Born of Woman (18 page)

Matthew smiled. He had deliberately made one or two important phonecalls late last night. It wasn't too early to start a few rumours circulating, build up excitement and speculation. He had no intention of handing the thing to Hartley Davies on a plate. He wanted competition, rival bids to push the price up, maybe a cliff-hanging auction with all the top publishers outgunning each other, before he finally clinched the deal of his career.

‘Come and sit down, Jim,' he said. ‘Yes, I
have
got something to show you. Have you any interest at all in boot varnish?'

Matthew lowered his aching body on to the narrow iron bedstead spread with its two white towels, each stamped ‘City of Westminster'. He still had his pin-striped suit on, even his shoes. Undressing came later, with shower, steam-baths, hot-rooms, cold plunge, and finally the body-scrub. First, he had to think.

Other men used clubs or libraries to do their thinking. Matthew preferred the old-fashioned gloom and splendour of the Porchester Baths, one of the last remaining Turkish Baths in London. The building was impressive, the location sufficiently out of the way to prevent him rubbing shoulders with other publishers. Indeed, the baths were relatively empty in the summer, when heat and humidity were high enough outside without doubling them in steam rooms. Matthew ignored the weather. He had been a regular client at Porchester Hall through almost thirty summers. He was respected there, known by name, assured of a gratifying combination of privacy and service.

All the heat and bustle of the baths themselves were sited conveniently downstairs. Here, on the ground floor, were only rows of little cubicles, each with its individual bed and chair, each curtained off by dark and heavy curtains, turning it into a monastic cell or sanctuary. Matthew always requested the far bed in the corner, the furthest removed from the muffled sounds of dressing or undressing, or the chatter of other clients. One of the attractions of the place was that it reminded him of his boarding school. There, too, he had had a cell with the same hard and narrow bed, the same confining curtains to prevent intimacy between boys. School had been a safe and solid place where emotions were cropped as short as hair and the outside world labelled strictly out of bounds. There could be no more abrupt unsettling changes—marriage, death, birth, bankruptcy. Unvarying rules and time-tabling kept life mercifully predictable. He didn't even need to mourn his parents because no one else had parents—at least not until the holidays—and most of those he spent at school as well. Ashdown Park was echoing and empty in vacations, but there was still a timetable, things you could depend on—hot roasts on Sundays, cold cuts Mondays, study in the mornings, a walk with Matron in the afternoons. Matron had aluminium fingers and a chalk-on-blackboard voice. Grey skin, grey hair, and the same stiff-white apron that Hester wore for baking.

Matthew lay back on the one thin City of Westminster pillow, closed his eyes. Hester's apron flared into a maternity-smock, her tight-coiled bun into swinging schoolgirl pigtails. Hester young, shameless, pregnant at eighteen. Impossible! He had come here partly to recover from the shock. He drew his wallet from his pocket, unfolded the torn-out diary page, read it for the tenth time.
‘22/2, 1919. St Saviour's Hostel, Southwark. Today my son was born …'
That one short line had thrown him into confusion, sent his mind and emotions spinning again, when he had spent all last night imposing tight controls. He had done his best to conceal his shock from Jennifer. She had seemed upset enough herself and had only shown him the page with extreme misgivings.

He had driven down to Cobham that afternoon, stood puzzled in the overgrown front garden. Why had no one let him in, when he could hear a radio caterwauling? He tried the door. It wasn't locked. It was his house, anyway, so why not just walk in? He found Jennifer alone upstairs in the small and poky bedroom, lying in bed looking pale until she blushed. She was trying to cover her thin transparent nightie with the sheet.

‘I'm sorry, my dear, I should have brought you grapes or flowers. I didn't realise you were so ill you couldn't even answer the door.'

She blushed still harder. ‘It's … er … not that, Matthew. It's just that I've … Look, do sit down.'

There was nowhere much to sit except the bed. He had avoided that, perched himself on the window-sill between two wilting potted plants. The window was open, but it was still stifling in the room, a sultry summer's day with no stir of breeze. He ran a finger along his constricting collar, envying Jennifer her naked neck and shoulders.

