,’ I offered.

  I don’t know if I even expected her to consider it, but suddenly she was saying something about Henni going to his dad’s because he wanted him to go to school properly and learn something and not keep moving around and then there was education welfare, onto them about attendance, maybe Lucien would be lonely, maybe it was a good idea.

  I turned sideways in the cramped seat to face her. ‘Would you mind?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mum Things have been better between us, haven’t they?’

  ‘So much better.’

  She turned to look straight at me. ‘And what about between you and Mark? Lucien’s had enough rows in his lifetime. I want him to know what it’s like to be peaceful.’

  ‘We’re OK, Angie. Yes, it’s stressful at times, but we’ve come through worse than this . . .’

  And she looked away again. I could so quickly lose her. I rephrased. ‘You know what I mean. We’ve managed twenty years of ups and downs. We’re not going to let this defeat us.’

  Angie got out her tobacco and started rolling a cigarette. ‘But it’s like Mark says, your head’s sort of somewhere else at the moment, isn’t it?’

  I resisted the desire to comment on her smoking. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, who would come first? Lucien – or the Sisters?’ She flicked her lighter a couple of times and the flame flickered in the dull light of the van. ‘It’s not that I’d blame you for that choice or anything. But there’s some heavy stuff going on around here, you’re important to all that. You might have to make choices.’

  ‘Do you think the Rose would make me choose between her and my grandson? Angie, love’s not like that. I’m probably more able to love Lucien now than I ever have been.’

  Angie inhaled deeply, opened the window an inch to flick out the ash and the wind rushed in, blowing her hair over her face. ‘And Mark seems better now, don’t you think?’

  ‘The bruises have gone.’

  ‘I meant less angry, since the thing in Lenford.’

  I didn’t think that, but I wasn’t going to say so because I didn’t want Angie to have any excuse not to leave Lucien with me.

  ‘And then the Sisters,’ she continued. ‘Dorothy’s great, isn’t she, like a sort of great-granny? So I suppose there’d be loads of you keeping an eye on him.’

  She is going to agree, I thought. Please God, let her say yes.

  ‘What about Sister Amelia?’ she continued.

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She wiped a space on the steamed-up window to look over to the boys and their crazy game. ‘I don’t know. I just get the impression she’d rather he didn’t exist. It would be different if he was a girl.’

  ‘You don’t need to worry about her,’ I said. ‘She’s a purist, but she’ll cope.’

  ‘And in a weird way,’ said Angie, moving on, ‘I think The Well will look after him.’

  ‘It will,’ I agreed, smiling at her. ‘The Well will keep us safe.’

  She stubbed out her cigarette in the little silver ashtray. ‘Let’s ask him what he thinks.’

  How clearly that scene plays out before me now. The wind snatches the van door from our hands as soon as we open it and I fight to close it again. Angie calls Lucien, shouting louder and louder to get herself heard. He looks up, runs over to us, runs fast as if he wants me to see how fast he can run, his thin legs pounding the ground, helter-skeltering down the hill, arrives out of breath and laughing and falls on the grass, spread-eagled. Angie says, ‘Oh what shall we do, Granny R, it looks as though Lucien’s dead!’ And he jumps up and says just kidding. Then he sits cross-legged and listens. Not only are his legs thin, but his face is too. It makes his eyes look bigger. I tell him he looks all skin and bone for someone who’s just turned five. He decides that he’d like to stay with me and Granddad, hugs Angie, says he’ll miss her and will she be back for Christmas and if she does she ought to know that he’s going to ask Santa for a penny whistle. And then he’s gone, back to the bike and Henni and I am so happy I too run madly down the hill to the Sisters to share the good news.

  They come out of the caravans, holding their hair out of their faces. Eve chases after a prayer sheet blowing across the grass.

  ‘Good news!’ I shouted. ‘Good news!’

  They hugged me in turn, while Sister Amelia stood slightly apart and then returned to her caravan without commenting. I followed her in, closed the boo
k in her hands and told her to talk to me, not to retreat into silence. She asked me how long Lucien would be staying and I told her as long as he needed to, maybe the winter, maybe forever, maybe one day his children would cartwheel down First Field on a blustery day in early autumn and all this would be his.

  ‘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.

  Rose, bless the hands which will hold him.

  Rose, bless the voice which will call him.

  Rose, bless the eyes which will watch over him.

  Rose, bless the ears which will hear his cry in the night-time

  and the lips which will kiss him to sleep again.

  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 u
npredicted 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.