Born of Woman (16 page)

Matthew opened his last letter, perused it briefly, scribbled something on the back and left it on Anne's typewriter. ‘I'm glad to hear it. He can put his new energies to work for me. I'll need a really good designer for this Hernhope thing. Lyn's the obvious choice. It will be an extra selling-point to say that Hester's own son helped to put the book together.'

‘Except Hester's own son doesn't want a book.'

‘He'll come round—he'll have to. The firm's losing money at the moment. We need something big to put it on its feet again. This latest find is perfect. Nostalgia's still big business. So is back-to-the-land. Sob stuff from the First World War never fails to sell. And if we build the whole thing round Hester herself, we've got the perfect peg to hang it on.'

‘Lyn doesn't see his mother as a peg, darling.'

‘Look, Anne, Lyn's costing me a lot of money at the moment. I've paid his salary in full for the last eleven weeks when he hasn't done a stroke. And what about the Cobham house? He shouldn't have left it empty all that time. It could have been vandalised or burgled or … He just takes the place for granted. Doesn't pay a penny for it, not even rent or rates. In fact, I'm running into problems on that property. I never said they could entrench themselves for ever. There's less than twenty years left on the lease and if I don't sell it soon I won't get a sale at all. People won't touch short leases. I really ought to put it on the market right away. Summer's the best time.'

‘You could always buy the freehold. Then you'd sell it for more, and you could leave the sale till …'

‘I can't afford that, Anne. I need some ready cash.'

‘Well, Lyn and Jennifer have got to live somewhere. Wouldn't it be better if they went back to Hernhope and made that their permanent home?'

‘No—totally impractical. Only farmers and shepherds can scrape a living in that wilderness. Hernhope's got no land left at all, and even if it had, Lyn couldn't cope with it. I want him living near me, so that I can keep an eye on him. He needs me to keep his feet on the ground, keep him in employment. The sooner that house is sold, the better. The trouble is, Lyn's using the missing Will as an excuse to twiddle his thumbs. What he
ought
to do is get off his back and see a solicitor. There's a perfectly simple procedure when a Will is lost. He can be appointed as administrator which gives him the power to act and sell the place.'

‘But he doesn't want to sell it, Matthew—and I can sympathise. In fact, I'm surprised you should even suggest it. It's a family house—
your
family. Wintertons have lived there for generations. Just because your father left it to Hester when he died, so now it's Lyn's property instead of yours. I don't see why …'

‘That's nothing to do with it. And, anyway, you're appealing to empty sentimentalism. The earlier Wintertons were farmers, so it suited them to live in a … barn. I'm a businessman … and it galls me that Lyn should be behaving in so unbusiness-like a fashion over what could be a useful and valuable asset.' Matthew was pacing up and down now.

Anne reclaimed her chair and started sorting through the in-tray. ‘And where are Lyn and Jennifer supposed to live in the meantime? You can't turf them out in the street.'

‘Don't be absurd, Anne.' Matthew straightened a picture on the wall. ‘If Lyn agrees to let me publish, he can live in a palace if he likes. There's money in that stuff. I'm absolutely convinced of it. We could make enough to build palaces all round.'

‘Matthew, that's … almost blackmail.'

‘Not at all. It's simply time Lyn faced up to facts. He's been
playing
recently. Even before Hester's death, he was doing work I could have put a school-leaver on at half the salary.'

‘Darling, that isn't fair. Lyn's got enormous talent. You wouldn't find a school-leaver turning out designs like the ones he did for
Europe's Last Great Kings
.'

‘Yes, and America turned it down. And
The Medieval Bestiary
. I've
got
to make some money—and make it fast. Anyway, it's more than just a matter of cash. We have almost a duty to publish, in a way—for educational reasons. If Lyn just sits on unique historical records, then we're depriving the nation of …'

‘Oh, Matthew,
really
… If you couldn't see a profit in it, you'd have shoved the stuff in a drawer and forgotten all about it.'

