Bello:
hidden talent rediscovered!
Bello is a digital only imprint of Pan Macmillan, established to breathe life into previously published classic books.
At Bello we believe in the timeless power of the imagination, of good story, narrative and entertainment and we want to use digital technology to ensure that many more readers can enjoy these books into the future.
We publish in ebook and Print on Demand formats to bring these wonderful books to new audiences.
About Bello:
www.panmacmillan.com/imprints/bello
About the author:
www.panmacmillan.com/author/wendyperriam
Contents
Wendy Perriam
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
Chapter Twenty Eight
Chapter Twenty Nine
Chapter Thirty
Wendy Perriam
Born of Woman
Wendy Perriam
Wendy Perriam has been writing since the age of five, completing her first ‘novel’ at eleven. Expelled from boarding school for heresy and told she was in Satan’s power, she escaped to Oxford, where she read History and also trod the boards. After a variety of offbeat jobs, ranging from artist’s model to carnation-disbudder, she now divides her time between teaching and writing. Having begun by writing poetry, she went on to publish 16 novels and 7 short story collections, acclaimed for their power to disturb, divert and shock. She has also written extensively for newspapers and magazines, and was a regular contributor to radio programmes such as Stop the Week and Fourth Column.
Perriam feels that her many conflicting life experiences – strict convent-school discipline and swinging-sixties wildness, marriage and divorce, infertility and motherhood, 9-to-5 conformity and periodic Bedlam – have helped shape her as a writer. ‘Writing allows for shadow-selves. I’m both the staid conformist matron and the slag; the well-organised author toiling at her desk and the madwoman shrieking in a straitjacket.’
Dedication
For L. W.
rarest and most precious of lilies.
Chapter One
‘Stand by, everybody. Total quiet now, please. Thirty seconds, twenty-five …’
Help! This is it. I’m on. Cameras surrounding me, zooming in with their prying spy eyes. Lights huge and hot, melting me away.
Twenty, fifteen, ten …
Relief to melt away. To be only a grease-pool on the studio floor, instead of a celebrity with two hundred people watching me out there and another ten million due to switch on in two hours’ time. I can‘t be a celebrity. Celebrities are always Other People. People with cast-iron nerves and proper talents. People like Vita Sampson. She’s a household name, yet she’s sitting there, just opposite, in her chrome and vinyl chair. She’s the latest goddess on BBC’s ‘In Town’ and ‘In Town’ has reached the Top Ten and Matthew said you’re made if you appear on it.
Ten, nine, eight …
There must be some mistake. I’m only Jennifer Winterton— somebody else’s name, somebody else’s creation. I’m only good at small things—planning herbaceous borders, messing about in the kitchen: Only a housewife, really; not even a wife—not now—well, not in bed. Pray they don’t find that out, start asking questions about …
Seven, six, five …
Stop! They’re counting too fast. Set the clock again. No—must get a grip on myself. Matthew’s watching me. Remember what he said. Relax, deep breathe, be gracious. You are the natural woman, sweet and unaggressive, the quiet, chaste, old-fashioned country girl. No, I’m not, I’m …
Four, three, two …
Oh, help me, God! Smile. Matthew says always smile. One second left. Can’t escape—I’m ON!
‘Hold it!’
What’s happened? Floor manager tense and sweating, dashing on to the set. Technicians appearing from nowhere. Frantic consultations. My own mouth won’t work at all. It’s stiff and stuck together, tongue thick and dry like blotting-paper. I try to force it open. ‘What’s wrong?’ I mouth to Vita.
‘Minor technical hitch,’ she smiles. ‘Just sit tight.’
