The Well Read online

  Only when I have found the truth will my sentence be over.

  I must therefore take control.

  Having won the debate with myself, I plan an assault, concentrating on Anon, because being devoid of personality he seems the weakest of the three. The guards have requisitioned Mark’s study and he is in there on his own, feet on the table, dealing a hand of Patience and when I stand in the doorway, he swings his boots to the ground, knocking the cards onto the floor. I never did like heavy-set men.

  ‘Is there a problem?’

  Bending down, I pick up the run of spades and lay them out on the table. ‘Eight, nine, ten, Jack, King, Ace. You’re missing the Queen.’

  ‘I never get it to work out,’ he says, shuffling the cards back into one pack. ‘I usually end up cheating on myself.’

  He sounds faintly American, but I am sure it’s just that he thinks the role he has been given is an American soldier sort of part.

  ‘Sunday today, isn’t it?’ I ask.

  ‘Sure is.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking I’d like to go to church.’

  Silence. All three of them have been well schooled in being non-committal; maybe that’s module one in the policy, practice and psychology of internment.

  ‘You know,’ I persist, ‘to take communion. I think that must be one of my human rights, the right to worship, don’t you?’

  Anon pulls out a cigarette, seems to remember my house rules and puts it away again. ‘You can ask, I guess. I’ll get a request sheet sent over.’

  ‘And I’d like to visit the woods. I assume that’s not a problem?’

  ‘Depends on which wood and what you plan on doing there.’ Anon takes his jacket off the back of the chair.

  ‘Wellwood,’ I offer helpfully, ‘the wood at the bottom of First Field.’

  The blank look doesn’t fool me. They have a map of The Well which Three spread out in front of me on my second day, wanting to ensure that I was clear about where I was and was not allowed to go. They know what has happened where in the history of this land.

  Anon looks at his watch, looks at me, looks out of the window.

  ‘One minute,’ he says and leaves the house via the back door. I can hear him, calling over to Three, saying he needs a word. Three has some authority over the other two, although as yet I don’t quite understand the rankings. Anon calls him Sarge, but whether that’s part of the script he’s written for himself or a real reflection of Three’s status, who knows. She wants to go to that pond, Anon is saying and Three is replying, but they are walking away like a pantomime duo, little and large, and it seems from the words I can catch that they do not agree: arse-licker, grave, fucking, shithole, old, then rather oddly, boo to a goose. That makes me smile.

  Later, Boy lollops over to the house with some papers in his hand – marching was never going to be his thing. ‘You’re going to need to fill out these,’ he says, ‘the pond is beyond the current agreed limit.’

  ‘Do I put both requests on the one form? The fields and the priest?’

  ‘You seriously want to see a priest? I was surprised. I wondered if it was some sort of joke on Adrian’s part.’

  ‘No joke and yes, I do.’

  ‘That’s what he said. So, I brought two forms over. If it was up to me . . .’

  Those six words are a windbreak where cowards hide during a storm. I let him stew for a few moments and with his complexion, he blushes easily. I am a vindictive old cow.

  He breaks the silence. ‘It’s quite straightforward.’ He is showing me which boxes to fill in. Not many people have stood this close to me recently and I can smell the soap he uses for shaving, breathe in the maleness which saturates his cotton shirt.

  ‘The usual bureaucratic crap. Date, name, signature,’ he says. As he puts the papers down, his hand touches mine accidentally and after he has left, I examine my hand as if this brief moment of contact might have left an imprint in the shape of normality on the flesh.

  Having signed in all the required places and frustrated by the tedious processes which confine me more effectively than any ball and chain, I wander as far as the beginning of the drive from where I can see the government workers planting strips of trial crops in geometric patterns across the top fields. Apparently they moved in with their Portakabins and GM crops virtually the day after I was moved out. The land still looks fertile enough, as if beneath the crust the seeping springs are still working their magic, but I have been gone for more than two months and apparently there has been very little rainfall even here in that time and I have been back more than two weeks and it has still not rained. I don’t know what to make of this. Perhaps the clouds don’t like these khaki farmers and are waiting for me to pick up the plough, but I won’t fall for the same trick twice. Back in the cottage, I pick up the pen instead. I will apply to walk my land, not work it. As I complete the form, I remember the worksheets I sometimes set at school on Friday afternoons, inspiration gone. They were called ‘cloze’ exercises and consisted of blocks of text with words missing and all that the pupils had to do was to put the right word in the right place. It was a mindless exercise designed to control behaviour as much as anything else. Then, later, I would pack up the marking for the weekend and head home on the Underground. Minding the gap. Filling in gaps. Staring at the bottom of gaping holes. This is my business now.

