Born of Woman

by Wendy Perriam

  Downright crazy, Matthew thought. If Jennifer went on like this, his whole project would be doomed. Wine had clouded her powers of judgement, wrecked his careful plans. She had never been used to alcohol, so even a little could push her over the top. Mind you, at least she had stopped swaying and seemed reasonably in control. It could have been worse, he supposed. She might have broken down in giggles or … He shuddered. The most important thing now was to shut her up. If she maundered on much longer, his book and reputation would both be ruined. Even now, she had only reached the funeral.

  ‘It was rather strange, you see, because at the service the Vicar was wearing white vestments. That’s unusual for a funeral. I mean, white is for joy and celebration, not death and mourning. I suppose it was because it was still so close to Easter, but all the same, I took it as a sign that … Oh I don’t know—it all sounds so far-fetched when I try and tell you, but I just felt Hester’s … presence all around me, not dead, but watching still. Then, when I found her diaries, I had this weird feeling it was—well—meant, that Hester and I were somehow … linked, brought together by some … outside power.’

  Matthew’s cheeks were flaming with embarrassment, hands clutching at the table-edge, gaze fixed on the carpet. He dared not catch the representatives’ eyes. He would have to interrupt this hocus-pocus, this rambling gibberish before Jennifer was catcalled out of the room. Slowly he looked up. Every eye was turned to her, not scoffing or ridiculing, but fascinated, rapt.

  He stared. Surely he was mistaken. Perhaps that total pin-drop silence was due to boredom, not attentiveness. But no. Even Basil Brooks himself was utterly absorbed. Matthew could hardly understand it. It couldn’t be her charm or sex appeal. Jennifer had never been a beauty, and frankly looked a mess now. The whole elaborate hair-do had tumbled into anarchy, the country flowers were fading, the careful make-up streaked. It was her words which had caught their interest, those very words he had blushed and cringed at himself. He had judged too swiftly, reacted too unfairly. There was a lot of current interest in the supernatural and Jennifer had somehow harnessed it, hit on a brand new selling-point, without any formal briefing. Her scrag-end of a speech was working far more effectively than the professional polished piece he had so laboriously prepared for her. She was even selling the diaries now, in her own strange and fumbling fashion.

  ‘I just wanted you all to know how … real those diaries were for me. Once I’d found them, I was almost … taken over. I never imagined for a moment they’d be published. In fact, I even opposed the scheme at first, but now I’m glad everyone else can share them. I’ve really got to know Hester these last few months. She’s taught me such a lot, you know, about plants and birds and animals. And a mass of household hints, and new skills like lace-making. More important things as well—things I can hardly …’

  Matthew stared at the radiant girl, transformed by her own enthusiasm. She was half-turned towards him now, and he could see her eager open face, completely free from guile or affectation. These men were so accustomed to the slick patter of the sales drive, the polished posturing performances laid on for them like false and heartless television commercials, that Jennifer’s integrity had a shining power and truth. She spoke so feelingly, so naturally, she made girls like Cindy Scott seem bogus and rehearsed. And she was even gaining confidence—describing Hern-hope now, with fewer hesitations.

  ‘It’s Hester’s house, of course. It always will be. You probably think I’m making too much of Hester. I did wonder that myself, in fact—whether the shock of her death was making me just imagine things. But it wasn’t imagination. You see even after the funeral, when I felt perfectly calm and rested, I was … still aware of her. One afternoon, I was walking along the valley, collecting dandelions. I was trying out one of her recipes for home-made wine. She said it was most important to gather the dandelions before the twelfth of May, because the flowers are larger and brighter then, and they make the wine smile. It was May the ninth, I remember, a rather wet and blustery day with lots of fat white clouds tearing along the sky. I couldn’t have felt more normal. I’d spent the morning scrubbing out drawers and cupboards and making leek and potato soup. I wasn’t tired or hungry or drugged or shocked or anything. And it wasn’t even spooky dusk or twilight, just a plain, quiet, ordinary afternoon. And yet I heard her voice. Hester’s … Speaking to me.’

