Born of Woman (23 page)

‘Louder', he mouthed.

‘G … Good
afternoon
.' Her voice tailed off again. ‘I … er … don't quite know what to say.'

Christ—she ought to know. He had been coaching her for weeks. He tried to prompt her, cue her in, but she was still dithering there without a tongue. Perhaps he should get up and speak again, himself. There was still time to change the media plans. Jennifer wasn't a hundred per cent essential. They could phase her out, present the book another way, work on a new publicity angle. Yet they couldn't save this conference. If Jennifer dried up now, or proved herself an impossible figurehead for so vital and prestigious a campaign, then all their preparatory work, all that expense and trouble on the lunch, would be so much mockery. The reps would return to their regions at best confused, at worst contemptuous.

The room was so tautly silent that noises from the street outside were trespassing in and taking over—the nervous stops and starts of London traffic, the scream of an electric drill. Up till now, there hadn't been a world outside, only the sob and smile of Hester's century. Jennifer shifted from one foot to the other. Matthew was
willing
her to speak, reciting her words over and over again in his own head, as if he could somehow squeeze them out of his brain into hers. Ah—he tensed. At least she had opened her mouth and was saying
some
thing.

He held his breath. It was not the speech he had written for her. She was venturing out on some new tack of her own. And wasn't she slurring her words a bit, swaying very slightly on her feet? Good Christ! The girl was tipsy. Why on earth hadn't he realised before? He remembered, now, watching her at lunch. She had eaten almost nothing, but had been clutching on to her wine glass as a prop. Brendan Holdsworth must have filled it once too often. That would explain the flush, the sway, the fluster, the lapse of memory. Supposing she went further—belched, hiccoughed, disgraced herself and him? He hardly dared to listen as she stuttered on.

‘Actually, I … never knew my mother-in-law. She always sounded … frightening. I mean, when people talked about her, she seemed … well … almost like a … witch.'

Matthew shut his eyes. Words like ‘witch' were utterly forbidden. She must have found them in the wine. What was Jennifer saying? She could ruin everything by being too outspoken, departing from her brief, the deftly crafted paean he had so carefully prepared for her. Hester was to be presented as a dignified and towering figure—aloof, perhaps, but never eccentric.

‘To tell the truth, the only time I saw her, she was …
dead
.' (Matthew winced). ‘So I thought I'd be … doubly frightened. The undertaker couldn't come till the next day. My husband was naturally … distraught, so I did … everything myself. I'd never touched a corpse before. When my own mother died they took the body away, and I was so upset, I was useless anyway. But with Hester, I felt …'

Matthew's hands were normally cool and dry, but now he could feel traitorous sweat slinking across his palms. You didn't bring death to sales conferences—or at least, only boastful death on battlefields or tragic epitaphs softened by stirring text or skilful photographs—not these sordid and tasteless references to corpses. The reps had only just finished their lunch and hardly wished to be transported to a sick room with a dead and stinking body upsetting their digestions.

‘I
was
scared, in fact, but when I plucked up courage and went to close her eyes, she was … sort of …
watching
me. Oh, I know this sounds quite crazy. I don't even have the words to explain it properly, but it was as if she
had
n't died—well—not completely.'

Matthew cleared his throat in warning. If Jennifer went any further with this ghost-and-spirit lark, this airy-fairy supernatural rubbish, they would label her as cracked, dismiss her out of hand. She must be stopped immediately. The trouble was, she had her back to him now. He had told her a hundred times to face the reps when she was speaking to them, and that bit she had remembered, while forgetting all the rest. He coughed again, tried to warn her off, but she was in the middle of her story and seemed determined to continue, talking louder, with fewer ‘ums' and pauses.

‘The next day, various neighbours called, including a very old woman who used to work as a midwife and often helped at deaths, as well. She told me, in the old days, the room where a person had died was always draped in white, and sometimes a sprig of yew was tucked in the folds of the shroud before the coffin was nailed down. She said yew was a symbol of immortality, you see, and the white meant resurrection and prepared you for the after-life.'

Matthew's nails were digging into his palms. Shrouds and coffins were hardly selling-points. Jennifer had been instructed to laud the
living
Hester, not a body in a winding sheet. Yet there she was, still loitering by the death-bed.

