Born of Woman (76 page)

Lyn froze. Once they left, he could never return again. Edward could sell, raze, destroy. Even if he kept the house, it would be only for a decade—two at most. Like himself, Edward had no heir. Both were wifeless, childless. And Edward was already in his sixties. In twenty years or less, Hernhope would pass to strangers. He could see the strangers, trespassing up the path, throwing out the furniture, distempering over the past, sanitising, gutting .…

‘Can you
hear
me?' Edward sounded tetchy. ‘Where are you? Up or down?'

‘D … down,' Lyn shouted back. ‘Just locking up. I shan't be coming here again, so …' He darted down the passage towards the cellar. His own words had panicked him. He couldn't leave—not yet, not empty-handed. He must find some souvenir or treasure, something of Hernhope he could keep for ever, smuggle out with him.

He heaved at the cellar door, locked it behind him, stumbled down the steps, the torch-beam feeble in the plunging black, memories flapping against his face. He started rifling through the chests and trunks, stopped at a box piled high with newspapers, some of them dating from the first decades of the century. Perhaps there was some record there of his mother's soldier-prince—an obituary, or an account of his campaign. He had found a different mother—one he could live at peace with, one who could even draw—had messed about with children's crayons, creating storks and scarlet hearts. He must take that mother with him, find some childish forgotten drawing he could treasure as his own, the equivalent of Edward's fairy-tale.

The newspapers were tattered, damp with mould. He hadn't time to look at them all, but skimmed through one or two, reading snippets from a world already dead. Reza Khan Pahlevi had seized the Persian throne, Roald Amundsen flown by airship to Alaska, Darwin's theory of evolution been banned in Tennessee. He tried to picture Hernhope in the 'twenties—still a large and thriving farm, his father not yet married, but the eldest son and heir, soon to take over, the child Susannah waiting in the wings. The farm had witnessed her marriage, watched her death, then—revived and run by Hester in the 'thirties—had battled on through depression, crash and war. Bereaved herself, Hester had still retained the house. The Forestry tried to buy it with the farm, lease it back to her as a powerless, landless tenant, but Hester had withstood them. The house was hers—and his.

Through all his boyhood he had feared it, found it too grim, too lonely, yet now he saw its courage and tenacity. All those pin-men from the newspapers, those Roald Amundsens and Reza Khans had long since perished. The house had struggled on. Mice had nibbled into Darwin, left droppings on Chamberlain or Churchill, yet Hernhope stood unscathed. He had been part of it, built into it, resenting his own history and strength. Yet, now it was no longer his to flinch from, he felt like a blurred forgotten photo in one of those old journals. You could only avoid oblivion through children or through art, which left something of yourself to outsmart death. And yet he had lost his foetus child, renounced his embryo art …

He tore blindly at the papers, as if to bind and staunch his pain with them. His hand struck something hard, the corner of a box. He dragged it out. It was Hester's button-box—not seen for twenty years—the huge square painted biscuit-tin he had played with as a child. He broke his thumb-nail prising off the lid. Yes—there were all the buttons glinting in the light.

He heard a sudden noise, slammed the lid shut again. He ought to get back to Edward. He had left him long enough and Ainsley was fuming to get off. Yet these buttons were his history as much as the house itself, and how strange that he had found them just as he was leaving. Was it Hester's doing again? He could feel her presence even in the cellar—perhaps more in the cellar where she had hidden her diaries and locked up all her past. Wouldn't Edward understand, for heaven's sake? At least he was upstairs in a decent comfy chair, with the embers of the fire to keep him warm. He could light the candles, study all the documents. Damn it—he even had a bottle of Glenfiddich.

He crept with the box towards the second secret cellar, crawled through the tiny door on his hands and knees. It was cold and grimy on the floor, but almost a relief to be hidden so securely, deaf to any shouts. He tipped the buttons all around him, remembered faces, recognised old friends. Hester had always told him where every button came from, attaching each to a name and story, using them as a family-tree or history book.

The two of them had always played with buttons on Christmas Day—making pictures, creating words—starting with their own names which they spelt out in different colours. It had seemed more than just a game. They had shaped the presents they hadn't had, made button flowers, button dreams. He started to make an L. He had a longer name now, which couldn't be scattered so easily by a careless foot. L for leader, love, Llewelyn …

He sorted swiftly through the buttons, pushing aside the broken, faded, boring ones, the menials from servants' clothes or overalls, the drab spoilsports still in mourning. This time, his name must be constructed out of strength. The first L he made of brass buttons, neat and highly polished, fitting for a soldier. The second L was silver for a prince. He had always loved those glinting silver buttons, outshining all the others in the box, the only ones which Hester made mysterious. ‘I don't know
where
they come from,' she always said. Were they, in fact, from Llewelyn's uniform, his splendid guardsman's tunic?