  Jennifer paused, rubbed her eyes, smudging the mascara. The silence was electric. It was because she looked so ordinary, the sort of fairish, prettyish, untidy girl-next-door whom everyone felt at ease with, that her words were so convincing. She was not marketing a gimmick or selling a commodity for someone else’s profit. She was telling her own truth. He could have paid a hundred thousand pounds to try and create such drama and excitement, and still not brought it off. Jennifer had achieved it by her own ingenuousness. She was still speaking in that excited, artless fashion.

  ‘And that wasn’t the first time. I’d heard her voice before—the day I found the diaries. That’s partly why I felt … Oh, gosh!’ She suddenly broke off, turned round to face her brother-in-law, stared at him in horror. ‘Matthew, I’m sorry. I’m meant to be making a speech, and I’ve been rambling on so long, I haven’t even started it.’

  Everybody laughed. It was the relief they had been waiting for. The supernatural had worked its subtle magic, but now they needed a break. Again, Jennifer provided it. She had sunk back in her seat, blushing and apologising, all the reps craning towards her, asking questions, genuinely fascinated. It was as if the conference had slipped out of its straitjacket and was now sprawling in its shirt-sleeves.

  Treat the sales reps as your friends, he had advised her, and she had taken him at his word. She was chatting to them as freely and unaffectedly as she might have done to Anne, promising them favours, cheeses, herbal remedies; doing more for his book than he had ever planned on paper.

  His mind was working furiously. He must exploit these new factors in his publicity campaign. He could weave the supernatural into interviews and press reports, get Jennifer to repeat her performance up and down the land. He wouldn’t sweat so much, now, about careful formal speeches. Jennifer’s own impulsive spontaneity had profit gushing out of it. He would have to coach her still, of course—all those falterings would never work on television, but she needed rehearsing in her own fresh and artless style.

  He could hear her now, babbling on about some tonic which Hester had concocted for Thomas Winterton for vigour in old age. She didn’t even realise its sexual implications. Innocence—that was the word he wanted. It was rare enough these days, yet Jennifer had brought it to this conference and won them over with it. She wasn’t the slick professional Allenby had wanted, but it was because of that she had made her points so well. He could see it working right across the media. Jennifer would stun them as a novelty, someone honest and refreshing after a string of jaded veterans.

  Matthew picked up the dummy, turned to the inside back cover where Jennifer’s photo smiled uncertainly, still shy, endearing, modest. She would bring it off. It was Hester he was selling, but in six months’ time, her daughter-in-law would be bewitching her way into every home in England.

  Chapter Eleven

  T V TEARS SENSATION!

  VITA SAYS ʻI DIDNʼT MAKE HER CRY.ʼ

  BEST SELLER BOO-HOO!

  TOP SHOW ENDS IN TEARS

  SOB STORY!

  Jennifer stared at the rack of morning papers shouting out her shame to the whole of Waterloo Station in the rush hour—to all the stations, all the newsagents, in all the towns and hamlets of the British Isles. She could hardly believe how she had been rocketed from obscurity to fame—or notoriety—in the space of just a fortnight. The six long months before that, she had stayed mercifully out of the limelight while Matthew produced his book and began to sell it round the world. Then came publication day in England, and she had been launched on her glittering trajectory up and down the country in a fallout of promotion.

  Even so, s
he had never made the headlines. There had been interviews on radio, signing sessions in book shops, quiet and flattering profiles on the inside pages of magazines and newspapers—not these vulgar slurs hogging the front pages, tasteless photos of her distorted features and streaming eyes upsetting people’s day. The trouble was, there was so little other vital major news. No one had tried to assassinate a president or kidnap a tycoon. No Paisleyite had knifed a Papist, nor pig’s heart been transplanted into man. All that was left was Jennifer Winterton’s tears, hallowed and increased in value because she had shed them over Vita Sampson. Vita was always News. Men found themselves bewitched by her, women jealous, hostile, or slavishly in thrall to her, copying every detail of her hair, her dress, her glare. If Jennifer had the temerity to upstage her on her own programme, then it could only add a frisson to the nation’s breakfast.

