The Well Read online

  Why did my husband sleep in the barn?

  Did I actually hear him breathing?

  Did he usually sleep in a man’s jumper?

  What kind of grandmother was I?

  Was there anything missing from his room?

  I thought not, but I would need to look to be sure. I asked to be left alone in his room, but they said no – for my own protection, for the preservation of the scene – so I tried to work through it methodically. There was the mirror where the moon had been reflected, his toy chest, closed, but with everything in it as usual, the jigsaw pieces, unmade, on the floor, stuffed under the table, along with the incomplete set of felt tips he’d used to write Ms over and over again in the barn. There on the floor by his bed was his special duck. And then . . . I stared at the space, tracing it with my finger. Don’t touch too much, said the policewoman. Is there something missing? Behind her, Sister Amelia had come upstairs and was watching from the doorway. I looked at them both, then back at the table, then I felt on the floor, looked under the bed, and my hand went to my own neck.

  ‘There is something missing,’ I said. ‘But he’d never have put it on. He couldn’t tie the knot. It was too fiddly.’

  ‘What’s that?’ the policewoman asked kindly, but her voice was urgent.

  ‘The Rose,’ said Sister Amelia, but the policewoman ignored her and looked at me.

  ‘Yes, a rose. A little wooden rose I made, hung on a piece of leather. He wore it sometimes – well, always – but he couldn’t put it on himself, he used to ask me to help him. I took it off for him last night when I put him to bed.’

  Was it really last night?

  Two other officers were already pounding up the stairs, one of them plain-clothed, pushing Sister Amelia out of the way and saying excuse me.

  ‘Why did you give him a rose?’

  ‘It is a sign of the Rose’s love for him.’

  ‘Was he special, then, to your religion?’

  ‘He is special. We are all special.’

  The officer’s resistance was like a wall. ‘But women are more special than men, am I right – in your religion, I mean?’

  ‘Different,’ I said hopelessly, my mind too drenched in worry to be able to explain.

  ‘So this ritual you had yesterday,’ he continued, ‘did that involve the lad? Would he have put the rose on for that?’

  You don’t understand, I kept saying, it isn’t like that.

  On and on they went, these people with their questions. The police seemed to have multiplied. They were all talking, I was repeating myself. I seemed to have to say everything again and again; I didn’t know if I was imagining it and was just locked in a world where there was no sound but Voice and perpetual echoes. Lucien, Lucien. A little wooden rose. A little wooden rose. Half past eight. Half past eight. My grandson, my grandson. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. Ask Mark, why don’t you ask Mark?

  The police found it hard to accept that we had no way of contacting Angie directly, impossible to believe that someone nowadays didn’t have a mobile and that we used to wait for her to ring us; they were right of course, it was madness that we ever agreed that was all right, but it was how Angie had wanted it. Everything I had ever done seemed in doubt. People moved around me like humans must look to goldfish, distorted and silent.

  ‘What are you all doing in here, swimming in circles?’ I screamed. ‘Get out, get out and look for him!’

  I barged my way out of the kitchen, out of the back door, out, over the stile.

  ‘No!’ I shouted at Mark, who made to come with me. ‘I want to be on my own.’

  Stumbling over First Field, I could hear the policewoman panting behind me. She must have been asked to stay close to me because who knows what I was capable of?

  As soon as I reached the brow of the field, I knew I was going to find him. I gathered speed as I dropped off the side of the hill; I could still hear the calling, the occasional whistle, and I wanted to hear someone shouting, we’ve got him, he’s here, he’s safe, and to feel my feet running back up to the house, but I knew I wouldn’t hear that. That was no longer possible. The search could have lasted days, been on the national news with me tear-stained and with a cracked voice appealing for information, and the police finding Angie on her farm in Scotland and driving her down in a police car, on empty motorways. Maybe even the village would have joined in, putting aside their accusations of witchcraft for the sake of a child. But I knew that wouldn’t happen now. I was close to him. My feet were taking me to Lucien. I could feel him calling me. How was it that I knew where he was?

