Born of Woman

by Wendy Perriam

  She reached across for the thin and faded notebook dated 1919, stared at the first page. Surely it couldn’t matter if she tore it out? Hester had guarded her secret all her life. All she was doing was helping her hush it up a little longer. Very carefully she eased back the covers of the notebook. The binding was slack, in any case. Bit by bit, she worked the page free, making sure there were no ragged edges, nothing to incriminate her. She folded the page into nothing, concealed it in the pocket of her coat. She would hide it later in her Tampax box—one place Lyn would never look. He was almost prissily fastidious about anything to do with menstruation, preferred to believe it didn’t occur at all.

  She shut the notebook. The baby didn’t exist now. Hester had gone to London simply to get a job, her family dispersed and ruined by the war. In all the turmoil and upheaval which followed in its wake, hundreds of girls must have left their homes or changed their way of life. When Lyn got round to reading the London entries, she would explain them in that light. She picked up the sketchbook again. Best to show him the drawings first, in any case. Lyn could relate to line and shadow, animal and bird.

  She stumbled suddenly as the lamp gave a final flicker before drowning in the blackness all around it. It was as if her tampering with the diary had brought instant retribution. She rubbed her eyes. Her body felt stiff and stupid with exhaustion as if she had lived through all those decades of the diaries, endured every raid and battle of two world wars, groaned through twenty hours of labour. Her clothes were covered in a shroud of dust, little flakes of plaster confettied her hair. She started to pack the books back, floundering in the dark like a blind person, groping around the floor, scared of the spooky fingers of darkness catching at her hair. A sudden rustle made her start. A rat? A bat? She shuddered, wanted only to get out now.

  She blundered towards the door, tripping over boxes, imagining faces in the gloom. A cobweb brushed against her cheek; she stubbed her toe on a loose uneven floorboard. She had reached the steps now, started fumbling up them, clutching at the wall.

  She stopped in horror. The door was opening before she had even touched the handle. She screamed, fell back, as a shaft of hurting light dazzled her eyes.

  ‘Jennifer! What in God’s name are you doing? I thought I heard you down here.’ Lyn was standing in the doorway in his crumpled blue pyjamas, flashing a torch as if to flush her out. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Y … yes. I think so. I was just … er … fetching that inhaler thing.’ Jennifer’s hand flew instinctively to her pocket, checked the torn-out page, remained palm across it like a shield.

  ‘I told you I didn’t want it. I wondered where on earth you were. I’ve been searching the whole house for you. I woke up in a sweat and …’

  ‘I’m sorry. Let’s g … go back to bed now. You’ll catch your death down here.’

  ‘Where is it, then?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The inhaler. I may as well use it, now you’ve dug it out.’ He wrinkled up his nose. ‘Ugh! The whole place reeks of menthol. Whatever were you doing lighting it down here?’ He flashed his torch again. ‘Can’t see it. That’s a book you’re holding, isn’t it?’

  Jennifer didn’t answer. She had taken the sketchbook with her to show Lyn in the morning. She was too weary now for all the explanations. They would get no more sleep tonight if she embarked on the whole saga of Hester’s life. Lyn sounded irritable, in any case.

  ‘I told you not to prowl around in here. What is the book?’

  ‘Oh … nothing.’

  ‘What d’you mean, nothing?’ Lyn ventured down two steps, reached across and grabbed it. He opened it at random, shining his torch on the page, stared down at the drawings, then back at her. ‘Where did you find this, Jennifer?’ He had collapsed on to the steps, leafing through the pages with an almost wild excitement, hand trembling on the cover.

  ‘You shouldn’t sit there, Lyn. That stone’s damp and cold and you’ve got almost nothing on. You’ll …’

  ‘Jennifer, I must know where you found this.’ Lyn had stopped at one of the drawings and was gazing at it intently, nose almost on the page. She peered over his shoulder. It was a river scene she had admired herself—preening mallard and nesting moorhen fringed by water-lilies.