  Jennifer hadn’t wanted breakfast. She was still slumped sleepless in their Cobham sitting-room when Matthew phoned at seven o’clock that morning, and invited (ordered) her to meet him at the Ritz for a breakfast interview with Rowan Childs. Her stomach heaved at both the breakfast and the name. She had never met Ms Childs, but had been belaboured in her column. Ms Childs disliked the book and had attacked what she saw as its sentimental sham, with her characteristic mixture of parody and poison. Jennifer had been worsted in the first round and would be trounced in the second.

  She hadn’t slept at all. She had arrived home late and trembling from the television studio, and found Lyn already in pyjamas, angry and embarrassed that his wife’s emotions should be served up to the nation like so much pap. She had sat with him in their denuded sitting-room, surrounded by wooden crates and packing-cases, and tried to calm him down.

  It wasn’t easy. She was so exhausted and disoriented from her whistle-stop tour of Britain, she needed calming down herself. As the pressure and publicity increased, so also did the problems. The most recent one was the sale of the Cobham house. Matthew had assured them that the offer was too generous to be refused, and since they would soon be looking for their own bigger, better place, the sale had come at a most convenient time.

  ‘Convenient for who?’ stormed Lyn. ‘We’ve hardly received a penny from Matthew yet, let alone enough to buy a property.’

  ‘We will,’ said Jennifer. ‘Just be patient, darling. Anyway, there’s still Hernhope. I don’t see why we shouldn’t live there, despite what Matthew …’

  ‘Oh, don’t start that again, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Jennifer kicked her shoes off. Her own patience was stretched like old elastic. She was annoyed with Matthew herself. Cobham had never been perfect, never even been their own, but at least it had proved a refuge from the glare and roar of the publicity campaign, and she had spent precious time and trouble transforming it into a tiny model Hernhope.

  The irony was that the real and larger Hernhope was standing empty while they were doubly homeless. Matthew kept reiterating that they shouldn’t presume to live there without proper legal sanction. Molly disagreed. She missed Molly, longed to be her neighbour again, instead of just a distant voice at the other end of a phone.

  ‘Of course you can take the house on,’ Molly had boomed down the line, the last time she had rung. ‘Who could stop you anyway? If you ask me, Jenny, Matthew’s pulling the wool over your eyes, so he can keep you where he wants you. It suits him, doesn’t it, to invent reasons why you mustn’t move up here?’

  ‘Yes, but …’ Jennifer’s voice tailed off. She had suspected that herself. Matthew had taken a trip to Mepperton nearly a year ago now—the first visit since his boyhood—checking on that mysterious bastard baby. He had also prowled round Hernhope, come back reporting problems. There was trouble with the generator, the water supply was dodgy. Yet when she and Lyn were living there, both power and water were fine, and anyway, things could always be repaired. Lyn was working a ten-hour day in Matthew’s office and could hardly commute from a northern wilderness—wasn’t that the crux? How could she argue, though, when Lyn himself refused to return, hated her to mention Hernhope at all? So she had done her best to compromise, created Hester’s empire down at Cobham, on a smaller, humbler scale. But now it would be taken over by careless urban strangers while she and Lyn lived out of packing-cases.

  Lyn was swatting his leg with his dressing-gown cord. ‘You’re never here, in any case. What’s the point of having a home at all, if you spend half your time in television studios and the other half dashing up and down the country?’

  ‘It was only for a fortnight, Lyn. And it’s nearly over now. Things will be back to normal in a week or two.’

  ‘I’ll believe that when I see it. The phone’s been ringing non-stop since that wretched programme. Every Vita fan in the country seemed to want to speak to you or dry your tears or send you a box of Kleenex. It’d still be ringing now if I hadn’t taken it off the hook.’