  When I reached the edge of Wellwood, I forgot where the little stile was, scrabbling along the barbed wire and brambles, leaving blood from my fingers as I went. In desperation I climbed the fence and my coat caught on the barbs, my legs were unsteady on landing and then I pushed my way through the undergrowth. Roots and strangling brambles tripped me up and above, low-hanging branches from dead trees caught in my hair and yanked me back. But it was just a wood, an oblivious wood. I found myself back on our pilgrimage path, still narrow but well trodden now; it took me closer to the pond, the dampness suffusing the air. It was almost tropical the way things grew here, even in winter; there was an emerald gleam to the ferns and underfoot the stony soil of the forest, the crunch of nuts and scuttle of dry leaves gave way to a softness, a slight give in the surface of the earth. I slowed down.

  Bodies float, I thought, they floated on the surface with their arms outstretched and flowers from weeds in their hair, but when I stared into the black pool, the blank gaze of the undisturbed surface met me and I experienced an agony of relief. I was wrong. A mallard flew up suddenly from the other side and was gone and even the distant shouting seemed to stop, leaving this cathedral midnight-silent, the arches of the great trees above it holding up the sky, their thin black branches leading the windows between them, letting in the winter light which shone on this, my baptismal font. For a moment, Lucien stood beside me, holding my hand, pointing at tadpoles, then he smiled and slipped away under the water. And then I could see him, beneath the surface where he lay, head down and hanging, barely visible, a pale shadow of a naked boy imprinted on a shroud of water.

  Heaviness, that is what I remember about the first day after that day: the dark itself weighty and anonymous, having neither time nor person to lift it; words, like my head, lying leaden on a pillow; even the silence was thick.

  A half-memory of walking in front of my mother’s car on a cliff road in dense fog, shining a torch from side to side. ‘Be careful,’ I am shouting. ‘You are too close to the edge.’

  Thirst sticking my tongue to my lips.

  Two people, a man and a woman (who was not the other who sat with me sometimes) talking. That other had gone, leaving no trace. Someone else had left, but I was not so clear who, just a sense that they too would never be back. Angie was always coming and going, but it was not her who was missing, although I did need to get in touch with her about something. Perhaps Mark could do that for me. They talked without listening to each other, the man and the woman in the corner of the room. It’s the smell that’s different, he said. I didn’t believe it, sir, when they said about this place on the news. It feels as though I haven’t smelled rain on grass since I was a kid. Let me know when she wakes up. I thought I was awake. My eyes told me this was my bedroom at The Well. Something had happened to bring these people here – a lot of people – they ran all over the fields and shouted because they had lost something, or someone. Then I remembered. Lucien was dead.

  Unfamiliar words and procedures. Days full of circles, questions, headlines, moments of absurd ordinariness and debilitating tremors of loss which came from deep within the earth, leaving jagged cracks down the flaking walls of my mind.

  I put him to bed. I woke up. He was gone. I found him dead.

  What made you think he’d be at the Wellspring?

  I don’t know. Maybe because he was always fascinated by it.
/>   What was your status with the cult?

  I am one of the chosen ones.

  Chosen by whom?

  I don’t know.

  How did you know you were chosen?

  I was told.

  By who?

  By the Rose. By Voice. By Sister Amelia. I don’t know.

  Who is Voice?

  No one’s Voice. It’s just a voice.

  Tell us about Sister Amelia. Who is she?

  I don’t know.

  Tell us about Mark.

  I don’t know what to say.

  Why did your husband leave?

  I don’t know.

  Why did your husband come back?

  I don’t know.

  Are you aware of the previous allegations made against your husband?

  Of course.

  Where is your daughter?

  I don’t know.

  Did you kill your grandson?

  I don’t know.

  You don’t seem to know very much at all.

  Where is Mark, I asked them, but they didn’t give me a straight answer.

