Born of Woman (20 page)

When they got in, Lyn went straight upstairs. She could hear him opening cupboards, slamming drawers, went up after him. Their suitcases were lying on the bed, already overflowing—not her careful tissued packing, but muddy shoes on top of shirts, books creasing up her clothes.

‘What are you doing, Lyn?'

‘We've got to leave. Now.'

‘Leave? Why? Whatever for? I thought we'd planned to …'

They had argued for an hour or more, Lyn insisting that the idyll was over now and he must return to work and Matthew's office before they were destitute; she begging that they stay and suggesting ways of survival. They could become almost self-sufficient with a few hens and ducks, a vegetable plot, an animal or two …

‘And what are we going to use to buy our animals?' Lyn made them sound ridiculous, impossible like dinosaurs.

‘Well, we could both get jobs to start with—to tide us over the bad patch.
Any
jobs—casual ones, just to save enough to set us up. And I could work at home, as well. Make things and sell them, like Hester did herself.'

He had gone silent then, pacing up and down the bedroom, hands clenched, head down. She sat and watched him, struggling with her own rage and disappointment.

‘How
can
we go? Just waltz off and leave the house to fall apart? We haven't even finished the repairs. And all those things we planted in the garden—they'll be ruined if we go. And what about my friends? Molly was coming round for lunch tomorrow, and I'd promised to help with …' Her voice was rising, losing its control.

‘We can phone Molly—now. Ask her to keep an eye on things. Tell her you're not well.'

‘That's not true, and anyway she'd think we're mad rushing off like this. It
is
mad, Lyn, you know it is. Totally unreasonable.'

He had suddenly swung round, heaved the suitcase to the floor, pulled her on to the bed instead, clung to her, almost hurt her with the fierceness of his grip. ‘OK, it
is
unreasonable—unfair, insane—I admit all that, but what else can I do? Don't you see, I'll lose my job if we stay up here? You know what Matthew's like. How can I keep a … a family if I'm out of work or on the dole or something? Anyway, it's not just a question of money. It's … it's … I can't explain, but it would be lousy for a child if its father didn't … Anyway, it's not a child—of course it's not. You're probably just unwell. We must get back to Cobham. You can see Dr Groves there and he'll give you a proper check-up and … Oh, please don't cry, don't
cry
…'

They had motored back to Cobham in under nine hours. Lyn drove so fast, she had felt jolted, sick and terrified, not the glorious morning sickness of early pregnancy, but a sour and desperate nausea as their protesting Morris gasped along the motorway.

The Cobham house smelt fusty when they entered it at dawn, seemed small and makeshift after the solid walls of Hernhope. The garden was a wilderness. Morning sulked through the windows with drizzle and grey skies. Lyn had put the kettle on. It seemed strange to turn a switch instead of stoke a range.

‘Cup of tea? You look pale, Snookie.' He had used her love-name only in relief because they were home and she had already started bleeding. Just a spot or two of blood, but enough to threaten a pregnancy. She turned day into night and went to bed at seven in the morning. The bleeding got slowly worse. The next day the doctor came—not the cheery, swarthy Mepperton hack, but the suave and Old-Spiced Cobham thoroughbred who expected sherry on his house-calls.

He confirmed the pregnancy. ‘But you'll have to rest, my dear. Go to bed and don't get up at all until the bleeding's stopped completely. That long drive probably shook things up a bit, gave your babe a fright, but if you stay put now, you can save it.'

She had sunk back against the pillows and felt her fear and nausea turn slowly into triumph. The baby she had craved and willed and prayed for was now a concrete medical fact. She hadn't dreamed it, hadn't just imagined it, and she would lie in bed for nine whole months, if necessary, so long as she could save it. Lyn had snatched his coat and slammed the door. It was the first and only time she had been totally at odds with him. It was as if the baby had cut her off from being a faithful reflection of his moods. Instead of fretting with him, she had felt like a firework—sparking, fizzing, glittering—a shower of Golden Rain lighting up the whole of greater London.

