Born of Woman

by Wendy Perriam

  He picked up the torch he had brought from the car, unlocked the cellar door. It was night again in the cellar, a second night, arriving prematurely, blotting out the hour or two of dawn. The chests and trunks were stacked as neatly as Jennifer had left them thirteen months ago. Only the shadows were ragged and untidy. Lyn groped his way to the very end of the cellar. Three suitcases were piled against the wall, concealing a low flush door which led into a second smaller cellar. Jennifer had never found that door, knew nothing of this secret hidey-hole. You had to crawl to get into it at all, and the door was still stiff despite the fact he had eased and oiled it last time. He had chosen a day when his wife was safe at Molly’s, crept in like a criminal, quaking and sweaty-palmed. Stupid to feel so guilty. All he had done was hidden a Will he hadn’t even glanced at. Deliberately, he had never opened it, never so much as slit the envelope, so that he could say more honestly, ‘I’ve never seen it—never.’ If you were bequeathed a house, you had either to live in it or sell it—and both had seemed impossible. Gossip and accusation would babble forth again, ‘Lyn Winterton refused his mother’s gift. She left him her house and he doesn’t even bother with it … denying his wife a proper home, letting down his ancestors …’

  Once it was hidden, he had felt smaller—like a child again—lighter with relief. He and Jennifer had simply lingered on at Hernhope, without the onus of ownership, the tie of heirs—no long-term plans, no binding obligations, until Jennifer told him she was …

  He crashed the cases out of the way, heaved himself against the tiny secret door until he had rammed it open, then crawled on his hands and knees beneath the low confining ceiling. He sneezed in the dust, wishing now he had never hidden the Will in so dark and grimy a dungeon. Yet Jennifer would have found it otherwise. She had explored every chink and cranny of the house as she might have explored a lover’s body. At least he could make her happy if he brought her back to Hernhope. All he had done so far was reject and deny her, turn his back in bed. He hated himself for his coldness to her, even cruelty. He had become prickly like those hawthorns which only survived on their bleak and wind-torn hillsides by growing stunted and distorted. In the book, the hawthorns glowed with berries, their thorns disguised by whorls of new spring leaves. That was what he disliked about the book—its dishonesty, its gloss—the way it romanticised his mother and the landscape, played down all their quirks and cruelties.

  Damn the book. He must drag his wife away from it, kidnap her here before the media world devoured her. He need never admit he had hidden the Will at all—just pretend he’d found it on this second visit when he was searching for some childhood toy or keepsake.

  He glanced around the dingy shivering space. A pre-war sewing machine lay half dismantled on the floor, a carton of old newspapers latticed with grey cobwebs. Nice to have recognised some loyal old friend like a sturdy rocking horse, a box of bricks. He couldn’t remember childhood toys at all, not ones that came from toyshops. He had played mostly with his mother’s buttons, which shone and rattled in a huge square biscuit tin with a picture of a thatched and rose-blown cottage on the lid, the sort of cottage Jennifer had sprung from. He had sat for hours under the dark oak table, sorting the yellows from the reds, creating pictures with them, shading the blues into greys and the greys into browns; making stepping-stones or mazes, banquets or flower-beds, or just holding a button in his palm and feeling it cold, hard, knobbly, smooth or rounded.

  Hester had always saved her buttons, even if the garments themselves were shrunken or outgrown. Those buttons spelt the scenes of her past—tiny mother-of-pearl ones from Matthew’s baby clothes, swanky brass from his father’s hunting coat; drab, battered things from a housekeeper’s overalls; triumphant blue from her wedding outfit. The younger buttons were as old as he was. Some of them had fallen from his mother’s underclothes, had touched her breasts, sat against her skin. He would pick them up and sniff them, but all he could smell were his own grimy sticky hands.

