Born of Woman (44 page)

He drove even slower now, crawling along the roads, staring through gaps in the hedgerows. He knew what he was looking for, the right bones beneath the flesh of grass and soil, some unique configuration of cloud and contour. He stopped in a valley where a huge sky crouched over cornfields and one orphaned tree dissected the horizon. The land was made of patchwork—a golden square of high and burnished barley stitched beside a duller stubble square, then blocks of green, mustard, olive, ochre, green again.

His chalks were pale things in comparison, but he would make them work for him. He roughed out the main lines in black, rubbed in yellow to get his ochre, scribbled in a green field beyond it, then swept in the broad curve of the sky with its choppy clouds. There was no noise, no tractor, no distracting voices or vulgar picnickers. Rooks spiralled up and down from trees, midges flitted round his head. He brushed them off. He needed all his concentration. He was drawing on a larger scale than he had done for years. The work he did for Matthew was always finicky and footling. Now he was trying to cram a chunk and slice of the world on to a single sheet of paper and not break it in the process.

He stopped only to stretch his legs and rest his back, or tear hunks out of the loaf when he was hungry. The drawing wasn't easy. It had somehow become too complex, the first spontaneous urgent lines swamped in shackling detail. He returned to his black chalk, switched from cloud to field, reworked the patchwork squares and made them simpler. The thing took off from there. Shapes gelled and soared, the whole structure stabilised. He knew he was drawing better than he had ever done before. Some new skill and virtuosity had been released in him. He dared not question it, dared not turn his mind to Wills again, to Hester. He must simply go on drawing while that extraordinary charge was there.

At dusk, he stopped—fingers aching, back stiff. He rolled up his paper, stowed it in the boot. He drove back to the village, ordered a pint in the Rose and Crown as an excuse to use their phone. People stared. He hadn't changed his clothes for forty-eight hours. They were stained and dirty from lying on the ground. He had torn his shirt on brambles, his chin was a stubble-field.

He dialled the Putney number. Jennifer answered in a sob and rush of words.

‘Oh darling. Thank God! I've been so worried about you. I thought you might have had a …'

‘I love you,' he said, in answer. People could hear, but now he didn't care.

‘What happened? What are you doing? I've been worried sick.'

‘I'm drawing. I mean
really
drawing. Listen, darling, I think this is important. I've …'

‘Drawing? But where? Why? I thought you'd be … Susie said you were absolutely …'

He tried to remember Susie. Susie Susannah Jane. Bloody lambs, half-formed foetuses. Undoing his pyjama cord a hundred years ago. Undoing Susie's buttons on a picnic, just three days before. Susie, pregnant, panicking. He felt her panic clammy on his palms. Mustn't think. Fear could stop him drawing. He shifted the phone to the other hand, leaned against the oak-beamed wall. He needed something strong and solid behind him. ‘That's over,' he said. ‘Finished.'

‘Over? What d'you mean, Lyn. What's going on, for heaven's sake? Where
are
you? Susie still hasn't said why you left, you know—not really. I mean, she told me about the … pregnancy, but …'

Why did his wife keep harking back to Susie when he longed to swamp her with his love, impress her with his work? ‘I'm sorry I didn't phone before. Forgive me. I hate you to worry, Snookie. I … I didn't feel too good. But I'm OK now. This drawing I'm doing—it's good, it's really good. You must see it. I want you to know what I can …'

‘Look here, Lyn, you can't just disappear like that and then phone up and say you're …
drawing
, as if nothing's happened at all and you're simply on a sketching trip or something. I've been in a terrible state about you. When are you coming back?'

‘Soon, I promise. Just give me a few more days. I daren't stop working now. I might never be able to …'

‘But where are you? And how are you living? You've got none of your things with you. Your toothbrush's still here and all your clothes and …'

‘I don't need toothbrushes. I'm living rough, sleeping in the car or in the fields.'

‘You'll get ill, Lyn. It poured last night. The ground must be very damp.'

‘It didn't rain here.'

‘Where's ‘‘here''?'

‘Northamptonshire. I'm phoning from Cheetham. It's a tiny village with just a pub and a couple of shops.'

‘Why on earth Northamptonshire?'

