Born of Woman

by Wendy Perriam

  Steak and beef had faded. She couldn’t waste time on dinner—not any more. She tried to make excuses, explain her change of plan. She heard her voice blathering on inanely, talking too fast, too wildly, excitement soaring over worry. The phone hollered for more coins. She stood there, paralysed. Anne’s last words had crescendoed to a whine, then spluttered into nothing. Her legs were trembling again. She replaced the receiver, touched the star of chickweed in her buttonhole. Hester was behind this—must have arranged it somehow—come to her aid, brought her husband back. She pushed at the heavy door of the booth, walked dazed into the street. She could see a bus lumbering towards her. ‘Waterloo’, it said. She raced to the bus stop, put out her hand, jumped on.

  ‘Wait for me, Lyn,’ she whispered. ‘I’m on my way.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  The train rattled through the dark and dripping evening, rain stinging on its windows, steel track towed along behind. Jennifer stared at her face reflected in the window, a dark and shivery face which kept fracturing into pieces as streaks and shapes roared past it, then reassembled, weeping tears of rain. She sat on the very edge of the seat, gazing out at factories and warehouses, abandoned depots, empty offices. They were still close to Waterloo. Slowly, the houses took over—people massed together—high and dizzy in tower-blocks, poor and grubby in tenements, streets lurching past the train. Lights lights lights puncturing the darkness, every light a home. She was just a rumble, shaking their floors and ceilings, stopping conversations, griming their net curtains. Or perhaps there were no people. Maybe all the homes were empty, like her cold and empty carriage.

  Even Waterloo had been deserted—a chilly Sunday station, bereft of its commuters, the pigeons huddled and drab-feathered. She had found the Cobham train at Platform 9, sat in the dirty compartment with its dim and flickering lights and its reek of stale tobacco, counting the endless seconds until it shuddered away from the buffers and gathered speed past rain-swept sheds and sidings.

  She started as a second train flashed past her, a third the other side. Trains tearing through her skull and out again, scorching through the black tunnels of her eyes. Lights, wheels, rain, speed, spinning and distorting, so that inside, outside, backwards, forwards, meant nothing any longer. She closed her eyes. Things quietened. One train speeding in one direction to the one man in the world.

  She reached across and wiped her window-face, tried to see beyond it. The houses were thinning now, the horizon opening out. No more strings of lights—glittering constellations of streets, estates and shops—only single lonely homesteads swallowed up in darkness. Lyn was out there somewhere, staring from that darkness, the noise of her train juddering through his world. She had feared him lost, or in some foreign country a thousand miles away, yet Charles had seen him just last night, almost on their doorstep. Charles was a serious boy, steady and reliable. He never lied, never invented things. He had been staying the night with a school friend down in Cobham and had phoned Anne and Matthew to tell them he had spotted a man he was almost sure was Lyn. Lyn in Cobham, when she had imagined him a world away! Cobham was only twenty miles or so—half of that now, as the train jolted and swayed towards it, ignoring the pointless stations in between.

  Jennifer clenched and unclenched her hands, shifted on the seat. She mustn’t be too hopeful. Charles had said ‘almost sure’. How cruel that ‘almost’ was. And even if it had been Lyn, he might have left by now, could have driven off from Cobham hours ago, and be the other end of England by the time her train pulled in. And why Cobham in the first place? Matthew’s little terraced house had long been sold. Lyn had never made any friends there, never declared any fondness for the place.

  ‘Lyn,’ she whispered. ‘Be there still.’

  Her tie with him was holy. When Susie called him a selfish pig or a rotten moody bastard, she was angry with them both—Susie for using words like that, Lyn for giving her grounds for them. Susie ignored his flair and soar of brilliance, his leaf-thin sensitivity which made him moody, but also made him special.

  She slumped back in the seat. She loved Susie for a hundred different things—her vulgar cheerful childish bounciness, her wild infectious giggle, her hugs and fads and crazes. And yet Lyn came always first. There were solemn vows which bound her to him, the tie and bond with Hester, her knowledge that she must save him from himself. She had to find him, had to make things right with him.

