Born of Woman

by Wendy Perriam

  They got high that evening. It was the only thing to do, when Jennifer’s head was whirling from all the lies and deceptions she had strewn like weeds at Putney, and which could grow tall and rank and choke her in their tangles. Supposing Matthew decided to visit the Bedfordshire flat? Fortunately, he was always too busy for visits and Anne had been told to rest and so was limiting her activities to a shorter day at the office and no extra travel or upheaval. But either of them might spot her still in London, or—horrors—still with Susie. There was also the danger of Lyn. Would he support her story, as she had begged him to during that last traumatic phonecall, (which had been interrupted by the whole family returning) or become so jealous and resentful that he would blow the thing apart? Had she made the right decision in the first place? She felt guilty towards everyone, tried to drown the guilts in Beaujolais and Susie’s spaghetti Southwarkese.

  They were still high in the morning—on Sugar Puffs and Nescafé—larked about like schoolgirls, laughed at nothing. There was some huge airy feeling of relief, as if Matthew’s three-storey mansion had been a prison or a dungeon, while their cramped and dingy basement was open to the stars. They dawdled down to Tesco’s, bought the crazy childish junk-foods Jennifer normally abhorred—Instant Whips and Kit-Kats, Alphabetti Spaghetti, endless tins of beans. Jennifer sewed, scrubbed, painted, renovated, almost like a game. They were playing at mothers and fathers, with a real live baby to make it all worthwhile.

  They had been there almost two whole months now. Every day of every week Jennifer had watched the baby grow, studied its development. She knew exactly how it was lying in the womb, what limbs it had, what organs, how much it weighed, the tiny vital refinements cell by cell. She looked after it by looking after Susie, took it to the antenatal clinic by forcing Susie to go along with her, assured its peace by making Susie rest.

  She was father as well as mother. She paid for it, supported it. Matthew’s money helped, but she had taken a job as well—a part-time job as a cost clerk in a local insurance office—the sort of dead-end, low-paid work the Women’s Group deplored. It felt strange to be an office-girl, especially in contrast with her glamorous life of just five months ago. Instead of dashing round the country in a froth of fame and fans, she was chained to a desk by a pile of paperwork—checking premiums and commissions, sending advice notes out to agents, distracted by the squall of phones and clatter of typewriters. Yet at least it meant that Susie didn’t have to stand or slave all day, and the baby wasn’t harmed. It wasn’t kindness or self-sacrifice. In fact, it was almost selfish. It was her child she was working for—and Hester’s. The more she did for it, the more it became her own.

  Half of the girls in the Women’s Group had never had a child and never wanted one. The other half resented their kids and complained about their pregnancies. Jo encouraged them. If they had to bear children at all, she hoped at least they would bypass normal intercourse. That was a favourite theme of the meetings. Jo was hammering it home now.

  ‘The latest developments in AID and test-tube babies mean we’re less dependent now on men or marriage, or all the oppressive conventions of …’

  Jennifer eased her aching legs, tried to get more comfortable on the bare and scratchy floorboards. Jo made her feel a renegade for craving the things the Group denounced. She was a traitor to them all because she wanted to serve a man, yearned to conceive and bear his child the old-fashioned oppressive way, was happy to feed his stomach and his ego. Instead, she was feeding Susie. It was ironical, in fact. She was still a slave in women’s liberation terms—devoting her life to someone else, accepting a job well below her capabilities, returning home from it to cook and clean.

  The girls had attacked her at first, not only for her way of life, but for her subversive role as Mrs Winterton Junior, luring women back to home and kitchen, submerging them in curds and whey, sentimentalising slavery. Now they were more friendly. In fact, after seven weeks of attending all their meetings, Jennifer saw the Group as something like a family—a haven and support now she and Susie were hiding from the world. Jo herself had helped them from the start—turned her hand to painting, lent them furniture, dug out crockery and bed linen she vowed she didn’t need. She almost welcomed Susie’s pregnancy as a useful teaching aid, a flagrant example of man’s perfidy and selfishness. Nonetheless, Jennifer still remained uneasy. Even now, Jo’s shrill litany of statistics about women’s pay and job conditions was making her uncomfortable. She had been relieved to get a job at all, glad of any pay.

