Born of Woman (48 page)

‘Tore it out?' He felt like a parrot repeating all her words, a dumb, stupid parrot with its claws clipped, chained up on a perch.

‘I'm sorry. It was … wrong, I know, but you were in such a … state already, darling, and then when Matthew wanted to publish, I was scared he might find out, or might even know himself, or …'

‘So you … ‘‘confessed'' to Matthew?'

‘Y … yes.'

‘And told him not to tell me?'

‘Well, yes, Lyn, … but only because I didn't want to hurt you. I wasn't aware you knew, you see. You'd never said or …'

‘I see. You assumed I knew nothing about such a vital event in my mother's life—in my
own
life, for God's sake—and yet instead of telling me, putting me right about it, trying to help me understand and accept and cope and come to terms with it, you shared the news with … Matthew.'

‘It wasn't like that, Lyn. I was simply trying to … I mean, I never thought you'd … Look, let's not discuss it now. I ought to go down to Susie. I promised her I'd …'

‘
Damn
Susie! Look, I want to know exactly what …' He broke off. He was gripping the bedhead so hard, his hand was marked with little ridges. Didn't want to hurt him, she had said—then gone on to kick him into the gutter. Ganged up with Matthew against him. Joined the enemy. His head was reeling. A pneumatic drill was braying from some roadworks down the street. It seemed to move in closer now, boring into his skull. All his certainties crumbling into rubble. Jennifer—his wife, his ally, the one person he had trusted, had turned to Matthew instead of him, had deliberately concealed from him such a crucial personal matter. And not just for a day or two, while she recovered from the shock herself, or decided what to do, but for a whole year—more than a year. All that time, she and Matthew had been sharing secrets, drawing closer, discussing a bastard baby which he had only stumbled on a week or so ago. He remembered all the occasions they had been closeted alone together—ostensibly discussing publicity for the Book. God alone knew what they had really been discussing, what other vital issues they had kept strictly between the two of them.

He remembered Matthew's words now, spoken less than half an hour ago, and with such apparent artlessness. ‘There are a
lot
of things you're not aware of …' ‘Perhaps your wife prefers to trust
me
on …' He had hardly listened, shrugged them off. How had he been so blind? His wife and his half-brother were obviously more intimate than he had ever realised. What else had Matthew said? ‘Jennifer particularly asked me to look after the financial side …'

Oh, she had, had she? So she didn't trust
him
on money matters. He was just a child, a fool. ‘Trying to protect you,' she had said. ‘Don't want to upset you.' Matthew had always patronised him, but for his wife to join in as well … They despised him—that was obvious—and they had protected him from nothing. In fact, by keeping him in ignorance, they had increased his shock, his stunned sense of betrayal, when he finally discovered Edward in the Will. He had tried to bury that baby, hide it from the world, yet all the time it had been bawling in Matthew and Jennifer's arms? Did they know about the Will, as well, know he was disinherited?

Jennifer came up to him, put her arms around him. ‘Lyn—darling, please don't be upset. I didn't realise you'd …'

He shook her off. He should have known he couldn't trust her. She had already blabbed to Susie, told her things which were strictly fiercely private, split about their non-existent sex life. Susie had called him a nun, used disloyal insulting words which she could only have heard from Jennifer. He had tried to blot them out, even blame himself because he was the one who was denying her in bed, but now he realised she had betrayed him all along. Run him down to Susie while pretending that she loved him.

The sun had disappeared, the sky looked pale and swollen. There was a cold lumpy silence in the room. Jennifer made another move towards him. ‘Linnet …'

‘Don't call me that.'

‘Please try and understand. I … love you, darling.'

‘I'm sure you do. It's very loving, isn't it, to give Susie a full detailed record of all my … failures. I believe you also discussed with her what … positions I liked best and how I hurt you when I … buggered you—that was the word she used.'