  Why did he keep stopping, wasting time? He crawled along again, nose down like a dog. There was work to be done, a Will to be read, a whole new life and property to grapple with. He dragged himself towards the smallest case which he had double-locked and draped in a tarpaulin. He almost hoped the lock might stick, but it opened eagerly. He rifled through the pile of magazines he had laid on top as a decoy and disguise. The Will might not be there. Despite all his precautions, someone might have stolen it—Hester, even, come from her grave to snatch the thing away.

  No. His fingers had already touched the edges of the stiff white envelope. It was tied with emerald ribbon to a larger package—other papers, probably—official matters relating to the house. He drew the bundle out. The first time he had seen it, he had felt a sort of curdled shock, leavened with excitement. Now he felt only weary. He was lying full length on the floor, stomach downwards, as if he were a child again. He shut his eyes. If he stayed there, night would come again (real night) and let him sleep for ever, swallow him. He switched off the torch and the papers disappeared. There was no Will now, nothing left but darkness.

  Through the darkness shrilled the bright, reckless sound of Susie’s laugh, her squeals of fury as she rammed the bolts. If he gave up now, they would only smell him out, drag him back to Putney. He would lose his soul to Susie, his wife to Susie, his life and strength to Matthew. Better to live here, make the house a fortress, summon Jennifer and shut the others out. He switched on the torch again, untied the ribbons, slit the long white envelope. Inside was the Will-form, folded round a smaller, flimsy envelope which fluttered to the floor. He smoothed out the parchment, bordered in red as if it heralded a celebration rather than a death. ‘THIS IS THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF’ was printed in scarlet LETTERS across the top. Hester had added in black ink, ‘Hester Margaret Winterton of Hernhope, Mepperton, in Northumberland’. He had almost forgotten her second name was Margaret. It didn’t suit her, somehow. Margaret was too placid and soft-centred.

  ‘I hereby revoke all former Wills heretofore made by me …’ The language was high-flown, highfalutin, almost biblical. Hester must have copied it from some other Will or document. She could never invent a stilted prose like that. The lines were so straight, she must have ruled them first; her writing so neat it seemed to wear a straitjacket. It was all part of her gift to him—the care, the trouble, the handsome emerald ribbon. A scribble and a paper-bag had done him in her lifetime.

  ‘I give, devise and bequeath the whole of my estate of whatsoever nature to …’ The torch was flickering. He shook it, turned it upside down, fiddled with the switch. The beam steadied.

  ‘… to my first and elder son …’ Lyn sneezed. Shaking the torch had disturbed another layer of dust.

  ‘… Edward Arthur James Ainsley.’

  Wait a moment, he wasn’t seeing right. The dust had affected his eyes. He was imagining names, inventing them, not reading what was written in the Will.

  He shone the torch-beam directly on the name. ‘Edward Arthur Ja…’

  Could a Will tell lies, play tricks on him, like Matthew’s boys at Putney? He closed his eyes a moment. They were tired from the long drive. When he opened them again, the letters would be changed: ‘I bequeath the whole of my estate to my only son Lyn Winterton.’

  He wished he could sit up straight. Reading a Will half sprawling on a damp stone floor, in the more or less pitch dark, was uncomfortable, even dangerous—could lead to misinterpretations and mistakes.

  ‘I bequeath the whole of my estate to my first and elder …’ He stopped. First and elder son was wrong to start with. Hester had wed so late, it was a miracle she had had a son at all. She had married Thomas as a middle-aged spinster whose only previous child had been the infant Matthew, her charge and now her stepson. He was her only son, born in the last shudder of her reproductive life. So who the hell was Edward Arthur?

  Lyn hardly dared to ask. A hundred fingers were pointing in accusation, a hundred rumours whispering through his head. If Edwar
d’s name was Ainsley, that could mean one thing only—he was spinster Ainsley’s son, born before she married Thomas, and with no proper legal father to give him a name and respectability.

  Impossible! His mother’s rigorous moral principles were as much a part of her as her frowning brow and determined jaw. He had often kicked against those principles, but to imagine Hester now without them was to throw morality itself into the gutter. Hester would never have risked a pregnancy, rollicked with some fancy man, tarnished her family name. In any case, how could she have concealed a child for all those years? Edward would be a full-grown man by now, older than he himself was. So where in God’s name was he hiding?

