Born of Woman (49 page)

‘Look what the cat's brought in! I never thought you'd tear yourself away from all the family.'

Jennifer tried to ignore the taunts, cheer Susie with the news that at least they were in funds. Matthew had obviously been shocked by Lyn's outburst and departure, and had responded with a surprising open-handedness. He had given her an immediate sum in cash and then gone on to deposit money in Lyn's bank account, with a promise of more to come. The three of them could share it, Jennifer said. She was committed now to buying a house with Lyn, but that didn't mean she wouldn't have time to help Susie find a better flat in a nicer part of the country, perhaps not too far from them. Susie might even find a flatmate, a girl in the same position, maybe, who could pay half the rent and provide some company and …

Susie hadn't answered, just heaved her suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe.

‘What are you doing?'

‘Nothing. Don't worry about
me
. You save yourself for your precious Lyn.' Susie wrenched the top drawer from the dressing-table, staggered with it to the bed and tipped all its contents out onto the counterpane.

Jennifer jumped up. ‘Careful! You mustn't lift heavy weights like that. You'll harm the baby.'

‘Good!'

‘Don't say things like that, Susie. It's wrong. I read somewhere that even foetuses have feelings and can sort of … pick up atmospheres and …'

‘I shouldn't worry, if I was you. Even if it's heard every fucking word I've said—which, frankly, I think is piffle—it won't have much longer to brood about it.'

‘W … what d'you mean?'

‘Well, if you really want to know, I've decided to get rid of the kid.'

‘You've …
what?'

‘Pull the plug on the little blighter. Flush it out. It's not that difficult. Someone gave me an address the other day. You know, one of those backstreet hags in Soho.'

Jennifer clutched at the wall for support. She felt faint, sick. ‘Susie, you can't, you
mustn't
. It's far too late for that. It's … murder. It's …'

‘OK, so I'm a murderer. You get off to Lyn before he wastes his precious money on another phonecall. And how about dear Anne? Isn't it time for her supper or her pills? She'll be ringing that little bell of hers and …'

Jennifer burst into tears. Susie followed suit. They wept and stormed for half an hour. In the end, Jennifer did return to Putney, but only for one night, spent an anguished evening packing up her things. She prayed that Lyn would phone so that she could try and make him understand, beg him to be an alibi. Anne and Matthew must think she was leaving to join him, not sneaking back to Susie. They were out for the evening, with the boys, had invited her to join them, but she had pleaded a bad headache. By ten o' clock, her head was truly pounding. Lyn still hadn't phoned. How could she leave in the morning without explaining her plans to him, or giving him her Southwark address? And what about her alibi? She couldn't leave at all unless he agreed to support her story.

At ten past ten, the phone rang. Her mouth was so dry, she could hardly say hallo. It was a friend of Charles checking up on a school project which they were meant to have completed in the summer break. At twenty past, it rang again. This time she didn't hurry.

‘Yes, hallo. I'm sorry, I can't hear you. Could you speak up, please.
Lyn!
Thank God. Where
are
you?' All his calls were from different parts of the country. He was driving north, south, east, west, in aimless frenzied circles. The pips went twice before she had even begun to explain.

‘I don't know what to
do
, darling. I would come if I could—please believe me. But it's Susie, you see. She's …'

Blackmail. That's what Susie had tried. Tried and got away with it. Jennifer dared not call her bluff. She could still get rid of the baby. She hardly knew why Susie's child was so precious. Except it felt almost like her own child.

The next day she left for Southwark—more for the baby's sake than Susie's—crept out of Putney like a criminal. Fortunately, the boys had returned to school that morning and all the rush and bustle of a new school term helped divert attention from her own tense and restless state. She waited till everyone had gone—Anne and Matthew safely in the office, even Mrs Briggs departed after her morning's cleaning. The official story was that Lyn was picking her up in the car at half-past one, and they were driving up to Bedfordshire to the tiny flat he had rented until they found a permanent home. At half-past one, she staggered down the basement steps at Southwark with a suitcase and three bulging plastic bags.

