Born of Woman (70 page)

‘Gently, Matthew, you're hurting …'

Oh, so she was complaining, was she? She had complained the night of the party, not in words, maybe, but in what she hadn't said. He grabbed hold of himself below, used his fingers as a splint, a prop. He was shrinking already—just when he'd got Susie where he wanted. Must fill her up, must fuck her. (Never used the word. Disgusting word, scribbled like graffiti on the white wall of his soul.) She didn't feel like Susie, wasn't tight like Susie, or wet and hot and gripping him as she had done for those few ecstatic seconds on his throbbing office floor. Something was different, wrong. He wasn't making contact. He was buckling on her, slipping sideways, wilting, sliding out. She was castrating him again, slamming the lavatory door on him.

‘Look, I … leave it,' she was stuttering. ‘It'll never work like this.'

What did she mean, ‘leave it'? Was she asking him to fail? Taunting him, unmanning him, frigging herself with pansy childhood sweethearts, marrying little runts. And why was she using that martyred plaintive voice? That was a wife's voice—a wife who didn't like it. He felt his hands creeping towards her throat—soft white throat stuffed full of coarse black lies—lies which could ruin him, betray him, accuse him of fathering children, defrauding brothers, cheating on his tax. If he squeezed that throat for long enough, the lies would gag and shrivel—no juice in them, no power.

He squeezed.

She coughed, spluttered, pushed and fought him off. He lay trembling on the bed, staring at the limp and strangled thing between his legs. There was nothing left of him, nothing left in his bank account, nothing left of his name or pride or manhood. Someone's tears were smarting against his cheeks. He slapped them off. Only babies cried. Slowly he sat up, peered around him. The room looked unfamiliar—too small for him, confining. He glanced at his watch—it wasn't there. He wasn't wearing anything. His wife was cowering in a corner, naked too. What was she doing there, surrounded by gaudy Christmas wrappings, but pale and unwrapped herself? He groped towards her, laid a hand gently on her shoulder.

‘You're cold, darling,' he said. His voice sounded hoarse and strange. ‘What have you done with your nightie?'

She couldn't speak, just pointed to the floor. He fetched it for her, slipped it over her head. Someone had ripped the fabric, left cruel red weals across her throat. He stared at the marks, purpling into bruises. She must have fallen, somehow. He tried to hide them with the collar of her nightdress, fasten the fiddly buttons at the neck, but his hands were trembling too much to manage buttonholes. Perhaps he could kiss them better. She had always done that with the boys—a kiss for every childhood scratch and bump. He edged a little closer. She seemed nervous of him, shrinking.

‘All better now,' he whispered. He had learnt the words from her when the boys were tiny babies, learnt a lot of things from her. Needed her. He tried to say ‘I love you', but the words were still rusted up together and he couldn't pull them free. He stumbled to the window. It was still lumpen dark outside. The curtains were undrawn and he could see the trees like shadowy spies, holding up their arms to block his escape. As he watched, they took a step towards him. He could hear the mutterings in their branches, complaints and accusations, swelling into a roar. He blocked his ears, ducked down beneath the sill. They couldn't get him now. Anne's kind cooling hands were on his forehead. He must save her, save his sons. There wasn't time to waste. He started scrabbling on the floor, gathering up the scattered Christmas packages.

‘Quick!' he said. ‘Get a suitcase, darling. Wake the boys.'

‘Matthew, please—you're not w … well. You need to r … rest. Let's go back to our room and …'

‘Don't argue, Anne. We haven't time.' He checked the window again. He could see Edward Ainsley just outside it, leering from the cedar.

‘Hurry!' he urged, turning back to Anne and piling the last few parcels into her arms. He hadn't let his boys down. They still had all their presents—expensive toys, educational books. And he was giving them a holiday, the longest in their lives. They would even have their Christmas—traditional home-style Christmas, stiff with silver horseshoes.

‘Fetch your puddings,' he whispered. ‘Pack them in a hamper. We've got to leave immediately.' He strode back to the window, pulled the curtains close. ‘We'll beat them,' he said. ‘Don't worry. They can't see us any more and we'll be gone before it's light.' He turned her round to face him, took the heaviest parcels from her. ‘I promise you,' he said, kissing her pale face. ‘Once we've got away, we'll have the best and luckiest Christmas of our lives.'