‘Actually, I don't believe in … heaven and things myself, but I did feel then that perhaps some people—special people or wise ones or just very strong and determined characters like Hester—could perhaps live on down … here, in some … strange way we can't yet understand. Anyway, I draped everything in white. I found some beautiful white damask in the linen chest which I used for the shroud itself. I wanted everything to be … right. I had to go miles to find a yew tree. All the trees around the house seemed to be spruce or fir or pine. I broke a bit off and laid it between her hands. That way, I knew I could … preserve her. Oh, I know it sounds … peculiar, but …'

Downright crazy, Matthew thought. If Jennifer went on like this, his whole project would be doomed. Wine had clouded her powers of judgement, wrecked his careful plans. She had never been used to alcohol, so even a little could push her over the top. Mind you, at least she had stopped swaying and seemed reasonably in control. It could have been
worse
, he supposed. She might have broken down in giggles or … He shuddered. The most important thing now was to shut her up. If she maundered on much longer, his book and reputation would both be ruined. Even now, she had only reached the funeral.

‘It was rather strange, you see, because at the service the Vicar was wearing white vestments. That's unusual for a funeral. I mean, white is for joy and celebration, not death and mourning. I suppose it was because it was still so close to Easter, but all the same, I took it as a sign that … Oh I don't know—it all sounds so far-fetched when I try and tell you, but I just felt Hester's … presence all around me, not dead, but watching still. Then, when I found her diaries, I had this weird feeling it was—well—
meant
, that Hester and I were somehow …
linked
, brought together by some … outside power.'

Matthew's cheeks were flaming with embarrassment, hands clutching at the table-edge, gaze fixed on the carpet. He dared not catch the representatives' eyes. He would have to interrupt this hocus-pocus, this rambling gibberish before Jennifer was catcalled out of the room. Slowly he looked up. Every eye was turned to her, not scoffing or ridiculing, but fascinated, rapt.

He stared. Surely he was mistaken. Perhaps that total pin-drop silence was due to boredom, not attentiveness. But no. Even Basil Brooks himself was utterly absorbed. Matthew could hardly understand it. It couldn't be her charm or sex appeal. Jennifer had never been a beauty, and frankly looked a mess now. The whole elaborate hair-do had tumbled into anarchy, the country flowers were fading, the careful make-up streaked. It was her words which had caught their interest, those very words he had blushed and cringed at himself. He had judged too swiftly, reacted too unfairly. There was a lot of current interest in the supernatural and Jennifer had somehow harnessed it, hit on a brand new selling-point, without any formal briefing. Her scrag-end of a speech was working far more effectively than the professional polished piece he had so laboriously prepared for her. She was even selling the diaries now, in her own strange and fumbling fashion.

‘I just wanted you all to know how …
real
those diaries were for me. Once I'd found them, I was almost … taken over. I never imagined for a moment they'd be published. In fact, I even opposed the scheme at first, but now I'm glad everyone else can share them. I've really got to know Hester these last few months. She's taught me such a lot, you know, about plants and birds and animals. And a mass of household hints, and new skills like lace-making. More important things as well—things I can hardly …'

Matthew stared at the radiant girl, transformed by her own enthusiasm. She was half-turned towards him now, and he could see her eager open face, completely free from guile or affectation. These men were so accustomed to the slick patter of the sales drive, the polished posturing performances laid on for them like false and heartless television commercials, that Jennifer's integrity had a shining power and truth. She spoke so feelingly, so naturally, she made girls like Cindy Scott seem bogus and rehearsed. And she was even gaining confidence—describing Hern-hope now, with fewer hesitations.

‘It's
Hester's
house, of course. It always will be. You probably think I'm making too much of Hester. I did wonder that myself, in fact—whether the shock of her death was making me just imagine things. But it
was
n't imagination. You see even after the funeral, when I felt perfectly calm and rested, I was … still aware of her. One afternoon, I was walking along the valley, collecting dandelions. I was trying out one of her recipes for home-made wine. She said it was most important to gather the dandelions before the twelfth of May, because the flowers are larger and brighter then, and they make the wine smile. It was May the ninth, I remember, a rather wet and blustery day with lots of fat white clouds tearing along the sky. I couldn't have felt more normal. I'd spent the morning scrubbing out drawers and cupboards and making leek and potato soup. I wasn't tired or hungry or drugged or shocked or anything. And it wasn't even spooky dusk or twilight, just a plain, quiet, ordinary afternoon. And yet I heard her voice.
Hester
's … Speaking to me.'