  The train had stopped at Oxshott and was gathering speed again, tearing up the landscape and flinging the pieces in her eyes. Every piece had Lyn on it—the whirling spiral of his thumb-prints, the letters of his name juggled up and spelling loss and love, the dark pupils of his eyes darker than the darkness.

  Only one more station. Jennifer jumped to her feet, hand ready on the door handle. No one else got out. She stood alone on the forlorn and tiny platform with its puddled concrete and rusting roof, listening to the last rumbling echo of the train as it drew away. Silence now. Even the rain had stopped. She climbed the steps of the footbridge, paused at the top, stared up at the sky. It arched above the railway track—dark, moody, turbulent—the thin black arms of trees straining up to reach it. The moon was full, but trapped, a swollen yellow eye blindfolded by cloud. It was surely only a fairy-tale that man had ever set foot on the moon. It was too far away, too frail, would crumble if you trod on it.

  She shivered, clutched the cold iron rail of the footbridge, descended the steps the other side, towards the ticket barrier. Some crazy irrational part of her almost expected to see Lyn waiting there, come to meet her train. But there was no one at all—not even a porter or a man to take her ticket. The station was like a ghost-place in a dream. No one to smile and say ‘good evening’, no one to make her real. Just wet and gleaming rails stretching away to nothingness and that vast staring sky.

  She turned out of the station, trudged up the road to the small parade of shops where Lyn had sometimes stopped to buy her a Mars bar or a magazine. That was before the book, when they were close and quiet and unpursued, and little things were treats. All the shops were shut now, Cobham a dead land. She had no plan of action, no real strategy. Cobham was only a village, but it was still some task to check every inch of it, especially in the dark. Hopeless, said a mocking voice inside her. She choked the voice, made herself walk on. How could Cobham be dead if Lyn were hiding there? She must find him, resurrect herself.

  She quickened her pace, footsteps hammering through the silence. Should she go straight to the river where Charles had said he’d spotted him—search all along its banks—or call first at their old home and make enquiries there? At least the new owners knew of her, were aware of her fame from the book. It wouldn’t hurt to knock. Lyn might have had some reason to visit the house, some letter to collect or possession he had left behind. It seemed unlikely after all this time, but she had to start somewhere—before she lost her nerve.

  She turned left into the main road which led up to the village. The soft light from olde-worlde carriage-lamps gleamed on bow windows and fancy paving-stones, exotic shrubs in stiff formations, pretentious house names engraved on polished plaques. White Mercedes crouched like huge pale moths on pebbled driveways edged with rhododendrons. Yes—Cobham was alive still—very much alive, so long as you were rich and well-connected. It was a mile or two to the poorer, shabbier street where they had lived themselves, its rows of terraced houses squatting behind mangy privet hedges.

  She half ran, half walked, scanning every side street, peering into the shadow of every clump of trees. Rain was threatening again, the sky still fretful, swift and swollen clouds caging the moon and stars. She branched right before the village, left, right, left again, and into their tiny street. Number twelve was almost at the end. She hardly recognised it. Their bare-brick workman’s cottage had been painted strawberry pink, frilly nets foamed at every window. The knocker was a small brass poodle’s head, the ‘twelve’ spelt out in writing in a fancy gothic script. The house had been prettified in a way which d
idn’t suit it—a simple yokel garbed in fancy dress. She stared at the new glass porch, the ugly carport. It was as if part of her life and self had been detroyed. This was the house where she and Lyn had started life together, and which they had restored and renovated. Now the new owners had done their own restoring, stripped them from the house with brush and blow-lamp, submerged them in pink paint.

  She pressed the door-bell, listened to its tinkling chime. No answer. She rang again, looked up and down the road. Some of the houses were in total shuttered darkness, and even where there were lights, the curtains were drawn close, so that she could see no human figure nor welcoming room. She had lived here once, belonged here, but now she was shut out. It was as if the street refused to recognise her; the roofs frowning with their brows drawn down, the windows wearing blank and hostile faces. Up in Mepperton, where the houses were far fewer and the darkness almost solid, unrelieved by street-lamps, she had never felt this lonely and benighted. Your neighbours might be far away in distance, but were always close in spirit. Here, people lived on top of you, but were strangers more or less. Every door seemed bolted, every window barred. And even if they unlocked to her, what was she meant to say? How could she admit that she hadn’t seen the man she loved for fifty-two whole days, had no idea whether he was well or ill, north or south, happy or in anguish? It was anguish to admit it to herself.

