Born of Woman

by Wendy Perriam

  Edward was still floundering in the darkness. ‘It’s madness to sit here in the pitch black. Haven’t you any paraffin? I found an old oil-lamp while you were out. If we could only light that, we’d …’

  Lyn shook his head. He hadn’t bought paraffin. It was over a pound a gallon, and he’d remembered that there was an old can in the outhouse, dating back to Hester’s time. When he went to find it, the rusty punctured can was sitting in a pool of oily black. The scant two inches left had lit half his Christmas Eve. The rest had passed in darkness. ‘Just accept the dark,’ he said to Edward. ‘Like animals do’. He could hear the fox again, sounding fainter and unearthly. He tried to take his own advice, unclench his hands, loosen his hunched shoulders.

  Edward slumped back into his chair. Neither man said anything. The darkness seemed to prick and chafe between them, as minute followed minute. A wodge of snow, dislodged by the wind, suddenly slid from the roof and shooshed abruptly past the window, thudding to the ground like a detonation.

  ‘Good God!’ Edward was on his feet again. ‘What was that?’ He started stumbling towards the door. ‘Look, I’m going to order that taxi. Surely one of your neighbours has got a phone?’

  ‘Our nearest neighbour is almost four miles away. I’ll drive you there, if you like. But I can’t guarantee you’ll ever get a cab. Not on Christmas Day with roads like these.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll risk it.’

  ‘You’d better wrap up warm, then.’ Lyn was still shivering himself. ‘There’s no heating in my car. Take my second sweater, if you like. I’ll just get my keys.’ He fumbled into the hall, steadied himself against the carved oak settle. He had always scoffed at Jennifer when she talked about spirits, presences. How had he been so blind? The whole house reeked off Hester. And he was about to turn his back on her, leave her home for ever. He ran his hand along the grainy wood of the settle, envied its solidity. The nomad gypsy moment had arrived too soon. He wasn’t ready, hadn’t made his plans. Edward was all right—returning to the light and warmth and safety of a city, the shelter of a hotel. He would meet his legal acquaintance in the morning, map his future, tot up all his gains. But what of him? Once he handed Edward over to the cab-driver, what road could he take himself?

  Edward had followed him into the passage. The two men stood almost touching in the gloom. Lyn cleared his throat.

  ‘There’s … er … no need to bother with a cab. I can drive you to Newcastle. I’ve n … nothing else to do.’

  ‘No, please, that’s quite unnecessary. Both the car-hire firms I checked with yesterday assured me they’d be working over Christmas. They charge much more, of course, but that’s only to be expected. It’s just a question of getting to a phone.’

  ‘You’ll find they’ll change their minds once they see fresh snow. They’re reluctant to come this far out in any weather. And with roads like this, they’ll …’

  ‘A taxi brought me here.’

  ‘Yes and the driver arrived cussing like a fishwife.’ Lyn was tracing the pattern of oak leaves on the settle, his fingers blindly sculpting bumps and hollows. ‘I’ve … er … got to leave myself, so you may as well come with me.’

  ‘It’s very kind, but your car … I saw it out in front there. It’s … rather ancient, isn’t it?’

  ‘Old and strong. Built to battle with these roads. I bought it from a local farmer who lives five miles up a dirt track, so it knows its way around.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure it’s no trouble …’

  ‘Just give me ten or fifteen minutes, will you? I want to pack some things. Why not sit in the living-room? It’s more comfortable there. Take the candles with you—we don’t need to save them now. And if you want to open the whisky or …’ Banalities were soothing, like booze, helped to numb the mind. Lyn dragged himself upstairs. His few possessions were still in his battered bag. He hadn’t even bothered to take out his pyjamas, or get his toothbrush wet. All he owned was in this house—raw and living memories. It was those he had to pack.

  He fetched his torch, groped along the landing. He could still feel Hester’s presence—a younger Hester, now, as the ’eighties concertinaed back into the ’seventies, ’sixties, ’fifties, and he was five years old again, head reaching to her elbow, a thin and restless child with dark unruly hair hacked off by Hester’s chicken-jointing scissors. No pretty golden curls or angelic smiles. The only photo he’d seen of himself showed a grubby brat scowling by the hen-house with his socks around his ankles, and even that was out of focus.

