The Well

by Catherine Chanter

  Did the days know where their relentless march would take them? Day five, exalted spiritually, exhausted physically, we held high the life of our Lady of Guadalupe and sat huddled in the warmth of the hub caravan, watching the links spread to Mexico and prayers in Spanish scroll through the site.

  Geography is no barrier to belief – andreabeliever

  Bendigamos a la rosa - oliva@nuevavida.

  And so it was the sixth day came. The thirteenth of December. Lucien woke me. There would never be a seventh day, never be a day of rest. It was late. I had been up all night praying, writing and had been to worship in the morning. It was colder, the wind had swung round to the north and the blue skies had been replaced by steel grey; beneath our feet there was ice for puddles. I think it was the cold, as much as the tiredness, which had finally driven me to my bed when I got back and for the first time in days I had fallen asleep. The faint tugging I felt on my arm was a reminder of a physical world which I had abandoned, but I rolled over and there was Lucien. He climbed into bed with me, snuggled up tight to me.

  ‘What cold hands you have,’ I laughed.

  He grinned madly at me. ‘And what big teeth you have, Grandmother.’ Then he said, ‘I miss you.’

  I hugged him even tighter, his woolly jumper tickling my nose, his bare tummy warm and soft against my body. ‘I’m so sorry, Lucien. Have you been lonely?’

  ‘Mummy hasn’t phoned for a long time,’ he said, ‘but I’m not really lonely, don’t worry.’

  Pulling on my thick fleece, I took Lucien downstairs and made slices of toast dripping with honey for him and great mugs of hot, sweet tea. One day, I told him, we’ll be able to have hot chocolate with proper milk again, but he said he couldn’t remember what that was like. Then I told him that there were only two more days, then the week of worship would be over and then I would be all his. Promise? Promise. ‘And when will Mummy be back?’ Lucien asked. ‘I’m sure she’ll call very soon,’ I said, ‘and then we’ll see when she’s coming for Christmas.’

  ‘And when will Mark be back?’

  Our worship that evening was at the Wellspring, the procession from the camp started at 4 p.m. and we followed our familiar pilgrimage, chanting and carrying candles and flares to be placed around the edge of the water. In those iron-grey days, the heron watched us motionless from the far bank and the overwintering coots hid amongst the tall, dry bulrushes. I reached down and touched the icy water and thought there will be no immersion at this service.

  Suddenly, Sister Dorothy’s voice broke our quiet preparations. ‘Who’s that? There’s someone there!’

  We strained to make sense of the footfall crunching through the dead wood and brambles.

  Jack grabbed me, trembling; she was not well again and often seemed distracted by distressing things or people we could not see or hear. ‘It’s something evil,’ she whispered, ‘don’t leave me.’

  ‘Get out! In the name of the Rose, get out!’ commanded Sister Amelia.

  Lucien, with hat and gloves and a stick for beating back the brambles, stumbled into the clearing. ‘Surprise!’ he shouted. ‘Mark’s come back, Granny R, it’s only us!’

  Mark. Behind him Mark, crashing out of the thick darkness of the wood, out of all proportion to the silence, coarse and heavy in boots and an ex-army jacket, storming our lightness, stamping back onto my thin ice.

  ‘We came to see the magic,’ cried Lucien. ‘Sister Amelia, can you see the magic now?’

  I looked from Amelia, to Mark and back again. ‘Mark! What are you doing back? What are you doing here?’

  Dorothy came to my rescue, it was her who took Lucien by the hand, led him away from us around to the other side of the Wellspring, let him light a candle, pointed out the long-billed snipe, running out from among the tufts of frozen grass as I summoned Mark back from the edge of the pond into the forest. We squared up between the tall oaks and hissed at each other.

  ‘Shall I tell you why I came back?’

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘Because Lucien asked me to.’

  ‘You’re lying. How?’

  ‘I rang your mobile, Ruth. Stupid me, I wanted to talk, but guess what? Lucien answered and said you weren’t there and you wouldn’t be back ’til late.’

  ‘He was fine.’

  ‘He was crying.’

  Glancing back over my shoulder, through the branches, Dorothy was crouched down with her arms around Lucien, his head on her shoulder. Eve was comforting Jack, whispering in her ear and Amelia was staring directly at me.

