The Festering

by Guy N Smith

  ‘I reckon Bennion must be a slave-driver, the way those blokes are running about,’ Mike mused. ‘They’ve probably got so many boreholes to drill that they don’t know which way to turn. Anyway, I can’t stand here all day watching them, I’ve got to get cracking with the next landscape. See you at coffee time, darling.’ He gave her a pouted kiss on the back of her neck and walked across to his improvised studio.

  Hardly had Mike begun to paint before the flimsy studio floor was vibrating, as a noise like a nearby road drill escalated by the second, building up to a deafening peak then maintaining its drone. Everything shook. The easel was probably rattling, but it was impossible to hear it above the din; Mike’s hand shook so that he changed his mind and replaced the brush on the tray. Damn it, he thought, he couldn’t paint in this, he couldn’t hold a paintbrush steady, let alone concentrate. The floor seemed to be heaving up, rising another six inches and shaking, and the door swung open on its rickety catch. Mike closed the paint tray and sat looking at it. Two days, maybe three, in which work was impossible. He thought about going into the house and trying to paint there. No, it would not be any better indoors. He sighed, then moved to the doorway to watch, because there wasn’t anything else to do.

  Jesus Christ Almighty! The untended garden bore no resemblance to the one he had viewed a few minutes earlier. From the elevated mouth of the rig a stream of thick grey oily slurry spouted high into the air. The jet arced, fell on the topmost boughs of a japonica tree, dripped from the branches and oozed its way down the trunk. Then it spread out into a thickening, widening pool, following the fall of the land, covering everything in its path as it crept relentlessly across the ground. Six feet from the front door, it had already determined its course, sliming towards the overgrown shrubbery. Sludge, mud and filth, and judging by its shiny texture – which reminded Mike of early morning snail tracks on the broken patio outside the back door – there was some kind of chemical mixed with it. The compressor in the gateway roared its approval at the mess the rig was creating, and seemed to increase its volume. The fountain of underground waste was unending. Gone was the green foliage of summer, and in its place was colourless, unrecognizable vegetation, a morass that dripped and spread – moving desecration. He half-wondered if it was safe to cross the drive to the cottage. Don’t be bloody stupid, it’s only liquid mud, he told himself. But is it? He shuddered, and had to resist the temptation to make a dash for it. Walking quickly all the same, he tried not to look. It gave him the creeps and … oh, my Christ, what a smell!

  The odour seared the back of his throat. It was like walking into some vile-smelling swamp fog, except that it was far worse. The lingering, penetrating stench made him heave and want to throw up. Too late to take a deep breath and hold it; he coughed, gagged and experienced an urge to vomit. Then he was at the door, opening it quickly and slamming it shut behind him, gulping down the faint cooking smells which wafted through from the kitchen.

  ‘Are you all right, Mike?’ Holly stood by the Rayburn, stirring something in a saucepan. There was genuine alarm on her face.

  ‘I’m okay,’ he smiled wanly, ‘apart from the noise and the smell.’

  ‘I’ve shut all the windows to try and keep that dreadful stink out of the house.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘But there’s nothing that will stop that awful din from getting in. Maybe we should go out, keep away until they’ve finished.’

  ‘Maybe.’ He went to the sink and began washing his hands in some leftover washing-up water. Except that we’re trapped, he thought, because I can’t get the car out and I’ll only prolong the job if I ask them to switch the compressor off and move the truck.

  ‘I can’t imagine what’s making that stench,’ she went on. ‘After all, they’re only drilling through rock and soil. I hope to God there isn’t some foul bog down there. We’ve got to drink the water that comes up out of it!’

  ‘Bennion guaranteed us water, didn’t he?’ Defiantly, he challenged that three-day-old promise.

  ‘But he didn’t promise us pure water, did he?’ Holly’s expression was strained with the thought that had been nagging her.

  ‘Surely that’s what he means.’ Mike’s words lacked conviction.

  ‘We’ll have to see what the final product is like.’ Holly realized there was no point in getting worked up at this stage. ‘I thought all country cottages had sparkling crystal clear water.’