Jennifer paused, rubbed her eyes, smudging the mascara. The silence was electric. It was because she looked so ordinary, the sort of fairish, prettyish, untidy girl-next-door whom everyone felt at ease with, that her words were so convincing. She was not marketing a gimmick or selling a commodity for someone else's profit. She was telling her own truth. He could have paid a hundred thousand pounds to try and create such drama and excitement, and still not brought it off. Jennifer had achieved it by her own ingenuousness. She was still speaking in that excited, artless fashion.

‘And that wasn't the first time. I'd heard her voice before—the day I found the diaries. That's partly why I felt … Oh, gosh!' She suddenly broke off, turned round to face her brother-in-law, stared at him in horror. ‘Matthew, I'm
sorry
. I'm meant to be making a speech, and I've been rambling on so long, I haven't even started it.'

Everybody laughed. It was the relief they had been waiting for. The supernatural had worked its subtle magic, but now they needed a break. Again, Jennifer provided it. She had sunk back in her seat, blushing and apologising, all the reps craning towards her, asking questions, genuinely fascinated. It was as if the conference had slipped out of its straitjacket and was now sprawling in its shirt-sleeves.

Treat the sales reps as your friends, he had advised her, and she had taken him at his word. She was chatting to them as freely and unaffectedly as she might have done to Anne, promising them favours, cheeses, herbal remedies; doing more for his book than he had ever planned on paper.

His mind was working furiously. He must exploit these new factors in his publicity campaign. He could weave the supernatural into interviews and press reports, get Jennifer to repeat her performance up and down the land. He wouldn't sweat so much, now, about careful formal speeches. Jennifer's own impulsive spontaneity had profit gushing out of it. He would have to coach her still, of course—all those falterings would never work on television, but she needed rehearsing in her own fresh and artless style.

He could hear her now, babbling on about some tonic which Hester had concocted for Thomas Winterton for vigour in old age. She didn't even realise its sexual implications. Innocence—that was the word he wanted. It was rare enough these days, yet Jennifer had brought it to this conference and won them over with it. She wasn't the slick professional Allenby had wanted, but it was because of that she had made her points so well. He could see it working right across the media. Jennifer would stun them as a novelty, someone honest and refreshing after a string of jaded veterans.

Matthew picked up the dummy, turned to the inside back cover where Jennifer's photo smiled uncertainly, still shy, endearing, modest. She would bring it off. It was Hester he was selling, but in six months' time, her daughter-in-law would be bewitching her way into every home in England.

T V TEARS SENSATION!
VITA SAYS ʻI DIDNʼT MAKE HER CRY.ʼ
BEST SELLER BOO-HOO!
TOP SHOW ENDS IN TEARS
SOB STORY!

Jennifer stared at the rack of morning papers shouting out her shame to the whole of Waterloo Station in the rush hour—to
all
the stations, all the newsagents, in all the towns and hamlets of the British Isles. She could hardly believe how she had been rocketed from obscurity to fame—or notoriety—in the space of just a fortnight. The six long months before that, she had stayed mercifully out of the limelight while Matthew produced his book and began to sell it round the world. Then came publication day in England, and she had been launched on her glittering trajectory up and down the country in a fallout of promotion.

Even so, she had never made the headlines. There had been interviews on radio, signing sessions in book shops, quiet and flattering profiles on the inside pages of magazines and newspapers—not these vulgar slurs hogging the front pages, tasteless photos of her distorted features and streaming eyes upsetting people's day. The trouble was, there was so little other vital major news. No one had tried to assassinate a president or kidnap a tycoon. No Paisleyite had knifed a Papist, nor pig's heart been transplanted into man. All that was left was Jennifer Winterton's tears, hallowed and increased in value because she had shed them over Vita Sampson. Vita was always News. Men found themselves bewitched by her, women jealous, hostile, or slavishly in thrall to her, copying every detail of her hair, her dress, her glare. If Jennifer had the temerity to upstage her on her own programme, then it could only add a frisson to the nation's breakfast.