Jennifer was scarlet, floundering. He longed for her to deny it—knew she wouldn't, couldn't. ‘I wasn't … aware I'd hurt you that way, and I'm … sorry if it's true. But I'd rather you told … me about it, not shared our intimate life with Susie or Matthew or …' He turned away. The pneumatic drill had stopped now, but had left ugly gaping holes. His straight and honest wife had betrayed his trust twice over, his stern and upright mother been proved a hypocrite. Nothing was pure or straight-forward any more. Even Susannah was polluted—tangled up with Susie—Susie Jane. There was no one he could trust. He had always admired his wife as totally honourable—the sort of person who would never snoop or gossip or read other people's letters or betray a confidence. But now …

Was he over-reacting? Damning her too harshly? He could hardly think straight. He tried to review the arid months which had passed since Hester's death and Jennifer's miscarriage. Wasn't it obvious that his wife had been withdrawing from him? He had lost her first to Matthew, now to Susie. He had blamed it on the book, at first, but it was more than that, he realised now. Jennifer didn't take him seriously, scarcely needed him. All the crucial issues she reserved for Matthew's judgement, all the lighter ones she preferred to discuss with Susie. Even the book itself was more of a sham than it appeared. He had always known that Matthew had doctored the diaries (‘editing', he called it) and had passed Susannah's drawings off as Hester's, but it was a new shock to realise that both Jennifer and Matthew had been willing to present Hester as a pure and virtuous woman when they knew full well about her secret past. He had been right to oppose the very idea of publication, but, even there, his wife had sided with Matthew against him.

‘Lyn, listen, my darling—
please
.'

Lyn swung round, stared. Jennifer had been towering in his thoughts like an Amazon, but she now looked small and vulnerable, one foot twisted round the other, hands trembling, her whole face contorted with concern. He almost weakened. He could smell her scent, see the tiny mole on the left side of her neck.
His
mole. He had kissed it so often, he had made it his. He touched her fingers, just for a second. ‘Snookie …'

‘Yes, I'm here, darling. I love you. You mustn't think I'm …' Her voice was blitzed by a pounding on the door.

‘Jen! Where are you? You promised you'd come down. I've sicked almost my whole guts up.' Susie burst in, her nightdress flecked with vomit, her face totally drained of colour. ‘And I still feel lousy and Robert's in floods of tears and Anne says she thinks she's going to …'

Lyn elbowed his wife aside, strode to the door himself. ‘I'm sorry, Susie. I really am. I know you're not well and I wish we could help, but we're leaving—now—this minute.'

Jennifer grabbed his arm. ‘Lyn—no! I can't walk out on Susie. I …'

‘So you'd prefer to walk out on me?'

‘Of course not, darling. But …'

‘Well, I'm not staying here—not in all this uproar. I think we ought to cut our losses and …'

‘All right—we'll go if you insist—but all of us. Susie as well.'

Lyn turned on his heel, walked slowly back to the window. ‘No.' he said. His voice was very quiet.

Susie flung herself on the bed. ‘Forget it! I don't care. I'm not going where I'm not wanted. I'd rather die. I'd rather …'

Jennifer hovered between the two of them. ‘Susie, don't say that. You
are
wanted. Of course you are. It's just that Lyn feels …'

There was a sudden shriek outside the door. ‘Auntie Jen, please come.' Hugh was panting on the landing, socks around his ankles. ‘Mummy's fainted. She's gone all white and sort of … numb. Daddy's phoning the doctor but I'm scared she might …'

Jennifer squeezed Lyn's hand, then dashed out after Hugh. ‘Wait, Lyn, darling, please. I'll be back in just a moment.'

She had already disappeared, Susie loping after her, groping along the passage, clutching her stomach. Lyn watched her go, softly shut the door.

He picked up Jennifer's dress—silky perfumed dress, the same blue as her eyes—buried his face in it, pressed it against his lips. He stood totally still for a moment—eyes closed, barely breathing—then unclasped his hands, let it fall. It billowed out a moment, sank limply to the ground. He walked round it, opened the wardrobe, took out his jacket with the chequebook in the pocket, a shirt or two, a sweater—stuffed them in a bag.

The staircase was deserted. All the drama was in Anne and Matthew's room. He could hear the voices floating up and back behind him—Matthew hectoring, the boys panicking and squabbling, only Jennifer calm. They
needed
her.

