Born of Woman (75 page)

‘We ought to save those candles. They're already half burned down and we'll need them for later on. Mind you, I don't know what we're going to do for supper. I bought a tin of soup, but we can't eat it cold. There's always bread and cheese, of course, but …'

‘I'm afraid I won't be … er … staying for supper. I'd like to talk things over, work out where we stand, but then I must be on my way. The roads are so bad, it'll take two or three hours at least—and I haven't even ordered a taxi yet. I was looking for the phone.'

‘Phone?'

‘You mean you haven't got a …? But you phoned me yourself, when you …'

‘Not from here, I didn't. Hernhope's never had a phone. Hester didn't want one. She communicated other ways.'

‘Well, how am I going to get back?'

‘You can't. You'll have to stay the night.'

‘Impossible! I've booked a hotel in Gosforth. I put up there last night, to break my journey. All my things are there, and they're expecting me for dinner and …'

‘They'll understand, with the roads as bad as this. I can make you fairly comfortable. At least the bedding's thick. It's light I'm more worried about. I've got a torch, but no spare batteries.' Lyn leaned across and blew the candles out—snuffed Edward out, as well. ‘Forgive me, but best to save those in case of an emergency.'

‘Look, I must get back.' Edward's voice sounded louder in the darkness. I've got urgent business in Newcastle in the morning.'

‘Business on Boxing Day?'

‘Well, semi-business. I'm lunching with a solicitor. He's a friend of a friend of someone I know in Warkworth. Now the Will's turned up, I ought to take the chance of discussing it with him. My own lawyers are on holiday all week, and there are so many matters to … I mean, I'll obviously have problems disposing of this house at all …'

‘Disposing of it?'

‘Well, a sale may be quite tricky, with it being so remote and …'

‘You can't sell Hernhope! It's Hester's house, an inheritance which goes back centuries and must be kept within the family. She wouldn't want strangers here.'

Edward pushed his chair back. He kept fidgeting and shifting as if he were scared of the dense and clammy darkness which shrouded the whole room. ‘Hester's … dead,' he said, at last.

The word seemed to sink like a stone into the silence. It was no longer silence. The sharp cry of a dog-fox suddenly tore across the night, a thin and desperate sound distorted by the hills. There were other noises—murmurings and creakings from the house itself—soughing of the wind as it whined down the chimney, fretted at the shutters.

‘No,' Lyn muttered, groping to his feet. The floor felt no longer level, the room was closing in on him. He had a sudden overwhelming sense of Hester's presence. He could see beyond the shadows, beyond the darkness, to some plane where his own dry throat and burning head hardly mattered any more. He lurched forward, stretched out his hands. His fingers closed on nothing.

‘Do you … feel something?' he whispered to Edward.

He heard Edward catch his breath. ‘What d'you mean?' ‘Well, a sort of sense of…' He broke off. It sounded crackpot. There weren't words for what he meant. ‘My … er … wife used to say that some people had such force or … strength in life, that it—well—lived on after them and …'

Edward cleared his throat. ‘Your wife sounds a little … fanciful.'

‘Not at all. Jennifer's extremely down to earth.'

‘I … don't believe in ghosts.' Edward jumped as the ashes in the range stirred and shifted suddenly. Every smallest sound seemed to boom and cannon in the darkness, a sobbing gurgle from the water-pipes, the creaking of the floorboards under his chair.

‘Don't you?' Lyn shut his eyes. Hester was still there. He could see her dowdy black dress, her limp and shabby overall with its pattern of tiny purple flowers, her swollen hands with their rough and work-worn skin which she had never bothered to soften with her own salves, her strong determined jaw and firm set mouth. Jennifer was right—had been all along. She had always claimed that Hester was too powerful a character ever to be extinguished, that she lived on at Hernhope, at least in spirit. Hester was at home, watching her two sons together, had maybe brought them together, so that he would understand about the Will, learn about the heritage of his name.

He crept towards the range where his mother had stood so often, stirring, basting, always busy. Sometimes, when he was small, he had laid his face against the overall, smelt grease, yeast, onions, all mixed up. She had pushed him away, roughly, and then relented, offered him a ladleful of stew. He had burnt his tongue in trying to gulp it down to please her, gagged on tiny bones.