Susie was waiting with a litre of Oddbin's Beaujolais and three cream doughnuts still in their paper bag.

‘One each and one for the baby, and you're a bloody angel, Jen, and I love
love
you and I promise I'll be good and do the washing-up and drink my rotten milk, but right now, let's open the plonk.'

They got high that evening. It was the only thing to do, when Jennifer's head was whirling from all the lies and deceptions she had strewn like weeds at Putney, and which could grow tall and rank and choke her in their tangles. Supposing Matthew decided to visit the Bedfordshire flat? Fortunately, he was always too busy for visits and Anne had been told to rest and so was limiting her activities to a shorter day at the office and no extra travel or upheaval. But either of them might spot her still in London, or—horrors—still with Susie. There was also the danger of Lyn. Would he support her story, as she had begged him to during that last traumatic phonecall, (which had been interrupted by the whole family returning) or become so jealous and resentful that he would blow the thing apart? Had she made the right decision in the first place? She felt guilty towards everyone, tried to drown the guilts in Beaujolais and Susie's spaghetti Southwarkese.

They were still high in the morning—on Sugar Puffs and Nescafé—larked about like schoolgirls, laughed at nothing. There was some huge airy feeling of relief, as if Matthew's three-storey mansion had been a prison or a dungeon, while their cramped and dingy basement was open to the stars. They dawdled down to Tesco's, bought the crazy childish junk-foods Jennifer normally abhorred—Instant Whips and Kit-Kats, Alphabetti Spaghetti, endless tins of beans. Jennifer sewed, scrubbed, painted, renovated, almost like a game. They were playing at mothers and fathers, with a real live baby to make it all worthwhile.

They had been there almost two whole months now. Every day of every week Jennifer had watched the baby grow, studied its development. She knew exactly how it was lying in the womb, what limbs it had, what organs, how much it weighed, the tiny vital refinements cell by cell. She looked after it by looking after Susie, took it to the antenatal clinic by forcing Susie to go along with her, assured its peace by making Susie rest.

She was father as well as mother. She paid for it, supported it. Matthew's money helped, but she had taken a job as well—a part-time job as a cost clerk in a local insurance office—the sort of dead-end, low-paid work the Women's Group deplored. It felt strange to be an office-girl, especially in contrast with her glamorous life of just five months ago. Instead of dashing round the country in a froth of fame and fans, she was chained to a desk by a pile of paperwork—checking premiums and commissions, sending advice notes out to agents, distracted by the squall of phones and clatter of typewriters. Yet at least it meant that Susie didn't have to stand or slave all day, and the baby wasn't harmed. It wasn't kindness or self-sacrifice. In fact, it was almost selfish. It was
her
child she was working for—and Hester's. The more she did for it, the more it became her own.

Half of the girls in the Women's Group had never had a child and never wanted one. The other half resented their kids and complained about their pregnancies. Jo encouraged them. If they had to bear children at all, she hoped at least they would bypass normal intercourse. That was a favourite theme of the meetings. Jo was hammering it home now.

‘The latest developments in AID and test-tube babies mean we're less dependent now on men or marriage, or all the oppressive conventions of …'

Jennifer eased her aching legs, tried to get more comfortable on the bare and scratchy floorboards. Jo made her feel a renegade for craving the things the Group denounced. She was a traitor to them all because she
wanted
to serve a man, yearned to conceive and bear his child the old-fashioned oppressive way, was happy to feed his stomach and his ego. Instead, she was feeding Susie. It was ironical, in fact. She was still a slave in women's liberation terms—devoting her life to someone else, accepting a job well below her capabilities, returning home from it to cook and clean.

The girls had attacked her at first, not only for her way of life, but for her subversive role as Mrs Winterton Junior, luring women back to home and kitchen, submerging them in curds and whey, sentimentalising slavery. Now they were more friendly. In fact, after seven weeks of attending all their meetings, Jennifer saw the Group as something like a family—a haven and support now she and Susie were hiding from the world. Jo herself had helped them from the start—turned her hand to painting, lent them furniture, dug out crockery and bed linen she vowed she didn't need. She almost welcomed Susie's pregnancy as a useful teaching aid, a flagrant example of man's perfidy and selfishness. Nonetheless, Jennifer still remained uneasy. Even now, Jo's shrill litany of statistics about women's pay and job conditions was making her uncomfortable. She had been relieved to get a job at all, glad of
any
pay.

