The Well by Elizabeth Jolley

Author:Elizabeth Jolley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781742284750
Publisher: Penguin Group Australia
Published: 2014-08-21T04:00:00+00:00

Speeding along the long road to the town Hester thought of Katherine nervously sweeping the rooms and then, with thin tremulous fingers, moving and dusting the ornaments. She would do this and afterwards prepare the vegetables for the evening meal because she had been told to. ‘Wash the spinach,’ Hester had said. ‘Be sure to get the sand out of it,’ as she had often said. ‘We’ll have Eggs Florentine.’ Katherine would, from habit, be very careful with the water and she would be sure to wash the fresh green leaves with a thoroughness equal to Hester’s. Afterwards she would lie down on her bed because, as she left, Hester had said to her to lie down and have a nice sleep. The day, she said, was just an ordinary day.

As she increased the speed Hester tried to think of Katherine serene at home busy with simple household work. She tried to think of Katherine singing and dancing from one part of the small house to another. And she tried to picture her curled up asleep, possibly for comfort, in the middle of the larger bed which was Hester’s.

Instead she knew the house was full of little sounds, footsteps and rustlings; someone breathing heavily; Katherine lying stiff with fear trying to hide flat under the tartan rug …

Hester felt hot. It was an unbearable heat. It was as if thinking gave her a pain. Her face flushed, burning hot. She rolled down the window swerving from one side of the road to the other. She felt a chill spread down her back. She knew that Katherine at home would be lying on her bed listening to the silence in the house. She would, very quietly, lean down reaching for her shoes and, with stealth, slip her feet into them and very slowly she would walk outside knowing that the house was empty because she has been through it with her little dustpan and brush and her cleaning rags. She has never before minded being left alone. Mostly she accompanies Miss Harper everywhere. Once when she was unwell … Hester smiled at the memory. Once when Katherine was unwell and had to stay in bed, Miss Harper, going off alone, had come back with the most darling duchess set. The dainty brush and comb and hand-mirror – Katherine still had them – were small and backed with hand-beaten silver.

‘Oh Miss Harper, dear, wherever did you get them? They’re so cute!’

‘I found them,’ Hester explained then, ‘in that funny old shop, you know, near Mr Bird’s place. The antique-furniture shop – the other end of town.’

‘Oh Miss Harper, dear, they must have been terribly expensive!’

‘Yes, but pretty Kathy, and I like you to have pretty things, especially if they are of good quality.’ Hester smiled again. During the years they often tried to imagine the previous owner of the set.

‘She must have been a princess, Miss Harper, dear, or a famous movie star.’

‘Yes a princess or a film star. We do have them here in the wheat.

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