  Permission finally arrives in the form of an amendment to the terms and conditions of the house arrest, reluctantly shared with me by Three. I am to be allowed into my beloved vegetable garden, into my heaven of an orchard; I am to be allowed to sit and lean against my oak tree and look through the latticed world of branch and leaf to the untouched sky above, and I am to be allowed to visit the Wellspring.

  As he walks away, Three turns casually and says, ‘Oh – and there’s a letter for you. I’ll send it over later.’

  ‘I didn’t know I got post,’ I say suspiciously.

  ‘This was for our attention, to be directed to you if I judged it appropriate. If you did receive post in your own name, it would be read by us. Whether or not it was passed on to you would be my decision. But,’ Three smiles, ‘this is all hypothetical because no one has directly written to you, have they?’

  The wait for the letter is unbearable. It could be from Angie. It would start, ‘Dear Mum, I forgive you . . .’ It could be from Mark – confession or accusation, who knows. Or from one of the Sisters; I really thought Sister Amelia would write if no one else. Sister Amelia. What would we say to each other if we were to meet again? Since my return, I have fought against her shadow, which has tried again and again to stand between me and the light, but the idea of imminent, direct contact from her is too strong and the thought of her dries my mouth with hope and fear and thoughts, wild and screeching as crows at dusk, scattering into the darkness.

  Breathe, breathe, I tell myself, slowly, imagine you are blowing out a birthday candle in one long breath. There. She is gone, for now. The spring sun moves in millimetres across the sky and I am beside myself with dread and hopeful expectation.

  Finally Boy bangs on the window. ‘Post,’ he says as he comes in. I can imagine him as someone’s son, or holding out a birthday card for a girlfriend. ‘Read it.’

  ‘I fear the Greeks,’ I say and am surprised when he replies.

  ‘I’m not bringing any gifts. Not on my wages.’

  These children must be part of the new breed of ‘community conscripts’, much disputed in Parliament but introduced in the face of the drought on that most tenuous of premises that ‘needs must’. He is probably doing his stint after university and there is no reason why an army private shouldn’t be quoting Virgil nowadays, but I have become predatory and recognise in him not only a possible source of conversation, but a potential source of information from the outside world. Right now, though, I am consumed with anticipation about the letter and am torn between ripping it open and a more reverential approach which would allow the moment to last.

  The Rev.
Hugh Casey has written from The Pumphouse, Middle Sidding, to say he has been contacted by the Prison Welfare Division in relation to my request to see a priest. He is pleased to let them know that it would be a pleasure to visit. Not Angie. Not Mark. Not Amelia. Disappointment punches me in the stomach.

  ‘It’s good news isn’t it? This priest bloke will come on Sunday.’

  ‘This Sunday then.’ I don’t want any of them, even Boy, to know how much I have lost track of times and dates.

  ‘Yep. Two days. Be a bit of an event for us all. Perhaps we should have a party.’ Boy clicks his fingers and reggaes his way around the kitchen. ‘Red red wine . . .’ he croons. I think he’s one of those people who can’t tolerate other people’s unhappiness and feels a personal responsibility to cheer them up. I manage to laugh just because I feel sorry for him: he has his work cut out for him here.

