Born of Woman Read Online Free PDF Page B

there once, his father’s sheep, the flock and father he had never seen. His first memories were sullen steel-jawed tractors, dragging vicious ploughs behind them, tearing up the pastureland, preparing it for trees. Five farms had gone in all. The other families which had sold out to the Forestry had all four moved away, their houses ruined now, their lands merged with the Wintertons’ to make a cage for conifers. Only he and Hester had remained inside the cage.
    They turned the corner and Hernhope leapt towards him, a grim grey house dwarfed by the larger sky. Fold upon fold of hill curved and crisscrossed behind it, shreds of cloud caught on its roof like rags. He held his breath as Jennifer jammed the brakes on, dared not speak or move. He had to worship a moment, give thanks that the place still stood, as proud, as powerful as he had remembered it—grey stone, grey slate, merging into the pearlier grey beyond, until it lost itself in purple. The moment swelled into a lifetime—baby in the blanket, boy in the hayloft, man hiding from his mother. However tall he grew, the house was always taller. Now he lived in a doll’s house down in Cobham, playing at farming on a cabbage patch.
    Jennifer switched the engine off and silence plunged between them. He hardly dared to look at her. Why had she stopped her chattering and exclaiming? Did she fear the house? See it as scowling, peevish, hostile—legs buckled, face cracked—no creepers round its neck to hide the damp-stains, no easy pretty garden to soften the stone; no smile, no open arms? He squinted through his eyelids and saw her hands twisted together on the steering wheel. The stillness was so utter, he could hear the trees holding their breath around him, the clouds rolling into void. He let his gaze inch up towards her face. Her eyes were shining, her lips parted as if he had just made love to her.
    â€˜Oh, Lyn,’ she breathed. ‘It’s wonderful ! So lonely, it’s like the last house in the world.’

Chapter Three
    Jennifer entered first. The door was stiff, heavy, but unlocked. She jumped as something scurried away from her. Only two or three brown leaves from another season, bellying in the draught. Lyn heard a curlew rip the silence as he shut out cloud and conifer.
    The dark passage hemmed them in as they tiptoed towards the kitchen. Strange to feel claustrophobic when there was no other house for miles and the horizon touched the floor of heaven. Three years had made no difference to the place. The same cold and echoing flagstones softened with Hester’s rag-mats; the same low, uneven ceilings, beams blackened with age and wood-smoke. Walls built two feet thick to withstand Scot and storm; windows small and suspicious with drawn-down brows to conserve every ounce of heat.
    It wasn’t as cold as he’d remembered it. Someone had lit the range. That bad-tempered black-iron monster had watched him as a boy—a braggart growing fiercer as it gobbled peat and logs. He turned his back on it. Jennifer cooked on an all-electric Creda Circulaire, a wedding gift from Matthew. The room was barely breathing. The clock had stopped at half-past one (a.m.? p.m.?) There was no fruit, flower, light, air. A bunch of shrivelled onions hung above the sink. The sink tap dripped and plopped. Had it always been stained like that? Cracked so badly? Or did he only notice because his wife was there? She was marvelling at the table, swamping it with modern, mocking things—bright enamel cake-tins, hollow Easter eggs in glittering coloured foil. They had filled the car with presents—mostly peace-offerings, recompense for the time he had been away. The shopping looked too garish—tins with gaudy labels, packets screaming promises, food which grew in the glare and cackle of supermarkets rather than the silence of the soil. He removed her jacket from his father’s chair—a chair for corpses, ghosts.
    Jennifer