He lingered by the window, dusk floundering into darkness, hills keeping endless watch around the house. The sheep grazed further down now, banished by the forest which overshadowed them. He could hear the bleating of the lambs. The place was like a labour ward in April. He remembered a schoolfriend’s father who had built extensive lambing sheds to increase his yield. He had often stood there as a lad, watching scores of panting ewes jammed together in the pens, their straw sour and stained with dung, bloody mucous trails or bulging sacs of waters hanging from their backsides. He had breathed in the stench, the mess, the clamour, seen lambs born wet and slimy, some not born at all. Shepherds tugging malformed limbs from wombs, deaths mourned only as loss of cash.
He drew the curtains, turned his back. Birth and death were both so cruel up here, so casual. Nature simply shrugged. He wished Jennifer would hurry. He’d feel better with her there. He could hear her closing cupboards, locking doors, then coming up the stairs, fiddling in the bathroom, flushing toilet, running taps.
‘Snookie,’ he shouted. No—mustn’t call her Snookie. She might think that he wanted it.
She stood at the door, too plump and flushed to be in mourning, hair falling round her shoulders. She was dressed in white now, not in black, wearing some long, trailing thing he didn’t recognise. He could see her nipples pushing through the stuff. Wrong to notice nipples when his mother was a headstone.
‘Hurry up and get undressed. I’m whacked.’
‘I am undressed. This is my nightie.’
Nightie? It looked more like a shroud. ‘I’ve never seen it before. It’s not Hester’s, is it? You’re not wearing her clothes?’
‘Lyn, you’re crazy. I’ve had it months. Your mother wouldn’t wear a thing like this. I’ve seen her nightgowns—real old-fashioned flannel with ruffles round the sleeves.’
He tried to imagine Hester wearing ruffles. Impossible. She had always snipped the frills off things, wrapped life in plain brown paper.
Jennifer turned the covers back.
‘Come to bed, darling, and let’s try and get some sleep. Gosh! You’re freezing. Snuggle close and I’ll warm you up a bit.’
She flopped towards him, warm and heavy. He had already switched the light off, so he could no longer see the shadow of her nipples, the faint bloom of down above her upper lip. Lips were the most dangerous things of all. Unzip a mouth and it unlatched things lower down. She was so close now, he could feel her almost breathing for him, the edges of her body unravelling into his. He pulled away, rolled over to face the wall. You didn’t grab your wife when the flowers on your mother’s grave were still alive.
‘Turn round, Linnet. Just let me hold you a moment.’
Linnet. Baby name he had never had with Hester. Name his wife was forbidden ever (ever) to say in public. Stupid, sissy, girly, beloved name. He turned.
She kissed him. He was stiff in seconds. How could he not be, when this was Susannah’s bed and he still had that locket cold against his heat? Now he was older, Susannah could do more for him—deep-throat him, swallow him, have him forbidden ways. He kicked the blankets off. Hester was barely cold. Trouble was, he hadn’t had it for six days. Not since the death, of course—only brutes did that—but even before, the news of Hester’s illness had put him off his stroke. They had tried it on the Easter Saturday night, but Matthew had somehow ruined it. It was Matthew‘s face he’d seen frowning up from the pillow, nagging about his job. His thing had curled up and died. Now it was rampant when it was blasphemy to own a cock at all. Trust him to stiffen when his duty was to sob. It had been the other way round on his wedding night—lying limp and almost blabbing with a real live woman panting there beside him, naked with her legs open. He had almost botched that night. Hester had taught him it must be forced and furtive, that women didn’t fancy it. Jennifer did. She was too loving and assiduous, the bed too damned co-operative. He had often dreamed of forcing girls—sometimes forced Susannah in his fantasies, flung her on her front and rammed in the forbidden way. He never dared with Jennifer—wanted to, but feared to. A wife might be offended.
He couldn’t screw her, anyway—not even conventional fashion. It wasn’t just the funeral—he had no Durex with him. He had never entered Jennifer in a whole three years of marriage without that rubber skin between them. He hated Durex—damn-fool fiddly things. But Jennifer refused the Pill, rejected every contraceptive. Jennifer wanted babies. Well, so did he—not just yet, that’s all. It was a matter of time, money, jobs, convenience. You had to plan these things. Anyway, even without the babies, he preferred to put a layer between himself and any woman, including his own wife. It was safer, somehow, cleaner. Made the thing less crucial. Stopped him touching her most private places. It meant he could keep a shell around himself, one last barrier—enter her and yet still be separate. Hester would have approved of Durex if she had permitted sex at all.