‘I don't know. I just drove here. The landscape's wonderful. It's very flat, but the skies are huge. There's such a sense of … space. I don't want hills at the moment, hemming me in. I've been working on something new for me today. Mostly skies—and how they sort of … press down on the fields. There's this … this terrific sense of tension where they meet and … Oh, Snookie, please try and understand. It's for
you
, the drawing—partly. I want to give you something. I want you to see me as a …'

‘I'd prefer it if you gave me some thought, Lyn. Didn't it even occur to you I might be worried? I almost rang the police, except Susie said it was stupid to make such a fuss and if you wanted to piss off, then …'

The receiver dropped from Lyn's hands, dangled on its lead. He could hear the anger in Jennifer's voice. Susie's anger, Susie's words. Susie dragging his wife away from him. He would lose her, as he had just lost his mother. For thirty years and more, Hester had put him first. However stern she was, she had lived for him alone; everything she had and was was his. Until two days ago, until the Will. Then, he saw it had all been a delusion. He had never had his mother to himself at all. Edward had been always there, a third invisible presence—taller than he was, older—with first claim on Hester's love and property. Only claim. In that Will, she had cut him off, snuffed him out completely. Supposing Jennifer did the same? He had been first with her as well, taken her love for granted. It was only now he realised how desperately he needed her. But Susie was threatenng that love, pushing a rival claim.

‘Lyn?
Lyn
? Are you still there? What's happened? The phone's gone dead.' Jennifer's voice, faint and half-distorted, talking to the wall.

He grabbed the receiver. ‘No, it hasn't. I'm here. Look, Snookie, I'm sorry. I'm desperately sorry. I don't want to hurt you. You're right—I should have phoned before, but …' The pips shrilled against his voice. ‘Wait! Please don't go. Hang on.' He fumbled for another 10p piece, found only a handful of pennies. ‘I
love
you,' he blurted out. ‘I love you more than …'

His love was swamped in a high-pitched whine. He had already been cut off.

He slumped on the bench beside the phone. Why did he always muff things? He had wanted to make her happy, explain his work to her. He had hardly thought at all whilst he was drawing—needed all his concentration to get it right. But the thoughts had been jamming up inside his head, ready to flood over when he laid his chalks and paper down. Thoughts about love, loss, Hester, Jennifer. ‘Beloved son', Hester had written, but not to him. He would never be beloved now, except by Jennifer. He had heard her love on the phone just now, underneath the anger. Fussing about his safety, worrying in case the ground was damp. She cared enough to worry, the only one who did. He longed to recompense her, shower her with gifts and flowers, make up for the months and months of misery he had dumped on her instead. He always got it wrong.

Even now, he had left her anxious and resentful, when he had rung to reassure her.

He drained his beer, slunk out of the pub. No one had spoken a word to him. He was used to that. People always shunned him, kept their distance. It was probably his own fault. He hardly knew how to be charming and approachable as Jennifer was so naturally. She would have smiled at people, got into conversation with some local farmer's wife, instead of freezing any overture with a scowl. It was something to do with their backgrounds. Jennifer's loving sheltered childhood had
made
her loving, made her trust the world. She loved him, despite the scowls. That love was intensely precious, all he had.

He crossed the road, unlocked the car, drove off into darkness. He longed for Jennifer to be sitting there beside him, ached to touch her body. He couldn't do that yet, couldn't even return yet. He saw now he had never been what she wanted. She had loved an artist and married a hack. He could still change, be worthy of her, prove himself. Tomorrow, he would find a town with a decent art-shop – buy the few basic materials he could afford – and paint her a new dowry.

Lyn stopped the car on the last fringes of the countryside before the road plunged into the sprawl and fret of London. He got out and opened the boot—took one last look at the dowry. It was a rich one, despite his limited resources. Landscapes in chalk, charcoal, children's paints; broad sweeping compositons on sheets of wrapping-paper; miniatures on matchboxes or beer-mats. Never before had he produced such impressive work so quickly. He had felt a wild exhilaration as the landscape sprang on to his paper, still alive. The triumph was still there, buzzing in his head like the throb of grasshoppers in the tangled grass behind him.

