Born of Woman

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘Look, you’d better read those letters. They may add something to the Will. I’ll go out and leave you on your own. It’ll be easier, then. While I’m gone, you can look around, view your property.’

  ‘No—please—we ought to talk things over. I … I never imagined for a moment …’

  ‘We’ll talk later. Now I need some air.’

  ‘You’ll freeze out there. It’s cold enough inside.’

  ‘I’m used to it. I was born up here, remember.’ Lyn turned towards the door.

  Edward sprang up. ‘No, wait—there may be some … mistake. This Will may be an old one. We ought to check. Or, if it was hidden so securely, perhaps she never intended …’

  ‘No mistake.’ Lyn stopped in the doorway. So Edward was scared of becoming Hester’s son and heir, of staying alone in the house with her, without him as chaperon. There was something ironical, almost endearing, about a man who could jet half-way across the world to save his name and ensure his privacy, thus provoking world-wide public scandal; a plaintiff who thundered for his rights, then panicked when he got them. They were true blood-brothers, shared fears and foolishness. Perhaps he was the one who should fall on Edward’s neck, shed tears of recognition. He could understand a man who had never dared marry or sire a child, who lived behind a mask, then rushed to lawyers when someone pulled it off, and was hurt and shocked when the hard world mocked his nakedness. In any other circumstances, he could have made a friend of Edward. But Hernhope had come between them. Because he had lost his house, he had lost his wife. He couldn’t forge a bond with a co-respondent, a man who had divorced and disinherited him.

  It was that which had ruined the magic night at Cobham, when he’d had Jennifer in his arms again. They had vowed eternity which had lasted for an hour, built a future out of moonlight. But as soon as the moon went out, he’d had to sneak away and leave her, capsize her silver fantasies. It might have been different if she hadn’t mentioned Hernhope, insisted on it, almost, as her bride-price. She couldn’t accept him as a man without an inheritance, a husband whose only dowry was himself, but had imposed a future on him, bracketed him with a house which wasn’t his to give. If he had ignored Edward’s rights and brought her here to Hernhope, their life would be a lie. Every day, he would hear the hidden Will whimpering in the forest, threatening to betray him. How could they live in a place which Hester had bequeathed to someone else and expect her eye to smile on them? Everything they sowed would be cursed and blighted by her, be it plant or hope or child.

  He gripped the door frame so tightly, it hurt his hand. He could see Jennifer’s naked body sprawling on the sacking, feel her hot clamping mouth around his prick. Never before had she swallowed him like that, gulped him down with such greed and such abandon. Amazing bloody woman. So demure in public and so wild when he switched her on. He stumbled through the door into the living-room. She was everywhere in this house. He had had her on that hearth-rug, had her in the velvet chair, a hundred times in the double bed which squealed and rocked as she did, once even in the larder, giggling like school-kids among her newly bottled chutneys. Yet, once they left the house, all that had stopped abruptly—the larking and the love. It was as if he had become another man, a colder, crueller lout who always turned away, who couldn’t even touch her. He had lost her now, lost her open body, her sheltering arms.

  He strode into the hall, dragged on coat and boots. ‘I’m going out,’ he shouted, heaved the front door open and stepped into a wilderness of white.

  Lyn bent his head against the wind, struggled up the sheep-track which was blocked and blind with snow, walked north towards the highest bleakest ground. The cold was like a snowball flung against his face, yet his body burned for Jennifer, still hot and wet at Cobham. He could feel the straw pricking under his shoulders, her nipple stiffening in his mouth. Her mouth, sucking and pumping round his … Who had taught her that? What was she doing now and who was she …?

  He stumbled off the path, tripped on a buried boulder. A frightened group of sheep were shambling in front of him, panicking each other as they blundered out of his way. Only a month or so ago, the strutting swollen rams would have been let loose among the flock—mounting, thrusting—twenty ewes a night. He had watched them as a boy—his horror at the speed of it, the fierce, brutish, indiscriminate coupling—a shake, a snort, a lamb. Rams bred and fed only to sire and screw. Ewes passive, pinioned, violated—made valuable and profitable because a ram had served them. Submissive breeding machines building their lambs while life and leaf shrivelled all around them. Lambs born brute and bloody in the snow. Rams snug in pens while their own offspring bled and tore and whimpered into life.