  This must be a boring posting for three young men. No doubt their mothers are pleased that they are safe in the English countryside, with running water and the task of guarding some inoffensive crops and keeping a middle-aged nutcase in a field, rather than out on guard duty, firing off rubber bullets at protestors or policing the marches which I am sure must have continued – the motivated and the mad stamping their thirsty way up and down Whitehall, demanding rain. The news used to be on constantly in the dayroom at the unit, blaring from the TV hung too high on the wall: pictures of soldiers guarding the reservoirs, the lakes in Cumbria, the building sites where the first desalination plants are under construction, or shots of the RAF, droning overhead in their helicopters, sights trained ready for unscheduled activity on the ground – an old woman with a bucket, a black kid with a hose, a group of men rigging an illegal pump next to an unauthorised factory. These jobs carry a lot more risk than this one, I am sure. Here the risk is of insights into one’s own dry soul and that has never worried anyone’s mother unduly.

  Needing to do something to wash away the taste of abandonment, I hold up a mug and he says please.

  Small talk. That will help. ‘It must be quite boring for you here,’ I begin.

  ‘The job description’s pretty dull,’ he admits, ‘but the location, now you can’t call that boring. The science of it, if you like.’

  ‘What science?’

  ‘We were recruited because we’ve all got science degrees of some sort. Typical army. They thought, oh, he’s got a degree in particle physics, he’ll be good at taking rain gauge readings, although of course it hasn’t actually rained since we got here.’

  ‘And have you? Got a degree in particle physics?’

  ‘I did a geography degree,’ he tells me. ‘This is my payback year. They were asking for science graduates and then when they found a bunch of us, they pulled out the ones who would be no good on active service and came up with us three. The blind, the deaf and the dumb.’

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘The blind. Lenses – very strong. Adrian – Anon as you unkindly insist on calling him – he’s asthmatic. Mind you, it’s hard to find anyone who isn’t nowadays, with the dust and everything.’

  ‘His weight can hardly help,’ I add. ‘So that makes Three the dumb one.’

  Boy looks away. ‘Hardly,’ he says. ‘He was already in the Volunteers apparently, so one step ahead as always. He was telling us how he’s already had experience policing the demonstrations as a reservist. So I told him I was probably one of those marching.’

  ‘What were you marching about? Not me, I hope.’

  ‘I’m afraid not. I’m not religious. Other stuff. Human rights mainly. I think there have to be ways to manage a drought without chipping away at all our civil liberties. And the land, of course, the way we’re messing up the climate. Have messed up, past tense for all we know. I’m not a geographer for nothing.’ He glanced at the camera. ‘Anyway, I got the rest of my degree in footie and beer.’

  I would have liked a son. I turn away and pour the remains of my drink down the sink.

  Sitting outside, my back to the stone wall at the rear of the house, inviting the spring sun to repair my prison-pale face, my heart is beating a little faster in the knowledge that today I will have a visitor. I wait, half in hope, half in fear, counting the minutes. Then, through the haze, I spot a black lumbering shape at the top of the drive. For a split second I think a Friesian has got loose, before remembering that there are no cows around here any longer. A few moments later the cow becomes a man wearing a dark suit, a black hat and a billowing black raincoat and carrying a white plastic bag. He must be the only person in England who still possesses a raincoat. The man is limping slightly, inching along the track and like most people, when he reaches the crest of the hill, he stops and looks around him, but he stays there much longer than most, sitting on the raised verge beneath the turbine for a few minutes before getting up heavily, brushing down his trousers and picking up his bag and continuing on towards the house. Here is my priest. Enter The Reverend Hugh Casey.

  God knows the last thing I need is another persuasive religious, let alone a male version. This distrust of men is the legacy of Amelia and her sisters, I tell myself: you should rid yourself of this prejudice. On the way into the house, I pick some daffodils from the wilderness of weeds straggling along the edge of the drive, stick them randomly in a redundant milk jug and put them in the middle of the table; it isn’t something I’ve done since I returned here, but today I am entertaining.

  Boy announces the priest’s arrival like a maître d’. ‘Ruth, meet The Reverend Hugh Casey. Come on in, sir.’

  ‘No, no, I’ll wait for the good lady of the house to invite me in.’

  It is a polite, cultured voice with a hint of an Irish accent. The body which accompanies it is large and the face is flushed, although whether that is from the walk or embarrassment I don’t know. I play my part and greet him; he takes my one thin hand in his two warm palms and holds it slightly longer than I am prepared for. In the kitchen he introduces himself again, takes off his coat and hat and hangs them over the edge of the chair.

