Free The Well by Elizabeth Jolley

Harper, dear, thank you. I’ll get my test first pop, you’ll see! Give me five minutes and I’m finished here.’ Katherine washed and dried the last dishes while Hester limped out into the yard where she stood waiting, unwilling and wooden, beside the Toyota.

M R B IRD called to see Hester. His visit was sooner than expected. Hester preferred to have the farm discussion at specific times and she usually arranged these times to suit herself. An enormous tea drinker, Mr Bird sat to drink tea with them. He was, Hester said privately to Katherine in the kitchen while they were splitting scones and spreading them with strawberry jam and cream, quite kind but an utter bore. She often felt, she said, like screaming with boredom when he was there. She did not scream however. A recurring painful memory prevented any showing of hysterical or true feelings. It was not so long ago that time could blur entirely a farm-management conversation when Mr Bird had come directly to the point and warned Hester that with the death of her father she would become a very well-to-do woman and that there was always the possibility that some man, out for land and money, might make up to her with a view to marriage. He had spoken as gently as he could but the very truth that he uttered was one which Hester knew and understood all too well; the awful fact that a man, if one should come, would not want her in her ugliness for herself but want her only as a means to the possession of her land.
    â€˜I think and have always thought,’ Mr Bird added more pain in his meant kindness, ‘that you are a handsome woman Miss Hester and very clever too but there’s those I would protect any woman from.’
    Thank you, Mr Bird,’ Hester said then, ‘I have absolutely no intention of marrying anyone.’ Later in the privacy of her bed she had been unable to stop a terrible bitter silent weeping because any tiny hope seemed to have gone completely. She had in her room chests packed with household linen embroidered during the years with Miss Herzfeld. Laughingly in drawn-thread work and with generous smooth stitching, white upon white, the two of them had initialled sheets, table cloths, table napkins, little linen towels and pillow slips with an elaborate monograph designed from a double aitch Hilde Herzfeld and Hester Harper or Harper and Herzfeld. Miss Herzfeld, making her way into the youthful Hester’s heart, taught her to wash her neck every day with cold water so that it would be beautiful to receive, when the time came, the necklaces and pendants and jewels some man would want to cherish her with. Both of them had washed their necks religiously even on the coldest mornings with the coldest water.
    So Miss Harper did not scream. As she told herself on other occasions, when she managed to dismiss Mr Bird’s intimate conversation, she also had a respect for her father’s money and needed advice so that she and Katherine could spend and enjoy themselves without reducing themselves to poverty. She needed Mr Bird and, when he now indicated that he had private business to discuss, Hester suggested that Katherine should go and finish machining the new curtains, part of the preparations to make everything clean and pretty for Joanna.
    Mr Bird, coming quickly to the reason for his out-of-time visit, explained that Mr Borden wanted to buy Miss Harper’s land and he wanted to buy the farmhouse instead of renting it.
    â€˜Borden’s place is doing very well.’ Mr Bird wiped his tea wet lips on the back of his hand. ‘It’s the slope of his place and the movement of moisture,’ he said. ‘Funny how you can stand on the ridge out there and see a crop to one side of you and – on the other side – there’s – well, there’s nothing.’ He shook his head. Hester knew what he meant. She had seen this for herself.
    Mr Bird went on to say that he thought it would be a good