  ‘Maybe we will.’ Mike dried his hands, idly wondering how they were going to pass the rest of today. And tomorrow. And the day after. ‘Anyway, as soon as there’s water coming out of the taps, I’m going to ask the Environmental Health Department to test it. I promise you one thing, Holly, Bennion doesn’t get a penny of his money until the water is passed fit to drink.’

  ‘Surely the drilling won’t take all day,’ she resisted the temptation to look out of the window at that moving, stinking swamp. ‘Sixty feet is what Bennion said they should find water at, and the rate that drill’s going they can’t be far off now.’

  Three hours later the rig was still jetting its foul residue over the japonica tree. Mike felt a headache coming on; this afternoon he and Holly would go for a long walk, he decided, right through the village and out as far as the Bryn. And they wouldn’t hurry back. Tomorrow they would find somewhere else to walk; if he couldn’t work, then he might as well make the most of the summer weather away from all this.

  Without warning, the compressor cut out, clanked to a halt, bringing a stillness that was in some ways as frightening as the noise itself. Mike was aware in those few seconds just how much his head throbbed and his nerves shook. He had a fleeting urge to scream, just looking at Holly, bracing himself for the return of the vibrations. But the silence continued.

  ‘I expect they’ve knocked off for lunch.’ Holly was the first to speak; she discovered that she was shouting, then whispering. ‘Or else they’ve finished,’ But she didn’t want to go out there to ask them. She preferred to stay indoors, where they were safe.

  ‘Let’s eat and then …’

  A sudden knocking on the door interrupted Mike, and made him start. The noise reverberated in the small room, and was frightening for a second. Then he laughed, a hollow, forced sound. ‘I expect it’s one of the workmen.’ It was the youth, his overalls shiny with that mud glistening evilly in the bright sunlight. In his hand he had a polythene water carrier. ‘Excuse me, chief,’ he grinned. ‘Can we ‘ave some water to make the tea?’

  ‘Water!’ It was Mike’s turn to laugh. ‘We don’t have any water, mate. That’s why you’re drilling for it out there.5

  ‘Oh!’ A moment’s perlexity, then, ‘Didn’t realize you didn’t ’ave none at all. Anywhere ’andy we can get some?’

  ‘You’ll have to walk down into the village. There’s an outside tap on the garage forecourt.’

  The younger man pulled a face and drummed the container in his dilemma; he didn’t care for walking – operating heavy machinery was more his scene. ‘Guess well ’ave to walk to the village, then. My mate’ll go.’

  ‘What’s that awful stink out there?’ Mike was easing the door closed. The stench was drifting in as if it had been lurking out there for hours awaiting its opportunity to invade the cottage. ‘What the hell is it?’

  ‘Christ knows!’ A grimace and a shrug of the shoulders. ‘Never smelled ’owt like it before, chief. Like sommat’s rottin’ down there. You ain’t got your septic tank there, ’ave you?’ His laugh seemed to have got strangled between his throat and his lips.

  Mike Mannion felt cold fingers twisting his intestines, compressing them into a hard ball. This fellow was admitting that he had never smelled anything like it before, and he had drilled six hundred boreholes!

  ‘It’s gotta be sommat in the ground,’ the youth mumbled.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Search me. Maybe there’s a soak hole down there, and all the dung from one of the farms drains into it.’

  ‘Jesus! Then in that case you’d better fi
ll it all in and forget the well. We have to drink the water, you know.’

  ‘Aw, it won’t be as bad as that. If it is a soak hole, then it’ll only be close to the surface. Deep down the water’s always pure. If it’s surface contamination then it’s easily sealed off. Don’t you worry ’bout that, we’ve come across scores of surface pollution and we’ve always got pure water from beneath it. A metre of soil is enough to filter water.’

  Mike sighed his relief aloud and closed the door as the youth returned to the Land Rover, where his stocky companion was immersed in a tabloid daily. A hiccup, nothing more; the onus was on F. Bennion & Co. Ltd. to rectify the problem. It’s not our worry, he reassured himself. Except that we have to put up with that stink in the meantime.

  ‘Damn it.’ He turned to Holly. ‘I never asked him how deep they’ve drilled so far. Well, I’m not going back out there. Come on, let’s have something to eat, and then we’ll leave them to it for an hour or two.’