  He quickened his pace and the scatty ewes did likewise. He felt like a ram himself—horned, horny, chasing them, in rut for them—in rut for Jennifer, wanting to mount her from the rear, tup her, serve her, force her.

  He fell on his knees, scooped up a handful of snow. He must cool himself, freeze his bloody prick off. Melting snow dripped between his fingers, trickled down his sleeves. He scrabbled for some more, touched something soft and heavy, coffined in the snow. It was the tangled fleece of a sheep, a dead sheep—very dead—stained and yellowed against the whiter snow around it. He tried to kick it free, stared into the empty eye-sockets of the leering skull with its yellow trap of teeth. He shuddered, struggled up. His trousers were sopping, his feet and fingers numb. Jennifer would have fretted, tried to dry his clothes, worried about chills and flu and … No one to bother now.

  He strode on. He hardly knew where he was going or why he was out at all in such cruel weather. But he had to calm himself, trudge and tramp away that sense of loss. Edward’s face and Jennifer’s were overlapping in his head, despair and desire fighting in his body. But at least the wind ripped away resentments, the cold numbed shame and guilt. The light was already dwindling, a hushed blue stillness tiptoeing on to the hills. It must be tea-time. Christmas cake and crackers, carols round the fire, families, belonging. He had lost all that, as well, even the chance of it. He could only be a family with Jennifer—husband and son with Jennifer. She let him be a child, gave him the leftovers of marzipan or bowls to lick out or Christmas puddings to stir. Stir and wish. Wish for her to be there—hot, wild, willing—back. Oh, Christ, yes! Sweep him from child to lover in a second, her fingers smelling of mincemeat, her bare breasts pressed against his …

  He broke into a run. Must forget her, trample her down in the snow. He was panting, sweating—sweating in damp clothes and four degrees of frost! He slowed a little, manoeuvred a slippery incline. Despite the fading light, he could still follow the track, even when it foundered in drift and boulder, ridge and rut. If Edward settled here, he would never find the paths, or understand the harsh relentless rigour of the country. He had always thought of himself as alien, but he realised now he knew the land as intimately as he knew the lines and sinews of his own hand. He could tell the time without a watch, predict the weather, eavesdrop on the birds. He understood the moods and markings of the sheep, knew the name of every hill and burn. That was his inheritance from Hester, something which went with the house, was part of it, and which could never be left to Edward, even in a Will. Ainsley lived in the southernmost part of the world—an easy, smiling country with uncapricious weather, where Christmas brought blue skies and tangled flowers. Hernhope would break and baffle him. He would probably try to sell the place and add it to the profits from the book. The house would be bulldozed into a puny row of noughts. He would be shooed from it as he himself had turned out moths and spiders just last night. He stood silent for a moment, watching sky and snow blur into each other, submerging everything.

  He had climbed so far and high, he had reached the border with Scotland, marked simply by a narrow wooden fence. Scotland was only another range of hills, a deeper bank of cloud. He brushed snow from a boulder, sat on the bare and pitted stone. For centuries, war had roared across these borders, raids and counter-raids, bloodshed, treachery. The borde
rers had been split in their allegiance, brother fighting brother; husband wife. He could feel the weight of history’s feuds and quarrels pressing down like the black night on the earth.

  He had often drawn this landscape, as a boy. It was far enough from Hester to be safe. He had made swift and secret sketches with a pencil stub, or camouflaged his paints as sandwiches and worked on it in watercolour—always muted colour—browns, purples, greens—or endless white. He had lost those skills now. He had tried to go on drawing, prolong that sudden burst of vigour which had so astonished and excited him those few days in the summer. But fear and loneliness had sapped his energy, wrecked his concentration. He needed Jennifer to put her fence around him, keep his talents in. Without her, he was nothing—neither man nor artist. Christ! He couldn’t even afford to be an artist. There was no money coming in, and all he had been promised now belonged to Edward. He could no longer rely on Matthew, had never belonged in his office, anyway—churning out those pat designs dictated only by cash and commerce.

