Born of Woman (66 page)

‘I don't want to adopt. I just want to take the baby over privately, without any fuss or forms or hassle.
You
pretend you're going to keep it, and then hand it over to me instead.'

‘How can I?' Susie was jabbing her finger through the holes in the cellular blanket. ‘I've told them a million times I want the kid adopted. OK, I haven't actually signed anything, but Miss Whatnot will go spare. What is her name, Jen? Heiffer-something, isn't it? I know I thought it suited the old cow.'

‘Hefferingham. She won't mind. She told me herself that mothers often change their minds. She'll be thrilled, in fact She's always saying that even the best adoptive parent isn't a patch on the baby's natural mother.' Jennifer lowered her voice. She was beginning to sound hectoring, had never expected Susie to oppose her plan. ‘I admit it's a bit of a fag for you to have to pretend and play the scene and everything. But please do it for me, darling. I know in my heart it's right. It's almost as if …'

‘
Leave
it, Jen. You can't have the child. You don't understand. It's not that simple.'

Jennifer stood up, tried to stop herself from shouting. Why was Susie being so pigheaded? ‘I suppose it's money you're worried about. Look, I will get
something
from the …' She broke off. A nurse was walking towards them. She stopped at Susie's bed, started pulling the curtains round it.

‘Sorry to butt in, dear, but could you wait outside a moment. I want to take Susan's blood pressure.'

Jennifer stumbled out, trailed along the ward. She had almost forgotten Susie was ill at all. She had been tiring her, upsetting her, when she had promised no excitement. And yet how could she stay quiet when this was the most crucial, vital thing she had ever pressed for in her life? She glanced around the ward—children everywhere—unborn ones in the beds, older ones brought in by grandmothers to visit mothers. The chain of procreation. One of the women had a doctor by her bedside, a flurry of nurses in attendance. Another was screaming in a foreign language what sounded like abuse. All the drama of a busy hospital and she had hardly noticed it. Even now, it was Susie who filled the ward. She turned back to her cubicle. The nurse had finished. Susie was lying flat, her face white against the whiter sheet.

‘Look, I'm … sorry, darling, I didn't mean to upset you, especially when you're ill. I didn't think you'd mind about the … In fact, I was stupid enough to imagine you'd be chuffed to have me as a foster-mother.'

‘I
am
chuffed.' Susie turned her face to the wall. ‘I mean I would be if … Oh, bloody hell! Look, it's not … me. It's …' Susie snatched up a cigarette, hunted for her nonexistent matches. ‘Look, I didn't want to tell you, Jen. It'll only upset you and …'

‘I'm upset already, Susie. If I can't have this baby, then I'll …'

‘You won't want it when you hear.'

‘Hear what?'

‘Well, the … er … thing is …' Susie paused. She had unwound the paper from her cigarette and was shredding it to pieces, flicking little strands of tobacco across the counterpane. ‘You … wouldn't exactly fancy being landed with your own brother-in-law's offspring, would you?' Susie was staring intently at two tiny crumbs of tobacco she had trapped in the fold in the bedspread ‘It's … er … Matthew's kid.'

‘Wh … What did you say?' Jennifer's voice was flaking and unravelling.

‘I'm not much good at maths, Jen, but between January and May, I only slept with three blokes. One didn't come at all, OK, and I had my period, anyway. Sparrow's just been ruled out as father. Which leaves the third.'

‘You don't m … mean …?' Jennifer sank down in the chair.

‘Yes, I'm afraid I do. Your precious Matthew screwed me. I suppose you thought he hadn't got a cock?'

‘Susie, I … I don't believe it. It can't be true, it can't be. Not Matthew, not … Anyway, didn't you say the third bloke lived abroad? I remember distinctly. You told me he was foreign and only in London for a month or two. Well, that's not Matthew. Matthew isn't …'

‘I'm sorry, Jen, I lied to you. I had to. Matthew
was
the third.'