The E he made of purple—not a timid colour. Purple for victory and passion, noble birth. He paused on the W. W for Winterton. He must make his father's initial out of all the strongest buttons—bone, horn, ivory, enamel—buttons which could outlast centuries. If he couldn't carry on the name in flesh and heir, then at least he could immortalise it here.

He had cramp in his foot. He rubbed it, then banged his head by sitting up too quickly. It was like a grave, this place, gloomy and restricting, the smell of mould lingering in the shadows, and a cold which froze the bones. He had reached the second E. That he made of Matthew's buttons. Matthew was a Winterton, so he belonged beside the W, lying next to his father. He chose baby buttons only—the mother-of-pearl, the harmless prep school grey—grinned to himself as he made Matthew small and powerless.

He stared at the half-formed name—LLEWE … Just the LYN left now to do—once his own name, now only part of it. He had to get it right. Game or no, it mattered. He sifted through the browns and greys, sullen beiges, sissy pastels, brushed them all aside. He chose red—bold, forbidden red—Susannah's scarlet, which had obsessed and coloured all his childhood; now Hester's scarlet, too, which she had concealed beneath her black. He made the L and Y of the most brilliant reds in the whole box, the red of Llewelyn's plumes.

Only one last letter left, the letter which completed him. That must be Jennifer. There were two N's in her name. It must be blue, the serene blue of her eyes, of sky, water, summer, south. He built the downstroke and the upstroke, the diagonal between them, tipped the letter a little so that it overlapped his Y and they would lie forever touching. Jennifer had always longed to live at Hernhope, so at least she should lie in some smallest secret corner of it, joined to him as she had been joined at Cobham in the moonlight, root to mouth. She and Lyn-Llewelyn would be together there for always, haunting the place like Hester. No one should disturb them, even if the house were sold.

Lyn crawled through the tiny door, locked it, wrenched the handle off, stacked boards and crates in front of it, built a barricade. The torch was failing now, but it would see him through his task. This was Llewelyn's last and strongest castle.

He paused a moment. He could hear muffled shoutings, thumpings on the outer door. Edward had heard him banging things about and had come in search of him, calling out in fear.

‘Where
are
you? What are you doing? We must get off. It's snowing really fast now. Can you hear me down there? Are you all right?'

‘Yes, yes. I'm coming.' Lyn ripped his thumb on a jagged strip of metal-banding which had worked itself loose on one of the broken crates. He swore, sucked it, mopped the blood off his sweater. His clothes were filthy, anyway.

‘Ready now,' he shouted, and as he groped and fumbled back to Edward's house, the last life-blood of his torch dribbled into darkness.

Cold bright daring winter sun hung like a golden bauble above the hospital. Jennifer stopped, dazzled. Sun on Christmas morning was an extra present in your stocking. She had already had a stocking—full of crazy things from Susie—cut-outs made from empty cigarette packets, gift-wrapped sherbet dabs and bubble gum purchased from the hospital shop, silver-foiled suppositories wangled from the nurses. Susie was still in hospital. Her few days' rest had dragged into three long weeks, and although they had promised her Christmas Day at home, as soon as she got up and started packing, her blood pressure had risen again. It was only a slight rise and she was otherwise much better, but they had ordered her back to bed, as much for the baby's sake as hers. She was trapped there now, railing against her fate, furious and fretting at the tedium, the timetable, the endless petty rules—what she saw as her ruined shackled Christmas.

Jennifer put her parcels down, rested her arms a moment. Buses seemed extinct on Christmas Day, so she had walked to the hospital, weighted down by a double patchwork bedspread and a clutch of other presents. She had been up all night finishing the bedspread. It took months to make a patchwork of that size, and she had completed Susie's in less than nineteen days. She'd had to use a machine, of course, but somehow that seemed more suitable for Susie, who was a modern machine-age girl, impatient of the slow, pernickety progress of her handwork. Even so, it had been a gruelling task. ‘Labour of love' was more than just a phrase. It meant flayed and fraying fingers, throbbing head, eyes aching from the kaleidoscope of colours. She had sewn love and remembrance into every flowered or striped or spotted hexagon, added a huge entwining double S on the plain blue centre panel.