He slipped out the back way, crept round to his car. The lawn looked more brown than green. There were dead heads on the roses. The goldenrod had tarnished, tall fronds bent and sagging. Summer was over. The first yellow leaves were blemishing the beech hedge. He opened the boot, picked up Jennifer's flowers. He sniffed them. They smelt of petrol and decay. All the blues had faded, leaves wilting, petals falling. They were summer flowers, so had perished with the summer. He tossed the whole bouquet into a holly bush, turned to his stack of drawings, sorted through the pile—trees, fields, landscapes, skies. They seemed pointless now, pathetic. Rubbish drawn on rubbish. He stared at the flattened chicken carton, the grubby paper bags. Only a dumb-fool amateur would have wasted his time on trash like that.

He picked up his whole week's work, crushed it between his hands, wrenched and pummelled it until it was a less overweening size. He carried the wreckage to Matthew's dustbin, lifted up the lid. The bin was almost full. Empty cans, broken bottles, eggshells, tea-leaves, rotting vegetables. He stuffed the paintings in, ramming the rubbish down with them, wrinkling his nose against the smell of garbage. Mouldy beetroot bled across his skyscapes, coffee grounds made black bogs in his fields.

As he drove away, he glanced in his mirror to see if anyone had seen him. Jennifer's face at a window, Jennifer's cry, ‘Come back!'

No one. Nothing. Only the next-door cat sneaking behind a clump of crippled lupins and one brown beech leaf fluttering to the ground.

‘All men are guilty of rape …'

Jennifer jumped. Her mind had been elsewhere—on Lyn, as always. It was traitorous for her to be longing for a man when the leader of the Women's Group was denouncing them so vehemently. Jo relished the word rape. She had never had a man herself, condemned the entire male sex without personal experience, denouncing it as brutal and oppressive.

Jennifer glanced across at her—grey hair, putty face, long bony feet with yellowed toenails. Jo was wearing open sandals in late October and a grubby dirndl skirt—no tights, no scrap of make-up. Her hair was teased into a coarse and frizzy Afro-cut like a grizzled ball of wool let loose among a colony of wildcats. She had been a radical feminist before feminism was fashionable or radicalism accepted, had trained as a librarian, switched to social work, and now styled herself a sex therapist. Probably a compensation for a life without
any
sex, thought Jennifer unkindly.

Jo was reading now from a revolutionary statement by a group of radical lesbians.

‘Heterosexual intercourse is an act of vital symbolical significance by which the oppressor enters the body of the oppressed
…'

Jennifer tried to concentrate. She could see
Lyn
‘s body—lean, pale, hard, worshipping. The only opression was that it hadn't entered her, not for months, months, months, and was even less likely to do so now, when they were no longer under the same roof and hadn't even seen each other for nearly seven weeks. It still seemed unbelievable that the two of them had separated—not formally, not even by deliberate choice or inclination, but simply through a series of crises.

When she realised that he had gone, packed his things and simply driven off that crazy confusing Friday in the first week of September, with Anne lying white and still upstairs and Matthew working off his jet-lag on the boys, she had felt shock, resentment, relief and misery, all mixed up and churning. He had phoned her the next morning from a call-box. He had already driven a hundred miles or so, sounded strange, disorientated, still bitter and distrustful. Yet he begged her to join him, cut her links with Matthew. He made it like a test case. If she loved him, she'd obey—honour her marriage vows, put her husband first. If not …

Yet it wasn't quite that simple. Anne was ill. She was acting nurse. She had been rallying round the bedside when the phone rang.

‘Of
course
I love you, Lyn, but it's difficult to talk just now. Dr Cooper's here, you see. No, Matthew's gone to the office. Yes, I know it's Saturday, but he had to see a … Yes, I realise that, but there's no one else to hold the fort here. All right. I will. I promise. Look, I'll have to go. I'm sorry, darling, but the doctor's coming down now.'

Lyn had phoned again the next day and the next. Anne was making progress. The drugs had worked dramatically, and she was already sitting up and taking food. Susie had been coaxed into her Southwark hideaway by a combination of threats and blandishments, Mrs Briggs was back on form, the boys preparing for school. She could leave now, could join him—so long as she squared it first with Susie, made sure she understood.

She took the bus to Southwark, found Susie pale and irritable, hunched in a corner, smoking.