Christmas morning. Lyn sat slowly up in bed, stared out through the window at the familiar landscape made strange and ghostly by its blanketing of snow. It felt odd to be in a house again, after weeks of living rough; sleeping in a proper bed with a mattress and two pillows instead of crick-necked in his car or damp and aching in a barn. It wasn't that much warmer, though. Long-fingered icicles hung outside the windows, the panes icy even inside. Hernhope had always been a cold house, despite its massive walls—too exposed to expect mercy from the weather.

He had slept in all his clothes. He pulled another sweater on and then his duffel coat, which had doubled as an extra blanket, walked stiffly downstairs to the living-room where he had sat alone last night, gazing into the fire. Leaping flames and crackling logs were now a crumble of dead ashes, as grey and cold as the sky which lay like a clammy hand upon the hills. He must cut more wood, make the place warm and welcoming for his guest. He unlocked the heavy door, stood a moment looking out. It didn't feel like Christmas. Even the snow was not the crisp and glowing Christmas-card variety, but a sullen, treacherous camouflage, concealing paths, blocking roads, threatening the lives of sheep and shepherd. The forest stretched eery, silent, to his right, dark trunks cutting like gallows through the white shroud spread on top of them. The house itself was muffed and cloaked in snow, its harsh grey outlines softened, its roof newly thatched with white.

Lyn tramped a path for himself from door to woodshed. His breath curdled against the shock of the frosty morning air and left a trail of vapour—proof he still existed, was still alive and functioning in a world where everything else was numb. He pinched his arm—felt the pressure on his fingers as bright and sharp as a match struck on a match-box. Pain was life.

The noise of the axe as he split the logs was another, louder pain. At least it helped to fill the silence. Silence was wrong for Christmas. Most of the village would be steaming and thawing in the village church, thundering out
God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen
as the organ wheezed and throbbed. He couldn't hear the church bells—Hernhope was too high and too remote. That was fitting, somehow. If they rang for joy, for triumph, then it was someone else's joy, not his.

He tried to block his thoughts out, fix only on the swing of the axe, the sting of the cold on his cheeks and hands, the hail of icy splinters flying up. He returned inside with his wood, re-laid the fire, swept the floor again. The house had been thick with dust when he arrived. He had startled spiders, removed dead moths, dead leaves, struggled with the kitchen range, scraped mould from weeping walls. Molly Bertram had long ago stopped cleaning or expecting their return. Even now, she had no idea that he was there. Christmas Eve had been the safest time to come. People were cloistered with their friends and families—hadn't time to spy. He had driven past the Bertram farm as quietly as he could. All the curtains had been closed—thank God. He saw no face at the windows, no one pottering outside. The whole family was probably busy with their Christmas preparations.

He, too was entertaining, though the house looked hardly festive. There was no mistletoe or holly, and all the Christmas trees were lowering dark outside, festooned only with snow and frost. Even the food was meagre. He had bought cold and simple fare—couldn't manage a turkey, had never learnt to cook. Hester had always forbidden him to interfere with what she saw as her exclusive role, and once he'd married Jennifer,
she
had taken over. It had been like an embrace, her cooking—not some heavy hotch-potch plonked down in front of him whether he liked it or not, and ordered to eat it up on pain of a ruined day, but all his favourite faddy dishes wooing him and coddling him—the kitchen smelling of Jennifer—spice and scent and warmth. She was coddling
Susie
, now, feeding up that baby.

He stumbled to the window. The snow was falling again in a pointillist landscape of endless whirling dots. The hills seemed to have changed their shape and their position in the blinding, blurring drifts. He could only guess the time. His mother's clock had stopped an hour or so before her death, and neither he nor Jennifer had ever ventured to wind it up again. He had sold his watch and couldn't check with the radio since the batteries had mouldered. There was no electricity. The house had lost its life-supply several months ago when the generator had overheated and seized up. The house was no longer his, so why should he struggle with spark-plugs and cylinders, to light someone else's life? It was enough that he had made it neat and welcoming, remembered to buy plain white candles along with the plain white bread and cheese.