I couldn’t get up if I wanted. My spine has turned to string. The lights are so hot, I’m scared wet patches will show beneath my underarms. Why did Matthew make me wear this dress? It’s hot, confining, claustrophobic—like the studio itself. We‘re shut in like a space capsule, black ceiling starred with lights, only a frightening void beyond. Void is a word Lyn taught me. He sees voids everywhere. If only he were with me now, instead of moping back at home. Oh, Lyn, I want you—you know that. I promise you it’ll be better once …
Careful! People are still watching. Not tonight’s ten million, but the two hundred flesh-and-blood ones staring from that darkness, suspended in that void. Live audience, they call it. ‘Live’ sounds dangerous like sharks. I’ve got to please them somehow, got to swell the ratings. TV time is the most precious thing on earth. What did Matthew say it cost? Fifty thousand pounds to make a thirty-second commercial, up to three hundred thousand for an hour of TV drama.
Money like that set all the terrors off again. Jennifer Winterton drowning and choking in figures. Thousands of bank notes fluttering through her stomach, bags of coins dumped heavy in her gut. Ten million viewers had marched into her body and were tramping round and round it. And she wasn’t even on, yet! Sound-man still baffled and huddled, struggling with yards of cable and a microphone. Floor manager with tie askew and jacket off, communicating (via headphones) with distant and disembodied gods. Jennifer swallowed. Tried to stop her hands shaking, fix her attention on something. The book, of course, the book.
She glanced down at the heavy, glossy volume preening on the coffee table—the only reason she was here at all. On the cover, Mrs Winterton Senior almost-smiled above her prim white collar. Hester Winterton. The public loved the name—old-fashioned, biblical, dignified. The photo wasn’t right, though. They had made Hester too insipid. Her husband’s mother was as powerful as the countryside she came from. That was on the back—the Cheviot Hills, the stern Northumbrian landscape soaring into a steel and granite heaven. Hester was trapped between those covers—the entries in her diaries, the entries in her life—soldiers in trenches, scullery maids in kitchens, babies in cradles, farm and home in crisis.
The smile was counterfeit. Hester wasn’t pleased. She had been publicised and packaged, thrown to the modern world like a bag of sweets in pretty coloured wrappings; a world she had hated and shut out, a life she had kept as secret as her diaries—those crabbed and weeping notebooks she had coffined in a wooden chest and buried in the cellar.
Jennifer closed her eyes, saw the photo still, but darkened with a frown now. ‘Hester, I’m sorry, I never knew they’d …’
‘Right. Here we go then. Take two. Everybody quiet, please.’
Someone set the clock again. Every eye fixed on that slow, jerking finger, pouncing on the seconds. Sixty, fifty, forty, thi
rty … Quick. Practise your first sentence. SMILE!
Her jaw ached, her lips burned, her eyes were puckering at the corners. Cameras closing in like kidnappers on soft, treacherous feet—so close now, there was nothing left but smile. She could feel her heart thump-thumping like a …
‘Cut! Sorry, everybody. There’s a jinx on us this evening.’ Floor manager dashing on set again, audience growing restive in the darkness. Matthew was out there somewhere, fretting at the delay, ready to check and judge her every word—like God. Jennifer couldn’t see him. Only a blur of faces, a choppy sea of heads. She was in a separate world, bounded by the cameras, blinded by the lights. It was Matthew who had decided her husband couldn’t come. ‘He’ll only make you nervous.’ She was nervous, anyway. These last few weeks had worn her out, almost changed her character. She’d never been like this before—panicky and hollow, fixated on herself—her fears, her face, her … All the publicity had ground her down. Fourteen days rushing up and down the country. Strange beds, snatched meals, photographers lurking, interviewers pouncing; everything she did or said turned into a headline. She had become a legend in a fortnight, the reincarnated Hester Winterton with her message of wholesome country living, now shut up in a cage, trapped in a grid of headlines. She was still pale and shaking (underneath the greasepaint); had only just returned, thrust on television before she had barely caught her breath.
She opened her eyes. Vita was speaking, trying to reassure her. ‘All right, Jennifer? I don’t think they’ll be long now.’
She mumbled some reply. Ought to call her Vita. Celebrities were always Christian names. It had been like that on radio. Phil, Dave, Tony, Rosie, darling. Instant intimacy in twenty different towns.
