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As it turned out, Andrew was the go-to man for all things plumbing. He had cleaned and set up a fair few wells in his time living in the country.
Jake and Harriet had just about finished their work on the courtyard. The large pink house overlooked two great lawns, three barns where they planned to house chickens for Jake and a couple of ponies for Harriet, and the trailer with its fatal unprotected ramp. Months of work had resulted in three fully-seeded lawns, barns scraped clean and a fancy new (used) tractor for trailer-tipping and field jobs. Their log burner and vegetable patch made them dead near self-sufficient. The last piece of the perfect puzzle was the adaptation of the well, so they would no longer need to pay for water.
Jake and Andrew had had very little to do with one another over the years. He thought Andrew seemed a sound bloke and sympathised with his plight of having to live with Tamara. Andrew, meanwhile, who had as little as possible to do with his wife and her friends, did not know the unpleasant experience she had imposed decades ago upon the man who had just hired him.
After they discussed the work that needed to be done, they sat in the kitchen shooting the breeze.
“How’s the wife, then?” asked Jake.
“Oh you know. I do my thing, she does hers,” was Andrew’s noncommittal reply.
“Ah yes, what’s her thing these days? Stirred up and trouble lately?” asked Jake, foolishly.
“What’s that about my wife, mate?” Jake sensed his neck hair bristle in response to that of his interlocutor across the table.
“Oh Andy, I’m sorry. I didn’t realised you two were on good – you know – anyway, I’m sorry, I just had some trouble with her is all.”
Though Andrew could barely speak a word to his wife without punching an imaginary wall, she was still the woman he was shackled to, and values were values.
He stood and said, “I’ll see you in a few days, once I’ve got all the parts to begin work.”
Jake behaved as politely as possible, but the goodbye was cold as the dead fawn in his field at the edge of the forest.
“Will you ever learn to keep your gob shut, you verbally incontinent fool!” he said to himself once Andrew had shut the door from the other side. He went and hastily covered up the manhole, not before casting a glance down seventy metres of ancient water which gleamed up at him menacingly.
“Would
you believe the police service around here?”
Tamara was
chittering away at her regular mums and nans meet-up. The farmer’s
wife, still very impressed with the woman’s impeccable social
manipulation skills, mouthed a hasty assent with her hazel eyes wide
open. Cordelia rolled hers and said nothing. She had had some
interactions with the lady of Sadler Farm on various occasions, all
of them pleasant. She did not believe Tamara’s accusations for a
second, but God was it convenient to have somewhere safe to leave the
two-year-old free of charge throughout the week – aside from the
occasional obligation of showing her face at one of the dreaded
socials.
Just keep quiet, stay polite, and all will glide over you. She was saving up for a house since her partner had left her with the child and a rented cottage she dearly hoped to make her own one day. The owner had assured her he would sell it off “soon”, but in the meantime still gladly took the rent money every month. Cordelia tried nightly to keep her mind off the fact that she could have nearly paid it off by now, had the subhuman twat stuck to his word back when she and her ex-partner had taken it on. Well, I suppose we would have had that added nightmare when we split up, she rationalised in her darkest hours.
And so Cordelia waited, worked and saved, all her working hours going into plans for the future. The injustices of today carried out against others dissolved in the pool of her own struggles. She sent warm thoughts to lovely Harriet and loving Jake, and shook her head in silent dissent when Tamara stoked the conspiratorial fire in this warm which warmed the room filled with children and soft toys.
The other mothers joined in exuberantly, though, seemingly thrilled at the idea of a battered wife. What else could it possibly be? None of them had been seen to by any man in weeks, months, some even years. The thought of enjoyable or loud love-making never entered their righteous minds.
Cordelia, who had been out of the village and messed around a bit of late, had her own suspicions as to what that bruise on the base of Harriet’s neck might have been, but God forbid she pep up about her own improprieties in this circle. The thrashing sounds allegedly overheard by Kevin the meteorologist as he stumbled past the Sadler property late one night, Cordelia also attributed to something a little more complex than simple battery. But she kept silent.
Andrew sat darkly in his armchair while Tamara played with the children in the next room. He could see into the women’s gathering but could not hear a word – this was preferable. She’s a good woman at heart, he tried to think to himself, loyally, in defiance of Jake’s recent attack of her character.
She may be a harpie, but she’s my harpie, God damn it, he affirmed to himself, taking one more sip of his strong lemonade. I already look a twat. How much more of one will I be if my wife’s integrity is questioned?
His work on the well suffered greatly from these bitter thoughts. Furthermore, neighbour Angela’s gentle enquiries as to the well-being of “poor Harriet” set him even more firmly against the man of Sadler Farm. How can the bloke call himself a man and not sort out these rumours, if there’s no truth to them? At this point, Andrew’s own sins were but a cobweb in his mind – ancient, irrelevant.
Harriet was indeed the sweetest and gentlest character he had ever met and could not abide by the idea of anybody mistreating her.
His work suffered, and so did Jake’s sanity. Why, oh why had he agreed to pay the man by the hour as opposed to the full job? Nearly one thousand pounds in materials already disappeared down the proverbial four-hundred-year-old drain, and now this excruciatingly slow plumber whom he dared not cross for fear of setting one more denizen against himself.
Although Andrew was not technically working slowly on purpose, he
wasn’t trying his hardest on purpose either. Filter parts were
taking weeks to arrive in the mail, but he came over to work on some
connecting pipes in the meantime, knowing at the back of his mind
that it would take some undoing once the filters came in.
It
was through no particular ill will but general gruffness and
reluctance to go home where his wife hosted ever more frequent
get-togethers where he was certainly not welcome – although it was
never explicitly stated. Nothing ever was.
Tamara would often say that his mere presence within a hundred-metre radius cast a shadow over any pleasant gathering. Cordelia always considered this a rather ill-fitting description for their weekly meet-ups.
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