  He dragged the rickety chair to the high-set landing window, as he had done so often as a five-year-old. It was pitch dark outside, but he wanted to remember how it felt, wobbling there when Hester wasn’t looking, gazing down at the steep and winding sheep-track to see if anyone was still alive in his and Hester’s world. Visitors were rare at Hernhope. The postman sometimes, with a bill, the paraffin man who called him ‘laddie’ and had a runny eye, needle-tongued Nan Bertram with some eggs or lambs’ tongues or reproof. Most times, there was no one—nothing to see at all, only hills and sky—and sky.

  He shut his eyes, watched the seasons change. The mud and flood of spring lapping at his scarlet Wellingtons, new lambs with each new day, green spiking through the brown. Summer and no school and endless evenings when dark played hard-to-get and he lay, long past sleep-time, kicking off the blankets, watching the sun still grinning through his curtains, whilst his mother sang winter hymns downstairs. In autumn, everything ran over on stove and shelf and hedgerow, and Hester filched his conkers for her linen chest to keep the moth away, and his legs prickled in grey school serge again, and there were gaps in trees and leaves in gutters and the first hoarse cough of winter threatening in the wind.

  Winter. The longest of the seasons, stretching from scarlet hip to purple crocus and engulfing every colour with its snow. Cold black howling Christmases creeping into besieged and chilblained Februaries with the last handful of flour grimy and weeviled in the sack. Braggart Marches petering out in snow again. Velvet-footed snow camouflaging death’s black fist in sly and smiling white. Sheep buried, swept away, lambs dead before they were born. And not just sheep. Dead rooks, dead rabbits; his own heart dead inside.

  Lyn slipped down from the chair. It was winter still on the dark and shivering landing. He paced from room to room, watching Hester as she cleaned and dusted, putting her stamp and imprint on the house, tying in her history with the centuries before her. Saw himself, cowering in corners with a forbidden sketchbook, or knees-to-chest in a chimney seat, poring over a catalogue from some long forgotten sale of stock, or hiding under beds with a sickly kitten clawing at his jersey. He stopped in his own room. The torch sent shadows trembling up the walls. He knew those shadows like old friends. There had been no electricity for his first ten years, only paraffin lamps and candles, which turned beds and wardrobes into ghostly ships or monsters, made the whole room heave and flicker. Even with the generator, the house was still plunged in darkness after nine. Hester treated light like grace—something fleeting, insubstantial—which came only in precious flashes and must be hoarded and respected.

  He turned his torch off—almost in obedience to her—crept downstairs, continued his tour of the house. He must go into each and every room, say goodbye to it, scoop up his past from every smallest niche. He shivered in the chill of his dead father’s long-dead study, shrouded in its dust-sheets and its cobwebs; touched the solemn furniture in the second, smaller sitting-room, remembered the insurance man perching on that sofa in his stiff grey suit, explaining stiff grey things to Hester who refused to bring an ashtray for his drooling cigarette. He stumbled on to pantry, scullery, laundry-room and what Hester called her ‘dairy’, saw his mother fighting wet and flapping sheets, or straining milk through muslin into an enamel pail, stirring in the rennet, elbow deep in white. He had resented the fact she had always been so busy, but now he realised it was the only way she could have kept them both alive. She’d had resourcefulness and co
urage. Softly he closed the door, stood motionless outside it. He had been in and out of every part of the house now—well, all except the cellar. Should he venture down there? It was dank and claustrophobic with painful memories, and yet …

  He swung round suddenly. Edward was calling out.

  ‘Are you nearly ready? It’s started to snow again. We really ought to make a start or …’ The voice petered out in darkness.

  Lyn froze. Once they left, he could never return again. Edward could sell, raze, destroy. Even if he kept the house, it would be only for a decade—two at most. Like himself, Edward had no heir. Both were wifeless, childless. And Edward was already in his sixties. In twenty years or less, Hernhope would pass to strangers. He could see the strangers, trespassing up the path, throwing out the furniture, distempering over the past, sanitising, gutting .…

  ‘Can you hear me?’ Edward sounded tetchy. ‘Where are you? Up or down?’