‘Right, that’s really it now. Silence on the floor, please. Take three. One minute countdown.’
Vita Sampson’s long silk legs uncrossed. She snapped on her own slick professional smile.
‘Good evening—and welcome to ‘‘In Town’’.’
Ten million people smiling back at Vita from John o’ Groats to Land’s End, goggling at her outfit, staring at her legs. Jennifer didn’t exist yet. The cameras still had to create her. They were the gods—the cameras—giving life, withholding it, cutting off limbs, words, gestures, shutting out whole scenes. It was still Vita they were ogling now.
‘My first guest tonight needs no introduction. The book which has made her famous has sold twenty thousand copies in a fortnight and is well on its way to becoming a household name. Born With The Century is the story of a remarkable woman who began her long and busy life in 1900, endured two World Wars and many personal hardships, yet who found purpose and fulfilment by living close to nature and achieving self-sufficiency. She has left us an enthralling record of her life in the diaries she kept from the age of fourteen until 1948 when her son Lyn was born—diaries packed with vivid and touching details of public and private events. These diaries have now been published with a mass of other records and a fascinating preface by her daughter-in-law, who pays tribute to the older woman’s skills, not only in this book, but in her own simple natural life-style …’ Vita’s pause was like a fanfare before the triumphant name which followed. ‘Jennifer Winterton.’
Creation. Cameras swooping now on her fair, plumpish, unfashionable, almost pretty face, eyes dilated with fear. What in God’s name was that roaring noise exploding through the studio? She glanced around in panic, wincing at the din. (‘Never look at the cameras, never at the audience. Keep your attention fixed always on the interviewer.’ Matthew’s Ten Commandments—a hundred thousand commandments.) Jennifer dared to break one of them, tried to focus on the abyss beyond the lights. Pale bun-faces ghostly in the gloom, eyes and spectacles glinting through the shadows. Hands on hands. Applause, Applause! That’s all it was, the roar—people clapping Jennifer Winterton. Stop! she almost shouted. She didn’t deserve applause. She was only a tiny photo on the inside flap of a book jacket. You couldn’t coop Lyn’s mother in a couple of hundred pages or a clutch of pretty pictures.
Applause dying down now. Silence still more frightening than the roar. Vita Sampson leaning threateningly towards her, cameras creeping up behind.
‘Jennifer, hallo and welcome.’
‘H … hallo.’ Voice skidding across her throat, words disintegrating. Vita Sampson rushing ahead too fast. Sales, statistics, figures, facts. The Book cradled in Vita’s arms. Red-taloned finger pointing to the text.
Her own mouth muttering things she didn’t know it knew. Her mind cut off from its moorings, zooming in and out of cul-de-sacs while her lips stuck and stumbled and fell over their own smile. Lights glaring, cameras swarming. Impossible to think, plan, speak, stop, STOP.
‘Jennifer, I think you said …’
‘Jennifer, I know you feel …’
‘Jennifer, how can you justify …?’
‘Jennifer, what makes you assume …?’
I don’t, I didn’t, I can’t, I’m not. Wait … What did Matthew say? If you’re flummoxed, gain time by repeating the question. What was the question? Do I believe in ghosts? Matthew told me not to mention ghosts—not as such—just keep on stressing Hester’s continuing presence. They’ll never understand, though. They’ll label me a crack-pot, say I’m inventing things.
Vita speaking again. Must have read my thoughts. ‘You say you’re aware of Hester’s influence, even after her death. I wonder, Jennifer, do you sense her as a type of spirit, then?’
No, no. Hester is rock and bone and vigour, not a spirit. Yet Matthew keeps on urging me to bring in the supernatural. How can I, when there aren’t the words for it and people think I’m …?
