The Well
One
Finn leant back and looked at her painting. It was different. The long deprivation had changed something in her. But the feeling was the same. The feeling that she’d somehow depicted something she hadn’t known was there.
She picked up her thinnest brush, just a few hog’s hairs, and dipped it in the slick of indigo. The oils were still too wet, but she carefully signed her name in the bottom right-hand corner. Fionnuala O’Neill. It didn’t smudge, and sat there darkly gleaming against the silver-grey sheen of the sea.
Finn sat for a moment, breathing in the forgotten familiarity of the smells of linseed oil, paint, and… The long ago. Indigo. The same pigment as woad. Difficult to think she was still that woman. Somewhere inside.
Beyond her easel, the sky’s lightening was already reflected in the water, and fishing boats were setting out with the tide towards the islands. Reluctant to break the mood, the rare moment of peace before Andrew woke, she just wiped her brushes, and left them soaking in the jar of white spirit. Time enough to clean them later.
She wandered into the kitchen to make some tea, then took her mug out into the back garden. It was deeply shadowed by the sun just beginning to rise over the hills beyond. Clouds were gathering, but for now the air was still and suffused with an early-morning freshness. Finn surveyed the wilderness the garden had become. The knee-high grass and the straggling suckers of the bushes reverting to dog-rose. The white-trumpeted bind-weed rampant, smothering. Andrew used to keep it so well. One of the few things he could almost control.
She flinched when she heard the crash, uncertain what had happened. By the time she got to her studio, it was too late. Her palette was upside down and oil paint was splattered over the floor, the walls. Her painting was gone.
Finn ran into the hall. The front door was open. No sign of him in the road. Back inside she checked the bedroom. The duvet lay flung on the floor. The sheet was crumpled and trailing.
She looked at the clock. Ella would be coming off shift; she’d probably be back at the police station. She lifted the phone and rang her daughter.
She ran outside, turned towards the village … the way he’d taken the last couple of times. The wind was cold, fine droplets of rain stung her face. She went too fast, and her feet ran away with her down the slope. The hedges at the side of the road seemed to be rushing uphill. She stumbled into a puddle, splashing icy water up her bare legs. Fearing she would fall, she turned sideways, and her feet had to slow.
The headlights of a car slowly rounding the upward bend shone into her eyes, and she paused, raising her arm to protect them.
The car braked to a stop, and the door opened. A hand grabbed her arm.
‘Mother, for God’s sake.’
She looked up at Ella.
‘Get in the car.’
Finn got in, turning to look behind. Andrew was strapped into the central seat, the picture under his arm, oil paint streaked over his pyjamas, rubbed into the stubble of his chin.
Ella slammed the driver’s door and put the car into gear. Her face was tight, weary.
*****
‘Look at it, just look at it.’ Finn held up her smudged and smeared painting, steadying it against the kitchen wall, beyond tears. Her painting. So much it had taken to begin again. ‘Mum.’ Ella folded her arms across her chest. ‘Mum, I picked up both of you. Both of you were running sideways like crabs down the middle of the road. In your nightclothes.’
Finn wrenched her gaze from the dark stain where her name had been dragged down into the sea, and looked at herself. At the paint-stained dressing gown wrapped loosely over not very much.
‘Someone might have seen you,’ Ella said.
Finn put her hands in her pockets, clenching them into fists.
‘Only one of you is supposed to be sick,’ said Ella.
They sat for a while in a tense silence. From the lounge, they could hear him softly singing along to the television.
‘He kept saying “gallery.”’
Finn looked at her.
‘When I picked him up,’ said Ella, ‘he kept saying “gallery.” It must have registered, somehow, somewhere in there. He wants you painting again. So do I.’
Finn pulled her dressing gown tighter around herself, re-knotted the belt. Straightened her aching fingers. ‘Something’s changed … all this time … all there’s been. But it was good. Parts of it.’
‘So now you know you can do it again.’ Ella touched her mother’s hand. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I need to eat before bed. It might as well be here as anywhere. I’ll shower Dad; make breakfast for him, and for myself.’
Looking at her daughter Finn saw her weariness, and felt her own.
‘Get dressed, go and get something in the village,’ said Ella. ‘You need a break.’
Finn started to protest, then nodded.
*****
In Portmonay, the streets were empty and her footfalls echoed in the silence, but the Rendezvous Café was heaving. The espresso machine roared, panting out clouds of steam. There was the chink of spoons against cups, voices murmuring subdued and good-natured.
The drying people smelt of wet dog.
Finn stood looking round for a table. It was hot. She unzipped her parka, but it was still too hot, it was becoming difficult to breathe. Her eyes were losing focus. She couldn’t … she pushed past an old man in her hurry to get to the exit. She heard him grunt.
Down on the quay she paused. The air was cold, briny. She realised she was holding her breath, and let it out. She breathed in deeply, feeling the cold air aching into her lungs. Her sight gradually cleared.
Fishing boats lay dark in the water; sails bundled and lashed against their masts so they looked like pollarded trees, tall and knobbly against the gauzed mist thickening over the hills of Jura. Emerald-faced mallards bobbed in the wake widening and calming behind a black-hulled yacht threading a path through the scattered islets of the bay towards the horizon.
She zipped up her parka, shivering, looking further out towards the islands she knew were there, but could no longer see. She listened to the wind, the waves, trying not to think.
Finn walked towards the sea, the pebbles shifting under her feet. The seaweed clinging to the rocks was drying, the bladder-wrack popping. An image of her painting formed in her mind, but she pushed it further back, where she pushed so much else she couldn’t bear to see.
She sat on a boulder. The sea was breaking on the shore, gratingly retreating.
Hypnotic.
Soothing.
*****
Finn became aware that the tang of the seaweed and the brine of the sea had become stronger. The tide must be on the turn. She pulled her car keys out of her pocket and climbed back up the steps, her legs unwilling. Once in the car she sat, head tilted back against the rest, watching the clouds scudding across the sky. Then she went back home.
*****
Finn sat for a while after Ella left, then went to the sink to wash their breakfast dishes. And remembered she hadn’t eaten. Andrew came too, walking close behind. After standing leaning against her for a while, he allowed himself to be led out into the garden. She returned to the kitchen, closing the door firmly behind herself. Leant against it for a moment, eyes closed.
But when she turned and looked through the window, he was standing motionless on the paving by the bird-bath, staring straight at her. His face was blank, expressionless. Ella had dressed him in the black tracksuit which had become too big for him. It sagged away from his neck, exposing its sinews and hollows, emphasising the sallowness of his skin. His thin black hair was blowing in the cold of the wind. And she went out and fetched him back in.
She rubbed some warmth into his hands, and sat with him in the lounge, humming to his favourite music CD until he began to sing along.
Finn went to the studio first, cleaned up the worst of the mess, topped up the spirit-jar around the sticky brushes. She passed him on her way back to the breakfast dishes, already pacing the hall, searching.
*****
Finn heard Ella’s car pull up outside the bungalow, and frowned. Two days in a row, there must be something wrong.
‘Oh, good,’ said Ella, before she was fully through the front door. She pulled it sharply closed behind herself. ‘You’re dressed. Things have been jumping at the station, just when I’m going to be away.’ She hung up her parka and herded Finn into the kitchen.