  The Bryn, with its rolling grassy slopes, reminded Holly Mannion of underdone breakfast toast; the heatwave had already begun to take its toll of the wiry hill grass, turning it into growing hay, and the sheep were sheltering from the direct rays of the sun in the patches of gorse and bracken. The dry heat was pleasant in comparison with the humidity of the usual British summer. Unless you were a farmer. Or a fireman, she realized. One carelessly dropped cigarette end could start a raging inferno in these brittle pasturelands.

  They climbed to the ridge, looked back down the Garth and tried to pick out their own cottage, but it was hidden behind a line of trees. Maybe it was better that way, she thought; they had come up here to get away from that vile slurry tide and its smell of putrefaction. In the far distance they could hear the steady thump-thump-thump of the rig and the roar of the compressor.

  Mike took her hand and led her over on to the other side of the hill, where the only sounds were the drone of insects and the bleating of sheep. When they returned that evening the workmen would have gone, and only the stench would remain. She could taste it like bile in her throat even up here.

  ‘Didn’t Bennion mention something about them clearing up all their mess afterwards?’ She asked.

  ‘He mentioned it,’ Mike replied, ‘in passing. But I can’t see how they can clear up all that sludge. Maybe they’ll hose it away. But let’s not spoil the afternoon thinking about it.’

  They returned to Garth Cottage shortly before nine o’clock in the welcome cool of a heatwave’s evening, having called in at the Bear, Garth’s only pub, for a bar snack. Now they approached the cottage in trepidation.

  The rotting odour met them at the gate as they squeezed past the silent compressor truck, an invisible cloud of malevolence which hovered over their home, waiting for them to come back. If anything, the smell was worse in the stillness of evening, more dominant without the accompanying deafening sounds of rig and compressor. Tangible – at least it touched them. Heavy in the windless atmosphere, not so much as a faint breeze to disperse it.

  ‘Ugh!’ Holly quickened her step, fumbling for her doorkey, desperate to be indoors when they should have been sitting on the patio enjoying the best hours of the day, watching the sun sink out of sight behind the Bryn. ‘My God, it’s worse than ever. We’ll have to stifle ourselves with the windows closed tonight, Mike.’

  ‘I wonder if they’ve finished drilling,’ He looked back at the silent rig and slammed the door shut. ‘I should think –’

  The telephone rang in the kitchen, a jarring jangle as though it had been awaiting them with some message and now it could speak. They looked at each other in a moment of illogical fear, each willing the other to answer it.

  ‘Garth 179.’ Mike lifted the handset, aware that his voice was trembling slightly.

  ‘Ah, Mr Mannion!’ It was Bennion – there was no mistaking his confident business-like voice, ‘I’ve been trying to get you all evening.’

  A veiled reprimand for being absent, Mike decided, and felt angry. We’ve been out because of your filthy smell, Bennion, he felt like saying. ‘What can I do for you, Mr Bennion?’ he asked.

  ‘Bad news, I’m afraid, Mr Mannion.’ The voice was loaded with false jocularity. Sweeten the pill, soften the blow.

  ‘Oh?’ Holly was at his side trying to listen.

  ‘Our boys drilled down to sixty feet but there wasn’t enough water. They had to go on until they found some.’

  ‘How deep?’ That advance on the landscape paintings was already diminishing.

  ‘A hundred and thirty, I’m afraid!’

  ‘Christ!’ Rapid mental arithmetic told him 130 £7.50’s less the original £850 made … £525!

  ‘They stopped at sixty feet, as agreed, knocked the door to warn you that they’d have to go deeper, but you were out.’

  ‘What’s done is done.’ Mike was suddenly philosophical.

  ‘I just thought I ought to tell you.’ Bennion sounded relieved that his news had not invoked an angry outburst.

  ‘Thank you.’ Mike avoided Holly’s penetrating stare. ‘Oh, just one thing, Mr Bennion. What’s this awful smell that’s coming up out of the well?’

  ‘Smell, Mr Mannion? What smell? The lads never said anything about it when they came back in this evening.’

  ‘It’s like …’ Oh, Christ, what was it like? ‘It’s like … something rotting, only a thousand times worse. You can taste it, it permeates everything.’