When Matthew came on Monday, the firework had burnt out. The bleeding hadn't stopped yet, sleep had proved impossible, and Lyn who needed nannying himself, was having to act as char and nurse. He couldn't cook, so he brought up little messes, sloppy scrambled egg with baked beans floating in it, burst and blackened sausages, even a jelly which refused to set. There were worse messes under her bed. She found it unbearably embarrassing that he had to empty all her chamber-pots—cope with smells, excretions, urine mixed with blood. She was totally dependent on him, for her food, her potties, even a clean nightie. It frightened both of them.

She had been almost relieved when Matthew walked upstairs. The house was so tense, she was glad of any distraction. Lyn had urged her to keep quiet about the baby, yet she longed to share her news, make it a triumph again, instead of the crime and tribulation Lyn had turned it into. But there were only further problems, so it seemed. All the things they had returned to Cobham for—the house itself, Lyn's job, his security and steady salary—were now threatened and at risk. ‘Unless you agree to publish,' Matthew smiled.

That only set up fresh fears. He had alarmed her with his talk of unique historical documents, his insistence on employing experts and researchers to fill in all the background to the diaries and create a living slice of history. What if one of his experts discovered she had tampered with the record, by tearing out a page, accused her of falsifying history, defacing important documents? Or supposing Matthew simply guessed that something had happened to Hester, to account for the gap in the diaries and her puzzling change in life-style? Even Lyn had thought it strange when he read his mother's jottings as a servant down in London and the sudden break with her gracious Fernfield childhood. She had had to keep reiterating how war disrupted
every
one, and how the death of Hester's father (like his own) had obviously resulted in a total change of fortune.

With Lyn, it had been a private matter only, but Matthew was planning to open up the diaries to the world. In the end, she was so scared, confused, exhausted, so upset by Lyn's latest bout of anger, that she confessed about the page she had removed, blushing crimson as she rummaged in her Tampax box. She'd felt relief as well as shame. At least she wasn't the only one who knew now. She had also done her best to protect her husband, save him further shock. Yet Lyn still refused to agree to publication. She herself had reluctantly acceded, as the only way to save them all from a bleak uncertain future. She tried to talk him into it, in return for Matthew's help.

‘
No
,' he'd said, banging down a bowl of tinned rice pudding and a spoon. She couldn't eat it, not when he had garnished it with anger. It was still congealing there when Matthew and the doctor arrived almost simultaneously the following afternoon, Matthew with his roses, the doctor in his riding mac. The fine spell had broken now and it was drenching down with rain. But there hadn't been a drop of blood since midnight.

Matthew had prowled around the kitchen while Lyn took the dripping coat and showed Dr Groves upstairs. He felt her tummy, examined her breasts. Lyn was staring at the floor, one foot tapping nervously.

‘Fine, Mrs Winterton. Things have obviously settled down now, but I'd like you to stay there another forty-eight hours, just to be absolutely safe. If there's no more bleeding at all, you can get up and carry on as usual, but nothing strenuous please. I won't call round again. Just make an appointment to see me in my surgery and we'll book you a bed for your confinement.'

Lyn had showed him out again. She'd watched them from the window, the doctor's Cambridge-blue Rover 3500 gliding round the corner, Lyn drooping by the gate, rain darkening his shirt-sleeves, beating on his head. He had started to walk away from her, down the narrow street, shoulders hunched, hands stuck in his pockets.

‘Lyn,' she'd called. ‘Come back!'

He returned an hour later, shoes squelching, trousers waterlogged, and clutching a bedraggled bunch of anemones in a soggy twist of paper. ‘For the baby,' he had murmured and tossed them on the bed. Matthew's Crimson Glories were already smirking in a cut-glass vase, Matthew himself sitting on the bed, pouring tea from an expensive china teapot they used only as an ornament.

‘Tea for you, Lyn?'

‘No, thanks.'

She had poured him one herself. ‘Look, have a cup. You're soaked. There's a dry shirt in that drawer there. And you ought to change your shoes. You'll …'

He hadn't moved, hadn't touched the tea, just slumped by the wall, hair dripping on to his shirt. She was damp herself, the wet stems of the anemones seeping through the sheet. She picked them up and smelt them. The blooms looked bruised and feverish, smelt of nothing.