  ‘It was in a sort of … chest thing, right at the back down here.’ She paused. No point lying when he would be searching the cellar himself in a matter of days. Crazy, really, ever to have imagined she could conceal his mother’s life and history from him. She had never believed in deception in a marriage, and if she was forced to suppress a single page for the sake of Lyn’s own sanity, then at least she should open up the rest.

  She crouched down beside him, laid her hand on his. ‘Listen, darling, there’s a lot of … important stuff down here. I think we ought to look at it together—as soon as you’re better, I mean. All your family records and Hester’s things as well—her diaries and these drawings. You never told me she could draw.’

  ‘She couldn’t.’ Lyn had turned another page now, found the comic frogs. He wasn’t smiling, though. His brows were drawn right down and a tiny muscle was twitching in his face.

  ‘My mother couldn’t draw to save her life. She not only couldn’t, she disapproved of drawing. Wasting time, she called it.’

  ‘But that was only later, darling, when she was busy and tired and … She did these as a girl. I’ve found out a lot about her life already. Her family were well-to-do, so she probably had governesses and proper drawing lessons. These are mostly nature studies, but there’s a sketch of her at the back. Atleast, I think it must be her—a self-portrait, I suppose. Gosh! I’m frozen stiff, aren’t you? It’s like a morgue down here. Let’s go upstairs before …’

  ‘Where? Where is it—that portrait of her? Show me.’

  Jennifer took the book from him, turned to the last page. The girl looked changed now in the torchlight, harsher and less gentle, with an almost blowsy beauty, the smile curling on her lips. ‘There she is. It’s funny, really, but I never imagined your mother quite like that. I know she’s only young there, but she looks so … Lyn, what are you doing?’

  ‘Going to search that chest.’ He pushed past her on the steps, hurtled down them.

  ‘Not now, Lyn. You’ve got a temperature. Wait until you’re better, or at least until the morning, then we can …’

  He didn’t stop to answer. She heard him trip on something, swear.

  ‘Be careful!’ She was groping after him, following the torch-beam. He had already reached the chest. A few books were still strewn around it, along with the second package from the sealed brown envelope which she had missed in her haste and fear.

  Lyn fell on his knees, ripped the package open, stared at the sheaf of photos in his hands—their old, brown, faded paper contradicted by the young and radiant female printed on them. There were ten or eleven photographs, all of the same woman—that tousled girl of the sketchbook, except the camera had somehow made her flesh and blood. The hair was fairer, the eyes larger and more provocative, the plunging cleavages certainly more daring. Most of the photos were cut off at the waist, but all displayed the dazzling neck and shoulders draped in silk, muslin, velvet, or adorned with scarves and flowers. Lyn had grabbed the torch and was shining it on each photograph in turn, laying them out on the dusty cellar floor. He placed the portrait underneath them, tracing the full lips with his finger. ‘Susannah ‘,’ he whispered.

  ‘What did you say?’ Jennifer took off her coat and draped it round his shoulders. It was madness for him to be down here with a streaming cold, clad only in thin pyjamas on one of the coldest nights of the year.

  Lyn picked up the largest of the photos and thrust it in her hands. ‘That’s her—Susannah—Matthew’s mother. Don’t you understand? She did those drawings and these are her photographs. Matthew told me the house was full of them once. When he was a boy, he couldn’t walk into a single room without his dead mother … watching him from the mantelpiece. But I never saw
them. They’d all disappeared by the time I was born. I’ve looked for them before, searched for years, in fact. Given up long ago. Do you realise, Jennifer, how strange this is—that you should … well—lead me to them, after all this time? It’s extraordinary, uncanny …’

  ‘But, I don’t quite … I mean, why Susannah, Lyn, when she died years before you were even …?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter why. Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t … Oh, Snookie, oh …’

  He clung to her, almost crushing her. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, only feel him sobbing into her, as she lay twisted and uncomfortable beneath him. He couldn’t cry, not even at the funeral. Days and days had passed and he had shown no outward sign of grief. Even when he had sat staring at Hester’s death certificate or found a letter written to him in her now frail and feeble writing—unfinished, broken off—he had still stayed stony-faced. She had longed for him to cry, to mourn his mother in some more natural, open fashion. Yet now he was mourning Matthew’s mother, crying before he had even read the diaries, before Hester’s life had thawed and melted his—weeping over a burst of blackthorn blossom, a page of frozen birds.