  Instinctively, she turned towards the river, as if she could gather up his traces there, like a fistful of feathers, a handful of weed. Lyn had always loved the River Mole, had followed it once from its source in St Leonard’s Forest to where it joined the Thames at Molesey, opposite Hampton Court Palace. He had sketched its reeds, its birds, the broad and stately walnut trees which shaded its bank at the foot of Box Hill. They had picnicked there together, fed the coot, watched them nest, breed, hatch, feed, fly; seen the river bank change from bare brown to tangled green, and back again. Now it was spooky black.

  She groped along the path. The grass squelched underfoot, sucking down her thin and silly shoes. Ragged shadows trembled on the water—pointing fingers, fraying faces. There were two moons now, one hanging in the sky, one fallen in the river underneath it, its broken fragments silver on the surface.

  She stumbled on, tripping on the tussocky grass, overhanging branches brushing wet against her face. There was no sign of Lyn, no sign of anyone. Charles must have got it wrong. Even with a full moon, the light was too dim to distinguish faces. If he had seen a man at all, it might have been just an angler or a gypsy. She was wasting her time chasing after shadows. But wait—what was that—that hunched shape on the further bank? Just another shadow or a crouching human figure?

  She ducked down beside a tree stump, crept a little closer. No, it wasn’t man, but bird—a large grey bird fishing in the moonlight—a heron. She had watched them so often up in Mepperton, standing tensed and poised like that, long snaked neck bent back in an S, head cocked to one side and listening. Yet heron were rare on this stretch of river and especially after sunset. She and Lyn had seen them in the daytime, never in the dark. She peered between the reeds. The bird stood so motionless, it could have been carved of stone or painted on a backdrop. The water rippled below it, the clouds retched and heaved above, but neither beak nor plumage stirred. A twig snapped beneath her foot. With a sudden honk, the heron lurched away, wings flapping, legs outstretched.

  Jennifer leant against the tree stump. Stupid to feel so dazed. It wasn’t a ghost she had seen. Heron did feed after dark, so long as there was moonlight. Lyn had told her that himself. And yet it still seemed like an omen, something else linking her to Hester, drawing her back to Hernhope. She started up at the moon, the same moon which must be prying now through the chinks of Hester’s house, showing up the jungled garden, the dusty deserted rooms. She had hoped at first that Lyn might have returned there in a last determined effort to sort out the problem of the missing Will. She had even phoned the Bertrams and asked them to check the place, but all they had found was leaves in the gutters and nettles halfway up the door. Molly had long since stopped her cleaning. What was the point, she asked, of dusting for the spiders, or gardening for the starlings?

  Jennifer trailed her hand in the icy water, trying to trap the quick-silver fragments of moonlight shimmering on the top. Hester had written so much about the moon. The sun was a far less frequent visitor to the bleak and shadowed hills of Hernhope than the nightly prowling moon. Hester had sown her seeds when the moon was waxing, predicted the weather by its shape or shadows, studied its different phases. A full moon was always lucky. Hester had made her potions then, exploiting its help in curing illnesses. Did heartache count as illness? Would she cure it by finding Lyn? Hester had recorded the legend that all things lost or wasted on earth were treasured on the moon—misspent time and wealth, broken vows, unanswered prayers, lovers’ sighs and yearnings. She stood up, stretched out her hands.

  ‘Help me.’ she whispered.

  She would follow the river for at least another mile, then return to Cobham centre, search every pub, street and wasteland for her husband. It might be futile, but she owed it to him. She had allowed Susie and her baby to snuff him out too easily, the Women’s Group to snub him when they didn’t understand.