‘H … Hester?' he whispered. He could even smell the stew, bubbling on that cold dead stove, his mouth smarting hot with peppercorns.

Edward started to his feet. ‘What? What did you say?' He blundered into something, swore.

Lyn swung round. ‘Are you all right?'

‘I … think so. Bruised my shin a bit. Are you?'

‘Y … Yes.' Lyn sank back against the range. If Hester were alive still, then he needn't blame himself for having killed her. He felt guilt flake and shred away like meat off bones in Hester's long-cooked stew, resentment boil to nothing.

Edward was still floundering in the darkness. ‘It's madness to sit here in the pitch black. Haven't you any paraffin? I found an old oil-lamp while you were out. If we could only light that, we'd …'

Lyn shook his head. He hadn't bought paraffin. It was over a pound a gallon, and he'd remembered that there was an old can in the outhouse, dating back to Hester's time. When he went to find it, the rusty punctured can was sitting in a pool of oily black. The scant two inches left had lit half his Christmas Eve. The rest had passed in darkness. ‘Just accept the dark,' he said to Edward. ‘Like animals do'. He could hear the fox again, sounding fainter and unearthly. He tried to take his own advice, unclench his hands, loosen his hunched shoulders.

Edward slumped back into his chair. Neither man said anything. The darkness seemed to prick and chafe between them, as minute followed minute. A wodge of snow, dislodged by the wind, suddenly slid from the roof and shooshed abruptly past the window, thudding to the ground like a detonation.

‘Good God!' Edward was on his feet again. ‘What was that?' He started stumbling towards the door. ‘Look, I'm going to order that taxi. Surely one of your neighbours has got a phone?'

‘Our nearest neighbour is almost four miles away. I'll drive you there, if you like. But I can't guarantee you'll ever get a cab. Not on Christmas Day with roads like these.'

‘Thank you. I'll risk it.'

‘You'd better wrap up warm, then.' Lyn was still shivering himself. ‘There's no heating in my car. Take my second sweater, if you like. I'll just get my keys.' He fumbled into the hall, steadied himself against the carved oak settle. He had always scoffed at Jennifer when she talked about spirits, presences. How had he been so blind? The whole house reeked off Hester. And he was about to turn his back on her, leave her home for ever. He ran his hand along the grainy wood of the settle, envied its solidity. The nomad gypsy moment had arrived too soon. He wasn't ready, hadn't made his plans. Edward was all right—returning to the light and warmth and safety of a city, the shelter of a hotel. He would meet his legal acquaintance in the morning, map his future, tot up all his gains. But what of
him
? Once he handed Edward over to the cab-driver, what road could he take himself?

Edward had followed him into the passage. The two men stood almost touching in the gloom. Lyn cleared his throat.

‘There's … er … no need to bother with a cab. I can drive you to Newcastle. I've n … nothing else to do.'

‘No, please, that's quite unnecessary. Both the car-hire firms I checked with yesterday assured me they'd be working over Christmas. They charge much more, of course, but that's only to be expected. It's just a question of getting to a phone.'

‘You'll find they'll change their minds once they see fresh snow. They're reluctant to come this far out in any weather. And with roads like this, they'll …'

‘A taxi brought me here.'

‘Yes and the driver arrived cussing like a fishwife.' Lyn was tracing the pattern of oak leaves on the settle, his fingers blindly sculpting bumps and hollows. ‘I've … er … got to leave myself, so you may as well come with me.'

‘It's very kind, but your car … I saw it out in front there. It's … rather ancient, isn't it?'

‘Old and strong. Built to battle with these roads. I bought it from a local farmer who lives five miles up a dirt track, so it knows its way around.'

‘Well, if you're sure it's no trouble …'

‘Just give me ten or fifteen minutes, will you? I want to pack some things. Why not sit in the living-room? It's more comfortable there. Take the candles with you—we don't need to save them now. And if you want to open the whisky or …' Banalities were soothing, like booze, helped to numb the mind. Lyn dragged himself upstairs. His few possessions were still in his battered bag. He hadn't even bothered to take out his pyjamas, or get his toothbrush wet. All he owned was in this house—raw and living memories. It was those he had to pack.