  ‘It’s not good enough,’ Mark said. Then he moved closer, speaking straight into my ear. ‘I can’t get hold of Angie, but if she calls, Ruth, you need to get her here, before it’s too late.’

  ‘Don’t threaten me.’

  ‘I’m not.’ He turned away, punched the trunk of the nearest tree but then sagged to the forest floor, squatting on the dead leaves and brittle twigs, head in his hands. ‘Just listen to what I am saying. I wanted so much to come back, but I can’t stay. I can’t cope with Lucien, it’s too much to expect, but I can’t leave him like this. Something’s going to give. I have to go. He has to go.’

  Sister Amelia crept up on us and now echoed his words, but for different reasons. ‘He is right. The boy has to go. This is the final intrusion,’ she said and then spoke directly to Mark. ‘You must both go. Leave the Wellspring and The Well and take the boy with you. You do not belong here. It is a living blasphemy.’

  ‘Not now, Amelia . . .’ I started to say.

  But we were interrupted by Lucien’s crying.

  ‘You promised,’ he was sobbing, breaking away from Dorothy’s hug, ‘you and you and you, you’ve all said you’d bring me here and see the magic and you’ve all lied.’

  One of the people around that pond kept that promise and brought him back, but only the water knows who.

  ‘Come here, Lucien,’ said Jack, holding out her hand. She pulled him close, whispered in his ear and tickled him. ‘No more tears? Promise?’

  Lucien squirmed, halfway between giggling and crying. ‘All right, I’ll go away now if that’s what you want.’ He threw a stone into the pond and ran off into the wood, tripping over the rotten branches and kicking one of the unlit flares as he went. Mark shouted after him to wait.

  My indecision lasted barely a second as Amelia slipped her hand in mine. ‘I won’t be long, Lucien,’ I called after him, ‘I promise!’ And I allowed Amelia to lead me back to the water.

  To worship after such conflict was not easy. Tears streamed from Sister Amelia’s grey eyes and her pain hurt me, piercing me all the more because of the love I thought she had shown me, the care I thought she had taken of me. Voice was loud and incoherent in my head, peace difficult to come by and it was a conscious effort to erase the image of Mark from The Well and pray, but eventually I came to that place of ecstasy again, all the more beautiful for the time it had taken to reach it, ravished by the Rose, every nerve ending quivering with knowledge, all else was as nothing. Before we parted, in unspoken agreement Sister Amelia and I hung back and let the others go ahead, and I whispered that I was sorry and she pulled me close and we kissed as sisters kiss and then we kissed again.

  Crossing the plough, clods of mud clung to my boots and I was weighed down and exhausted as I struggled back up the hill and faint by the time I got back to the house. The kitchen seemed a strange place, cluttered with small, physical objects I hardly recognised. In the sitting room, the fire was almost out, the log basket full, but I could not connect the act of putting the log in the stove with warming up. Once I realised how cold I was, I started shivering uncontrollably, jerking and spilling the tea on my robe, feeling it soaking through to my jeans. My jaw seized up and my teeth chattered and it occurred to me that I was having some sort of fit, but there was nobody there to keep my burnt tongue from slipping down my throat and suffocating me. I swallowed consciously, determined to make each instinctive act of remaining alive purposeful. I stood up. I
put the mug on the mantelpiece and pushed it one or two inches back towards the wall. I walked towards the staircase, hands out in front of me, feeling my way to the banisters. Working my way, hand over hand, I climbed the stairs one at a time until I reached the top and I made it into the bathroom. It was dark. Slumped on the floor, I leant up against the wall to collect myself, then managed to crawl towards the bath, using one hand to grip the cold, white rim and the other to feel for the links of the chain for the plug. Link by link I inched my fingers up the metal, until I felt the rubber plug catch the other side of the tap. I released it and heard it swing against the bottom of the bath. Reaching down, I pushed it into place and turned on the taps, listening to the splattering water and the familiar lurching of the pipework in the airing cupboard. Downstairs, the well pump shuddered and sucked at the still pools in the bedrock hundreds of feet beneath the house.