  Her legs ached and the backs of her heels were blistered when she returned, at last, into the allotments. She had trudged four or five miles in all, been recognised by people in pubs, accosted by a stranger, even chatted up. But she was still alone and husband-less. She was almost certain now that Charles had been in error. Lyn was unique, maybe, but there were still a score of lean dark men who could resemble him at a distance in the dark. If he had come to find her, he would have gone direct to Southwark, not to Cobham. There was nothing left at Cobham. Even their allotments would have been re-let to other tenants or reverted back to weeds.

  Jennifer shivered in the gloom, wished she had brought her gloves. It was colder now, though the rain was still holding off, some of the cloud dispersing. The moon had slipped its blindfold and looked as plump and solid as a de-rinded Edam. Even so, its light was grudging. She was glad of the near-by street-lamps casting their soft glow on guard-straight leeks and glistening cabbage leaves. It was consoling, almost touching; to see the care lavished on these plots by humble men and women who toiled here every weekend, creating their tiny Hernhopes out of a hundred and twenty-five square metres and a compost-heap. She groped along to plots eleven and fourteen, the two which had been theirs. They were further down towards the fence, past a stretch of weeds and wasteland. She prayed they, too, would not be overgrown. There was tangle enough at Hernhope, without every place they touched turning into a wilderness.

  She stopped by plot eleven, felt ridiculous relief. It was as neat, as ordered as the day that they had left, though everything was taller and more lush now. Humble vegetables looked exotic in the moonlight—silvered spinach, spangled cabbages. She walked up and down between them, bending low so that she could see exactly what was there. The new owner appeared to have kept the plot much as they had planted it—runner-beans towering at the back, lettuce under polythene coddled at the front, cabbage, onions, spinach, sprouts and cauliflower neat-rowed in the centre. Yet, despite the neatness, the lack of weeds and obvious signs of labour, nothing had been harvested. She peered a little closer. The marrows were as large as kit-bags, the runners huge, tough, hard-seeded, curved like scimitars, way past the size for normal picking. All the onion-tops had been neatly folded over, but the onions themselves were bursting out of the soil, as if begging to be lifted. She remembered planting them herself from seed on Boxing Day, cossetting them in seed-trays in the dark, till she could transfer them to the soil in April. It was Hester who had insisted on Boxing Day. She had written in her notebooks that onions received a special blessing and bonus if planted at dawn on the day after Christmas. So she had got up specially early, called down Hester’s benediction, and sat in the chilly Cobham kitchen beneath the paper chains, pressing in the tiny blackis
h seeds. Lyn had come down later and kissed her across the splitting bags of compost, and when all the seeds were carefully tucked to rest, they went back to bed themselves, but not to sleep.

  She stared at the onions now. She had chosen Ailsa Craig—a hardy Scottish strain, which Hester had recommended as being proof not only against infection, but against the harsh Northumbrian climate. It appeared to have done just as well in Cobham. But why had nobody lifted the onions, cleared the soil? True there had been no frost yet, but it was already late October and everything would rot or spoil if it were left in the ground much longer.

  Yet the new owner was no laggard. He had recently planted a double row of spring cabbage, and lettuce under glass. His winter peas were marked by a line of cloches, a row of little tags. She peered at the name on the labels—Feltham First—a variety they had often chosen themselves. But why did he want more vegetables when he had let these older ones lie wasteful and ungathered? His carrots were quite young still. Jennifer bent closer. Between every third row of carrots was a little clump of sage, its dusty-coloured cushions pale between the feathery carrot tops. Only Lyn plated sage among his carrots to keep carrot fly away. It was a trick they had learned from Hester, an old wives’ tale which worked, but which modern gardeners scorned.

  The new owner must have copied their idea, replanted both varieties exactly the same way. She smiled at his naiveté. There were no carrot fly till spring, so the sage was quite superfluous for this later, autumn crop. All the same, she felt absurdly pleased. It provided some tiny continuity in a world where everything else had been destroyed or bulldozed, proved almost a tribute to her and Lyn and Hester and their methods. Some keen allotment holder must have been admiring their plot before they had even left it, then rushed to take it over, and kept it religiously the same. It was almost as if he had saved the harvest for them, tended and weeded their vegetables, but refused to pick or eat them because he was not the one who had sown them in the first place. A crazy thought, but an appealing one. Some part of her and Lyn, their life and work together, still stood like a tiny monument.