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As predicted, Harriet rudely failed to attend despite the grand written invitation to the lady’s great welcome-home party to herself. The hostess promised to serve Harriet’s favourite dessert, creamy homemade meringue with raspberry coulis – did I mention that at that gathering last time? thought Harriet with alarm. By god, those women are good listeners if nothing else.
Jake had seen it, she knew, for she had found it on the kitchen table upon her return from town on a day out with her urban friends. She was a little bit jolly and went on to tease Jake with the card.
“Oh my, darling, look! You would simply regale yourself with Tammy’s cooking. And how thoughtful, look. My husband is also welcome pop along, she writes, at the bottom, in smallest of lettering. Look Jake, how lucky you are! Clearly the village adores us for all our efforts to fit in. Ah go on, we haven’t seen her in so long. Perhaps Andy beat some sense into her during their time away,” she howled with wicked laughter.
“You’ve clearly had a great time out in the city,” said Jake dryly. To be fair, he did envy Harriet her light-hearted view of human nature. The city folk had nothing at stake in their social life. They could flit from group to group or meet new friends altogether once the old gang got nasty. They were not trapped in a circle of rich layabouts and benign retirees, sprinkled with the occasional bored psychopath. All those characters were diluted in the crowd… a sea of blissful anonymity.
Harriet often reproached him his envy of city life. She, to the contrary, had felt unique, wanted, a reason to get dressed up, during her time in the village. Even the odd conspiracy tickled her and the glorious rolling hills took her breath away every single morning from the window of their matrimonial nest.
She loved the townspeople’s honest interest in animal husbandry, their genuine discussions of the weather. The weather had a real impact here, unlike in the city where it was endlessly discussed to break the ice but never actually changed the course of anybody’s day. In the village, it could turn out a matter of life and death for a farmer’s crops, a young woman’s horses, even for a young child.
One of the town’s eccentrics could easily trace her alcoholism back to the day she opened the car door after stalling in a flooded ford and her toddler son had been viciously flushed away by a merciless wave, fatally bashing his head on a nearby rock. The lady was never the same since, but she maintained a solid reputation through relentless creativity and shameless honesty.
This woman lived in the neighbouring village and Harriet was always disappointed to have so little access to her. This was not the petty type who would indulge in shallow, judgmental gossip round a dinner table in the afternoon with a hateful husband leering at her through his zoo-like glass barrier.
Most village folk were too shy to approach the tragic artist except for Lazy Larry, who had happened to participate in the installation of one of the woman’s great exhibitions and had remained friendly with her ever since. Lazy Larry, despite the name and belly, was a hard worker whenever he did any.
Jake had plenty of time for Larry. He had met him earlier that day during the older man’s afternoon waddle through the countryside, and had him in for a drink. The benevolent fellow knew Jake had been having a hard time and he felt there was great integrity in the boy, who toiled away daily to create the perfect home for a future family.
“How you going, Jake my boy?” Larry had boomed, causing Jake to start upright from his focussed efforts on the paving stones leading to the front porch.
“Oh hey, Larry! Long time no see,” he relaxed visibly upon seeing the friendly face. “It’s going, mate, going mental if I daresay,” Jake said with a grin.
“Good to hear you’re joining the rest of us, then. What’s next for this god-forsaken historical site?”
“It’s looking pretty well now mate, to be fair. A couple more bits here and there, the well water connected to the mains and we’re rolling along smooth as cream.”
“That old thing not connected yet? Oh look Jake, I’m sorry I’ve been busy larding up. I would have been glad to help speed it up for you and angry Andy.”
“Please – don’t even give it a second thought,” Jake waved his hand though his gut clenched bitterly. “I seem to remember Harry saying you told her some folksy legend about that thing, by the way. Some woman ghost in there or something?”
“That’s right, she must be what’s holding him up. Distracting him, like, with her womanly wiles. God knows they’re probably wilier than Tamara’s at this point,” he sniggered.
“Yeah, any bird’s a catch after that sneering viper of his,” Jake grimaced. He was so relieved to have a sympathetic ear to disparage Tamara with. Lazy Larry was a strong supporter of the opposition and nodded his chins emphatically.
“Say what you will of the ghost, but the victim surely can’t be pure legend,” insisted Jake in all his curiosity.