  ‘Lyn,’ she whispered. ‘Darling …’ She hardly knew what to say to him. Her usual words of comfort seemed too pat and feeble for this storm of grief. Tears were sliding down her own face, trickling slow and salty into the corners of her mouth. She couldn’t bear to see him so distraught. She tried to mop her eyes, but one hand was twisted back behind her and Lyn’s whole weight pressing down on top, his body heaving against hers. She longed to find a handkerchief, a more comfortable position, but she dared not push him off. He needed to cry, to break the grip of that black and heavy grief which had held him prisoner since the funeral.

  The torch had fallen from his hand and shone feebly in the wrong direction, an eye of light staring in the darkness. The floor pressed hard cold hands along her spine. Time seemed to have injured itself and slowed to a limp, so that every slow-coach second hobbled through the whole length of the cellar before stumbling on the next. She lay there, sniffing, aching, trying to mumble comfort through her rough tweed coat which covered both of them. At least Lyn had calmed a little, the sobs faltering into hoarse and laboured breaths.

  ‘All right now, darling?’

  Silence. It was as if he had almost forgotten where he was and was drifting back to sleep again. Best to let him rest until he was quite recovered. She shifted a little, easing her aching hand, tried to relax as well. But every time she closed her eyes Hester’s life kept rushing into the cold black space behind them—snippets from the diaries, phrases she remembered, wars, deaths, casualties—the bald, abandoned baby, the three young brothers shell-shocked in the trenches, bloodying the mud. She shuddered. Lyn looked dead himself, his body slumped on hers, cold and motionless like a casualty from some other, recent war.

  She pushed him with her knee. He had to move, breathe, live. ‘Get up!’ she shouted, surprised at how fiercely her voice had cut across the silence.

  Slowly he struggled to his knees, pulled her to him, stared into her face. Suddenly he was kissing her, so roughly, so intensely, her mouth stung and throbbed with the pressure of his tongue. His breath smelt of cough-sweets, his face felt stubbly where he hadn’t shaved, yet hot and wet from crying.

  She tried to pull away, but he held her shoulders, traced a finger along her lips as he had done with the portrait. ‘I love you, Snookie. I love you, I love you. You know that, don’t you, darling? I love you more than I’ve ever … Oh, don’t die. Don’t ever die.’

  He had thrown off the coat and was unbuttoning his pyjamas. ‘Put your arms around me, tight. I want to feel your body close to mine.’

  ‘Lyn, no.’ She shrank away. ‘You’re out of your mind! It’s far too cold to …’

  ‘Please, darling. There must be nothing between us. Nothing. Not even our clothes. I can’t explain, but …’ He was pulling up her sweater, trying to slide his hands beneath her breasts.

  She removed the hands, almost slapped them off. Why should she feel so hostile when he was telling her he loved her? She tried to calm herself, lay back on the floor. She must remember he was ill, try and make allowances. She fumbled for the coat, dragged it half across him.

  ‘No, leave it, Snookie. It’s right like this. I know it is. I must be … close to you, feel we’re joined and …’

  He sounded so intense, she dared not push him off again. She stared up, past his shoulder, at the dark lowering ceiling with its shadowy beams. She felt like wood herself, dead and rigid.

  He kissed her again, less roughly now, but pressing down so close, it was as if he wished to lose his mouth and self inside her. She tried to respond, ashamed of her hostility. He needed her so fiercely, seemed so strange and vulnerable. Her lips relaxed a little. He only wanted comfort, her body to block the darkness out, to cling to like a child.

  No, not a child. She could feel him stiffening lower down, stirring against her thighs. She tensed. Surely he couldn’t actually want to … not in the dark and damp with swollen glands and a temperature? It was ridiculous, perverse. She closed her legs, pulled her mouth away.