No one spoke. Matthew checked the teapot, cleared his throat. An aeroplane droned over, and in the next-door garden a child began to cry—a shrill and fractious wail which got slowly louder. Lyn suddenly sprang up, lurched towards the door.

‘All right,' he said. ‘You win, Matthew. You always win.' His voice was very low and controlled as if he feared to let it off the leash. ‘Publish your bloody book and be done with it. There's no way out if I've got another mouth to feed.'

The very next day, he returned to Matthew's office and started work on the layout of the book. Matthew didn't believe in wasting time. The arguments continued. Matthew was planning to use the flower and wildlife drawings in the sketchbook as another aspect of Hester's charm and skill. Lyn insisted they were Susannah's work and had no place in the book.

‘You can't
prove
they're Hester's,' he muttered.

‘And you can't prove they're Susannah's.'

Lyn flung his pencil down. ‘Look, I know this isn't Hester's work. You're just hoodwinking the public, spoiling the book by packing it full of lies.'

‘I'm
pleasing
my public, Lyn, and enhancing the book with some delightful illustrations. There's no proof who did them either way, in fact, so let's not argue, shall we?'

Jennifer turned on her side, tried to get more comfortable. At least the quarrels were confined to the office now. She was glad Lyn was back at work. She needed peace to recover, adjust to her new role. She was to be not just a mother—that was promotion and wonder enough—but a vital part of Matthew's whole new project. He had explored their Cobham kitchen, marvelling at booty brought from Hernhope, recognising almost forgotten objects from his boyhood—Hester's wooden gingerbread moulds with their carved design of rose and thistle, the handsome ham-stand with its central spike, the smoked glass spice jars still mostly full and fragrant, the cream and butter coolers. Even in the rush of leaving Hernhope, she had insisted on collecting up these treasures so that she could take some part of Hester back with her.

‘Do you realise, Jennifer, we're both working for the same end—to glorify and resurrect Lyn's mother? You see that, don't you? We have a personal responsibility to her, a family pride and loyalty to safeguard and perpetuate everything she wrote.'

He made it sound solemn and exalted, close to the sense of mission she had experienced herself. She tried to explain to Matthew what Hernhope meant to her, how she longed to return there and make it live again. Couldn't they use their own share of the money to turn dream into reality?

Matthew hesitated. It wasn't quite as simple as that, he explained. He was working out a scheme whereby she and Lyn would receive a royalty, but royalties took time to dribble in, and even when they did, it would be wiser to invest the cash rather than blue it straight away. Money should be used to make more money. Once the book was doing well and had been sold around the world, then they could discuss properties. For the moment, though, he preferred them both to live close by, so they could all pull together on his project.

She had to admit she liked the idea of unity and harmony, an end to all the bickering, the constant divided aims. While she was pregnant, she was content to live at Cobham anyway—especially since the bleeding. She had seen it as a warning, decided to take things quieter now, avoid all risks. A smaller house would be easier to manage. Besides, her baby was due in the very worst of winter, when snow could cut her off in a remote and hilly spot like Hernhope. Safer to have it here in the milder south, with help and hospitals more accessible. Matthew had even promised to pay her a mini-salary if she stayed at Cobham and continued her work on Hester's recipes. That was money for fun. She could transform the place into a tiny southern Hernhope, a shrine to Hester herself.

What worried her more were Matthew's plans for using her to help publicise the project. He had mentioned a trade launch and sales conference, to be held as early as November, and then a mass of interviews in publication month. Her baby would be four months old when the book was launched in May, but Matthew said they could hire a nanny for a while. It all sounded rather grand and very frightening. She had found it hard enough to address the Mepperton Young Wives, let alone a throng of important publishing men.

Yet she had promised to co-operate. Matthew had already paid them a small lump sum for relinquishing the diaries, plus the prospect of Big Money once the book had proved itself. All Lyn's grouses about the financial impossibility of living up at Hernhope could then be overruled. For once, she was grateful to Matthew, glad he was around. Now that she was pregnant, she needed someone strong and solid to lean against, a shrewd businessman to take care of all the problems.