Free The Well by Elizabeth Jolley Page B

Never, she thought while the hairbrush steadily pressed the long sweeps of her strong hair downwards, had her paddocks looked so beautiful. From where they sat they looked across fold after fold of silent silvered stubble. In the moonlight the land seemed to be lifted up, raised as if held in offering towards the moon and the stars. Every stalk seemed clear and separate as if made of precious metal.
    â€˜Perhaps,’ Hester said dreamily, ‘perhaps I had better go to town tomorrow and sell and sign and do whatever has to be done. Perhaps,’ she added, having told Katherine word for word Mr Bird’s confidential conversation, ‘if we had some ready cash instead of it all being tied up in the property we could do a bit of travelling. See Europe. I’d like to take you to the places where I went when I was a girl. Beautiful! I remember,’ she continued as if to herself, ‘the swan waitress.’ She laughed. ‘You’d like to go wouldn’t you Kathy, wouldn’t you? eh?’
    â€˜Oh Miss Harper, dear, you will know best what should be done,’ Katherine said, making a prim little mouth as she spoke. She told Hester to turn her head, ‘A bit more Miss Harper, dear, so as I can brush the other side. Your hair’s beautiful, Miss Harper, dear,’ she purred. At the convent, she went on to remind Miss Harper, they all had to have their hair cut off, ‘real short. Oh it was terribly ugly, you can have no idea.’ She brought into her voice an American accent from
Saturday Night Fever
revived for the fourth time at the west-end drive-in cinema. ‘So short and ugly,’ she mourned, ‘you reely can have no idea. We were all perfect frights!’ Hester, having heard this lamentation more times than she could count, had her reply ready.
    â€˜Well yours has grown very well over the years,’ she repeated comfortably in a voice reserved for remarks like this. She took the hairbrush. ‘Sit down, Kathy, in front of me, like this and I’ll do yours now. It’s very soft and pretty, your hair, very fine and pretty.’ Gently she began to brush Katherine’s pale hair. The idea of travelling appealed very much. Suddenly it seemed possible that they would skim through the week of Joanna’s visit and then deposit the guest at the railway station, perhaps even a day early; there would be a great deal of planning and arranging to do. Hester as she saw Katherine’s hair shine in the moonlight under the steady brush began to think of charming little hotels in the Swiss Alps, in Paris and in Vienna. Yes, she thought, money would make all this possible.
    The transaction, the agreement, all the decisions and the drawing up of documents for the sale took several weeks.
    Mr Borden, to celebrate and to make his new ownership known, announced that he was giving a party and it would be held at the hotel. As Rosalie Borden said, it was a combination party as several people in the agreement were taking up small parcels of land immediately and it was also a way for Miss Harper to say farewell to her land. Quite an occasion really when you thought about it as the property had been Harpers since kingdom come. The hotel, she said, was to be taken over entirely for the night as anyone who was anyone in the township and the surrounding districts was to be invited. A great many friends and acquaintances of the Bordens lived in the city and would be coming. Some of these people, looking towards a leisured life on the land, had put down large sums of money to secure a small corner of Mother Nature.
    The preparations went forward quickly. All the women with any pretence at being dressmakers were busy making and remaking dresses. There was to be a buffet supper (with caterers), laid out in both dining rooms. Seafoods and snacks would be served in the bars. And, in the yard there was to be a three-piece band and a specially laid and chalked dance floor. There was