  With a returning awareness of the physical world, I started to undress. Great clumps of ridged mud fell onto the carpet as I struggled to untie the laces which had tightened into impossible knots. My robe slipped easily over my head, but my jeans were damp and tight and I could not trust myself to stand up, so I wriggled like a child on the floor, pulling them down my legs until it all came off at once – pants, socks, jeans – and lay like a half-finished Guy Fawkes dummy. My numb fingers unfastened my bra and I lifted my leg over the bath and felt the sharp heat on one foot, then the other, felt the veins in my calves and then my thighs grow red and swollen as they returned to life. I lowered myself in until I was sitting, then lying, until my head sank under the water and my hair floated behind me and I was warm again, so warm.

  The water drained from me in a rush as I sat up, terrified and gasping for breath; it streamed from my hair down my back, it blinded my eyes and I tasted it in my mouth. The bath surged to and fro with a crazy perpetual motion as if it wanted to persuade me to go back down, but in time it retained its equilibrium and so did I. The sliver of a moon coming through the window was enough for me to start to make sense again of the edges of the room, my breath slowed and deepened, my jaw relaxed and I stretched my legs and flexed my toes. I was very hungry, of that I was sure, and my own consciousness edged back into my mind telling me I should eat, were there eggs in the rack and had I made safe the chickens for the night or had the fox laid waste the pen? And then there is Mark, said Voice, Mark is back and where is Lucien?

  ‘Lucien?’ I shouted. ‘Lucien?’

  Lucien had been at the Wellspring, Sister Amelia had wanted him gone, Mark had taken him away. He must be with Mark, he was safe. I had no idea how long ago it was that they left. Out of the bath, I dried, dressed quickly in clean clothes and towelled my hair roughly, just enough to stop the drips dampening the back of my neck, but kept the water in the bath for Lucien. I left the boots on the floor, thinking I’d have to deal with the mess in the morning, and went to find him. All grandmother now, I ran to the barn where the clock said it was quarter past eight, the stove was roaring, steam was rising from something boiling on the two-ring cooker and Lucien was standing on a chair, naked except for trainers on his feet and the little wooden rose around his neck. He was stirring something in a bowl on the table.

  ‘Granny R! We’re making you a surprise!’ he shouted. ‘Go away! You’ll see, go away!’

  ‘What on earth . . .?’

  Mark pointed at the jeans, pants and shirt hanging over a chair by the radiator. ‘The first attempt went all over him,’ he said, then he lunged towards Lucien. ‘Careful. It’ll happen all over again.’

  ‘Mark helped me take off my clothes and wash all over,’ said Lucien. ‘He said we could wash away all the evidence and nobody would ever know. That’s what you said, wasn’t it, Mark?’

  ‘I did indeed,’ said Mark, who then turned his back on Lucien. ‘What the hell is that?’ he whispered, pointing at the rose necklace around Lucien’s neck.

  Not now, I mouthed back, then continued out loud. ‘I’m so sorry, Mark,’ I said. ‘I had no idea of the time. I came back and had a bath and . . .’

  Mark wiped his hands. ‘Well, we’ve had a great time together, haven’t we, Lucien?’

  The barn was probably a mess before Lucien got there, but now there were hundreds of bits of paper from Mark’s printer all over the floor, each with a token scribble of a picture on it before Lucien had moved onto the next like a form of speed-painting. I picked up one, then another, then another. They all had the same motif. Lots and lots of Ms, Lucien said. For Mummy, Mark explained.

  ‘I better get Lucien off to bed,’ I said.

  Lucien’s face collapsed into an overtired scowl. ‘I’m not going to bed. I’m staying up tonight. You can go to bed. Get out.’ He got off the chair and started pushing me at the knees. ‘Go on, Granny R, get out.’

  Mark raised his eyebrows at me.

  ‘And I’m going to the Wellspring again when you’re not there,’ Lucien shouted. ‘Because it’s not just yours and anyone can go there whenever they like, Mark says so.’

  Mark felt the damp jeans and then got his own old green jumper from the bed and pulled it over Lucien’s head and rolled the sleeves up.

  ‘It’s like a huge dress,’ moaned Lucien.

  ‘It’s cold outside,’ said Mark and then picked him up, so easily, so strong, and Lucien laid his head on his shoulder. ‘I’ll carry you over.’