  ‘Please, my darling.’ He was fumbling with her tights now, dragging them down and almost off. She shivered as the cold pounced on her thighs.

  ‘No, Lyn. I …’

  Her hands were fighting his, refusing to let him remove her skirt. He took the hands, covered them with kisses, then placed them on the floor above her head as if they were some piece of lumber he had found and didn’t need. He left the skirt on, but pushed her sweater up, unhooked the bra beneath it, kissed her nipples, then pressed his own bare chest against them. His body felt chilled and sweaty against her own, forehead burning on her cheek, clammy hands trembling down her back. She was crushed not just by his weight, but by the fear of her own anger. She rarely felt such anger, and never when he was making love to her. That was the trouble, though—it wasn’t love. He was forcing her again, tricking her with kisses and caresses, so that he could knock her off her guard, then enter her that violent fruitless back way. She’d had enough of it, didn’t want it even in the warmth of her own bed, let alone on a dusty cellar floor. The dust had got into his throat and started off his cough again—a hoarse desperate cough which echoed through the cellar. It was crazy for them to lie there any longer, and she for one was going back upstairs. She tried to struggle up, but a further spasm of coughing pinioned his body closer to her own.

  ‘Lyn, move. I want to …’

  He could hardly speak. His eyes were streaming, his chest racked. She felt a stab of pain between her thighs. She was too dry and tense to take him, but he was forcing in between the coughs. She still had her skirt on, but it was rucked up round her middle, uncomfortable where he was pushing down on top of her.

  Anger exploded into shock. He had entered her without a Durex, not the back way, but the normal, fertile dangerous way. He had never done that before, not in all three years of their marriage, not even when it was comparatively safe, just before or after her period. This was the most dangerous time of all, the middle of her cycle, the prime time for conceiving. She was so astonished, she just lay there like a sack. He was thrusting very slowly. He must be keeping it slow on purpose, so he wouldn’t lose control. He would come out again in a moment—surely. Lyn would never risk a child.

  ‘L … Lyn, hadn’t you better …?’

  ‘I love you,’ he whispered, in answer. ‘I love you, Snookie. You don’t understand, but …’

  She lay back, silent now. She didn’t understand. Why was he so ardent when she herself felt distanced from him, her resentment barring him off from her as if it were a Durex stretched taut across her soul? She had longed for him to enter her like this, but now it was actually happening, all she was aware of was the turmoil in her head. Her body seemed to have shrivelled or cut off. Yet she had to admit there was something changed about him. Although he had forced her in the first place, he seemed a different person now fro
m the one who had pushed her to her knees those last few days.

  The words of the marriage service chimed a moment in her head. ‘With my body, I thee worship.’ Lyn was worshipping, hands hymning down her breasts, lips whispering across her eyelids like the feathers on Susannah’s birds. Those shy, swift birds had somehow tamed and softened him, made this moment sacred. Anger seeped away like dirty water. Lyn was still inside her. She understood it now. It wasn’t just a mistake or aberration, some reckless impulse he would all too soon regret; it was a deliberate gift to her, offered tenderly and freely, some lasting transformation in himself.

  She lay completely still. If, by some miracle, this was to be their child, then he must never say that she had forced it on him. There was no need for her own pleasure. It was enough that it was happening, slow and solemn like a sacrament. She had been fretting about the cold, the dust, the hard, unyielding floor, but all around her were dead and watching Wintertons murmuring from the Game Books, imploring from the letters, waiting for their heir. The torch had gone out, so she had lost her own outlines now, her edges blurring with Lyn’s and all his ancestors’. Somewhere in the shadows, she heard Hester confiding to her diary, ‘Today my son was born’.

  Lyn was breathing faster now. She could feel the long, slow, urgent piston-shots gathering pace and speed. He was coming … coming slowly, very slowly, but unmistakably. Coming right inside her. No. Impossible. Prohibited. It couldn’t happen. Wouldn’t. She had been romanticising, dreaming—kidding herself he wanted a child instead of just excitement. Any second now, he would wrench away and out of her, realise the risk he was taking and withdraw before that final clinching moment which could change their lives.