  Lyn flung the Will away from him. He didn’t want to know, didn’t want to meet some upstart interloper who had cut his own certainties from under him, grabbed his rights and property, been favoured by a mother he no longer recognised. He was Hester’s son, her unique and only son, the one who had shared her life and home for thirty years and more; he her rightful heir—not this preening bastard.

  But perhaps he was maligning her, jumping to conclusions. Edward needn’t be a bastard. There were other ways of explaining it. Hester might have contracted a first and earlier marriage to a cousin of the same name—that would explain the Ainsley—hushed it up because the degree of kinship was too close, or her parents disapproved of him, or …

  Lyn rubbed his eyes, tried to get more comfortable in the cold confining space. Even a legitimate son was hardly any better—still a rival, an intruder, a jolting sickening shock. He had to know, had to find some evidence. He grabbed the small brown envelope which had fallen to the floor. The Will had been folded round it, so it must afford some clue. He ripped it open, drew out a yellowed piece of paper, folded into four. ‘Certificate of Baptism’, he read. Instinctively, he covered it with his hands. He had already seen those bragging names sitting on the top, shouting out their claim—Edward Arthur James. He shifted his hand a centimetre, glimpsed the next printed heading on the form—‘Name of Parents’. He made himself look down, fingers trembling on the paper. There wasn’t any cousin, any father—only one accusing name—Hester Margaret Ainsley. The letters writhed and floundered on the page, as if grovelling in shame. So his mother was a sham, a slut—a woman without scruple or even sense. She should have invented a father, filled in a name—any name—so long as it redeemed and hid her fall.

  The torch was fainting now, in shock. Lyn held it only an inch or two from the paper, peered at the date on the certificate. The ink had run into a blot there and was difficult to decipher. ‘9th March’, he made out. ‘1919’.

  1919? But that was another world ago! He must have read it wrong. No, there it was again, on the top of the paper, following the name of the church—Christchurch, Blackfriars. Lyn crouched back on his heels, stared at name and date. A teenage Hester and a London church. Suddenly, all the pieces of the jigsaw snapped together in his head, and he winced in horror at the picture on the puzzle-box. Now, at last, he understood that sudden break and change in Hester’s life, that gap in the diaries no one could explain. Why should a girl from a close and prosperous family suddenly take to her heels and bury herself in a sordid job in London? Wasn’t it obvious, once you thought about it? How had they not suspected it before? Even Matthew had been stupidly naive. They had all been blinded by the notebooks, assumed Hester had no secrets from her diary, recorded everything. God alone knew what else she had left out, what other frauds and secrets he might stumble on.

  Even this baptism was something of a fraud. Hester had always refused to play the Christian or kowtow to any vicar. He had never been baptised himself, an omission he resented since the church had been so central in village life. It had cut him off from other normal children, made him feel an alien. Yet here was a genuine alien, some whipper-snapper bastard revelling in those sacred Christian rituals which had been denied and barred to him. And a bastard with three names! Three manly regal names as arrogant as Matthew’s three, while he made do with one short sissy girl’s name. The names were a fraud as well—just swanky padding to disguise the lack of a father’s name, or to hide his lowly origins. Edward Arthur James could well be just a cowherd’s son. All that hole-and-corner secrecy, the subterfuge, the poverty, all pointed to a low and base seduction, some vulgar grope and fumble by a jumped-up servant or a sozzled lance corporal on a fortnight’s leave. Perhaps Hester hadn’t even known the ruffian’s name, or had been pawed by more than one of them. The whole thing had a grubby feel about it. Any decent man would have married her, sought the forgiveness and understanding of her parents, saved her all those years of shame and skivvying.

  He stuffed the certificate back into its envelope. He should feel sorry for his mother, pity her youth, her snatched and shattered virtue, yet all he could feel was anger. Why had Hester always botched her life, even as a girl, found lust instead of love, toil and exploitation instead of status and contentment? That’s what she had bequeathed to him—not her house and property—but her ill fortune and her joylessness. They had passed into his bloodstream and tainted his own life.