  One thing I did know was how to log on to todaysheadlines.co.uk.

  • ‘Women shall inherit the earth from women’: is this why Lucien died?

  • A member of the Rose of Jericho sect yesterday revealed evidence showing that the woman known as Sister Amelia had been talking of the need to expel Lucien Ardingly . . .

  • Police suspect ritual drowning in child murder case.

  • Police would today neither confirm nor deny reports that the boy was blindfold when his body was found. They are following leads suggesting . . .

  • Pictures seen here, taken from the religious sect’s webpage, show . . .

  • Drought and Death go hand in hand: Johan Matzinsky exposes the hidden costs of the ongoing climate crisis.

  • Drowned boy had mental health difficulties.

  I clicked on the link.

  Drowned boy had mental health difficulties

  Medical experts today are speculating that Lucien Ardingly (5) who drowned on The Well on Friday was born with Foetal Alcohol Syndrome and may have had significant emotional and mental problems. These could have led to him harming himself either deliberately or accidentally. These factors, combined with poor parenting and a traveller lifestyle, may well have led to feelings of low self-worth. ‘It is likely his state of mind deteriorated when he was deserted by his mother and left in the hands of a grandmother already suffering from delusions of grandeur,’ said Melanie Unwine, Consultant Child Psychologist. (See p. 7: Why are so many of our children committing suicide?)

  I didn’t see page 7. I returned to the main site.

  • Did this Grandmother sleepwalk her way to murder?

  • Grandpa or Paedo Pa?

  I hesitated, then expanded the headline.

  Fact: Ardingly is not the boy’s real grandfather.

  Fact: Ardingly had moved out of the family cottage and lived a solitary existence in a barn on the isolated property.

  Fact: Ardingly is suspected of having removed all the boy’s clothes whilst looking after him the night before he was murdered.

  The most frightening fact of all: Mark Ardingly was investigated for child pornography when he worked for a local authority and was NEVER CONVICTED.

  The police need to be asking questions – NOW!

  The taste of doubt. The police confirmed that the only footprints found by the Wellspring were those of the Sisters, Sister Amelia, Mark, Lucien and me, no drought-deranged outsiders, no vengeful locals. Him or me, then. Or the Sisters.

  ‘What about the Sisters? Sister Amelia?’ I asked the policewoman.

  ‘They have been released without charge as well.’

  ‘As well as who?’

  ‘As well as your husband.’

  ‘Where was he then?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask him. I am not at liberty to say.’

  I did ask him. He told me. The medium of the internet, which had painted him as a potential paedophile and thrown our lives into chaos in London, had this time put on a suit and tie and provided him with an alibi. Analysis of his laptop had shown he had been online at, as the pathologist chose to call it, the ‘likely time of death’. There were Google searches recorded for flats to rent, Christmas tree farms in Scotland, our solicitor’s address, Alcoholics Anonymous, how to drown yourself . . . and there was a half-finished letter apparently addressed to me, last edited at 2.07 a.m. I didn’t ask about the letter; I knew what it was. Apparently, Mark told me, computer evidence like this is not ‘conclusive’, as the police say, but it was enough to let him off the hook for the time being.

  Nothing has been conclusive since that night, but conclusions are all that I am interested in now.

  There were things I wanted to ask the Sisters as well, and at some point I was given permission to visit them. I found them the same, but different and my questions stuck in my throat. Sister Amelia was in the hub with Eve, updating the site because the followers were worried, their faith wavering, but their hope for rain uncompromised. They told me how they had been questioned, but in the end, of course, as Amelia said, no Sister is ever alone. They were all each other’s alibis – that’s how the police framed it; they were all each sister’s keeper, according to the word of the Rose. Later, I sat for a while alone with Dorothy who was tear-stained and shrunken, wrapped tightly in a blanket. She told me that they had questioned her repeatedly, not just about what she had been doing, but about the others too and she had become confused. Some things only seemed significant in hindsight; she said she had never felt old until then.