He had never once had sex in his mother’s house. The rare times he had brought a girlfriend back, they had sat in the front parlour and Hester had fed them rock cakes and stony glances until the hussy left at ten. He had done it in ditches, sometimes, to escape her, lying on dirty sacking or dead leaves, crouching under hedgerows when his mother had five spare beds, all virgin, all unslept in. Yet in some ways he admired her. It was sluttish to sleep around, wallow in it, couple like a dog with some bitch on heat he had sniffed out in an alleyway, then slip in late with a weight on his conscience, bits of bracken in his hair.
That’s why he had married Jennifer. She made it decent, gave the dog a pedigree. He sat up on his elbow, stared down at her breasts. They looked larger the way she was lying, cupped and squeezed together until they overflowed. One hand was bent towards them, her fingers curving just below the nipple. The same fingers which had closed his mother’s eyes. Were they really closed, or was Hester spying on him still? No, he didn’t want babies. Wanted to want them, at least for Jennifer’s sake, but he knew he’d make a hash of it. He’d seen what sons had done to Matthew—sucked him dry. They had to have the best of everything—clothes, food, schools, holidays. Matthew had turned into a sort of manic money machine, working eight days out of seven, cracking his whip at the world, putting his wife to work, his half-brother, conjuring jobs out of scraps of paper, profit out of stones.
He couldn’t work like that to keep a son. Sons grew taller than you did, took everything you had, including your wife. If you had a mother, you couldn’t have a wife. For years he’d had two mothers, Hester and Susannah, conflicting and fighting in his head, tearing him apart. One beckoning, one warning; one wise and withered and sacred, one wet, hot, sluttish, eager, open. He couldn’t endure it any longer. He wanted only Jennifer—simple, powerful, strong. She had gone to sleep already.
He leant across and kissed the back of her neck, ran his fingers slowly down her spine from nape to coccyx, leaving his hand cupped beneath her buttocks. He prayed she would wake and want it. Then he could tell himself she had knocked him off his guard. Her breathing hardly wavered. He turned away, touched himself instead. He rarely masturbated now—less need to with a wife. He could feel the locket hard against his thighs, Susannah opening everything towards him.
Why in God’s name was Susannah still alive? Because he had kept her alive, not only in his mind, but in his drawings—sketched her a thousand times in pencil, charcoal, ink; ripped off her clothes and made her the model in his own private life-class. Later, in his art books, he’d seen public paintings of her—‘Susannah Bathing’, ‘Susannah and the Elders’—huge fleshy women with thighs you could get lost in. Laboriously he had copied Rembrandt, Rubens, Tintoretto—using coloured pencils this time, or—daringly—a tiny box of watercolours which cost him five weeks’ pocket money. He always waited till Hester was out or asleep, adding embellishments, erotica, making himself a handmaid attending at her bath, or a slavering elder spying from a bush, admiring those lewd curves and creases dimpled across her flesh. He longed to paint in oils, to give Susannah’s haunches th
at ripe and rippling texture he had fingered in the books, but how could he hide a canvas or disperse the smell of turps, even if he’d had the money to afford them? At least with watercolours, he could keep his paintings small and secret, hide or destroy each scrap of paper. Only his model survived. Still survived, when she would be well into her sixties now. Impossible! Susannah was always seventeen, caught forever in her youth and bath as she was in those Old Masters. Even now she was lying there beside him, still wet and tousled from bathing, her taunting teenage body whispering into his, her fingers tight around him. Susannah had more fingers than any woman he had ever known. One up his arse, two around his balls, three stroking him bigger, one touching up herself.
He grabbed the minx awake, turned her into Jennifer. ‘Lie on your front,’ he whispered.