  She shifted position on the floor again, glanced around the room—girls sprawling, smoking, chewing gum—all concerned with winning rights and freedoms she knew she ought to value, but which seemed vastly less important than having Lyn back in her life and bed, his baby in her womb. Most of the girls wore faded jeans and baggy tops and looked as shabby as their surroundings. The meetings were held in a bleak church hall in Clapham, with Jesus posters on the walls and shelves of battered hymn-books. They even met on Sundays, the ‘service’ followed by coffee as in many modern congregations.

  It was time for coffee now. Jo had finished speaking, at last, and two of the girls were boiling kettles and clattering cups, while the rest broke into little groups, chatting and relaxing.

  ‘How you doing, Susie?’

  ‘OK, I s’pose.’

  ‘I only hope it’s not a boy—after all Jo said against them.’

  ‘I bet it is! I felt it kick like crazy every time she called man the enemy.’

  Everybody laughed. Jennifer kept her fingers crossed. She hoped it would be a girl. Female babies were easier and stronger, had fewer ills and infections than boys. She had wanted a girl herself when she was pregnant. Lyn might have accepted a girl more easily—less rivalry, less threat. Despite his moods and touchiness, she still longed to have a child made in his image—a dark, artistic, moody, brilliant child. But how would she ever achieve it when she hardly had a husband any longer?

  ‘Thought of a name yet?’ A small, pale, breastless girl in a studded leather jacket was passing Susie her coffee.

  ‘No, I haven’t bothered, really. I shan’t keep the kid, you see—it’s going to be adopted and the new parents choose the name.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’ Jennifer banged her cup down. She hated the thought of adoption. Even the social worker had tried to talk Susie out of it, impressed upon her that more and more single girls now chose to keep their babies, and that help and money were both available, even sheltered accommodation and special jobs. Susie refused to listen; she didn’t want a baby—only freedom and her figure back.

  What other solution was there? Jennifer couldn’t help beyond the birth. She was committed to Susie for the next few months, perhaps, not another twenty years on top of that. The rest of her life was Lyn’s. Susie’s baby was a once-in-a-lifetime labour like the book had been. Once it was safely delivered and Susie free to work, she must return to Lyn again, build some life and future of their own, fade all the scars of pain and separation. She could still love Susie, but only at a distance, as a friend, not with such intensity and risk.

  All the same, the word adoption hurt. She tried to blank it out, pretend it wouldn’t happen. The baby was hers at least a little longer. If Susie wouldn’t choose a name, then she had thought of scores—bought three separate books of babies’ names, one with detailed glosses on their meanings. The meanings were mostly wrong. Matthew meant Gift of God, Susie meant a lily. She glanced across at Susie, sprawling with her legs apart, the six-month bulge pushing out her scarlet smock which was already splashed with coffee. Her hair was tousled, her purple nail varnish chipped and flaking off. Some lily!

  Hester meant a star. That was closer. She had been a guiding star. Jennifer was still aware of her presence, especially since the move to Southwark where Hester herself had lived as an unmarried pregnant girl. Jennifer had deliberately chosen Southwark when she first went to find a room for Susie—not simply because it was an inexpensive area, but because of t
he parallels. She only hoped Rowan Childs was not still digging up the corpse of Hester’s baby. She, too, might have an interest in those parallels.

  Jennifer was always scared that the media would somehow track her down, find the Country Woman living in a London slum. She hated being in hiding, not only from Anne and Matthew, but also from the book. Now that the first elation had seeped away, she felt less like a carefree schoolgirl, more like a criminal lying low. She had become so fraught and anxious that Anne and Matthew would find her out, she had started phoning them each week, even visiting them occasionally on a fictitious day-return from Bedfordshire, to try and lull their suspicions, or at least prevent them writing to that mythical address.

  ‘How’s Lyn?’ Anne always asked. ‘Do bring him with you next time.’

  She had explained away his absence with a score of different stories. He was finishing a painting, checking on a house, recovering from colds, coughs, flu, or lack of sleep. She hated the deception, blushed as she wove the lies. Her own mounting worry made every fable worse. How would Anne and Matthew react if they knew the actual truth—that she hadn’t heard a word from Lyn since his last phonecall to Putney, way back at the beginning of September? She tried to discuss it with Susie, share and dilute her fears.