  ‘Not your local man, I’m afraid. They dug me out of retirement for this. I can only suppose it’s because I live relatively close and many years ago used to be the chaplain at a military hospital. Hardly guaranteed secure, but that’s the way their minds work, I suspect.’

  ‘Well, thank you for coming anyway.’ I offer him a cup of tea.

  ‘Ah. Now, that’s where I can make myself useful,’ he says and rummages in his plastic bag. He pulls out a Bible, which was to be expected, a small wooden box with a cross on it which he says contains the holy sacrament and a little flask. ‘I gather you have the water,’ he says, ‘I can provide the milk.’

  This is proper milk, milk that we drank as children in great gulping mouthfuls, milk that we poured onto cocoa on bonfire night. The smell of it spills over my mind and I am drunk on the memory.

  ‘I have my own cow,’ he pronounces. ‘A Jersey, Annalisa by name.’

  Giggling in church at Christmas was always my forte when I was small and something about the priest in my kitchen is making me revert to childish ways. That or hysteria. I stick my head in the drawer, ostensibly rummaging for a spoon.

  ‘I’m sure you’d love her. She is particularly beautiful. I have to say that she is the love of my life.’

  ‘They let you keep her?’ Now I am really hunting for sugar, because although I am not familiar with the clergy, he looks like the sort of vicar who takes sugar – a lot of sugar.

  ‘Let them try and stop me, that’s what I said. Truth be told, I played the holy card. Said that the priest of the village had ancient rights to graze one cow on the common land and if they tried to remove her, I’d take it up to the House of Lords. God seems to be exempt, you see, from the effect of their emergency powers and it would have been a frightful nuisance for them, so they went away like most bullies do in the end.’

  Interesting though this line of thinking is, I want nothing to stop me savouring the taste of tea with real milk, so
we sit at the table together, sipping in silence like connoisseurs. As predicted, he adds a lot of sugar and gazes around the kitchen expectantly. I wonder if he is expecting cucumber sandwiches and bourbon biscuits arranged in a circle on a porcelain plate, because he is not only old, but old-fashioned, a sort of living anachronism. It has to be a possibility that he, too, is not what he seems. I pick up the thread of his conversation.

  ‘I didn’t know that. I’m surprised no one suggested the ecclesiastical legal route to me for The Well. After all, it had become a religious place of sorts by the time I was arrested.’

  ‘Not the same at all, my dear, not in their book. God forbid anyone might start accessing eternal life by any means other than the C of E. Now, are you going to show me round?’

  Having explained the limitations of my imprisonment, we set off, past the back gate (‘This must be where you got the daffodils,’ he says, ‘such a wonder to see a vase of real flowers on a kitchen table nowadays’), on through the budding orchard and then down through First Field. He apologises for repeating himself, praising God like it was Easter Day all over again. ‘But you must see the wonder of it for me, can you not see the wonder of it, the green of the grass and that pink colour you get when the trees are in bud?’

  Once he calms down, we walk slowly and we talk freely. We talk about varieties of tomatoes, we talk about dust, we talk about the Holy Land and about water and a shared childhood experience of swimming off the coast of Exmoor, where the pebbles gang up with the waves to drag you under. He describes being a prisoner of war and we share an understanding of freedom based on barbed wire and spotlights. We find ourselves, inevitably I suppose, looking down at Wellwood, and he says, so is that where it all happened, and I say, yes, that is the place, but I don’t go there, and he asks me if I mind if he prays. He closes his eyes and bows his head and his prayer is silent; mine is written in dried leaves floating on the surface of the water out of sight, under the trees. I appreciate the way he asks no questions, offers no answers. Making our way back up the hill to the house, I am conscious that I am emaciated and unfit, but that for him this is really hard work, he is definitely overweight and rather purple in the face. I am no doctor, but it’s not hard to diagnose high blood pressure and to hazard a guess at a root cause: too many years putting too much Jersey cream on too many scones when it would have been rude to say no.