A house could go on functioning without heat or light or family, could still stand strong and solid, while cold and dark inside. He had proved that with himself. He had cut off his wife, his heart, his centre, yet his hands could still lay tables or chop wood, his breath still make smudgy patterns on the pane. All he had to do was not remember, slap his body down if it stirred for Jennifer, forget her mouth around him under that fickle Cobham moon.

He dragged himself upstairs, tidied his clothes, combed his hair, then down again to boil some water to wash and shave. Must keep busy. He banked the fire, set the knives and forks out on the table. He hoped he wouldn't disgrace himself. He had grown too accustomed to eating with his fingers, living like an animal. He washed the few cold supermarket tomatoes, cut them into halves. (Jennifer made radish flowers, tomato roses …)

He put the knife down, paced up and down the kitchen. His guest should have arrived by now. Other families would be sitting down to their Christmas lunch, worshipping the dead and risen turkey wrapped in its golden skin like a chasuble, claret-blood poured out to wash it down. He had only plonk, a pale synthetic ham caged in a tin and blushing with chemicals, a loaf, a piece of cheese—simple peasant food for a bastard born in a manger who had ended up as King.

He trailed into the hall, opened the front door a crack. Snow slapped against his face, whirled into the house. Would anyone venture out in such harsh weather? He shut it out, stood at the window instead, watched a plump male blackbird struggling in the snow, its feathers defiant black against the white. The silence was so taut, he could hear his own heartbeat tearing it up around him like a snow-plough.

‘Let him come,' he whispered. ‘Let him come.'

He spotted the car when it was only a black speck on a white track, swelling slowly into an insect, a bird, a boulder, and then—miraculously—into four wheels and a bonnet, lumbering through the drifts. He gripped the window-frame, stomach churning with fear. Why had he ever suggested this meeting at all? He must have been crazy, raving.

Too late now to hide. The car was drawing nearer, making as much upheaval in the hushed and frozen countryside as if it were a bomb or minor earthquake. Birds were flying up, outraged, snow crumbling under lurching wheels, steam panting from the exhaust, deep scars left all along the track.

The driver stepped out, cursing. Lyn hardly noticed him. He was watching the second man, the taller, more important man who was emerging from the back. He was dressed for a city funeral in a dark suit and heavy black overcoat—too severe for Christmas, too formal for the country. Where was the little angel with his smile, his mop of curls? He had been jealous of that photo when he found it with the Will—that pretty preening child with his lock of golden hair sent by doting Alice Fraser. The curls had disappeared now—and the gold. What hair he had was grey and sparse, the charming infant chubbiness turned to saggy flesh. The smile had gone, as well. The face was grave above its neat silk scarf. Lyn felt suddenly embarrassed by his shabby corduroys, baggy sweaters. He had never thought to change, had no ‘best clothes', in any case. He had got too used to living without a wardrobe, wearing the same old garments day and night, like a skin or pelt you couldn't change.

The clotted silence seemed to stretch to the Northern Isles. Lyn could have hugged the driver just for breaking it, for being human and hot-tempered in a world where everything else had turned to ice.

‘Bastard of a road, innit? I've risked my bloody neck coming all this way. Gone off the road twice and …' He turned back to his passenger. ‘If you're planning to return this evening, then you'd better ask some other fool to fetch you. Happy Christmas!'

He grabbed the clutch of banknotes offered him, slammed both his doors and tried to turn the car around on a patch of stony shale which had turned into an ice-rink. Lyn and the stranger used the cover of the noise to mutter greetings. The two sets of eyes stared at each other for a moment, then looked away. Both had seen Hester's eyes imprinted on the other, uniting them—uncanny when everything else about them was so obstinately different. Edward was much the older, with broader shoulders and an imposing frame like a soldier's or an athlete's. Lyn looked brittle in comparison, as if he could be snapped in half like a garden cane. His dark unruly hair, tangling to his collar, contrasted with the thin clipped hedge of grey surrounding Edward's balding pate. Edward's face was tanned and heavy-jowled, Lyn's lean, fleshless, pale.