  ‘Of course he’s OK, Jen. Just sulking, I expect. You did your nut before, and he rolled up fit and well.’

  ‘That was only a week, though.’

  ‘Makes no difference. He’s just bloody unreliable—or artistic, or whatever you call it. He’s probably working on his masterpiece and the oils need time to dry. Keep away from Putney. It’s only Matthew who makes you sweat.’

  Susie didn’t understand. There was almost a compulsion to maintain her ties with Putney, despite all the deception. She could hardly explain it herself, except that it kept her still a Winterton, joined her to a family. Anyway, she had to collect her letters, check on any phonecalls, keep up to date with the progress of the book.

  It was selling without her now—spectacularly in England, solidly abroad—always top of the charts, always in the news. Matthew was cock-a-hoop, wooed by jealous publishers, feted at literary parties. He had taken over the publicity himself, with the loyal support of Jonathan and a second-stage campaign by Hartley Davies. She had longed for it all to end, but once she was out of the spotlight, the stage seemed dim and cramped. She had gone too far the other way, perhaps. Instead of chauffeured Mercedes, there were long wet waits in bus queues, a one-room basement in place of four-star hotels. Yet neither role was real. She felt more and more confused, more torn between extreme and contradictory views.

  ‘Ta-ta, you girls!’ Jo had finished her coffee and was gathering up her things. ‘Must get off sharp today. I’ve got a woman coming to supper who’s very big in the EOC. See you next week.’

  Jennifer and Susie left soon after, walking arm in arm towards the Common where they caught a bus to Southwark, then walked north towards the river. The area was a hotch-potch of building styles—once proud Victorian mansions collapsing into glass and concrete tower-blocks, tiny fly-blown caffs dwarfed by huge abandoned factories with half their windows boarded up. Scaffolding was everywhere—old streets half destroyed, new projects semi-finished but already vandalised. It was only five o’ clock, but the light was fading and a grey drizzle dirtying the air. The streets were deserted. Only the scrawled graffiti defacing walls and posters proved people still existed.

  In this northern stretch of Southwark, there were very few houses left. Most of the ordinary homes which Hester would have known, had been demolished to build banks and offices, warehouses or pubs. People were too puny and unprofitable to be allowed space to simply live. Jennifer thought of Lyn’s ancestors pacing their spread of hills. There was no green here but the blight of a weed pushing through a paving-stone or the rash of mould on a damp and cracking wall.

  They turned into their own street—one of the few still saved from the bulldozers—a dingy row of ancient terraced houses with flaked and peeling paint. Jennifer walked down the steps to the basement, fumbled for the key, winced as she opened the door. She had done her best on a low budget and with everything against her. The room itself was oddly shaped and facing north. The furniture was a mish-mash—half Jo’s, half junk-shop. A tatty brocaded sofa faced two armchairs, one maroon leatherette with a rent in the seat, one poppied chintz with broken springs and all its poppies fading. The sofa was Jennifer’s bed. Susie’s bed was grander—an old-fashioned brass affair, embellished by an embroidered tasselled counterpane which had belonged to Jo’s great-aunt. The ‘kitchen’ was a double gas-ring, a moody electric kettle and a shelf of groceries. The bathroom was up two flights, the nearest lavatory a dark and smelly closet in the back yard.

  Jennifer lit the gas fire, drew the curtains close, so they could forget the drizzle outside. She had made the curtains herself, added matching cushions, painted the chest of drawers and the battered wardrobe. The place certainly looked more cheerful, but it wasn’t home, didn’t have a garden, didn’t have a Lyn. Lyn’s name was like a pain still—the jagged pain of longing, made fiercer by resentment. She dragged her mind away from him, turned to Susie, who was kicking off her shoes.

  ‘What’s for tea? I’m starving.’

  ‘What d’you fancy?’

  ‘Fillet steak and strawberries.’

  ‘Coming up. I’ll call the chef.’

  Susie giggled. ‘Oh, Jen …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I am … you know … grateful and everything. I mean, it can’t be much fun for you, cooped up here, waiting for me to pod.’

