Born of Woman (10 page)

Jennifer envied her. Back in Cobham, many of the women were bored and discontented, their husbands out of the house from eight till eight, their sparse and well-spaced children absent at boarding schools. Apart from one or two small farms, and their own shabby little backstreet which Matthew hoped would soon be redeveloped, Cobham was an expensive, exclusive suburb where coffee mornings or bridge parties were the norm. Jennifer had never felt she quite belonged there. She wasn't plush enough. Matthew's street was shunned by most of the ‘village' where bay trees and burglar alarms stood guard outside double garages and neo-Tudor beams. Their do-it-yourself interior and junk-shop furnishings had never been accepted. She and Lyn would fit in better here, where Molly's rooms bore battle-scars from claws and paws and children.

The dogs were rampant again, barking and circling as the men got up from the table and prepared to return to the fields. Molly was filling Thermoses, fetching anoraks. She finally closed the door on them and poured coffee for the rest.

‘I'm sorry it's a bit stewed,' she said ‘I can't turn that damn range low enough. That's why I burnt the pie.'

Jennifer turned to glance at the highly-polished range with its two separate ovens and little fiddly knobs and handles, all meticulously black-leaded. ‘I'd
love
a stove like that at home—all hot and bright and crackling, instead of my stiff white dead electric one which looks more like a fridge.'

‘You're just a romantic, love. That thing's more bother than it's worth. I'd swap with you tomorrow! There's no mains electricity at all up here, and we didn't even get our generator until 1959. It was a real red-letter day when they installed it, I can tell you. Though I must admit I was scared stiff of the stuff at first—wouldn't even turn a switch on, in case it blew the place up. I'd stand trembling over the toaster, ready to run a mile!'

1959—Jennifer had been only one year old then—an all-electric baby. Molly already had two babies of her own, lighting them to bed with oil-lamps, wringing out their nappies on an ancient wooden mangle, pressing cot-sheets and nightdresses with flat irons heated on the range. And Hester in the next house up, sitting in the gloom with Lyn …

‘I suppose you all … knew Hester?'

‘As far as you could
ever
know her,' Nan rejoined, scooping pastry fragments from the table. ‘She kept herself to herself, you see. When Thomas was alive, I was in and out of that house like one of the family, but once she took over, I might as well have been a total stranger. All wrong, it was. You Wintertons have always been our nearest neighbours. The two farms shared boundaries once. Thomas and my husband often worked together, helped each other out. That's the way up here. Everyone depends on everybody else. You couldn't survive otherwise.'

Molly pulled her chair back, stretched her legs. ‘Nan used to help Susannah—you know, Matthew's poor young mother.'

‘Well, someone had to, didn't they? She was a fancy little minx, and frail with it. Never run a farm in her life. I was only six or seven years older, but I had farming in my blood. Her father was a financier—something grand like that. She needed someone practical around. When she died I had a bairn myself, only two months older. I fed them both, you know, until the housekeeper arrived.'

Jennifer took a sip of coffee. ‘You mean … Hester?' Strange to hear Lyn's all-powerful mother referred to as a housekeeper. Stranger still to think that Nan had suckled Matthew. Hester had stayed nearly fifty years. Changed housekeeper to wife. Swapped Matthew for her own son.

Molly was already on her feet again, clearing the table. ‘It can't have been easy for Hester, taking the place of a young and pretty teenager everyone adored. Forgive me, Jenny, but your mother-in-law was rather … plain herself and a bit severe. And people always saw her as an alien.'

‘But I thought Lyn said she was born up here.'

‘Well, Fernfield. That's still Northumberland, but it's a good way south, you know. ‘‘Local'' up here means not much more than a ten-mile radius. Anything more is ‘‘foreign'', especially in the thirties when transport was less good. Anyway, Hester had been working down in London, so they regarded her as a ‘‘townie''. And she never spoke about herself or had visits from her family or …'

‘Look, let me help with those.' Jennifer picked up a sodden tea-towel and joined Nan at the sink where she was pummelling plates and dishes. ‘What was Matthew like as a baby, Nan?'

‘Small and noisy. No, don't use that. There's a clean one in the drawer. He was that puny, he looked like a skinned rabbit. My bairn weighed almost double at the same age.'