She humped her parcels up again, trudged the last fifty yards towards the hospital. A tramp in a grimy coat which flapped around his ankles slouched past her, muttering to himself. She longed to wish him Happy Christmas, share existence with him. For the past two weeks, she had felt strangely insubstantial, except when she visited the hospital. The warmth and bustle of the ward, even the rules which Susie kicked against, made things real and purposeful. But once outside again, she felt herself fade and dwindle as the heavy-breathing winter evenings closed around her, and London's seven million people were only empty offices, drawn curtains, deserted streets.

She had never got up alone before on Christmas morning, the empty schmaltz of the chat shows making the silence louder, the uncooked and now superfluous turkey pale and cold with goose-pimples, Lyn's presents piled unopened beside her bed. She had made him a Christmas cake, knitted him a sweater, a scarlet one this time. She hardly knew why scarlet, when her husband always hid in sober colours, but somehow it had seemed right and bright for Christmas. Now it looked merely desperate—bleeding because he couldn't try it on. She had no idea where he was. She hadn't even received a Christmas card. That angered her. He knew her address, knew how much Christmas meant to her, and if he had decided to ignore it, then she would harden her own heart. That ecstatic night at Cobham seemed almost like a dream now. She had been totally committed to him then, and he had repaid her by running off again. Served him right if she switched her concern and allegiance to Susie, put her and the baby first. She had little choice, in any case. Susie was an immediate problem, a vital swelling presence, whereas her husband had made himself a shadow and a stranger.

The hospital had become a sort of refuge. She had got to know the nurses on the ward, helped them when they were short of staff, was always ready to talk to other patients who needed support or company, spent hours by Susie's bed, trying to rally and amuse her. It wasn't virtue or unselfishness. At Southwark, she was no one; on the ward she had a name, a role, a reason for existence. Besides, since Susie was carrying the baby which was going to be her own, then to be with her and concerned for her, was like caring for herself.

She stopped to rest her arms again, glanced around her. Everything was dirty and deserted. Santa Claus had left shiny black dustbin-bags overflowing with rubbish instead of sacks of toys, dumped them in the gutters. A mangy dog was sniffing round them, the only living creature besides herself. The shops were locked and shuttered. There were no Christmas decorations, no holly wreaths on doors. The only seasonal reminder was a torn and flapping poster announcing road accident statistics for last year's Christmas period. Only the sky had bothered to dress up. Ruffs of gold and scarlet were crinolined round the sun, fading into underskirts of pink and pearly grey. Yet, even that was deceptive. It was cold, despite the blaze. The North was deep in snow and sleet, and although the South was spared it, they still had thick frost and zero temperatures.

Jennifer shivered on the pavement, made herself walk on. Susie needed her. Her parents were still hostile, had only relented enough to send her a scribbled ‘Merry Xmas' on a Woolworths Christmas card. Sparrow was spending Christmas with his mother and three brothers in Sittingbourne. He hated hospitals. She had to make it up to Susie, be all relations at once—mother, lover, husband, mate. Lyn might be alone somewhere and moping, but at least he wasn't eight months pregnant, lying in a shabby ward with fifteen hugely expectant mothers, coughing, groaning, snoring all around him.

The sun had disappeared now, shut out by the beetling facade of the massive hospital building which was looming up in front of her with its stained and crumbling pillars, its grey forbidding stone. Jennifer faltered up the steps, pushed open the door, moved from frost to fug. Inside, the foyer swung with paper chains. A tall lop-sided Christmas tree stretched balding branches towards the visitors, as if begging for more tinsel. Three patients with paper hats atop their dressing-gowns had trespassed down the stairs and were mingling with the staff, all cheerful and transformed. Jennifer had visted twice a day for eighteen days and had rarely seen a smile before. Now people were chattering and laughing, singing snatches of carols. Christmas had affected everyone, even the normally stern receptionist and the new knife-edged Sister on the antenatal ward. She disapproved of Christmas morning visiting, but it had been introduced by a senior nursing officer who considered herself progressive, so she was doing her best to smile upon her giddy garish ward. Beds were askew with all the extra people, white counterpanes aflame with Christmas paper. Nurses with holly in their caps were munching chocolates, passing round mince pies. Balloons hung in every corner, bottles of Harvey's Bristol Cream had taken over from specimen bottles. Children were screaming, the radio shrilling
Silent Night
. The other patients were surrounded by their families and hardly noticed Jennifer as she picked her way along the ward, dodging toddlers and trolleys. She stopped at Susie's bed—still last one in the corner—stared in shock. It was tidy, made, unrumpled—not a sign nor trace of Susie. No books or papers littered on the coverlet, no fag-ends in the ashtray.