Born of Woman (6 page)

Jennifer was nudging him, coaxing him from his knees on to his seat. What was happening now? The vicar loomed ten foot taller, braying from the pulpit about our dear departed sister going to her rest.

Hester was nobody's sister—too closed and private for that—and of course she would never rest. Always too much to do—range to be stoked, bread to be baked, cheese to be made and sold to buy his shoes. Even in heaven, she'd be up at five, laundering whole skies, polishing angels.

The vicar's voice echoed and crescendoed. Empty churchy words resounding with stained-glass nothing. Lyn stared at the coloured window which showed Adam and Eve driven out of Eden, Adam guilty and abashed, hiding his thing with a limp and furtive hand. His mother had made him feel like that, as if his body were a sin and he were permanently naked, even with his clothes on. Eve was a Susannah—young, full-bodied, frivolous—golden ringlets serpenting down her breasts. He had read in an art book once that lilies were the flowers which sprang from Eve's tears as she stumbled out of Paradise. The name Susannah came from the Hebrew word for lily, so it all tied up. Lilies for purity and innocence, yet linked to that first flush female whose name was sin and shame. Matthew had sent lilies only yesterday. He had flung them in the dustbin. Susannah belonged to
him
now.

The vicar had glided down to ground level and everyone was standing. The organ added sobs to its mournful drone. Four local farmers were parading down the aisle with a coffin on their shoulders, their coarse quaffing mouths set in pious Sunday smirks. Lyn had somehow made his feet work and was blundering along behind them, glued to Jennifer's arm, all the congregation pouring out of their pews and trailing after him.

The sun winked and sniggered as the cortege snailed into the churchyard. Ever since he'd arrived here the sun had kept on shining, turning winter into summer, death into carnival, gilding things when he wanted them in black.

Most of the graves were tangled and neglected, weeds choking mothers, creepers strangling sons. Some of the older tombstones had sagged or shifted as if they no longer had the heart to stand up straight. Moss and lichen blanked out loving inscriptions as their owners crumbled from pain and loss to memory, to void.

Jennifer was leading him like a child. He hardly knew what was happening, except he was stumbling over tussocks, following a rag and tag of people who were gathering round a hole. The Winterton plot had been full for more than thirty years. They had opened it for Thomas, but he had been the last. Hester's grave was two down from her husband's and shaded by the relics of a diseased and dying elm. The first and younger wife had pride of place.

Lyn stared at the raw scarred earth, bleeding against the tangled undergrowth. All the ground around him was writhing with dead bodies, vanished Wintertons pointing bony fingers at his shame and folly in leaving the family home. He dared not look in the hole in case it plunged him into nothingness. That hollow heartless coffin was bad enough.

The vicar had blown his whistle for the second half. Lyn jumped as words spattered on the coffin.

‘I heard a voice from heaven saying, ‘‘Write this: Happy are the dead …'''

Peculiar word, happy—especially at a funeral. Lyn sucked it like a fruit-drop. A word like hope which meant something different from what it should. Nobody looked happy. Molly Bertram was weeping and the shepherd's wife from Nettleburn emitting little sobs and gasps which collided with the psalms.

Even Jennifer was crying—mourning a woman she had never known and who had forbidden her to exist. Jennifer had washed the body, closed the eyes. Lyn shivered. When she had finished she even smelt of Hester, his mother's droppings and dribblings staining his wife's clothes. She had picked flowers and filled his mother's room with them—more for a wedding than a funeral. Was Hester's death Jennifer's decree absolute? Were they solemnising their marriage because only now was he divorced and parted from his mother?

Shouldn't
he
be crying? His eyes did ache, but it was only from the sun. Crying was so ugly. He longed for some nobler, cleaner, keener, fiercer grief. How could you shroud Hester in a snivel, splutter her away in sodden scraps of Kleenex? The vicar kept on booming.

‘Man born of a woman has but a short time to live. Like a flower he blossoms, then withers; like a shadow he flees and never stays.'

Born of woman
. Even in the Alternative Service Book, it sounded strange. How else could you be born? Was that what frightened him in women? To be shut up in them, coffined in them, gulping down their food supplies, squawling out between their legs?