  ‘Oh, I shouldn’t worry about it,’ Bennion laughed, ‘It’s probably just surface pollution, some kind of animal matter. We find it all over the place, but the shaft will be sealed so you’ve nothing to worry about. The lads have finished drilling. Tomorrow they’ll put the submersible pump in, cement the pit in and seal it off. Take it from me, Mr Mannion, by Tuesday, Wednesday, maybe, you’ll have the purest water in the district coming out of your taps. Don’t worry about a thing.’

  ‘And what about all this awful slurry that’s burying the garden? You did mention that you’d clear up the mess after you’d finished.’

  ‘We haven’t finished yet!’ Bennion’s tone changed and became sharp with controlled irritation. ‘When we’ve finished the job, all that will be hosed away.’

  The line went dead, the conversation was closed. Slowly Mike Mannion replaced the receiver. He said to Holly, ‘There’s nothing whatever to worry about, just a bad smell that will disappear when they wash the slurry away.’ He tried to sound relieved, confident. But only for his wife’s sake, because his stomach was balling again and for some inexplicable reason he felt frightened. Very frightened.

  4

  Nick Paton had moved out from the Midlands’ sprawling conurbation shortly after passing his City & Guilds. A qualified plumber, he sought a change of lifestyle like many others who had opted out, and preferred to earn his living maintaining private water supplies run by hydraulic rams rather than conventional mains bursts, and overhauling central heating systems operated by woodburners in contrast to boring gas and electric ones. It promised a more relaxed way of life. But he had been disillusioned this last five years; because he was good he was in demand, and there came a time when the workload exceeded the number of hours available in the week. So he worked weekends to try to catch up. But he never caught up, he was fighting against a backlog of jobs, and the pleading phone calls became abusive. So he learned to live with it, left his telephone off the hook and took each day as it came.

  Nick had seen his thirtieth birthday last February. He was tall and thin, and his hair was sparse; by the time he was forty his crown would be bald. But that was a long way off – he lived for today. His easy-going disposition was rarely ruffled; girls fancied him, older women, too, but he seemed oblivious to their attentions. There was barely time enough for work, certainly none for romance.

  Three years ago he had moved out of his lodgings with Mrs Carter – an ageing widow who looked upon him as the son she had lost in the war – and bought the Green, a ramshackle cottage on the edge of Garth village. He
somehow found the time to renovate it but was seldom at home to enjoy the results. It was a roosting place, somewhere to sleep, and he ate either at the Bear, if he was lucky enough to be finished work before the landlord called ‘time’, or else at a fish and chip shop in the town, seven miles away.

  His list of proposed calls was scribbled on a jotter pad kept in his Escort van. The first job scheduled for that morning was Mrs King’s toilet, the downstairs one. She had phoned the previous week, or it could have been a fortnight ago, to report that it ‘bubbled back’ when she flushed it. A blockage, undoubtedly, but he guessed it was nothing that a good rodding wouldn’t solve. Ten minutes at the most, and then there would be some ‘bait’ for him, the Garth term for elevenses, a mug of tea and a pile of cheese and pickle sandwiches. No rush there, and he needn’t bother with much breakfast this morning.

  The telephone bleeped. Damn, he had forgotten to take it off the hook. He decided to answer it, and that was a decision of mixed benefits. It was Frank Bennion on the line, and that meant he wouldn’t be going to Mrs King’s for bait.

  In a way Bennion was his boss. The borehole man put a lot of work Nick’s way; there were innumerable wells to pipe into dwellings and Bennion paid well – charged the customer plenty, too. Nick sighed beneath his breath. ‘Very well, Mr Bennion, I’ll go straight there this morning.’

  There was one snag. This fellow at Garth Cottage – Nick knew the place vaguely and had thought it was still unoccupied – had water from a ram as well, and wanted the new system plumbed into the existing one. No real problem, just time-consuming; an extra pit, two stopcocks, some modifications to the header tank in the loft. An extra day’s work. He hoped Mrs King’s toilet blockage had cleared itself. They often did. Nick lingered another ten minutes, just time enough to eat some beans on toast; there was unlikely to be bait at Garth Cottage.