He fetched his torch, groped along the landing. He could still feel Hester's presence—a younger Hester, now, as the 'eighties concertinaed back into the 'seventies, 'sixties, 'fifties, and he was five years old again, head reaching to her elbow, a thin and restless child with dark unruly hair hacked off by Hester's chicken-jointing scissors. No pretty golden curls or angelic smiles. The only photo he'd seen of himself showed a grubby brat scowling by the hen-house with his socks around his ankles, and even that was out of focus.

He dragged the rickety chair to the high-set landing window, as he had done so often as a five-year-old. It was pitch dark outside, but he wanted to remember how it felt, wobbling there when Hester wasn't looking, gazing down at the steep and winding sheep-track to see if anyone was still alive in his and Hester's world. Visitors were rare at Hernhope. The postman sometimes, with a bill, the paraffin man who called him ‘laddie' and had a runny eye, needle-tongued Nan Bertram with some eggs or lambs' tongues or reproof. Most times, there was no one—nothing to see at all, only hills and sky—and sky.

He shut his eyes, watched the seasons change. The mud and flood of spring lapping at his scarlet Wellingtons, new lambs with each new day, green spiking through the brown. Summer and no school and endless evenings when dark played hard-to-get and he lay, long past sleep-time, kicking off the blankets, watching the sun still grinning through his curtains, whilst his mother sang winter hymns downstairs. In autumn, everything ran over on stove and shelf and hedgerow, and Hester filched his conkers for her linen chest to keep the moth away, and his legs prickled in grey school serge again, and there were gaps in trees and leaves in gutters and the first hoarse cough of winter threatening in the wind.

Winter. The longest of the seasons, stretching from scarlet hip to purple crocus and engulfing every colour with its snow. Cold black howling Christmases creeping into besieged and chilblained Februaries with the last handful of flour grimy and weeviled in the sack. Braggart Marches petering out in snow again. Velvet-footed snow camouflaging death's black fist in sly and smiling white. Sheep buried, swept away, lambs dead before they were born. And not just sheep. Dead rooks, dead rabbits; his own heart dead inside.

Lyn slipped down from the chair. It was winter still on the dark and shivering landing. He paced from room to room, watching Hester as she cleaned and dusted, putting her stamp and imprint on the house, tying in her history with the centuries before her. Saw himself, cowering in corners with a forbidden sketchbook, or knees-to-chest in a chimney seat, poring over a catalogue from some long forgotten sale of stock, or hiding under beds with a sickly kitten clawing at his jersey. He stopped in his own room. The torch sent shadows trembling up the walls. He knew those shadows like old friends. There had been no electricity for his first ten years, only paraffin lamps and candles, which turned beds and wardrobes into ghostly ships or monsters, made the whole room heave and flicker. Even with the generator, the house was still plunged in darkness after nine. Hester treated light like grace—something fleeting, insubstantial—which came only in precious flashes and must be hoarded and respected.

He turned his torch off—almost in obedience to her—crept downstairs, continued his tour of the house. He must go into each and every room, say goodbye to it, scoop up his past from every smallest niche. He shivered in the chill of his dead father's long-dead study, shrouded in its dust-sheets and its cobwebs; touched the solemn furniture in the second, smaller sitting-room, remembered the insurance man perching on that sofa in his stiff grey suit, explaining stiff grey things to Hester who refused to bring an ashtray for his drooling cigarette. He stumbled on to pantry, scullery, laundry-room and what Hester called her ‘dairy', saw his mother fighting wet and flapping sheets, or straining milk through muslin into an enamel pail, stirring in the rennet, elbow deep in white. He had resented the fact she had always been so busy, but now he realised it was the only way she could have kept them both alive. She'd had resourcefulness and courage. Softly he closed the door, stood motionless outside it. He had been in and out of every part of the house now—well, all except the cellar. Should he venture down there? It was dank and claustrophobic with painful memories, and yet …

He swung round suddenly. Edward was calling out.

‘Are you nearly ready? It's started to snow again. We really ought to make a start or …' The voice petered out in darkness.