They were lowering in the coffin, straining against the straps. Was Hester fighting them, refusing to go down? Lyn glimpsed the neat squared-off edges of the hole. They had tried to soften it with wreaths—‘floral tributes' the undertaker had called them, a puffed-up little man with laquered hair, who looked as if he had tried to embalm himself. The wreaths were mostly hideous—decapitated flowerheads squashed into solid cushions, blooms snared and scalped and pinioned, as if they were crying out in pain, satin ribbons lassooing plastic foliage.

The vicar flung his handful of dust,
‘Ashes to ashes'
punched out like a rugby song. Lyn stared at the oblong box lying so snugly in its oblong hole. Never before had Hester been so submissive, fitted the space she was given, done what she was told. He felt he ought to haul her out again, rip the wood apart and let her holler. He stepped towards the edge. The ground came rushing towards him, Hester's mouth a black and screaming hole. The vicar grabbed his elbow, led him away. Jennifer was already standing by the porch and he was pushed into position beside her. Death was still muddled up with weddings—a long reception-line snaking towards him, queuing up to pump him by the hand. Jennifer was sniffing and smiling at once, as she had done three years ago, except she had been white and radiant then, instead of black.

All the locals' names were crumbling into dust. Three short years he had been away, and they all looked much the same as when he'd left, but the last few days had warped time like elastic, mouldered all his brain cells. He was blanking out on people he had known for thirty years or more. Thank God for Jennifer who was collecting names and inviting them back for tea. Half of them declined, cold-shouldering her fairy cakes and trifles, preferring a double whisky in the Rose and Crown. Special licence for a funeral. The publican already counting up his profits. Molly Bertram was shepherding the rest. ‘Over here, Mrs Walters. Jack can take one more. No, you go with Peggy, Mr Bryant.'

Revving of engines, slamming of car doors. He was the host and he couldn't even drive. His legs were made of sunlight, his hands were lumps of wood. He climbed into a Land Rover. His own car was packed with strangers, the vicar's full of hats. People chatted to him as they laboured up the hill, scraps and shreds of Hester passed between them.

‘Marvellous for her age …'

‘Of course, she
was
so independent …'

‘At least it was over quickly …'

‘Mustn't blame yourself …'

Blame …
Blame
? How had they found him out? If he had gone up earlier, done what his wife advised, hadn't wasted a whole Saturday with Matthew, then Hester wouldn't have died. He'd have had time to call the doctor, phone the ambulance, found her still alive.

He had killed her, then—or he and Matthew had. Matthew had sent messages and money (always money with Matthew) and sensible advice. Drive in daylight, try and keep her cheerful, phone if you need us, always ready to help.

More time wasted fondling Jennifer. Caressing her breasts while Hester gasped for water. Stopping for picnic kisses when his mother was a corpse. They were probably filling in that hole now, earth falling on her face.

‘Mind the step,' said the driver. Somehow they had reached the house while he was still fighting off the grave-diggers, scrabbling at the soil. How could he have missed road and hills and forest; bumped across seven cattle-grids and not even felt them rumble?

He staggered up the path into his house—
Hester
‘s house—except, for the first time in his life, she wasn't there. His wife was Mrs Winterton now, already pouring tea. She was using the best gold-rimmed Dresden china which Hester had packed away when Thomas died, the damask cloths, the silver apostle spoons. All those fine fancy things belonged to Matthew's era. He and Hester had made do with earthenware—thick brown clumsy stuff laid on the bare boards. He feared his mother might march back and demand less fuss.

‘Have a cup of tea, Lyn. You look frozen stiff.' Molly Bertram mothering him, passing him Jennifer's ham-and-mushroom patties. ‘Try one of these. You ought to eat, you know.' Eating herself, mouth full, a mushroom fragment caught in one side tooth; dressed in some skittish mauvey thing instead of seemly black.

People thronging all around him, invading Hester's privacy. Half of them had shunned his invitation, yet the house still bulged with bodies. He crept towards the hearth. Despite the sun, he felt chilled and corpse-like from the inside out. However many fires they lit, the house refused to thaw. Jennifer had tried to tame it, but it still shrugged off her overtures. It was an uneasy mixture now of her and Hester—Jennifer's blaze and polish on the ground floor, and the barer, greyer death-knell of the bedrooms.