‘He … he c … couldn't be. He's not like that. He's always been so strict and …' Jennifer was almost crying with horror and incredulity. ‘Anyway he's old enough to be your f … father. He wouldn't take advantage of you. I mean, he was your employer, almost your guardian, and …'

‘Not then, he wasn't. I only pressured him into giving me a job when I knew I'd fallen pregnant. I still thought it was Sparrow's kid. But Sparrow wasn't helping—didn't have a bean, whereas I was well aware that Matthew was loaded, and looking for a girl to help Anne out in the house. It seemed the perfect job to me. No tax, no ties, and an employer in my power.'

Jennifer's tears had turned to steel now—cutting and unshed. How could Susie be so devious? It had always seemed extraordinary that Matthew should have employed a girl like Susie, but she would never have guessed his reason in a hundred thousand years. She snatched up a magazine with a simpering girl on the cover, flung her face downward on the bed. ‘H … how did you meet Matthew in the first place?'

Susie was dismembering a second cigarette. ‘It was at a party—one of those swanky publishing things with pink champagne. I went with another guy I hardly knew. He drank too much of the bubbly and spent most of the evening puking in the toilet. Matthew took me over—you know—filled my glass, fetched me some food, made sure I was OK.'

‘Yes, I know.' Jennifer almost spat. She might have guessed the story would be squalid—vomiting in lavatories, Matthew pouncing on other people's girlfriends when he told them all how late he worked at nights. Wonderful work that was—impregnating a teenager, cheating on his wife. She could still hardly believe it. Stern and virtuous Matthew, who wrote letters to the papers about the moral dangers of television, who wouldn't allow so much as a comic in his house, in case it corrupted the boys. She felt corrupted herself, as if all the times she had sat in his study, fed at his table, had left some grimy residue on her skin and hair and hands. And yet it still seemed so improbable. Matthew was a cautious, prudent man. Even if he succumbed to the charms of seventeen-year-olds, surely he wouldn't have risked a pregnancy.

‘Didn't Matthew …
use
something? Or … or … check to see if you were on the Pill or …?' She couldn't go on. It seemed both sordid and impertinent to be enquiring into Matthew's private life.

‘Yeah, he did check, and I told him I had this cap thing, but they're a devil to put in, you know. You have to squeeze jelly stuff all over them, and they slip and slide about, and if anyone tries to kiss you down below, all they get is a mouthful of spermicide. I decided not to use it till … well … later on. I didn't want to spoil things. I mean, I had every reason to believe Matthew was a stayer. He'd been giving me all this spiel about what an ace lover he was, and how sex wasn't something casual or impulsive, but a sacred act which needed time and preparation. Well, naturally, I reckoned it would be hours before we reached the … crunch and I could always excuse myself before that, and put the cap in
then
, when he'd worked through his hundred and fifty spiritual exercises and was still going strong. Actually, it wasn't like that. He came in two seconds flat—just climbed on top of me, shoved his … thing in, and … that was that.'

Susie flung the bedspread back. Her casual almost jaunty choice of words belied her real emotion. Her cheeks were flaming now, fingers twitching nervously at the sheets. ‘That's how I … got pregnant. At the time, I refused to believe it possible. I mean, we'd only done it the once and only for halfa minute, where as me and Sparrow had gone on hours and days and … Mind you it
was
my dangerous time, and Matthew did stay in. We both sort of lay there. I think we were both shocked he'd come at all. After that night, I just blocked the whole thing out. Pretended it never happened. Even when I realised I was pregnant, I still refused to tie it up with Matthew. Making babies with a guy that old and so uptight really turned me off. I'm sorry love. I know he's your relation, but …'

‘Hardly a relation.' Jennifer could barely speak for shock. This was the Matthew who fined his sons if they said so much as ‘bum', deplored the modern world for its permissiveness, boycotted his local newsagent because it stocked
Penthouse
and
Men Only
. She no longer wanted
any
tie or bond with him. ‘Matthew's simply a half brother-in-law. No more. Almost an ex-half brother-in-law, now.'

‘Oh, Jenny, don't be bitter.'

‘I am bitter. And this time I'm shocked as well. Oh, not with you, with Matthew. It's shameful—when he's married and got four lovely boys already … Look d' you
swear
that this is true? I mean if you lied to me before, how do I know you're not lying to me still?'

‘But that's the point, Jen—I only lied because I knew the thing would shock you.'