“You’re right there, kid. It was only two landowners ago – that’s fifty years – when one of them got so tangled up in the town’a affairs. I think she was a bookkeeper, found out a bit too much about her neighbours’ dealings. Some say she was thrown in, some say she did herself in as the place and all its ugly dramas got to her, but either way a human most certainly find herself decomposing down that well.”
“Christ almighty. I hope – wonder who… fished it out?” Jake said in a hushed voice.
“Can’t say for certain, but I think it was the son of the next occupant. The police round here have always been a band of jokers anyways, nobody believes a word they say for better or worse -” he raised his eyebrow knowingly at Jake - “but poor Andy’s certainly got some heavy history to be dealing with, working on that thing.”
“Well, if he’d just finish up already he wouldn’t have to anymore,” the landlord snapped.
Lazy Larry chuckled a goodbye and walked off, leaving the young man to simmer down. That filter system will have to be state-of-the-art, if there’s a dead fucking body down there, he thought. Better be ghost-proof at any rate. And I’ve dealt enough with these police for another decade at least, no chance I’m asking them for records on that.
He wandered towards the well-room where Andrew had resumed work after the tea that had been dutifully prepared by Harriet and reluctantly served by Jake in order to keep the precarious peace. The old man had a dour expression on his face and Jake realised he had probably overheard – there was no way of knowing how much – the conversation with Larry a few minutes earlier.
This was definitely the last thing Jake needed: Andrew knowing his precise feelings about his – what had he called her? - sneering viper of a wife. And, sure enough, he did. He had also caught the part about the excruciating pace of his work, though that at least was fair comment.
Upon realising the social doom which awaited him, Jake had simply walked away to wait for his woman to return and tell her they would need to hire someone else to finish up. His hope of ever gelling with the villagers was finished.
His musings about the dead bookie had reached fever pitch when Harriet burst, half-drunk, onto the scene only to mock his dislike of the woman who had made his new life, which was supposed to have been perfectly idyllic, a living hell.
“What do you say, my hot mess? Shall we lighten up their evening?” she was leaning on the counter after a particularly turbulent mis-step. The girl’s pretty head turned to the floor tiles to try and settle the booze-storm inside her skull.
“Maybe you should lie down, my drunken doll. We can talk tomorrow morning.”
Andrew had gone a couple of hours ago, with an extremely curt salutation. Jake had not dared to give him the sack then and there, and despised himself not only for this cowardice but for his clumsy display as soon as Larry had granted him the blissful abandon of badmouthing Tamara. The villagers suddenly did not seem so guilty in this whole debacle as he was. They are fools undeniably, and yet I allow myself to be drawn in. I can not even manipulate a septuagenarian hive mind into liking me! No, I cave to their crushing gossip, I avoid them, I bring on more unjust suspicion through my actions. I do not care what they might think if they knew the truth, but this gross misrepresentation insults me beyond belief, traps me like a rat in molasses. They will not rest until I’m done for!
And Harriet, poor Harriet. She could fit in better than I ever could. Ever! Maybe it was my stubborn mother’s fault, and now there’s no way out, where to? Harriet with downplay it all as she always does and stick to this place like a loving tick.
That woman down the well would understand me like nobody else.
She knew the sordid and pathetic lives of these tiny-minded people like the back of her hand. She would sympathise with me better than Harriet ever could, silly, naive Harry, likes to be centre of attention, doesn’t she?… flaunting their generous gifts in my outcast face… the woman of the house, the real lady of the land, she’s down there.
He found himself by the well all of a sudden, delirious.
The shower where Willy Wurton had expired was about three metres to the back of him, through a doorway and a short corridor. Their bedroom stood right above it.
Harriet was busy readying herself for a romantic sparring session with her beloved, whom she assumed was pent-up again. But Jake wasn’t pent up. He was fed up. And he wanted to be master of the village like that woman had been. He needed to share his abject hatred with a sympathetic ear, be it a partly decomposed or spectral one.
Maybe she had not been so pretty as Harriet, he thought in a brief moment of reason. But there was more to life than sex! he reasoned further. There needed to be understanding, sympathy, a shared worldly cynicism. His final thoughts as he plummeted through the darkness were, “the piping looks nearly finished.”
THE END