The Well by Elizabeth Jolley Page B

Usually she sat on an upright wooden chair.
    In the kitchen Hester, conscious of her shaking hands, failed to light the primus stove even at a second attempt and the kitchen was filled with kerosene fumes. Katherine, at once, took over the lighting of the stove in a most natural way either not noticing or pretending not to notice. Hester leaned against the door post and watched with Katherine as the blue flames roared under the little tin kettle they used when they wanted tea in a hurry.
    During the night Hester, who felt very tired, was wakeful. It seemed to her that after sleeping heavily she was no longer able to sleep and her right arm felt numb. She recalled, as she lay awake trying to feel confident that she was able to move her arm and that it was only pins and needles because of lying on the arm while she was asleep, that she had been very tired lately. Her other knee had seemed weak and at times when she was stepping up a step it almost seemed as if the knee on her good leg was not able to take the weight thrown on to it because of the weakness and awkwardness of the lame leg. She wondered if she could have had a mild stroke. This thought was so alarming, the thought of Katherine all alone and herself unable to speak or to move, that she raised herself up and getting out of bed she walked as firmly as she could about her small bedroom. There was no sound from Katherine’s little room opposite.
    Quietly Hester closed her door and, finding the matches she lit her candle. It was with relief that she found herself able to do these things. She was perfectly all right, after all, she told herself. And, with her usual honesty, she went on to tell herself that she was jealous. Actually jealous. At her age. All because Katherine wanted the company of this Joanna. Rubbish company, a girl who could do nothing but harm. Hester was vague in her mind about the life this other girl could have had but it was dirty and infected and should be kept away from the freshness and purity of their own lives. She tried to think of other things. Thinking of her endless paddocks should comfort her. She loved her land but recently had been forced to realize that the years of drought had now become several years. She was relieved that Mr Borden still wanted to live in the farmhouse. She never went across there. Days, weeks, months, years with Katherine made time go by very quickly. The farmhouse seemed a long way away.
    That Katherine could have such a wish, Hester reasoned, was natural. She kept telling herself this but such reason did not help her. She dreaded the hovering loneliness.
    She thought, in spite of loving the farm, how intolerable the black moonless nights in the wheat would be if she had all her days and nights alone. Katherine might well, she shivered at the idea, be tempted by Joanna’s stories of her own life to want to leave. The quiet secluded old woman’s life, for that is how it could be described, was not really the desired thing for a young woman like Katherine.
    She found herself, without explanation, poking about in one of the cupboards in her room. One of the things she pulled out to study carefully in the soft light of her candle was an old photograph of herself when she was a little girl. A photograph taken by a professional photographer in a shop.
    She had not looked at the photograph for years and now suddenly all sorts of memories of fondness and cherishing came back to her. Suddenly she wanted to be Hetty, the little lamb, Hetty, my lamb, again. She could, as she looked, almost feel the crêpe de chine of the new frock on her bare legs. The blue and fawn pattern was there in the picture. Now she remembered it clearly, the clinging material very soft and light. It was as though she could, even now, feel the white-ribbed silk socks tight round her legs. When she looked at the polished leather sandals she felt as if she possessed them and wore them still, so vividly did they come back to her from the