He stripped off his shirt. The day was hot and close. Swifts with scythe-shaped wings soared above the wasteground. Wild forget-me-nots pushed through patchy weeds and dregs of picnic litter. Nice name, that—forget-me-not. He picked a spray or two, stared at the tiny golden eye in each blue star of petals. He would bring them back for Jennifer, fill his arms with flowers for her. Only sissy men picked flowers, but he had spent his last penny on paints and petrol, so he couldn't buy her any. He would choose only blue ones, blue to match her eyes and match the sky. He found a few frail harebells, pushed through the hedge into a copse and searched for viper's bugloss, its long pink stamens protruding from the deep blue mouths of bell-shaped flowers. He snapped off rough and hairy borage stems, scalped a clump of speedwell. He tied his bouquet with grass, laid it in the boot beside the drawings, then flopped back in the car.

Putney, twenty miles.

It seemed strange to be in a house again, to have roof and ceiling above him instead of boundless sky, walls hemming him in, where there had been only trees and hills for eight whole days. Lyn paced in and out of all the downstairs rooms—Matthew's rooms—with their sombre colours and heavy furniture. The house even smelt of Matthew—a smell of polish and success. Anne and Matthew were still in Tokyo, everyone else was out. Susie and Jennifer must have taken the boys on one of their expeditions—a boat on the Thames, a picnic by the sea. He felt excluded, as he had been all the summer. Yet why should they want him with them—a gloomy silent man who didn't know any jokes and had never gone ten-pin bowling or watched ‘Top of the Pops'? He had tried to phone, warn them he was coming, but got no answer. All the way back across the long stifling traffic-jam of London, he had fantasised his welcome—Jennifer alone, watching for him, ready to spring up and embrace him as soon as she heard the car wheels in the drive. No one had sprung out except the next-door cat, which spat at him, then ran the other way.

He grinned, picked up a small bronze statue of a naked warrior—one of Matthew's trophies—put it down again. The whole house was a monument to Matthew. All his achievements only underlined the younger brother's failures, his sense of nothingness. Even his drawings seemed less assured now, his triumph empty posturing. In Matthew's house he was nothing—not an artist, hardly even a man. Couldn't paint, couldn't fuck. Matthew had castrated him.

He walked to the window, stared out at the sullen yew trees closing off the garden. He had to get away, save his skills before they shrivelled up again. Hester had left him nothing, not even a fiver, but Matthew owed him money from the book. He must demand it as soon as his brother returned, use it to buy their own place. Never mind dividends or interest—other things were most important now. Jennifer, for instance. He must get her out of Putney before Susie took her over, before Matthew stormed the media again and pushed her into another round of simpering and strutting. He would have to work for Matthew—other jobs were scarce and insecure—but he would work only freelance and for only half the week. Matthew valued him more now, since he had proved his worth on
Born With The Century
and the two books after it, so he could afford to make a stand. He had to give Jennifer something, find her the place in the country she had wanted all along. It couldn't be Northumberland or a house as grand as Hernhope—only a room or two, perhaps, with a scrap of garden, but at least it would be their own.
His
paintings on the walls, not these stuffy portraits and boring landscapes in their fancy gilded frames.

He walked upstairs, stopped outside the room which Anne called his and Jennifer's. Anne was wrong. The house was Matthew's—every inch of it—Matthew's finger-prints on every piece of furniture, Matthew's eyes peering through the slats of every blind. The door was half ajar, but Lyn still stood motionless outside it. He didn't want to see that double bed, the one he had used only for sleeping, and fitful sleep at that. It seemed cruel now, incredible, that he could have turned his back on Jennifer, gone so long without it. Tonight, he would change all that. Except Susie would still be there. Susie angry and taunting still, calling him a nun. Susie pregnant …

He walked back along the passage, paused at the foot of the narrow attic staircase which led to Susie's room; suddenly ran up. He knew she wouldn't be there. Nobody was in. Front and back doors had both been locked when he arrived, five bottles of milk curdling on the step. He opened Susie's door, stared in shock. The room was bare. No Susie mess and clutter, no clothes in the wardrobe nor make-up on the dressing-table. No dolls or teddies on the bed. Susie had decamped.