‘Matthew—
small
?'

‘Oh yes, and sickly. Couldn't keep his feeds down. I'll say this for your mother-in-law. She had a picky child on her hands. He didn't even sleep through the night until he was almost eighteen months.'

Jennifer stared at Nan's gnarled and bony hands. Could Matthew ever have been sickly, ever have been a bairn at all—all six-foot-steel of him with his computer-brain and that everlasting sceptre in his hands?

Molly was chopping onions for a home-made soup. ‘
I
remember Matthew. He was fourteen when he left here and I was eight or nine. He wasn't small then. I was secretly in love with him. He was very tall and lanky with dark hair.'

‘What made him leave?'

‘What had he to stay for?' Nan was tackling the saucepans now—six or seven of them. ‘He'd lost both his parents. Hester had married his father just before he died. I doubt if Matthew approved of that. He was quite a little snob, you know. She hadn't much time for him, anyway, once the new bairn was born. And the farm was a write-off, more or less. Money was short, the house was dark and cold. I'd have had him here, but Hester wouldn't hear of it. In the end, one of Thomas's fancy relatives turned up from London and took Matthew off her hands. Offered to pay his fees at boarding school—even kept him in the holidays. No one saw him up here after that.'

‘Did Hester … mind? I mean, if she'd looked after him since he was a baby—fourteen years or so, then surely she must have …'

Nan rested her dish-mop for a moment. ‘I doubt if she'd
time
to mind, she was that busy. She had debts, you see, and it was quite a struggle to pay them off and run the house and … She made extra cheese and butter and sold them in the village. And you should have seen her eiderdowns! Real hand-quilted jobs stuffed with feathers from her own ducks. She never asked enough for them, considering how many hours of work they took her. No one saw her much, to tell the truth. She was always stuck at home, sewing or scrimping or cooking. We tried to help, of course, but she cut herself off more or less completely. My husband even offered to buy the farm—combine it with ours and offer her security. She wouldn't even discuss it, so when she went ahead and sold the place to the Forestry, my John lost patience. After that she fobbed everybody off and lived like a recluse. We worried about the lad—your Lyn. We hoped he'd stay and make a go of it up here. But he went Matthew's way.'

Molly was crying from the onions. She mopped her eyes on her pinafore. ‘He had to, Nan. There was nothing for him here. No job, no future—not for someone arty.'

Nan sniffed. ‘Arty's not what I'd call it.'

‘Is it hard to get jobs up here?' Jennifer steered the conversation away from Lyn again. ‘I mean, suppose I wanted a job. Do many women work?'

‘We never stop,' grinned Molly, straining scum off the stockpot, then turning back to peel and chop some carrots.

‘No, I mean jobs outside the home.'

‘There aren't any,' snapped Nan. ‘And just as well. A woman's got enough to do without …'

‘It's funny, though,' Molly cut in. ‘We may seem far less liberated than you London lot, but in a way, we rule the roost up here. The men can't manage without us—well, not the farmers, anyway. A woman can almost make or break a farm. That's why Hester was so important. Thomas would have more or less gone under without her to support him. She helped with everything—lambing, calving, milking, gardening, making bread and jams and butter, even cheeses. I don't know anyone else who makes their own cheese now. It's too damned fiddly. The skill must have died with her. And then there was all the paperwork. The women often took that on as well. My mother worked every bit as hard.
And
Nan. All the women did.'

‘I had six bairns,' said Nan. ‘And we didn't even have running water until 1945. Wash-day meant what it said—a whole day put aside for the laundry—not just a quick whirl in a machine. We had to collect rain-water in a butt, heat it on the range, then scrub away by hand with a bar of soap. You have to be dedicated if you farm up here. It isn't just a job, it's a way of life. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to have my forty winks. There wasn't time for naps in my younger days, but now I'm over seventy I reckon I deserve one. Goodbye, my dear. And tell that man of yours it's only the guilty who can't sleep at night.'

She banged the door behind her. Molly grinned. ‘She's quite fond of Lyn underneath,' she said. ‘Often talks about him. Look, leave all that. Ruth'll do it. Go and put your feet up.'