Jennifer fumbled for her jacket. Her coat was still in Matthew's office—had been there a whole week now. She remembered sitting there in front of him, feeling sorry for him, grateful for his hand-outs. Were they simple bribery? A means of buying her silence in case Susie had confided in her, told her the whole story?

‘You should have told me before, Susie—way back in the summer—even if I was shocked. It's far worse for me to stumble on it now when …'

‘I was scared you'd throw me out, Jen, or refuse to help me at all. I hadn't a penny in the world …'

Jennifer snatched up her gloves and bag. Susie had used her all along, taken advantage of her naiveté, her foolish gullibility.

‘So your're w … walking out, are you?' Susie was almost crying now herself. ‘I was right, you see. You d … don't want Matthew's kid.'

Jennifer didn't answer, just stood trembling by the curtains. Wouldn't it be better to turn her back on Matthew, pack Susie off to Sparrow, and hand the baby over to some quiet, conventional couple not tied to it by guilt, or marriage bonds?

‘I … I don't know what I want, I'm totally confused … I'm going out for a minute—to clear my head. I'll get your matches on the way. All right?'

Susie nodded silently. Her small, scared face looked wrong above the bulge, as if someone had joined a child's head to an older woman's body. Matthew had made that bulge, tried to bridge the thirty years between them by booting Susie from the playroom to the labour ward.

Jennifer stumbled to the door, trailed along the corridor, up some stairs, down some more. She was walking blindly, bumping into people. Matthew had always been the strict and righteous Elder in the family, building up his empire, laying down his laws, leading them all like blind and obedient satellites. Yet, how many lives had he warped and overturned? Susie sick and pregnant, her own precious, precarious marriage blown to pieces by the impact of the book, the book itself impounded by solicitors, Edward shamed and shocked. Yet, without Matthew, she would never have met Susie, never married Lyn. Matthew sowed love and then uprooted it—like the baby she had almost taken over until she knew that it was his. How could she keep a child which he had fathered, a lifelong reminder of his guilt and shame?

She stopped a moment, tried to find her bearings. She had been looking for the exit, but had somehow gone too far and landed in the basement, by the vistors' canteen. At least it was somewhere to sit and rest her brain. She chose a corner table, out of the way. They were almost closing, two girls in orange nylon overalls slooshing disinfectant on the floor. She hardly saw them. The figure looming up in front of her was Thomas Winterton's, stalking huge inside her head. He had died before Lyn was born, left him nothing but his genes. But those genes were Matthew's, too. Both sons had inherited that unique exclusive patterning which made them Wintertons. And since the baby Susie carried was also half a Winterton, then surely there must be some of Lyn in it.

Jennifer picked up a sugar lump from the plastic dish on the table, held it in her mouth. She could feel tiny grains of sweetness seeping into her body, singing through her veins. She knew nothing of genetics, but surely it was possible that this child could duplicate some vital part of Lyn in its blood-stream or its cells, repeat some features of his character or constitution. Because it was Matthew's kid, Susie had concluded that she couldn't or wouldn't want it. But Matthew's kid must be made, at least in part, from the same building bricks as Lyn's would be—the nearest she might ever get to her own husband's child and lineage—a child who belonged to Hernhope, who was half a Winterton, who might even be born with Lyn's eyes or soul or hands. She stared down at the mottled table top. She could see cells in it, branching into lilies, breaking into flowers. This child could well redeem them all, let in some light and sweetness to the frowning Winterton genes. Susie might be slapdash and rebellious, but she was also cheerful and warm-hearted. Even Matthew had his strengths. A child could fuse the best of them, thaw Matthew's frosty gloom with Susie's radiance; temper Susie's sluttishness with Matthew's skill and steel.

But supposing Susie's baby combined the worst of her and Matthew, grew up reckless, hypocritical, promiscuous, neurotic? Environment played a part, of course, but what could she offer to cancel all those threatening genes? She herself was leading a feckless fractured life with no permanency or centre. And as Matthew's sister-in-law(even ‘half' or ‘ex', the relationship still existed, however she denied it), she was the very worst person to have possession of his child. She was deluding herself if she imagined she could hide from him for ever, especially with a baby he might even suspect was his.