‘Take your tie off, Matthew, if you're hot. Lyn's at the launderette. He'll make us a pot of tea when he gets back.'

It was more than tea he wanted. He used Lyn's absence to start on his campaign. He had rehearsed his arguments all the way down in the car—the importance of the diaries to history and posterity, and Lyn's selfishness in trying to keep their discovery to himself; his ‘tribute to Hester' theme—a book of exceptional quality and beauty to be published as a memorial to Lyn's mother and a living monument to Hernhope; Jennifer's own contribution and fulfilment as a second Hester carrying on the traditions of the first. So far so good. He had thus established the solemnity and challenge of the project, its intellectual calibre, its historical importance. Only then had he moved on to matters of hard cash, hinting at insolvency if they impeded publication. A few hard allusions to the rising cost of living, the soaring cost of properties, the unfortunate necessity of selling the Cobham house, his firm's new money problems and urgent need for a really big success, its uncertain future without one,
Lyn's
uncertain future …

Jennifer was looking more and more upset. He had slipped down from his window-seat, perched on the very edge of the bed. ‘Look, my dear, I don't want to worry you, but there's simply not enough work for my designers at the moment, not without the Hernhope book. That would solve everything, of course, but if Lyn refuses to let me publish, then … You see, he's just not earning his salary at the moment. First he disappears for three months and now he's playing nursemaid here and …'

Jennifer struggled up from the pillows. He tried not to notice the way her nipples showed through the thin blue nylon nightie. She had nicer breasts than Anne. Anne had worn hers out by suckling four sons in succession.

‘Matthew, listen—I know you think I'm just … what's that word?—malingering. But I'm
not
, I promise you. If I had 'flu or something, of course Lyn would go to work, but you see, I'm … not allowed up at all, not even to the bathroom.' She stared down, embarrassed, at her hands, then suddenly blurted out. ‘I'm … pregnant, Matthew, and I've started to haemorrhage, and the doctor says if I want to save the baby, then I've got to lie absolutely still.
Now
do you understand?'

He had muttered a jumbled mixture of congratulations and condolences. His mind was reeling. He felt pleased for Jennifer, worried for her, but how would this latest news affect his project? He had been planning to use her to help sell and publicise the book. By the time it was published, her baby would be born, so long as all went well. A baby could be an extra selling-point. Babies had been used successfully to market everything from life insurance to face-cream. Jennifer would fit her nurturing role still better with an enchanting little infant in her arms, and radiant with new contented motherhood. He could even use the child, plug it as Hester's first grandchild and the new heir to Hernhope.

He took her hand. ‘I'm thrilled, my dear. And so will Anne be when she hears. You should have told her yourself, you know. You're getting as secretive as Lyn is.'

She bit her lip. ‘I'm sorry. Lyn's a bit … well … worried about it all and he … thought it best to …' Her voice had petered out. He noticed the nervous way her hands were picking at the fringes of the bedspread. There had been problems, obviously. He was well aware that Lyn had never showed much enthusiasm for the ties and responsibility of a family. Maybe he could exploit that when he tackled Lyn himself. The expense of babies, their need for a solid future and a settled home, how a family man could never afford to turn down any chance to improve his circumstances or benefit his child.

It hadn't worked like that. Lyn hadn't even listened. When he returned with the laundry and the shopping he had been brusque and unco-operative, annoyed that Matthew was there at all, resentful that Jennifer had told him she was pregnant. He finally slammed out again, leaving Jennifer in tears and all the groceries littered round her bed.

It was then she mentioned the diary page. She had been almost incoherent, sobbing about Lyn's moodiness and how he mustn't receive another shock since he was upset enough about her own condition, and if she showed it to him, would Matthew make a solemn promise that he would never, ever pass it on to Lyn nor include it in the published work, and if he was aware of what the page contained already, then please, oh please, would he …

Matthew rubbed his eyes. He felt drained by all the uproar. She had even asked him to unearth the page himself, extract it from a Tampax box, of all things! She wasn't allowed to move, not even as far as her own chest of drawers, where she had concealed the box by wrapping it in a pair of Aertex knickers, then stuffing it at the very bottom of the bottom drawer and piling clothes on top. It was all so cloak-and-dagger, so unnecessarily dramatic. That was why he had come here—driven straight to the Turkish Baths from Cobham, bypassing home and dinner. He needed time to recover, time to think.