‘There's nothing wrong with profit, Anne. I've told you that before. If my firm makes money out of what could prove to be a valuable national archive of historical importance, then the nation gains twice over. Profit is simply a measure of success. And if I don't get down to work soon, there won't be any success. I've wasted quite enough time talking, as it is. I want to tie up as many ends as possible this week, so I can clear the decks for Hernhope. It's going to be big, that book—great, I might even venture. Bring me a coffee, would you, please, and try to make it strong. We had dishwater all last week.'

Matthew walked slowly up the stairs to his own office which took up most of the top floor and was cut off from the rest of the staff, who were crammed into smaller quarters with inter-connecting doors. He stopped several times on the way, peering into offices, spot-checking desks and drawers, rifling through waste-paper baskets. The cleaners' negligence in emptying them had often proved to his advantage. He didn't pay expensive staff to waste their time on noughts and crosses, or freelance work for other firms, or puerile attempts at love letters. Matthew strove to maintain an everlasting vigilance. It was not just a question of value for his money, but a vital matter of principle. He had deliberately installed his wife on the ground floor at the front so that she could check on everybody's movements, including unnecessarily protracted lunch breaks, late arrivals, or furtive getaways at ten past five.

He opened the door of his office, frowned at the cleaner's efforts. There was still dust on the filing cabinet, a dirty cup and saucer on his desk. The room had been decorated in a more astringent and expensive style than any other in the building. Everything was brown. A daunting expanse of thick-pile nigger carpet stretched from door to desk. The walls were hessian, the colour of burnt toast. The desk itself he kept uncluttered. No personal weaknesses such as family photographs distracted his attention from the job in hand, no tycoon trinkery, no overflowing in-trays. Just six-foot-four of Victorian mahogany frowning between him and any underling. His was the only chair. Colleagues were waved to a Regency chaise longue of excruciating hardness. Not only did its obvious style add cachet to the furnishings, it also proved invaluable in maintaining his advantage, especially at a meeting. By throwing his staff together on a sofa, depriving them of the status, security and territorial rights of their own individual chair, Matthew found it easier to subdue them. With knees touching and backs aching, their arguments lost force.

Despite the summer morning, the heavy velvet curtains were still drawn close. Matthew left them so, sat at his desk in the gloom, staring at his expensive stationery with its tasteful heading (in sombre brown again) ‘Winterton and Allenby, Publishers'. It would have looked better, of course, without the Allenby. Jim Allenby was a crude, conceited man, too young to be trusted and too bright to be ignored, with an appalling taste in ties and wines, and whose one advantage was that he had offered a hundred thousand pounds in cash to a Matthew rich in ambition, but low in funds. A sum like that could hardly be turned down, even at the cost of diluting and polluting the name of Winterton. Matthew had moved from minor public school, paid for by his uncle, to minor university (having tried and failed Oxbridge), with a feared and hated National Service smarting in between. He had then squeezed his way into the editorial department of a minor publishing house by taking a summer filing job and proving indispensable. He worked long and punishing hours, devouring information and manuscripts—always eager, early, charming, willing, wily—then going on to evening classes in printing and computer studies. He mugged up reports, contracts, sales figures, libel laws and editorial minutes, making himself familiar with every branch of the business and courting every member of staff, from tea-boy to directors.

By dint of changing firms three times, he finally became an editor, with his name on the door of a small and windowless office, and even half a secretary. He realised, though, that he was still less skilful in recognising a masterpiece or commissioning a runaway best-seller than the younger, smarter men who put in half his hours. He
used
these men—picked their brains, read their memos, expropriated their successes while disclaiming any involvement in their failures.

After eleven years, he had mastered all their skills, but lost his youth in the process. Middle age was not recognised in publishing which preferred unflagging brain-cells. Matthew found youth, brain and capital most conveniently combined in James Spencer Allenby whom he wooed away from Weidenfeld's to his own less illustrious premises, then allocated the gloomiest office next to the lavatory and the oldest (married) secretary. Neither quenched Jim's spirit. He it was who had suggested that they set up as what was called a packaging firm, rather than yet another small-scale publisher. Packagers were a fairly recent development which had first appeared in the early 1960s as book production companies concentrating chiefly on design and editorial, turning out lavish illustrated books which they then sold to publishers around the world. They produced only a small number of titles, but gave each of them more specialised attention than the average hard-pressed publishing house had time for.