  ‘You shouldn’t do that, Lyn. Matthew may be trying to get hold of me or Hartley Davies or even …’

  ‘See? You’re as bad as they are. Can’t bear to miss a chance to hog the limelight. Try the ‘‘News At Ten’’, next. It gets even higher viewing figures than Vita Sampson, some nights.’

  ‘Lyn. That’s … mean. Horrid.’

  ‘Forgive me.’ He came across and held her, hugged her so hard she could hardly breathe. ‘I love you, Jennifer, but I’m not too keen to share you. Can’t you understand that? I’ve hardly seen you these last few weeks and everything’s such a mess and …’

  In the end, she soothed him off to bed and sat alone downstairs, collapsed on the sofa with a cup of instant soup. Things were a mess, all round. She glanced around the room. Even here, she couldn’t avoid the book. Copies of it were littered on the sofa, looming on the shelves; press cuttings scattered on every surface, letters from readers, agents, publishers. This was the publication which was meant to have brought them peace and happiness, a new life in the country, an end to money wrangles. Instead, it had set off a tide of disagreements, even with her husband. And now, a whole year on from those first fruitful days at Hernhope, here they were, still tied to Matthew’s apron strings—homeless, childless, sleepless.

  She had stretched out on the sofa—tried to switch her mind off—only half succeeded when dawn tapped at the window with its squall of birds. At least she was bathed and dressed when Matthew rang with his summons to the Ritz. She had to re-do her face and hair, of course. A quick comb and a dab of lipstick weren’t enough for London’s leading female journalist. She patted her head to make sure the elaborate coiffure wasn’t tumbling from its pins after the shove and jostle of the crowded commuter train.

  She was still dithering in the station, trapped in the tide of impatient office workers pushing and pressing past her as she stood staring at the newspaper-rack. She longed to swap with them, to face only an in-tray or a typewriter instead of Rowan Childs. The station seethed and swirled around her, sun shut out of it, air stale and over-breathed. Someone tapped her on the shoulder. She swung round.

  ‘Excuse me, Miss. You’re Jennifer Winterton, aren’t you—the girl who cried on the Vita Show last night? You really had her worried.’

  ‘No, I’m … sorry. You’ve … er … made a mistake.’

  ‘Who you kidding? Look, there’s your photo in the Mirror. Trying to tell me you’re her twin or something?’

  Jennifer dodged away. Crazy to stand in front of all those newspapers, reflecting her face and pointing their fingers at her. Behind them, in the station Smith’s, copies of the book itself were piled high in the bestseller section, shouting out her name. That name had always been a small and private thing before, signed neat on cheques or sitting unobtrusively on birthday cards or letters. Now it had introduced itself to every reader in the land, forced itself on strangers. The book was part of her, its ink and pages fashioned from her flesh and blood. Every time she glimpsed it in a book shop, she felt as if a lump of her own dismembered body had been left on the counter for crowds to
poke and peer at. She and Hester had swelled and multiplied until they filled the British Isles. More than twenty thousand copies sold already. Twenty thousand people gouging pieces out of her, snapping off her limbs for souvenirs.

  Now she’d appeared on television, her pursuers came in millions. Ten million viewers panting for her autograph, stopping her in stations. She wasn’t worthy of it. Someone else had cut and styled and coiffed the book, doctored and distorted it, woven all the threads together, then thrown it to the masses in a champagne froth of bubbles. She was just the figurehead, mouthing Matthew’s opinions, signing her name to a preface she hadn’t even written, shining up her smile.

  She had assumed that it was over, that now at last she could return to peace and Lyn and anonymity, but one stupid, shameful breakdown had thrust her into another round of being a primped and public person. Lyn loathed that public person. The book had forced itself between them like one of those huge bolsters placed between courting couples in medieval times to prevent them having contact. It was as if Hester were alive again—not the gentle, human Hester she had discovered in the diaries, but Lyn’s all-powerful Mother, spying, forbidding, terrorising. Hester was angry about the invasion of her privacy, the way her private diaries had been thrown as sob-stuff to the world. The loyal and gentle tribute originally intended, had grown less reverent and more vulgarly commercialised.