Someone joined him by the hearth. ‘How's Matthew?'

Lyn jumped. ‘Er … fine.'

‘Couldn't he come up?'

‘Well, no, he …'

‘Are his boys doing well?'

‘Yes. Very.'

‘Any sons yourself yet, Lyn?'

‘N … no.' He turned away, grabbed a sausage roll to stop his mouth. You had to breed up here. Sons meant extra pairs of hands to help with the harvest or the lambing, to carry on the line. They'd be wondering what was wrong with him. A strong young wife like Jennifer should be swelling out by now. He pushed through the crowd to find her. She was surrounded by a group of older women, all mobbing her with questions.

‘Such a pleasure to meet you, Mrs Winterton. We always wondered why you'd never …'

‘How did you come to meet your husband, dear?'

‘Reckon you'd like to stay up here—make the house more modern? Remember what I told you. If there's anything you want, even if it's only a chat or a …'

‘I understand no one's found a Will?'

Lyn winced, tried to catch Jennifer's eye. She had created a sort of
party
all around her—fancy clothes, fancy food, hum of conversation. Hester would have hated it. Hester kept her doors shut, her parlour blinds drawn down. Even the vicar had swapped his tea for Scotch and was stuffing himself with cake.

‘Delicious chocolate gâteau, Mrs Winterton. You're a very good cook, I see.'

‘It's my job, Mr Arnold. I was trained in domestic science.'

‘Oh, you cook for a living, do you?' Little flakes of chocolate spraying from his lip.

‘No, nothing as grand as that. I do a few dinner parties for people, or things like weddings, sometimes. And I sell my stuff—you know, jams, chutneys, pâtés, to the local delicatessen.'

Lyn slipped into the circle. ‘She does it for
fun
,' he muttered. ‘Just a hobby.' Didn't want them saying he couldn't keep her, that his own job was underpaid and tied to Matthew's whim, that Matthew paid the bills but kept the purse-strings.

The vicar stroked his chin, left a smear of chocolate icing. ‘Pity you didn't meet your mother-in-law. She was a very inventive cook, you know. Found ingredients in the fields and hedgerows and concocted all sorts of things, even her own medicines. And she was the only one up here who still made cheeses.'

‘
Cheeses
?'

‘Oh yes, you've probably seen the moulds. They're …'

Lyn tried to manoeuvre his wife into a corner, get her on her own. ‘Ask them to
leave
,' he whispered. ‘I don't feel well.'

‘Hush, darling—they'll hear you. Go and lie down for a minute. They'll understand. They'll be leaving soon, in any case.'

‘No, they won't, they'll …' He was talking to the wall. His wife had been swallowed up again.

‘Mr Winterton?'

He jumped. Another face ballooning from his childhood—grizzled perm, scatty hat, eyes lost in their wrinkles. Mrs Wise from Alwinton smiling with her off-white china teeth. He tried to make his mouth work, use solemn straitjacketed words to fit a death. A blob of trifle was quivering on her spoon.

‘Yes, it … er …
was
a shock, Mrs Wise.' Yellow custard plopping onto her lilac Crimplene bodice, sliding down her cleavage. ‘No, the doctor wasn't there. I'm afraid he …'

He lurched away, collided with someone else, a tall tweedy woman who smelt of dogs. She grabbed his arm, bony fingers digging in his flesh. ‘We're all so
very
sorry, Mr Winterton.' Face thrust close to his. Purple gauze of thread-veins, mole with a coarse black hair in it sprouting from her cheek. ‘I understand it happened very suddenly?'

He nodded, pulled his arm free. Impossible to escape. People all around him—mouths, mouths, mouths. Everybody guzzling—swilling tea, gorging cakes, gulping down his mother. He was bleeding like those cherries in the trifle, red stain into white. His head was a meringue—hollow, full of air. The smallest guest could have crunched him up to nothing, crumbled him away. Clack-clack-clacking. Empty words.

‘No, thanks, Mrs Dixon, I've still got half a cup left. No, we weren't there when it …' He picked up a cupcake, put it down again. Pink sugared petals sprinkled on white icing. Flowers on a winding-sheet. ‘We couldn't leave before, you see. We didn't realise quite how bad she … b … bad … she …'

Go
away
!