Jennifer slumped over, still half asleep. She had told him he could wake her if he felt bad, but she’d meant sobbing over Hester, not slavering over Susannah. She would gladly kiss his tears away, but not a bloody great erection. It wasn’t fair to rouse her, anyway. She was exhausted from the day—all that cooking, coping, hostessing. He’d just lie against her, hold her, feel her body soft and calming under his. He envied her that calmness. The way she could sleep the minute she was tired, fit sex into a schedule, sob when it was time to, smile when it was not. With him, everything was scrambled screaming up together—grief, guilt, lust, fever—all revving between his legs. The more he tried to still himself, the more his body urged. He had cramp in his leg, pain in his chest, anger blasting through his bloodstream. Anger with that stubborn, shameless part of him which still cocked up when everything decent begged it to lie down.
He wasn’t even comfortable. He was lying half on top of a sprawled and supine body, one leg slumped across it, chin against a spine. Warm fleshy buttocks pressed against his balls, keeping him excited, while Jennifer’s deep, shuddering breathing warned him off. Maybe he could do it while she slept—sneak in very gently and be out again before she was fully awake. At least it would be less blatant. But it wouldn’t solve the baby thing. She might swell up in revenge, produce a kid to shame him. A kid could kill a wife—had already killed Susannah. Jennifer mustn’t die. He didn’t want her split apart in childbirth, slimy and heaving like those blood-stained sheep.
Why enter her at all? If he touched himself again, he could come just lying close to her, spill out on her thighs. He hated that. Made him feel a boy again, furtive and humiliated. He didn’t want it passive, forced to stifle his cries as he had done all his boyhood, having to leak and creep and dissemble when he ached to ram and shout. It wasn’t simply lust. He could make it sacred if Jennifer joined in. Coming would be like crying, a release and a relief.
He sat up in bed, switched the bedside light on. Jennifer stirred and mumbled something, turned her head away. Slowly he peeled the covers back, eased her nightie up until he could see the long slope of her back, curving out into full fleshy buttocks dappled in the light. He slipped his hands beneath her belly and coaxed her up and back until she was crouched on all fours with her bottom humped towards him. He sniffed her faint female odour of mingled scent and sweat. She was trying to slump down again, burrow back into the blankets.
‘Tired, darling. Want to sleep.’ Her voice was slurred, husky, unbearably exciting.
‘Ssshh,’ he whispered, ran a finger slowly across her buttocks, down into the crease, found the forbidden hole, stroked around it. It was resisting him—tight, unwilling, locked. Hadn’t he learned to break locks? He eased the finger in, felt it give a little. Coiled spring around his finger. Rat-trap. Wedding-ring. She shocked awake, trying to push him off and tensing all her muscles. The trap closed tighter.
‘Don’t. You’re hurting, Linnet.’
Stupid name. He wanted to gag her, force her. Sick of all the restraint, the rules, the should-nots, the gentle solemn loving, the pretty passive names. Right, he’d be a dog—a cocking, snuffling mongrel without his pedigree, a dog who had slipped his lead.
He jerked the finger out and held her open while he eased the other in. It went only a grudging straining centimetre, then stopped. She was virgin there as she had been when he met her—everywhere—zipped up to the neck. He tried to force the zip down—two centimetres—three. It felt tight and fierce like handcuffs round a wrist. Jennifer was whimpering, making little gasping noises of pain or fear or shock. At least she wouldn’t swell. You couldn’t conceive in an arse-hole. He liked it in her arse-hole. It was tighter, safer, and she didn’t have a face—just that huge heaving arse rearing up in front of him, imprisoning him inside her. He had snapped the handcuffs now and found space and shaft beyond. Every tight, tighter thrust was tying them together, cancelling out his separateness. The bed creaked hoarsely underneath them. For a sudden anguished moment he heard Hester braying out her fury in the bedsprings. He closed his ears, thrust harder. He wouldn’t let her in.
‘Jennifer!’ he shouted. If he had her loud enough, Hester would be drowned. His wife was noisy, too, now, little noises spitting out from under her as if she were an animal.
‘Darling,’ she was crying in a sort of muffled breathless gasp. Darling could mean anything—pain or bliss or anger. She was butting her head against the pillow, arching up her back, twisting her buttocks so that he almost lost his grip. Was she trying to shake him off or goad him on? Couldn’t stop now, anyway. Not a mind or body any more, just a ramming thrusting piston. All his grief, fear, fury, force, centred on one point.