  ‘That’s all right. How about a nice cheap nutritious egg Mornay, instead of steak?’

  ‘How about a kiss?’ Susie came up behind her, put her arms around her. ‘It’s the cook’s night off, OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Relax, then. You’re all tensed up. You never come near me now. I suppose you don’t fancy me with this great lump stuck out front.’

  ‘Oh Susie, I do. I love your little lump! It’s just that …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, I feel it’s … bad for the baby. Not physically, but … you know—as if we’re sort of … perverting it.’

  ‘Perverting? You do use funny words.’

  ‘I can’t explain, but last time we … er …, I was worried that … Oh, I don’t know—forget it.’ Jennifer edged away. It was only later that she had worried, and even then she could hardly put it rationally. It was as if the baby had been watching their every movement, staring from its cradle in Susie’s belly, feeling strange sensations shock against its frame as their three bodies heaved and interwined. She was concerned about the child. It had already had an unequal start in life, daily doses of gin and nicotine, no father, no real home or family. It had sat and listened to militant feminists denouncing the male sex. It would probably grow up neurotic and confused.

  She was confused herself about the whole awkward business of what she did with Susie. She accepted now, in theory, that sex between two females was neither wicked nor disgusting, yet part of her was still profoundly shocked that one of those females should actually have been herself. Their first amazing session together had never been repeated. She hardly knew how it had ever even happened, except it was all tied up with Oz, and with the guilt, thrill and terror of her first and only adultery which she had shared and heightened with Susie in a semi-tipsy state.

  ‘Nothing wrong,’ said Susie. ‘Just a bit of fun.’

  ‘Comfort,’ corrected Jennifer. That was all they wanted really—comfort and affection—another body to cuddle up against, block out the anxieties. Better to lie with Susie than fret alone. She glanced across at Susie now. She was sprawling in the chintz armchair, struggling with the nappy-pin which held her jeans together.

  ‘Christ! I must get out of these. I think I’ll put my nightie on. At least it’s loose.’

  Jennifer yawned, stood up. Perhaps they’d both get into their dressing-gowns, have an
early night. She was tired herself, tired of her constant brooding over Lyn, tried of the boring office job which would claim her again in the morning—the crowded in-tray, the endless rows of figures. ‘Good idea. I’ll get it for you, shall I?’

  ‘Thanks. It’s under the pillow.’

  It wasn’t. Jennifer eventually tracked it down in the upstairs bathroom, flung into a corner. When she returned, Susie was lying stretched out on the sofa with her eyes shut, naked except for a skimpy pair of pants. Jennifer stood at the door a moment, awed by her pregnant body—the deep curve of the belly, the majestic swelling breasts. She crept across, placed a hand on the bulge.

  Susie jumped. ‘Gosh. You scared me—and the baby. Feel it kicking?’

  ‘Yes—sorry. Here’s your nightie.’

  ‘Ta. It’s nice with nothing on, though. The sofa sort of … prickles. Why not take your clothes off too and we’ll have a little cuddle.’

  ‘No. I …’

  ‘You’ve gone off me, haven’t you, Jen?’

  ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘Kiss me, then.’

  They kissed—a brief and nervous kiss. Jennifer pulled away. It was uncomfortable on the sofa. The upholstery scratched rather than prickled and the cushions smelt of cat’s pee.

  ‘You are a fidget, Jen. You’ve still got your shoes on, for heaven’s sake. No wonder you can’t relax.’

  Jennifer kicked her sandals off, curled up her bare toes.

  Susie grinned. ‘Funny feet!’

  ‘You’re always saying that. What’s wrong with them?’

  ‘I dunno. Just funny. Hey, have you ever had your big toe kissed?’

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Big toe. I know it sounds alaugh, but it’s actually quite fantastic. Here, give me your foot up.’

  ‘Susie, don’t. I …’

  ‘No, wait. Hang on. You’ll love it!’ Susie knelt up, placed her lips round Jennifer’s big toe and drew it slowly into her mouth, tightened her grip on it. She flicked her tongue over and under and around it, grazed it with her teeth, used her lips to chafe and knead and nip. Her teeth scratched across the toenail, sank into the skin. The tongue followed, soothing and swaddling, cancelling out the pain.