The Moon in the Meadow Well

At nine o’clock the Well Keeper got up off her stool, lifted the lid off the Meadow Well, and looked down.

The moon was at the bottom. It lay on the water, small and round and white, and perfectly still.

“Still there,” she said, and put the lid back.

Then she glanced along the meadow in case anyone had seen her. Nobody had. The lamps stood in their row down the lane, gold in the blue, and every cottage window was lit. Nobody at all was out of doors, because it was moon-night. That was the whole point of moon-night.

On the clearest night of every month, the Sky-Meadow came for its water early. People came before dusk with jugs and pails and kettles and the big blue ewer from the cottage by the gate. Once a man came with a teapot, having left it rather late. They filled up, said good evening, and went home. After that nobody drew a drop until morning, out of respect for the moon.

Nobody had ever said what would happen if somebody did. That was what made it a custom and not a rule.

The custom had come with the job. The keeper before her had kept it too. She had left one written instruction behind. It was on a slip of card, tacked to the post under the slate roof, and it said: Clear nights: mind the moon. When the Well Keeper asked what that meant, the old keeper looked at her as if she had asked what water was for. “You don’t draw up the moon,” she said. “Everybody knows that.”

The Well Keeper was a practical woman. She had hung out washing round more than one charter with a field board and a serious face, and she was not easily impressed by things that glowed. She did not, if she was honest, believe there was a moon in her well. But she had never quite dared to stop, either. So once a month she sat up by the well on a stool, in her second-best coat. She had a kettle on a little oil stove, and the kitchen clock propped on the rim stones where she could see it. And every hour she lifted the lid.

The lid was an old bread board of Poppy’s with one corner burnt off. Nobody remembered how it had come to be the lid. It still smelled faintly of crust when it was warm, and the Well Keeper found that more comforting than she would have said out loud.

Every hour the moon was there. Every hour she said so. And every hour she felt a little bit silly, and put the lid back, and looked to see if anybody had noticed.

* * *

Wick came up the lane just before ten, at the end of his round, with his lighting pole over his shoulder.

The kettle was already hot. It was always hot by the time Wick came, on moon-nights and most other nights too, and the second stool was always out. He was the only other person in the meadow out working at that hour, and the Well Keeper believed that people who worked late ought to be given tea by somebody.

Wick usually arrived explaining a flame. Tonight he leaned his pole against the post, sat down, and said nothing at all.

The Well Keeper poured. “You’re low,” she said.

“I wouldn’t say low.” Wick took the cup in both hands. “I’d say level. Slightly under level.” He looked into the tea. “Poppy said a thing.”

“Poppy says a lot of things.”

“She said all my flames look the same. To everybody but me.” He frowned. “She said it nicely. She said it while she was winning, which wasn’t nice, but the sentence was nice.”

“What were you playing for?”

“Practice. That’s seven, she says. It’s four. She counts the ones before breakfast.” He turned the cup round. “But they don’t look the same. The one by the stall leans east, because of the gap in the hedge. The one at the gate burns tall, because the glass is new. I trim every one a little differently, because they’re all a little different. And if nobody can tell, then I suppose…” He stopped. “Then I suppose I needn’t bother.”

The Well Keeper did not know much about flames. She knew about water and washing, and she knew when somebody had walked all the way round a meadow in the cold and come back with something sitting on him. She pushed the sugar towards him. He did not take any. That was how she knew it was bad.

The clock on the rim stones said ten. She got up and lifted the bread board.

Wick had sat beside her on a good many moon-nights. On the hour he always looked politely at his tea, the way people do when somebody else is being private about something. Tonight he wanted to look at anything that was not his tea. So he got up and leaned over the rim beside her.

The moon lay at the bottom of the well, round and pale and still.

“Still there,” said the Well Keeper.

Wick tilted his head. “It’s flat on the left.”

“It’s the moon.”

“Yes. I’m not saying it isn’t. I’d only say it’s a very little bit flat on the left. Most people wouldn’t notice.” He leaned further in. The Well Keeper took a handful of the back of his coat, as a precaution. “That’s how I trim that one,” said Wick, and his voice came up out of the well sounding much surer than usual. “That one there. That’s mine.”

He was pointing straight up.

The Meadow Well had a little slate roof over it, and from the beam of the roof hung a lantern, so that people could see the bucket. Wick lit it every evening. There was a draught under that roof that came from the right, so he trimmed the flame a little flat on its left, to stand up straight against it. Nobody had ever noticed. Wick had not supposed anybody ever would.