Jennifer stretched herself out on the sofa. The old Jack Russell, lame and almost blind, padded over and flopped down at her feet. There was more room in the kitchen now. Four of the children had disappeared upstairs. Only Ruth remained, humming as she put the plates away. There was a general hum of satisfaction—cats purring, the chunter of the hens outside, stockpot burbling to itself beside the gently sizzling onions, the rasping snore of the terriers, replete after their lunch.

‘Molly …' Jennifer said.

‘What, love?'

‘Could an outsider make a go of it?'

‘How d' you mean?'

‘Well, live up here. Be accepted. Even if she was one of those … aliens from the south?'

Molly laughed. ‘Oh, yes. The shepherd's wife at Nettleburn used to live in London. She worked as a check-out girl in Tesco's and the only sheep she ever saw were those in the advertisements for New Zealand lamb stuck over the frozen meats section. She was terrified when she first came up here—said she'd never imagined anywhere so lonely. Yet now she admits she's got more friends than she ever had in a city of seven million.'

Molly had turned the onions off and was heating milk for her shedful of orphan lambs. ‘Nan tends to sneer at people like that. Calls them foreigners and says they don't fit in. But one or two of them have made a real success of it, gone back to all the old traditional crafts—quilting, smocking, patchwork, curing bacon, making their own sausages. There's another girl who married the farmer at Biddlehope. She only came up here two years ago, yet she took half the prizes at our local show.'

Jennifer longed to do the same, leave her Cobham neighbours with their gleaming labour-saving homes and start again up here. She already had the skills. She was trained in domestic science, good at sewing, knitting, homemaking. Even Lyn had a feel and flair for gardening. Only one step further to set up a smallholding or market-garden and try to make a living from it. He might well be more contented self-employed and self-sufficient, instead of slaving in the city with Matthew as his task-master. All right, he'd never want six children, but even
one
would be a start. And they could maybe take a lodger in, or let out part of Hernhope to holiday guests. Nice to have more to cook for, a family around her, people dependent on her skills. She had never had sisters or brothers, grandparents or aunts. Just her and her parents becalmed in a small, quiet, cosy home on the commuter-line to London, and—after her father's death—she and her mother cowering in a bungalow with a couple of ageing cocker spaniels. It had been too sheltered, too restrictive. Lyn was as bad—almost a recluse. They must expand, develop, become part of a larger whole, part of a community. Lyn already had a long tradition behind him. He was a native, born and bred here, not an outsider like the girl who worked at Tesco's or the wife at Biddlehope. And she herself would soon fit in. Molly would help—not only as friend and nearest neighbour, but someone she could model her own life on.

She needn't take things too far. Lyn wouldn't want her fat and dowdy, dressed in men's corduroys with cats on every chair. She glanced across at Molly—flour in her hair, rent in her sleeve—splashing milk on to her shoes as she filled five baby bottles for the lambs.

‘Want to help me feed them?' Molly asked, heaving her shoulder against the heavy kitchen door. ‘Gosh, this sun's amazing! You must have brought it with you.'

Jennifer smiled. Nice that, like an omen. Bringing the sun from London to warm and nurture Hernhope, nurse it back to life. Molly tugged back the bolts on the shed. Four lambs rushed towards her, butting their heads against her legs, reaching for the bottles. The fifth and smallest one lay shivering in the straw.

‘That's Sooty. Sweet, isn't he? Black lambs are rare up here, you know. He was only born this morning. Quite a tricky birth, I'm afraid. Mick couldn't save his mother. Want to give him his bottle? Right, go and sit on that bale. You'll be more comfortable there. Now try and coax him to his feet, then hold him firm between your knees. Don't be frightened of him. He's tougher than he looks. No, tilt the bottle more. Good—you've got the hang of it. He's sucking well now.'

Jennifer stroked the tiny furry head, watched the black throat gulping and straining as the white milk dribbled down it. She had never fed a baby. It gave her almost a sense of power—the lamb trusting her, dependent on her, its whole effort and attention focused on her as wet-nurse and provider.

‘OK there, Mum?' grinned Molly, who with two bottles in each hand was managing to feed all four remaining lambs at once. Jennifer glanced up at the window set high in the shed, a square of sky with a curve of hill trapped in it. Such space up here, such possibilities. Long hours and hard labour hardly mattered, so long as you had purpose.