Read Online The Well by Catherine Chanter - Free Book Online Page B

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 thegap. 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