Matthew disliked the term packager. Some of them had already won respect, but the word suggested low-grade manufacturers churning out detergent cartons, rather than editorial specialists creating works of high quality and educational worth. He glanced around at the books which lined the walls of his office, shelves and shelves of books—his own creations—reached above his desk to caress their glossy spines. On the far wall hung the framed design awards his firm had won, a few outstanding pieces of artwork, and the most brilliant of their book jackets, also framed. The wall was like a miniature art gallery, proof of his firm's prowess. He had Lyn to thank for most of it, but it was his own scrupulous attention to detail which had gained Winterton and Allenby its solid reputation. Even in the fat years, he had refused to relax his grip. Profit had never made him lazy or extravagant, only spurred him on. The last two years, however, had proved a bitter disappointment. The same exacting labours and painstaking involvement had brought only low returns, and his two most recent ventures had completely fizzled out. It was vital now for the firm to recoup its losses and save its name. The Hernhope find could make that possible.

Of course, there were risks in publication—and not only financial ones. Matthew understood his brother's fears. The journals had been as much a shock to himself as they were for Hester's own son. Matthew had built his whole boyhood on contempt for Hester. As soon as he was old enough to know she was not, in fact, his mother, he had blamed her for the deception and confusion, even held her responsible for his own mother's death, since she had arrived so promptly after it. His father had never, in fact, allowed Susannah to die, but had kept her alive in constant reminiscences, in sad, smiling photographs which haunted all the rooms, in endless visits to the cemetery. Matthew tagged along with him, gazing up at the sky for a glimpse of that Perfect Mother who now lived with the angels, and then returning back to earth, damp, cramped and disappointed, to Hester and cold supper.

Fourteen years later, his father married Hester. Matthew was confused. The woman whose chief failing was that she could never replace Susannah, now appeared to have done so. The photos disappeared, weeds grew around the gravestone, as the former drudge and housekeeper now lorded it as mistress. Matthew could only believe that Hester herself had engineered the marriage, taking advantage of his father's declining health and increasing money worries to entrench her own position and at least inherit the house. More confusion followed, as his father wasted and Hester and the rumours swelled. Within the year his father died, Hester gave birth and Matthew fled.

Yet, reading her diaries had revealed to him a very different woman. Gone was the drudge, the skivvy, the scheming interloper who had in some way killed off both his parents. In her place was a stoical, hardworking woman as well-born as Susannah herself. The servant he had scorned and patronised had been born in a mansion, the daughter of a gentleman, and seemed to have lost her standing only through the death of that same father and the horrors of the war. He blushed to think that he had even been ashamed of her, not at Hernhope, but later, at his boarding school, where the other boys had gracious leisured mothers who wore hats and nylon stockings and did nothing more exacting than embroidery. It was not smart to be an orphan—almost contemptible to have an eccentric frowsty stepmother who doctored cows and mucked out pigsties and had further embarrassed him by giving birth when she already had wrinkles and grey hair. In the end, he cut Hester and Hernhope off. His uncle was more acceptable. He was his father's brother to start with, and ran a Humber Super Snipe instead of a pony cart.

Now he knew not only that Hester's family had been as substantial as his uncle's, but also that Hester herself had held both house and farm together when his father was too bitter and crazed with grief to cope with either. He himself had been an added burden, a sickly fractious child she had nursed through infant gripes and adolescent tantrums until he finally ran off and left her—the only time she might have needed him.

Reading through those records had been like stripping a piece of Band-Aid off his soul. Griefs, shames and longings which he had refused to acknowledge at the time, came gushing out to confuse and overwhelm him; facts turned on their heads, resentments seen as lies. His first thought, like his brother's, was to hide the evidence. Who wanted all those reproachful, unexpected facts, Hester's role re-written, his own shown up as meaner and less martyred than he remembered it himself? It had been easy to label Hester as a sour and loveless drudge until he actually read her words, saw how often she had worried about his health and happiness, how many hours she had sat by his bed with cold flannels or hot drinks. There was even a postcard with a Humpty Dumpty doodled on the front, and a verse in her bold black writing on the back: