Born of Woman

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘No,’ he had said to Matthew, when Jennifer started bleeding and his brother came wheedling for the diaries. He was furious she had told him about the pregnancy. Matthew had exploited it, listed all the expenses of being a father, the worries and the ties, hinted that he would never cope with them. According to Matthew, he had never coped with anything without his elder brother’s help. Matthew undermined him, made him doubt his powers. Perhaps he hadn’t any powers.

  ‘No,’ he said again, when Jennifer went on bleeding and he brought her tea and towels, sat on her bed feeling his terror clammy on his hands. He peered into her chamber-pots before he emptied them. Little clots of blood.

  The fledgling didn’t budge. ‘If she rests, she’ll save it,’ said the doctor.

  He almost killed the doctor. The chamber-pots were clear now.

  ‘The lambs are born so easily,’ Jennifer had said when they were still at Hernhope and had just returned from Molly’s. ‘They seem to slither out with almost no fuss at all, and they’re up and suckling within a matter of minutes.’

  He had been less than five when he watched a local shepherd tug two decomposing lambs from their heaving mother. The festering limbs had crumbled in the shepherd’s hands. The ewe had had twin-lamb disease. They had saved her life, but both her lambs had putrified inside her. All that day, he had carried the smell around with him. He had been punished for leaving his dinner, but mince and semolina had turned into fetid flesh. He remembered another ewe which had died in labour, collapsing in the snow with half a lamb protruding from her hindquarters, its bulging tongue lolling from the stuck and swollen head. The huntsman’s van had carted her away, tossed her bloated carcass on a pile of bloodstained newborns with their dead and stinking mothers—the casualties of birth. As a boy, he had often seen that van, doing its round of the local farms and villages—peered inside with fascinated horror—calves with glassy eyes and twisted limbs flung like rubbish on top of rotting lambs. The huntsman would be whistling as he made room for one last ewe, swollen sac of waters ballooning from her rear. The corpses would all be skinned and fleeced, then hacked into pieces and stewed up in a saucepan, or dumped in a deepfreeze as dinner for the hounds.

  Once, he had had a nightmare—saw Susannah, dead in childbirth, tossed into that van—blood on her belly, unformed foetus trailing from her thighs. The image stayed around, curdling all his dinners, laying fear down in his body instead of fat or flesh. If Jennifer died in childbirth, then he would be the murderer, since he had made her pregnant. He didn’t trust that slick and smarmy doctor. He ought to get a specialist, the finest obstetrician in the county. Except specialists cost money—the sort of money only Matthew had.

  ‘All right,’ he stormed at Matthew. ‘Publish your bloody book.’

  Everything was bloody—the bed, the carpet, the bathroom. Jennifer had phoned him at the office before she phoned the ambulance. When he reached the house, she wasn’t there—only the traces of the baby he had sold his pride and mother for. He found her note, followed her to the hospital. Everything was white there. White wife on a white sheet with a foaming wake of white and sodden Kleenex scattered all around her on the bedspread. He had tried to comfort her, but the words came out still-born. He knew she knew he had never wanted a baby. Perhaps it wasn’t a baby at all, but a nightmare or a haemorrhage—even a plot engineered by Matthew. After all, he had never seen the money Matthew promised—or only a fraction of it. (‘There are more efficient ways of paying you than straight money on the table.’ Who were they to argue?)

  After a week in hospital, where they scraped out any remnant of a child, the doctor called again and while admiring the campanulas, advised no sex for a month. Lyn spun it into two. Didn’t want to hurt his wife, make her bleed again. The campanulas began to fade and shrivel.

  ‘It’s all right, now, darling, really it is.’ Jennifer was wearing her most transparent nightie, leaning over him so that he could see the plunge between her breasts. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me.’

  Something wrong with him, though. He escaped into the bathroom. He wasn’t impotent—not physically—but all the fears had blown up in his head like dead and bloated lambs. New fears, now, about the book they were preparing, the book which kept reminding him of babies and defeat, which was a betrayal of his mother, a distortion of her life.

  Soon, his wife was trapped in the book as well, fused with his mother, when they were completely unalike. Both had been distorted and the resultant dual female was a danger and a sham—a woman far too powerful, yet who somehow wasn’t there. In publication month, his wife literally wasn’t there. She was too busy becoming famous, leaving him behind—every male in England gawping at her, while the only one who loved her sat alone at home without her. He was simply Jennifer Winterton’s husband, Hester Winterton’s son, the little lad at Hernhope, cowering in the shadows.

  There were shadows across the road, flickering lights and signals, lorries roaring past him, wheels spinning in his head. He was really making speed now, the car gulping down the miles, its staring yellow eyes never wavering from the tarmac. He was amazed his ancient Morris could go so well. He rarely drove it over forty for fear it would stall or sulk. But now it seemed to understand his urgency, be as keen as he was to reach Northumberland. It was only the row with Susie which had forced him to act at all. Mustn’t think of Susie. Shouldn’t have touched her breasts. He had craved those breasts for months. Lain in bed saying ‘no’ to Jennifer and ‘yes’ to Susie, fondling Susie’s nipples, screaming out in nightmares, waking up and finding Jennifer there, waking her, wanting her, refusing her again. Dared not risk it—not even through a Durex. Stupid comic things. No man used a Durex. Only fumbling schoolboys or henpecked timid husbands. He wasn’t timid—wasn’t impotent. Better if he were. If only he could stop thinking about it, feeling it rise hard and gross between his legs, nudging him in the morning, reproaching him at night, urging ‘grab her, make her, force her’.

  He didn’t know which her. Susie and his wife had become fused in all his fantasies, Susie and Susannah. It was Susie who had tempted him—truly, not in fantasy—pressing against his body with those shameless breasts of hers, bringing back all his childish lusts and longings, choosing a day when it was so stifling hot and muggy he was almost off his guard, damp shirt sticking to his chest, her shirt with a button off and a gap between the …

  ‘PISS OFF!’

  He swerved, almost hit a lorry, winced as the driver opened fire with a fusillade of curses on his horn. Susie had cursed him, too. ‘Piss off’ was just the start of it. She was furious because he couldn’t (wouldn’t?) help her. She should never have confided in him. He’d wanted kisses, not a crisis. All that agonising had ruined everything.

  He stared at the compass needle. Whichever way it pointed, some woman was looming up in front of him. South was Jennifer and her cosy Sussex background showing up his own; north was Hester, filling the whole horizon; east was Susie whose family had settled in Great Yarmouth, a huge, messy, feckless family who were all the things he dreaded—violent, squalid, stupid and in trouble; west was Somerset, where Susannah’s ancestors had come from before they moved up north in 1850. Should he turn off west? No, he had no choice. He had to go to Hernhope and had to get there swiftly, before light and morning spied on him. He didn’t want snooping Molly Bertrams bidding him good-day, or crafty solicitors lying there in wait for him.

  He pressed his foot down hard, envying that needle its total lack of doubt. Jennifer would be flying south from Newcastle as he raced north to Hernhope. Or was she travelling in the morning? He didn’t even know. It was Susie she told her plans to now, Susie she confided in. Jennifer had soaked up her crass women’s lib ideas like a piece of pink spongy blotting-paper. They were printed on his wife now, but all the letters were the wrong way round. They didn’t suit her and she didn’t understand them. All they did was confuse and cheapen her, make her Susie’s chattel and her mouthpiece. That’s why he had to leave. Susie was pol
luting all of them. Too many problems at Putney, anyway. He didn’t belong in a family, with its squalls and taunts and babble, its three phones shrilling—one on every floor, breaking apart his meals, his sleep, his work. Too many hands grabbing at the table, too many eyes staring at his untouched food. Even if he escaped to the office, he still had all the grime and grind of London. He didn’t fit in with the men he had to work with—jokes and nudges and coarse talk with the secretaries, beer and fake bravado in the pub. Then back to a wife divided into six, he left only with the scraps and gristle of her, the fat and flesh already gone to Susie. Even when he dragged her away from Susie and lay next to her in bed, he still couldn’t make her his. It wasn’t just the old fears. How could he relax with four inquisitive and sharp-eared boys sleeping just across the corridor? It had been even worse with Matthew there—he and Anne lying one thin wall away, judging him, sneering at his efforts, listening to how short or long or ludicrous it was. He had rarely heard a sound from their side. A cough, perhaps, a muttered word, a shuffle. They must have done it at least four times to produce those four huge sons. How could Matthew be increased by four? Or did he mean diminished? Sons grew taller than you did, cleverer. They giggled at you in corners, whispered behind their hands, asked you riddles which didn’t have an answer, demanded money all the time. He didn’t begrudge the money, if only he could be certain they weren’t jeering at him the minute he had parted with it, mouthing ‘Stupid isn’t he? Sissy Uncle Lyn.’

  The ‘sissy’ swelled into a roar, the roar of four wheels and an engine fighting with the miles. The road was galloping now, towns and houses left behind, city lights and dazzle long ago extinguished. Nothing existed except the yard or two of tarmac created by his headlights. There was no horizon, no kindly guiding star, only the prison bars of hedgerows with darkness closing in behind them. He could go to prison. It was a crime he had committed. He had looked it up in a lawbook in the library. To hide a Will was an indictable offence which could be punished with imprisonment. But since he was the rightful heir, it was only himself he was defrauding, concealing his own rights because he feared them. He had always feared them, but especially since November 1969, when Hester had made her Will. It was the day of his twenty-first birthday, and the two events were linked. The house was his birthday present—something more substantial than the two small books she had stuffed in a paper bag for him or the meagre cake she had burnt on her moody range. It was as if she were saying, ‘Wait until I’m dead, son, and I’ll leave you everything. When I’m gone, you’ll have a present worthy of you.’

  He didn’t want her dead, didn’t want everything. Property brought worries, duties, involvement in a wilderness, obedience, ties, hard work. He was already planning to leave her and, there she was, tying the knot between them still more tightly by bequeathing him her house. It had been her property for over twenty years. His father’s Will had been revoked on the second marriage and when he died, Matthew inherited nothing but his debts. Those were settled by selling the land to the Forestry. The house and Lyn survived.

  He remembered the day she had bought the Will-form, journeying all the way to Newcastle in the stern black coat she had worn only once before, for someone else’s funeral. She refused to employ a solicitor, wrote it herself in secret and had it witnessed by two odd-job men who were all but illiterate and weren’t allowed to read it anyway. He had never read it himself. He simply knew that Hernhope would belong to him. He tried to forget the fact, to dodge the labour and responsibility she was laying on him like a burden. She mentioned it only rarely. ‘You’ll remember what I told you, Lyn, about my Will. You know where it’s hidden, don’t you? You’ll do what I ask?’

  He had always nodded, changed the subject. A Will meant death and Hester couldn’t die. Death would only shroud him in guilt and terror, and he had guilt enough from marrying Jennifer. The last time Hester reminded him, he had already run away, shackled himself to Jennifer and the South, tied his work to Matthew’s.

  After her death, he found the Will in the locked drawer in her bureau, exactly as she had said. More than a Will, a package tied in ribbons. He had left it there, scared even to touch it. The funeral roared past him. Everyone was buzzing about a Will, the Bertrams interfering, the vicar cross-questioning him, the whole village speculating, even Jennifer probing.

  ‘It’s not where she said’, he told her. I can’t understand it. It isn’t anywhere.’

  When she searched, he searched along with her. He had already hidden it, still unopened and unread. That couldn’t be a crime. Crimes were cool, deliberated things, plotted for one’s gain, whereas he had acted in a frenzy—sweating, shivering, dithering—and only for his loss. It was partly all the tittle-tattle which had confused and frightened him. The village was encroaching, using Hester’s funeral as an excuse to suck them in. Jennifer was oblivious. ‘So friendly,’ she kept saying, as greedy hands stretched out to grab her time, her mind.

  Now, he saw things differently. A buzz of country cackle was nothing compared with the whole of England shouting out his name. His wife was not just Queen of Mepperton, but Toast of the British Isles. She had become a piece of public property, gabbling on the radio, sobbing on the television, barging her way into all the newspapers. They had even tried to hassle him, grill him about his childhood, pry into his marriage. He had to get away. Putney wasn’t safe, not with Susie-Susannah prowling through every chink and crack of it, but Hernhope could be a sanctuary, too far away for most of the fans to follow, and too dead-and-alive for Susie. Susie would never settle somewhere without a disco or a take-away. If he put all these miles between them, she would shrivel and diminish, fade into a caged and muzzled photograph, no bigger than Susannah’s. He could make the house his stronghold and escape-tower, fence and fortify it, shut out not only Susie, Matthew, and the whole of London, but his own lusts and crimes and fears.

  The roar of the road was like a blessing now. Only twenty short miles left. The Morris slowed and laboured as the hedgerows narrowed and the road began its tricks. A faint white mist clung like sheep’s wool to the blue-black blur of fields and hills. Dawn always broke so stealthily, tiny shreds and glints of light seeping over the horizon, the stars still faint grey pinpricks on the slowly unfurling blackout of the sky. An owl flapped white against the gallows of two blasted elms, its screech disturbing the burble of the river. Shapes and textures began to free themselves from the clogging darkness which had made them all one mass. Lyn could distinguish colours now—blue from black, grey from blue, could see the fuzzed dividing-lines between field and sky, grass and corn. The wheat was high, soon ready for the scythe. ‘In the morning it is green and groweth up, but in the evening …’

  A startled flock of sheep shambled away from the snort of his wheels. The lambs were no longer skittish, but grubby plodders munching like their mothers. In a few short weeks, they would be bleating through the mint sauce on someone’s carving dish. Nothing could stay young up here for long. Calves were veal, kittens drowned, pups must be trained for their serious work as sheepdogs, fledglings learn to fly before hawks or foxes scrunched them, children learn to fear.

  The village was deserted as he rumbled through it. A dog barked threateningly, a woman tugged a curtain back, let it fall again. The sky was now a dull watery grey, thick with birdcalls. The road began to climb. Astounding, really, that the car had ever made it. Even now, it was rattling like a rickshaw on tracks that were meant for sheep. Five more miles to go. Lyn dared not pass the Bertrams’ house. The shepherds would be stirring, the dogs set up a racket as he passed. A mile from their farm, he drove off the road and concealed the car in one of the straggling offshoots of the forest. He sat there a moment, dwarfed by the giant’s-back of hills which had loomed out of the shadows, changed from black to grey to olive, and were now tinged pink from the first wavering radiance of the sun. Their beauty almost hurt. He wanted to wrench it from them, fling it on to paper, pin it down in brush-strokes. If he had been born to different
parents, he might now be a painter, a proper landscape artist. Hundreds of artists starved, of course, if they refused to compromise or didn’t have the talent or the luck. But at least he would have tried—gone to decent art school instead of that crass commercial course where slickness counted more than vision.

  He licked his finger, drew a second range of Cheviots on the window of the car which his breath had misted up. He longed to hold a brush again, swap his London office lay-out pad and Letraset for oils and canvas in this heady landscape. He still had vision, even skill. All he needed was time, peace, money, independence. The sun sparkled on the window. It had broken through at last, the whole eastern flank of hills blazing scarlet while the west still slumbered grey. The sky was like a palette with all the golds and reds he would ever need. He sprang out of the car. He would do the rest on foot now, climb the back way up to Hernhope, avoiding the main track.

  The ground was steep and rocky. He used his hands to heave him up, slipping on patches of damp and tussocky grass, stubbing his toes on stones. Despite the sun, the moon still hung pale and glassy like a lemon fruit-drop sucked to its last sliver in the sky. He watched it fade to nothing, caught his breath as he breasted the hill and glimpsed the solid walls of Hernhope frowning in the distance. How could a simple house set off such fear? Or was it fear? Everything was peaceful—plash of the burn, lovesick morning wooing of the wood pigeons.

  He tiptoed towards the house, as if scared he might startle or offend it. It looked tidy and well-groomed. The garden they had planted was neither choked with weeds nor had reverted back to wasteland. He glanced around. Who had been working on it? Had Hester jumped up from her coffin and come with spade and trowel to carry on his labour? She had never idled all her life, so how could she lie dead and disabled now, when weeds were choking cabbages or debris blocking drains? He fumbled in his pocket. Thank God he had kept the keys. However much he feared its obligations, this house was his inheritance and he wanted entry to it. He made straight for the kitchen—Hester’s chief domain. Last time he had seen it, Jennifer’s handiwork had brightened all the surfaces—buttercups in jamjars, bread and cakes and cheeses in the larder, jellies glistening in the fridge. The shelves were empty now, but not as damp or dusty as he had feared. Molly must have come from time to time, kept her promise to guard and tend the house. He hadn’t time to linger. Molly might appear this very morning, with garden fork or duster, or a solicitor with a warrant. It surprised him really that Matthew had choked off all the lawyers, stopped pressing for him to be administrator. Christ! That was a relief. It would have been a second crime to swear on oath that there was no Will when he himself had hidden it. Why the hell should he want to be administrator, when he’d gone to so much trouble avoiding all official ties?