  The little boy and the man, making their way across the icy yard to the cottage, with me losing my footing behind. Mark opened the door, stepped back into the cottage, carried him upstairs and was sitting with him on the edge of his bed as if nothing had changed since he was a baby and lived with us in London.

  ‘Shall I tell Granny our secret?’ Lucien was rubbing his eyes and reaching for his special duck.

  I am standing at the door. Voice likes secrets. ‘What secret is this?’ asks Voice and I say it out loud for her.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Mark.

  Lucien shook his head slowly in agreement.

  ‘But we can tell her that we’ve made her supper,’ Mark said. ‘We thought you’d be very tired because you’d walked so far and you haven’t had much time to eat recently.’

  Lucien is holding his duck tight. ‘I’ve got lots of secrets, Granny R.’

  Lucien was in that impossible state, over-excited and over-exhausted, wide awake and half asleep at the same time, so I decided to abandon the normal bedtime routines and I left him in Mark’s green jumper, pulled off his trainers, untied the knot on the leather band which held his little wooden rose around his neck and placed it carefully on his bedside table, then pulled the duvet snug around him and kissed his forehead. One kiss. One last kiss. A Judas kiss. He was restless, so I read the Noah story, with just the nightlight on, letting the rhythm of the two-by-two fold its pattern over the night and put in order the day that had gone and present the rainbow as hope for the day to come. Then when his breathing had slowed and his beautiful eyes had closed, I asked for the Rose’s blessing on Lucien and crept from the room. I pulled the door so it was almost shut, as usual, and that was how I left him. I know that was how I left him. I left him.

  I went to have supper with Mark because Lucien had made it. And maybe because I was exhausted and needed something physical to hold me to the ground, after the slip-sliding week I had just experienced. And I felt worried for Mark, because there was something desperate in his face that night; a part of me loved him because he had come back – and remember, I had loved him for a long, long time. And it looked like an olive branch, even if now I see it in my mind’s eye as a crown of thorns.

  We sat like a couple in a rented holiday cottage who suddenly find they have too much time and too much silence on their hands. Mark and Lucien had made parsnip soup, which I sipped, feeling it sit uncomfortably on my shrunken stomach. I tried to resist the wine he had brought back with him; he took a great gulp as if he was summoning courage.

  ‘A while ago,’ he said, ‘you tried to persuade me that we should sell up and get
out while we could and I said no. But I was wrong, Ruth. Yes, I came back because of Lucien on the phone, but I wanted to come back and talk anyway. And what I want to say tonight is yes, let’s do it, let’s take what we can and go and start again somewhere else. Maybe it’s not too late.’ He looked up from his glass, vulnerability in his eyes and pain in the way in which he closed them to hear my answer.

  ‘It is too late, Mark,’ I said, ‘I can’t leave now.’

  We gave way to the silence again, aware of not only our differences, but of the history of our closeness, living up here as attendants in our own theme park.

  Mark started clearing the table, creating noise with the plates and knives, returning to the same question that seemed to plague him. ‘Is this it, then?’ he asked. ‘You will stay here at The Well forever? With her? Nothing will take you away?’

  ‘Only if that is what the Rose wants.’

  ‘The Rose? Or Amelia? That’s it? You’ll let her erase twenty years of love just like that. Gone.’

  ‘The Rose!’ I repeat.

  ‘And Lucien?’ He spoke with his back to me.

  ‘The Well will always be here for Lucien and Lucien for The Well. He is the future. The Rose is close to him, I feel it.’

  ‘You think Angie will agree with you?’

  ‘Leave her out of it,’ I screamed at him.

  Crashing the frying pan into the sink, Mark turned to face me. ‘You are kidding yourself. Whether or not your Rose is real, I don’t know. But what I do know is that you are fooling yourself. The Sisters don’t believe that about Lucien. Sister Amelia hates him, really hates him – you saw it yourself this evening down at the spring. Sometimes I wonder what she might do to him, she’s such a religious freak. Face it. A male inheritance is not part of their vision. Your grandson is nothing but an obstacle on the road to their fucking paradise.’

  My lips were dry. I looked over my shoulder at the door. He has done it before, said Voice.