  He eased up from the stone, ducked underneath the fence. Now he was in Scotland—battle country. He still had his soldier’s name. He must fight, endure. He had lost wife, house, art, job, but at least he was coping. He had survived for weeks, for heaven’s sake, in harsh and hostile country, without home or larder, wife or wage. Edward couldn’t do that. Edward would need his silver trays, his country club, his little clutch of lawyers. Llewelyn ap Whatnot had ended up as a monk. He had better follow suit, cut off his prick with his tonsure and live with no possessions—no ties, no cash, no bloody wives or women. He’d leave tonight, go somewhere wild and far, where no one would ever find him—Wales, perhaps, where Lyns were princes and the land was never conquered.

  He slipped through the fence again, started the long trudge back. Although it was downhill now, it was harder going. The dark made snares and booby-traps out of every rock or gully. He had to use his hands, grope like a blind man, sliding and scrambling down the track if he chanced to lose his footing. The cold was more intense, freezing snow to ice, fingers to pain. His ears stung and smarted in the wind. He halted a moment, blew on his hands, stamped his feet, listened to the silence. In nearly two hours’ walking, he had seen the lights of only three remote and snowbound houses—Edward Ainsley’s neighbours. Would they accept him as neighbour, or shun him as an alien? You could only truly belong if you were born here, the smell and feel of the country grafted in your childhood.

  Hernhope looked almost blind as he approached it. Edward had closed the curtains, drawn the shutters. That was his right as owner. He could even board up the windows if he chose to, tear the place down, dismantle it for firewood. Lyn knocked before he entered. You didn’t barge into a house no longer yours. Edward came to the door in his heavy overcoat.

  ‘Where on earth have you been?’ Edward sounded edgy, close to panic. ‘I’ve been extremely worried. I thought you’d had an accident or …’

  ‘I only went to get a breath of air.’

  ‘Air? There’re enough draughts in this house. The fire’s gone out, and the range. I’m sorry—I couldn’t manage them. I got so cold, I had to put my coat on.’

  ‘Better keep it on, then. That range has moods and I’ve no more fuel, in any case.’ Lyn removed his own coat and one of the bulky sweaters. The house felt stifling after the bitter wind outside. It was like a furnace burning off his fingerprints, melting down his childhood, his ownership, the years of Winterton history.

  Edward was still fussing. ‘You were gone so long, and I wanted to talk to you. This … er … new development alters everything. I feel quite … shaken up, to tell the truth. There are some papers here I’d like you to take a look at, so we can at least discuss …’

  ‘Not now. I’m whacked.’ Lyn turned away. He refused to play confidant as well as executor. He’d done what his mother had asked him. Why should he scan the other documents, read Hester’s private letter and endearments? They were only lies, heaped on Edward in guilty restitution. Why ruin his own inheritance by having to discuss them, count up the ‘beloveds’? All he would do was complete his Christmas duties. He picked up the box of fruits. ‘I can’t offer you tea, I’m afraid. There’s no way to boil a kettle. But if you’d like an orange or some grapes …’ Edward’s orange, Edward’s grapes. Everything was Edward’s now—the chair he sat on, the dark hills closing round them, Susannah’s room upstairs.

  ‘No, thank you.’ Edward had cupped his hands around a candle, as if its tiny flame were the only light and warmth left in the world. ‘I don’t think you understand the problems. I mean, take the issue of copyright. That alone is …’

  ‘We ought to save those candles. They’re already half burned down and we’ll need them for later on. Mind you, I don’t know what we’re going to do for supper. I bought a tin of soup, but we can’t eat it cold. There’s always bread and cheese, of course, but …’

  ‘I’m afraid I won’t be … er … staying for supper. I’d like to talk things over, work out where we stand, but then I must be on my way. The roads are so bad, it’ll take two or three hours at least—and I haven’t even ordered a taxi yet. I was looking for the phone.’

  ‘Phone?’

  ‘You mean you haven’t got a …? But you phoned me yourself, when you …’

  ‘Not from here, I didn’t. Hernhope’s never had a phone. Hester didn’t want one. She communicated other ways.’

  ‘Well, how am I going to get back?’

  ‘You can’t. You’ll have to stay the night.’