The Well Keeper looked up at the lantern. She looked down the well. Then, because she was a practical woman and the obvious thing had become very obvious all at once, she turned round and looked at the sky.

The real moon had not come up yet. There was a pale glow behind the observatory knoll where it was on its way, and Maren’s top window was lit, because Maren never went to bed when she ought. But over the meadow the sky was deep blue from edge to edge, with stars in it and no moon at all. And when the moon did come up, it would have to get through a slate roof to reach the water.

“Ah,” said the Well Keeper.

“I could check,” said Wick. “If you like.”

Wick carried a cover for every lamp glass on his round, in case of a gust, and he kept them in a canvas bag in size order. He found the right one. He reached up and slipped it over the lantern, and they both looked down.

At the bottom of the well, the moon went out.

He took the cover off. The moon came back, round and pale and flat on the left.

Wick did everything twice, so he did it again. Out went the moon, and back it came.

“Once more,” said the Well Keeper. “Slowly. I want to watch the water this time, not you.”

He did it once more, slowly. Then they both sat down.

* * *

“How long have you had that lamp?” said the Well Keeper, after a while.

“Two years in March.”

“And before you, whoever had it before you. And before them, somebody else.” She looked at the bread board on her knees. “So once a month, for longer than I’ve kept this well, the whole meadow has been filling its jugs before dark and putting a lid on your lamp.”

Wick thought about that. “Is it down there on cloudy nights?”

“I’ve no idea. Who looks for the moon on a cloudy night?”

“I feel I ought to apologise,” said Wick. “I’m not entirely sure what for.”

“For trimming a lamp properly? Drink your tea.”

He drank his tea. She watched him do it. Then she said the thing she had decided to say, and she said it plainly, because she did not hold with saying a thing twice.

“Poppy’s wrong.”

“About the cards?”

“I wouldn’t know about the cards. About your flames. Everybody in this meadow has looked down this well on a clear night, and not one of us ever thought it was a lamp. Your flame burns so steady the whole meadow took it for the moon.”

Wick went pink. He did not say anything. He took out his ruled notebook, the one where he wrote the time beside every game, and he wrote down 10:14 and something after it, and he did not show her what.

The Well Keeper went to the post. She pulled the old slip of card off its tack, held it up to the lantern, and read it again. Clear nights: mind the moon. She took the pencil from her apron, and after moon she wrote, small and neat, (lamp).

“Mind it how?” said Wick.

“Don’t knock it with the bucket,” said the Well Keeper. “People do.” And she tacked the card back on the post, where it belonged.

The bread board she leaned against the post. She would take it back to Poppy in the morning. It was a good board, and it had never been much of a lid.

* * *

At midnight the Well Keeper let down the bucket.

She had not drawn water on a clear night in all her years at the well, and she was surprised how ordinary it was. The rope ran out. The bucket knocked twice on the way down, as it always did. Far below there was a splash, and the moon broke into pieces, and the pieces wobbled about and gathered back into one moon. She wound it up.

The real moon had come over the knoll by then and was high and white above the observatory. Neither of them looked at it. They were looking in the bucket, where a small round light was floating on the water, a little flat on the left.

She filled the kettle from it and made Wick a fresh cup. It was the best cup of tea she had made in years. She told him so, and he said tea was mostly the water, and she said that was exactly her point.

Then she sent him home.

“Bed,” she said. “You’re lighting them all again tomorrow.”

He picked up his pole and his bag of covers. At the edge of the lamplight he stopped, and she watched him count the covers in the bag with one finger, and then count them again.

“I did take it off,” he said. “The cover. I’m nearly sure. Is it lit?”

The Well Keeper leaned over the rim and looked down.

“Still there,” she said.

Wick went off down the lane under his own lamps. The Well Keeper turned off the oil stove, carried the kitchen clock indoors, and went to bed at twenty past twelve on the clearest night of the month. She had not done that in eleven years. She slept beautifully.

Poppy got her bread board back in the morning, and said she had been wondering where that had got to. Then she went and looked down the well for a long time, and came back, and said to nobody in particular that she supposed it was a bit flat on the left.

The meadow took the news well, once it had been told twice. Jugs were filled whenever anybody liked, and the queue at dusk was never seen again. But nobody stopped calling it the moon. Wick moved that lamp to the very end of his round, so he could trim it last and best. And on clear nights after that, when somebody in the Sky-Meadow drew water late and saw the moon at the bottom of the well, flat on the left, they would say what a lovely moon it was tonight.

And Wick, if he happened to be passing, said thank you.