  ‘D … down,’ Lyn shouted back. ‘Just locking up. I shan’t be coming here again, so …’ He darted down the passage towards the cellar. His own words had panicked him. He couldn’t leave—not yet, not empty-handed. He must find some souvenir or treasure, something of Hernhope he could keep for ever, smuggle out with him.

  He heaved at the cellar door, locked it behind him, stumbled down the steps, the torch-beam feeble in the plunging black, memories flapping against his face. He started rifling through the chests and trunks, stopped at a box piled high with newspapers, some of them dating from the first decades of the century. Perhaps there was some record there of his mother’s soldier-prince—an obituary, or an account of his campaign. He had found a different mother—one he could live at peace with, one who could even draw—had messed about with children’s crayons, creating storks and scarlet hearts. He must take that mother with him, find some childish forgotten drawing he could treasure as his own, the equivalent of Edward’s fairy-tale.

  The newspapers were tattered, damp with mould. He hadn’t time to look at them all, but skimmed through one or two, reading snippets from a world already dead. Reza Khan Pahlevi had seized the Persian throne, Roald Amundsen flown by airship to Alaska, Darwin’s theory of evolution been banned in Tennessee. He tried to picture Hernhope in the ’twenties—still a large and thriving farm, his father not yet married, but the eldest son and heir, soon to take over, the child Susannah waiting in the wings. The farm had witnessed her marriage, watched her death, then—revived and run by Hester in the ’thirties—had battled on through depression, crash and war. Bereaved herself, Hester had still retained the house. The Forestry tried to buy it with the farm, lease it back to her as a powerless, landless tenant, but Hester had withstood them. The house was hers—and his.

  Through all his boyhood he had feared it, found it too grim, too lonely, yet now he saw its courage and tenacity. All those pin-men from the newspapers, those Roald Amundsens and Reza Khans had long since perished. The house had struggled on. Mice had nibbled into Darwin, left droppings on Chamberlain or Churchill, yet Hernhope stood unscathed. He had been part of it, built into it, resenting his own history and strength. Yet, now it was no longer his to flinch from, he felt like a blurred forgotten photo in one of those old journals. You could only avoid oblivion through children or through art, which left something of yourself to outsmart death. And yet he had lost his foetus child, renounced his embryo art …

  He tore blindly at the papers, as if to bind and staunch his pain with them. His hand struck something hard, the corner of a box. He dragged it out. It was Hester’s button-box—not seen for twenty years—the huge square painted biscuit-tin he had played with as a child. He broke his thumb-nail prising off the lid. Yes—there were all the buttons glinting in the light.

  He heard a sudden noise, slammed the lid shut again. He ought to get back to Edward. He had left him long enough and Ainsley was fuming to get off. Yet these buttons were his history as much as the house itself, and how strange that he had found them just as he was leaving. Was it Hester’s doing again? He could feel her presence even in the cellar—perhaps more in the cellar where she had hidden her diaries and locked up all her past. Wouldn’t Edward understand, for heaven’s sake? At least he was upstairs in a decent comfy chair, with the embers of the fire to keep him warm. He could light the candles, study all the documents. Damn it—he even had a bottle of Glenfiddich.

  He crept with the box towards the second secret cellar, crawled through the tiny door on his hands and knees. It was cold and grimy on the floor, but almost a relief to be hidden so securely, deaf to any shouts. He tipped the buttons all around him, remembered faces, recognised old friends. Hester had always told him where every button came from, attaching each to a name and story, using them as a family-tree or history book.

  The two of them had always played with buttons on Christmas Day—making pictures, creating words—starting with their own names which they spelt out in different colours. It had seemed more than just a game. They had shaped the presents they hadn’t had, made button flowers, button dreams. He started to make an L. He had a longer name now, which couldn’t be scattered so easily by a careless foot. L for leader, love, Llewelyn …

  He sorted swiftly through the buttons, pushing aside the broken, faded, boring ones, the menials from servants’ clothes or overalls, the drab spoilsports still in mourning. This time, his name must be constructed out of strength. The first L he made of brass buttons, neat and highly polished, fitting for a soldier. The second L was silver for a prince. He had always loved those glinting silver buttons, outshining all the others in the box, the only ones which Hester made mysterious. ‘I don’t know where they come from,’ she always said. Were they, in fact, from Llewelyn’s uniform, his splendid guardsman’s tunic?