  ‘Impossible! I’ve booked a hotel in Gosforth. I put up there last night, to break my journey. All my things are there, and they’re expecting me for dinner and …’

  ‘They’ll understand, with the roads as bad as this. I can make you fairly comfortable. At least the bedding’s thick. It’s light I’m more worried about. I’ve got a torch, but no spare batteries.’ Lyn leaned across and blew the candles out—snuffed Edward out, as well. ‘Forgive me, but best to save those in case of an emergency.’

  ‘Look, I must get back.’ Edward’s voice sounded louder in the darkness. I’ve got urgent business in Newcastle in the morning.’

  ‘Business on Boxing Day?’

  ‘Well, semi-business. I’m lunching with a solicitor. He’s a friend of a friend of someone I know in Warkworth. Now the Will’s turned up, I ought to take the chance of discussing it with him. My own lawyers are on holiday all week, and there are so many matters to … I mean, I’ll obviously have problems disposing of this house at all …’

  ‘Disposing of it?’

  ‘Well, a sale may be quite tricky, with it being so remote and …’

  ‘You can’t sell Hernhope! It’s Hester’s house, an inheritance which goes back centuries and must be kept within the family. She wouldn’t want strangers here.’

  Edward pushed his chair back. He kept fidgeting and shifting as if he were scared of the dense and clammy darkness which shrouded the whole room. ‘Hester’s … dead,’ he said, at last.

  The word seemed to sink like a stone into the silence. It was no longer silence. The sharp cry of a dog-fox suddenly tore across the night, a thin and desperate sound distorted by the hills. There were other noises—murmurings and creakings from the house itself—soughing of the wind as it whined down the chimney, fretted at the shutters.

  ‘No,’ Lyn muttered, groping to his feet. The floor felt no longer level, the room was closing in on him. He had a sudden overwhelming sense of Hester’s presence. He could see beyond the shadows, beyond the darkness, to some plane where his own dry throat and burning head hardly mattered any more. He lurched forward, stretched out his hands. His fingers closed on nothing.

  ‘Do you … feel something?’ he whispered to Edward.

  He heard Edward catch his breath. ‘What d’you mean?’ ‘Well, a sort of sense of…’ He broke off. It sounded crackpot. There weren’t words for what he meant. ‘My … er … wife used to say that some people had such force or … strength in life, t
hat it—well—lived on after them and …’

  Edward cleared his throat. ‘Your wife sounds a little … fanciful.’

  ‘Not at all. Jennifer’s extremely down to earth.’

  ‘I … don’t believe in ghosts.’ Edward jumped as the ashes in the range stirred and shifted suddenly. Every smallest sound seemed to boom and cannon in the darkness, a sobbing gurgle from the water-pipes, the creaking of the floorboards under his chair.

  ‘Don’t you?’ Lyn shut his eyes. Hester was still there. He could see her dowdy black dress, her limp and shabby overall with its pattern of tiny purple flowers, her swollen hands with their rough and work-worn skin which she had never bothered to soften with her own salves, her strong determined jaw and firm set mouth. Jennifer was right—had been all along. She had always claimed that Hester was too powerful a character ever to be extinguished, that she lived on at Hernhope, at least in spirit. Hester was at home, watching her two sons together, had maybe brought them together, so that he would understand about the Will, learn about the heritage of his name.

  He crept towards the range where his mother had stood so often, stirring, basting, always busy. Sometimes, when he was small, he had laid his face against the overall, smelt grease, yeast, onions, all mixed up. She had pushed him away, roughly, and then relented, offered him a ladleful of stew. He had burnt his tongue in trying to gulp it down to please her, gagged on tiny bones.

  ‘H … Hester?’ he whispered. He could even smell the stew, bubbling on that cold dead stove, his mouth smarting hot with peppercorns.

  Edward started to his feet. ‘What? What did you say?’ He blundered into something, swore.

  Lyn swung round. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I … think so. Bruised my shin a bit. Are you?’

  ‘Y … Yes.’ Lyn sank back against the range. If Hester were alive still, then he needn’t blame himself for having killed her. He felt guilt flake and shred away like meat off bones in Hester’s long-cooked stew, resentment boil to nothing.