Questions flying faster now. Can’t speak. Can’t think. Stop! Cut! Let me out! Face cracking up like crazy-paving, traitorous things happening to my voice. Haven’t got a face or voice, only a mask which is breaking into bits. It’s not me under there. I’m at home with Lyn, planting out begonias. Smile at the begonias, hold Lyn’s hand, pull yourself together. Smile. SMILE. I’m crying. Impossible! Blink the tears away. Quick—cough, sneeze, clear your throat—anything but tears. Vita’s as worried as I am. Asking easy questions. Treating me like a child.
No. The sobbing’s louder now. The cameras can’t resist it. No one’s cried on ‘In Town’—not a real good howl. There have been tears before, but only stifled ones, and from people with a reason for them—saints and zealots weeping for man’s messes, choked and dazzled footballers, defeated presidents, Miss Worlds paying back their crowns.
Cameras cock-a-hoop now, highlighting the tears, presenting them in full colour close-up to tonight’s ten million viewers, trying every angle, cutting between Jennifer’s streaming eyes and all the saddest pictures on the caption-stand—lance corporal shot in the stomach, dole queues shivering on Tyneside, rotting harvests, starving lambs. Vita solicitous and skilful, trying to weave the crisis into the interview, explain it to the viewers.
‘Perhaps you could try and tell us, Jennifer, what aspect of Hester’s life upsets you most?’
No answer.
‘You’re obviously very distressed by certain memories. Hester’s life was certainly a hard one and her book has maybe touched some nerve …’
‘I … I …’ More sobs.
‘This was, of course, a harsh and terrible century. So many young and talented men cut down in their prime, so many private tragedies in two massive global wars. Hester’s own three brothers were all killed in the trenches. It seems to me that you identify with Hester. I mean, does your awareness of her … her presence mean you share her actual grief?’
Jennifer gulped. ‘Yes, that’s … r … right. That’s …’ Words almost indecipherable. Untruthful words, in any case. She is crying for herself, not for Hester’s brothers—for her exhaustion and her problems, her stupidity and fear. Crying because she can’t smile and doesn’t know the answers. Because she’s a stupid stuttering pathetic waste of money—waste of Matthew‘s money. She’s failed him, let him down. Crying because her h
usband doesn’t desire her and she lies awake at night wondering if he ever will again. Crying because she’s tired and tense and …
‘CUT!’
‘Fantastic, Jennifer! That really was a scoop. Genuine emotion always makes the news. The Press Office are on to it already. They want a few shots to splash around tomorrow’s dailies. This way, please. They’re waiting in the Green Room—panting to see you, in fact!’
Different cameras in the Green Room. Smaller bolder ones, jumping out at her before she has arranged her face or forced a smile. They don’t want a smile—not any longer. Tears are far more profitable. Tears sell newspapers and newspapers sell books. Tears swell ratings, tears mean cash.
Cry, cry, cry.
Chapter Two
‘Don’t cry.’
Lyn Winterton watched his wife’s tears glaze the cold, buttered surface of her toast. He hated her to cry. He had eaten nothing, just mangled his hot cross bun into shreds and pickings. ‘You can’t cry for someone you’ve never even met, Jennifer.’ It sounded harsh, when he had intended it as loving.
‘But she’s your mother, Lyn.’
Which meant he should be crying. He couldn’t cry. His mother had taught him not to. Even with his stupid fancy girl’s name, he wasn’t allowed to blab.
‘Anyway, I feel … as if I know … her.’ Jennifer’s voice was frayed and pulled apart. ‘I mean, you t … talk about her so much.’
Lyn made a pellet from a scrap of bun. So she noticed, did she, the way Hester seeped and trickled into everything? Even with three hundred miles between them and a wife who loved him more than his mother did. He forced the pellet down. Jennifer had saved him the last, staling, home-baked hot cross bun, left over from their breakfast. He had never really cared for hot cross buns, but they were precious like the love. She made them every year with such devotion, chopping peel and kneading dough, the whole kitchen warm and spiced. He leaned across and touched her hand, hand that had shaped the buns. ‘It’s you who are obsessed with her.’
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