  ‘It was straightforward about Eve and Amelia, they just went to bed as usual, but Jack?’ She dried her eyes and started making some herbal tea. ‘I didn’t know what to do. She begged me.’

  ‘What was wrong?’ Sitting at the little fold-down table, I stared at the watercolour half-painted on the pad in front of me, mesmerised by the way it captured the winter rain falling at an angle across the bare poplars, struck by the desolate feeling which came from this painting of heaven.

  I was barely listening, but Dorothy continued talking regardless. ‘Sleep is very hard for her. I often wake and find her gone, so it wasn’t unusual. But she’s been so ill, Ruth. She was a complete mess while the police were around, totally paranoid and deluded. I wondered if it triggered bad memories for her, you know, when she was a child. She kept saying the police would have her sectioned.’

  ‘So what are you worried about, Dorothy?’

  ‘I prayed, Ruth. I prayed so hard, but I couldn’t hear the answer. Do you remember asking me once if anyone ever spoke back when I prayed? Well, this time, nothing. But I had to say something. So I said she was here, asleep with me, in this caravan, all night, until dawn when she got up and went out to pray.’

  ‘Where does she go when she can’t sleep?’

  ‘Usually to the hub, now it’s cold. In the summer, she just sat out and looked at the stars until she felt calm again. She couldn’t harm anyone, Ruth, you and I know that.’

  I took the mug from her, inhaled the sweet lavender of forgetfulness and rosemary of remembrance. ‘Dorothy, you are the most truthful person I know. You mustn’t worry.’

  ‘I think I have told them everything,’ she sobbed.

  The door opened and the cold air rushed in, making us wrap the rugs around us just a little bit tighter, holding onto the writings on the table to stop the answers blowing away. ‘I am sure you did,’ said Sister Amelia.

  My boy gone? Never to sit with me again here? On the sofa, reading together? Never?

  A post-mortem report – the Table of Contents:

  Autopsy Face Sheet

  Historical Summary

  Examination Type, Date, Time, Place, Assistants, Attendees

  Presentation, Clothing, Personal Effects, Associated Items

  Evidence of Medical Intervention

  Post-mortem Changes

  Post-mortem Imaging Studiesr />
  Identification

  Evidence of Injury

  External Examination

  Internal Examination

  Histology Cassette Listing

  Microscopic Descriptions

  Toxicology Results, Laboratory Results, Ancillary Procedure Results

  Pathologic Diagnoses

  Summary and Comments

  Cause of Death Statement

  Freshwater aspiration leading to systemic hypoxemia, causing myocardial depression; reflex pulmonary vasoconstriction and altered pulmonary capillary permeability contributing to pulmonary oedema; a fall onto the back of the head resulting in an abraded scalp surface, the undermined areas of scalp infiltrated with liquefied fat.

  An interim certificate of fact of death has been issued by the coroner.

  Inquest adjourned.

  Body released for burial.

  Dates – 25 December, 31 December, 1 January – all passed, unmarked. Lucien’s funeral was the first and last time we were all together: Mark, Angie and me. I think now of the missing fathers – of Angie’s father, of Lucien’s father, Mark’s father. Even my own father comes before me as an absence, fathering away in test tubes behind blue curtains in an attempt to further the line. There were mothers missing as well.

  The police had finally traced Angie, but she wanted nothing to do with me, that’s what they said.

  ‘She is going to find it hard to come here,’ I remember him saying. ‘You must see that. The fact that nobody’s been charged. It will just be too hard for her.’

  When he had stopped crying, Mark shaved, had his hair cut and moved back in from the barn. He was close to me, at those times, physically close to me. He held me when I could hardly stand, he sat with his hand on mine, he slept on the sofa just so I could hear him breathing in the night. He listened to my silence and to my noise, the harsh sobbing from a hoarse throat and a sandpaper soul. And when the Sisters came to visit, I heard him, from my bedroom window, lying for me: ‘She is sleeping. She will come to find you when she is ready.’