His nails were digging into her back, his breathing laboured and distorted. She and the bed were both rocking underneath him, the squeaking of the springs cutting through her cries. She wasn’t fighting any longer but moving with him, thrusting with him, making her pace and rhythm one with his. Shameless, brazen woman who purred in the drawing-room and buggered in the kitchen, blotting out the funeral, bringing passion out of pain. As tight and wild as Susannah. Sluttish marvellous woman debauching all his boyhood, branding all his paintings, coming when he came. He was schoolboy, lover, husband, coming, COMING …
His cry cut the room in half. He collapsed on top of Jennifer, sheet tangled round their limbs, blankets tumbled to the floor. He could feel her shuddering into stillness underneath him.
‘Darling,’ she was sobbing. ‘Oh, my darling.’
Chapter Five
‘Ah, Jennifer! We were just wondering where you’d got to. Do come in.’ Molly Bertram opened the door on a barking tangle of dogs. ‘We started dinner without you. Hope you don’t mind, but the men have to get back to the lambing. Where’s Lyn?’
Jennifer returned the overtures of two small but boisterous border terriers. ‘He’s … er … not too well. That’s why I’m late, in fact. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t worry, love. Better for him to rest. He’s probably still shocked by the funeral. He always took things hard, did Lyn. Down, Ben! He’s really wild, that one. Thinks he’s still a pup when he’s coming up to ten.’
‘I don’t mind. I love dogs.’ Jennifer followed Molly into the hall—walked into warmth, noise, colour, cooking smells. Outside, the Bertram farmhouse was the same slate-roofed stone as Hester’s—grey, solid, stern. Inside it was still old-fashioned and well-worn, but alive where Hester’s was dead. All the rooms glowed with chintzy cushions and brightly coloured rugs. Every shelf and surface was crowded with ornaments and photographs, cats napped on window-seats, logs purred in the great open fireplace in the hall. Molly paused a moment, kicking back a log which was smouldering in the grate.
‘Look, before we face the troops, tell me how things are. Apart from Lyn, I mean.’
Jennifer hesitated. ‘Er … fine.’ How could you say ‘apart from Lyn’, when her life was woven into his like a two-colour knitting pattern? And how could she explain to Molly about his moods? Everything about Molly was comfortable and solid—her stocky figure which had neither bust, nor waist, nor hips, but ran them all together in a well-upholstered mass; her coarse springy hair which looked much the same w
hether she had come straight from the hairdresser or just tumbled out of bed; her ruddy, wind-burnt face. Cheeks like apples, people said. Apples varied, though. Molly’s were red like a Worcester, roughened like a Russet, slightly shrivelled and blemished as if the fruit had been in store too long. Her eyes were the colour of the apple pips, a dark glossy brown which made her whole face come alive; hands broad, almost clumsy, with chapped skin and broken nails—hands which held the household together, coped with children, crises, animals.
‘Come through, love. You don’t mind the kitchen, do you? I’m afraid we don’t go in for fancy living here.’
‘No, I love your kitchen.’ The first time she’d seen it, Jennifer had felt a sense of total welcome, as if the room itself had leapt forward to embrace her, and then relaxed and put its feet up, so that she could only do the same. She had arrived one afternoon from Hester’s house, with the corpse still lying cold and stiff upstairs, and found Molly baking, hot loaves steaming on the table, warm eggs piled in a china bowl, little shreds of feather still clinging to their shells, haunches of bacon hanging from the ceiling, the smells of yeast, spice, polish, and old dog all mingled up together. Crumpled newspapers and ancient Farmers’ Weeklies were scattered on the huge lumpy sofa which lolled beneath the window. A sofa in a kitchen! It was really more a living-room—truly living—full of children, bustle, stir. Modern kitchens were often more like morgues or museums, all chilly stainless steel and dead Formica, but in the Bertram kitchen, everything spilled out and tumbled over in an exuberant cornucopia, each work-top hatching its crop of food or fruit or clutter; the floor-space busy with toys, boots, dog baskets, bulging sacks of dog-meal and potatoes; even the cups and saucers not stacked away in cupboards, but making a blue dazzle on the dresser.
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