  The E he made of purple—not a timid colour. Purple for victory and passion, noble birth. He paused on the W. W for Winterton. He must make his father’s initial out of all the strongest buttons—bone, horn, ivory, enamel—buttons which could outlast centuries. If he couldn’t carry on the name in flesh and heir, then at least he could immortalise it here.

  He had cramp in his foot. He rubbed it, then banged his head by sitting up too quickly. It was like a grave, this place, gloomy and restricting, the smell of mould lingering in the shadows, and a cold which froze the bones. He had reached the second E. That he made of Matthew’s buttons. Matthew was a Winterton, so he belonged beside the W, lying next to his father. He chose baby buttons only—the mother-of-pearl, the harmless prep school grey—grinned to himself as he made Matthew small and powerless.

  He stared at the half-formed name—LLEWE … Just the LYN left now to do—once his own name, now only part of it. He had to get it right. Game or no, it mattered. He sifted through the browns and greys, sullen beiges, sissy pastels, brushed them all aside. He chose red—bold, forbidden red—Susannah’s scarlet, which had obsessed and coloured all his childhood; now Hester’s scarlet, too, which she had concealed beneath her black. He made the L and Y of the most brilliant reds in the whole box, the red of Llewelyn’s plumes.

  Only one last letter left, the letter which completed him. That must be Jennifer. There were two N’s in her name. It must be blue, the serene blue of her eyes, of sky, water, summer, south. He built the downstroke and the upstroke, the diagonal between them, tipped the letter a little so that it overlapped his Y and they would lie forever touching. Jennifer had always longed to live at Hernhope, so at least she should lie in some smallest secret corner of it, joined to him as she had been joined at Cobham in the moonlight, root to mouth. She and Lyn-Llewelyn would be together there for always, haunting the place like Hester. No one should disturb them, even if the house were sold.

  Lyn crawled through the tiny door, locked it, wrenched the handle off, stacked boards and crates in front of it, built a barricade. The torch was failing now, but it would see him through his task. This was Llewelyn’s last and strongest castle.

  He paused a moment. He could hear muffled shoutings, thumpings on the outer
door. Edward had heard him banging things about and had come in search of him, calling out in fear.

  ‘Where are you? What are you doing? We must get off. It’s snowing really fast now. Can you hear me down there? Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, yes. I’m coming.’ Lyn ripped his thumb on a jagged strip of metal-banding which had worked itself loose on one of the broken crates. He swore, sucked it, mopped the blood off his sweater. His clothes were filthy, anyway.

  ‘Ready now,’ he shouted, and as he groped and fumbled back to Edward’s house, the last life-blood of his torch dribbled into darkness.

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Cold bright daring winter sun hung like a golden bauble above the hospital. Jennifer stopped, dazzled. Sun on Christmas morning was an extra present in your stocking. She had already had a stocking—full of crazy things from Susie—cut-outs made from empty cigarette packets, gift-wrapped sherbet dabs and bubble gum purchased from the hospital shop, silver-foiled suppositories wangled from the nurses. Susie was still in hospital. Her few days’ rest had dragged into three long weeks, and although they had promised her Christmas Day at home, as soon as she got up and started packing, her blood pressure had risen again. It was only a slight rise and she was otherwise much better, but they had ordered her back to bed, as much for the baby’s sake as hers. She was trapped there now, railing against her fate, furious and fretting at the tedium, the timetable, the endless petty rules—what she saw as her ruined shackled Christmas.

  Jennifer put her parcels down, rested her arms a moment. Buses seemed extinct on Christmas Day, so she had walked to the hospital, weighted down by a double patchwork bedspread and a clutch of other presents. She had been up all night finishing the bedspread. It took months to make a patchwork of that size, and she had completed Susie’s in less than nineteen days. She’d had to use a machine, of course, but somehow that seemed more suitable for Susie, who was a modern machine-age girl, impatient of the slow, pernickety progress of her handwork. Even so, it had been a gruelling task. ‘Labour of love’ was more than just a phrase. It meant flayed and fraying fingers, throbbing head, eyes aching from the kaleidoscope of colours. She had sewn love and remembrance into every flowered or striped or spotted hexagon, added a huge entwining double S on the plain blue centre panel.