She shifted position on the floor again, glanced around the room—girls sprawling, smoking, chewing gum—all concerned with winning rights and freedoms she knew she ought to value, but which seemed vastly less important than having Lyn back in her life and bed, his baby in her womb. Most of the girls wore faded jeans and baggy tops and looked as shabby as their surroundings. The meetings were held in a bleak church hall in Clapham, with Jesus posters on the walls and shelves of battered hymn-books. They even met on Sundays, the ‘service' followed by coffee as in many modern congregations.

It was time for coffee now. Jo had finished speaking, at last, and two of the girls were boiling kettles and clattering cups, while the rest broke into little groups, chatting and relaxing.

‘How you doing, Susie?'

‘OK, I s'pose.'

‘I only hope it's not a boy—after all Jo said against them.'

‘I bet it is! I felt it kick like crazy every time she called man the enemy.'

Everybody laughed. Jennifer kept her fingers crossed. She hoped it would be a girl. Female babies were easier and stronger, had fewer ills and infections than boys. She had wanted a girl herself when she was pregnant. Lyn might have accepted a girl more easily—less rivalry, less threat. Despite his moods and touchiness, she still longed to have a child made in his image—a dark, artistic, moody, brilliant child. But how would she ever achieve it when she hardly had a husband any longer?

‘Thought of a name yet?' A small, pale, breastless girl in a studded leather jacket was passing Susie her coffee.

‘No, I haven't bothered, really. I shan't keep the kid, you see—it's going to be adopted and the new parents choose the name.'

‘Not necessarily.' Jennifer banged her cup down. She hated the thought of adoption. Even the social worker had tried to talk Susie out of it, impressed upon her that more and more single girls now chose to keep their babies, and that help and money were both available, even sheltered accommodation and special jobs. Susie refused to listen; she didn't want a baby—only freedom and her figure back.

What other solution was there? Jennifer couldn't help beyond the birth. She was committed to Susie for the next few months, perhaps, not another twenty years on top of that. The rest of her life was Lyn's. Susie's baby was a once-in-a-lifetime labour like the book had been. Once it was safely delivered and Susie free to work, she must return to Lyn again, build some life and future of their own, fade all the scars of pain and separation. She could still love Susie, but only at a distance, as a friend, not with such intensity and risk.

All the same, the word adoption hurt. She tried to blank it out, pretend it wouldn't happen. The baby was hers at least a little longer. If Susie wouldn't choose a name, then she had thought of scores—bought three separate books of babies' names, one with detailed glosses on their meanings. The meanings were mostly wrong. Matthew meant Gift of God, Susie meant a lily. She glanced across at Susie, sprawling with her legs apart, the six-month bulge pushing out her scarlet smock which was already splashed with coffee. Her hair was tousled, her purple nail varnish chipped and flaking off. Some lily!

Hester meant a star. That was closer. She
had
been a guiding star. Jennifer was still aware of her presence, especially since the move to Southwark where Hester herself had lived as an unmarried pregnant girl. Jennifer had deliberately chosen Southwark when she first went to find a room for Susie—not simply because it was an inexpensive area, but because of the parallels. She only hoped Rowan Childs was not still digging up the corpse of Hester's baby. She, too, might have an interest in those parallels.

Jennifer was always scared that the media would somehow track her down, find the Country Woman living in a London slum. She hated being in hiding, not only from Anne and Matthew, but also from the book. Now that the first elation had seeped away, she felt less like a carefree schoolgirl, more like a criminal lying low. She had become so fraught and anxious that Anne and Matthew would find her out, she had started phoning them each week, even visiting them occasionally on a fictitious day-return from Bedfordshire, to try and lull their suspicions, or at least prevent them writing to that mythical address.