He switched off the light in his tiny cell, lay in gloom except for the thin ribbon of light which crept between the curtains. Outside, two raucous clients were laughing and joking as they got undressed. Matthew frowned. The notices said SILENCE, yet were all too often ignored. He longed to close his eyes and just shut off. The diaries had taken their toll.

‘Mr Winterton, your tea, sir.'

Matthew jumped. The attendant had slipped between the curtains with the tea-tray, placed it on the bedside table. He glanced at the thick white china (school china), the strong stewed tea-bag tea, the two uneven scoops of pink icecream, the cellophane-wrapped biscuits (McVitie's digestive sweetmeal). All comfortingly familiar. He never touched sweet things at home, drank only weak Earl Grey, but here in his secret hideaway he could become a child again. They had had pink icecream at school every Monday evening. It was Monday evening now. There was still some order in the world.

Or was there? Hester had dropped a bombshell through it. He had problems enough in deciding how to present the book at all, without this new perplexing issue of the baby. Should he include the mysterious pregnancy, or ignore it? It would certainly make a dramatic story, provide a whiff of scandal for the prurient, a tale of loss and heartbreak for the sentimental, plus an almost Dickensian element of mystery and drama in the unknown parentage of a missing child. All things which would push his sales. Yet it was the mystery which worried him. If he introduced the baby, his readers would expect to see its picture, know its fate, and that fate might besmirch the Hester he had decided to present as a blameless model of old-fashioned womanhood.

Somehow, he wished to see her that way himself. It was a slur on his own family to think that Hester had come to Hernhope with some dubious past behind her which she had concealed from her employer, and then to have married that employer under what were strictly false pretences, since she had led him to believe that she had neither man nor past nor child. All those stern morals had been covering something else. The woman who had slapped him down if he ever touched himself, had lain trembling and panting under a rutting man, maybe even encouraged her seducer. Matthew let the last spoonful of icecream slide slowly down his throat. He had to admit there was something intriguing about that seduction, even provocative. He could see Hester rolling down her stockings, pushing up her skirts …

He snapped the light back on, forced his mind back to the issue of the baby. Probably best to kill it off, abort it before it ever saw the light of day on the printed page. He would reach a wider market if his book received a ‘U' certificate, as wholesome all-round family entertainment with nothing to slur its country-fresh appeal or his own upstanding family. There was also his promise to Jennifer. Promises could be broken, of course, if a Higher Good demanded it, but he needed Jennifer ‘s goodwill and cooperation if he were to use her in the project. She was right about her husband—Lyn
would
be shocked and confounded by the news of Hester's past. And he was relying on Lyn to do all the main design work on the book. No one else could touch him for skill and originality, no one else provide that all-important selling-point of being Hernhope's heir and Hester's son. It would be madness to upset him once he'd been persuaded to embark on the project and relinquish his rights to the material—and that was proving hard enough, for God's sake. Not only was he jibbing at the whole idea of publication, he also flatly refused to get himself appointed as administrator. Maybe that was just as well, since the whole situation was now dangerously complicated. They would have to swear in front of lawyers that Lyn was Hester's only child, and though Lyn himself might escape the charge of perjury since he knew nothing of an elder son, what about his own case? Was he obliged to inform his brother of the changed situation before making any deal with him, and if he failed to do so, was he then guilty by default?

Yet how
could
he break the news—risk upsetting Lyn so gravely that the downgraded second son might refuse to make a deal with him at all? Anyway, he was as wary now of lawyers as Lyn himself. They could waste months of precious time searching for an heir he was almost sure had died in infancy. There had never been the slightest hint or rumour in his boyhood of Hester having any living son—no mention of it in the diaries beyond those two brief lines. Until Lyn was born, years later, Hester's only child and interest had been himself.