  That life was pulled apart now, tangled up with lies. He had lost not just his inheritance, but his strong and scrupulous mother, his place as only son. If only she could have warned him, prepared him for this blow, confessed her past in person instead of throwing him the evidence when she was safely past reproach. She must have known how it would hurt him, confuse and anger him. And what a fool she had made him look—worrying about a property which wasn’t even his, refusing a gift nobody had left him.

  But if he had refused it so wholeheartedly, why should he want it now, why covet something he had feared and run away from? He had hidden the Will, declined the role of heir. It was relief he should be feeling, a sense of lightness and escape that he had avoided all those burdens, those ties and responsibilities. He was no longed saddled with a house too big and grim for him, or the guilt of trying to sell it with his ancestors’ bones accusing all around. Those were Edward’s problems now, Edward’s obligations.

  It was that he couldn’t bear. To be kicked aside, by some braggart charlatan who had never shown his face up here. Or had he? Perhaps Edward had been his neighbour all along, spying on him, feeding off his mother, laughing up his sleeve. Hester could have brought him north with her when she took the job with Thomas, left him in the care of a local cottager, stolen out to visit him in secret. No! Secrets were never safe in Mepperton. The whole village would have buzzed with it fifty years ago.

  Lyn groped for the Will, shone the torch again, saw his own name staring from the middle paragraph.

  ‘I appoint my second son, Lyn Winterton, to be the sole executor of this my Will, and to inform the beneficiary Edward Arthur J …’

  Lyn rammed his fist against the floor. Second son, executor—so that was his role—to bow and scrape to Edward Arthur James. Thirteen years ago, his mother had asked him if he would be executor. How could he refuse when all he was doing, he presumed, was handling the transfer of his own property? But she had deceived him, tricked him, left him with nothing but the dirty work, the job of messenger. Frowning, he read on. There was some letter he must post, informing the new heir of his rights. He would find it, Hester wrote, in the second, larger package.

  He snatched up all the documents, crawled with them through the door into the main part of the cellar. He would no longer crouch like an animal, prostrating himself to Edward. He leant against a packing-case, easing his aching limbs before he ripped the package open. It was full of letters, tied together in that mocking emerald ribbon—with one separate envelope addressed in Hester’s handwriting—not her usual scrawl, but the pruned and formal script she had used on the Will-form. He stared at the address.

  Edward Ainsley Esquire, (Could a bastard be Esquire?)

  Woodlawns,

  River Road,

  Warkworth,

  New Zealand.

  NewZealand! Thirteen thousand miles between them. Lyn felt a flicker of r
elief. At least his rival wasn’t squatting on these hills, waiting to move in. The envelope was sealed, then stuck across with Sellotape. He dared not tamper with it—turned instead to the other letters, slipped them from their ribbon. Some were airmail envelopes with fancy New Zealand stamps, others postmarked London—all dated between 1919 and 1921 and all addressed to Hester. It would be impossible to read them in the grudging light of the torch. He groped towards the door, climbed the stairs to daylight—light so vigorous it was like a searchlight blinding him.

  Almost automatically, he turned his steps to the kitchen—sat at the table, hands trembling on the envelopes, sorting them into ordinary and airmail. The New Zealand ones had the sender’s name and address printed on the back—a Mrs Alice Fraser from Woodlawns, Warkworth again. Fraser? He had seen that name before. An Alice and Edward Fraser had appeared on the Certificate of Baptism in the section headed ‘God parents’. Another Edward—that feared and fateful name. Lyn skimmed through the letters, tried to get the gist of them. Yes—the infant Edward had been taken to New Zealand by his godparents, except they seemed more like foster-parents, with total charge of the child. The letters were mainly progress reports for Hester—clever little Edward had learnt to crawl, swollen little Edward had cut his first tooth, lisped his first word …