by Betty Burton
'It's a tradition that we has oxes to draw at a family wedding. We mostly only keeps them for that these days, don't work 'm much.'
Bella recognized Baxter Hazelhurst's boast as that of a thriving farmer, a man with a decent bit of acreage and six sons of great heighth and breadth to work it, a man who could keep beasts just because he fancied them.
Jaen easily interprets her mother's expression — more fool you — and is pleased when, instead of saying so, she slaps the back of a shining beast and hides her opinion. Mother has bitten her tongue a time or two today, but if they don't go soon she will not be able to keep it up.
When the wagons were ready, only Bella Nugent was left outside the Dragon and Fount. A few villagers watched at a distance to see the bedecked wedding carts leave. Watched the taking away of Jaen, the child she got when she had truly loved Tomas Nugent who was long gone, long ago dead. Bella Nugent stood alone and waved.
Waved as though she wanted nothing better in the wide world than to see Jaen drive away with one of they great Hazelhurst treetrunks. Her pretty daughter who worked the land good as any man, and stood on Blackbrook market charming everybody. Many's the time Bella would have liked to say something nice to Jaen, but it never would come out. Instead it fermented and festered until it exploded as 'Oh fer goodness sake!' over some trivial irritation.
2
WEDDING DAY
Up Teg Farm
Jaen and Dan, seated on a makeshift bench in the leading wagon beside Baxter and Nance, had the place of honour of the occasion. In the bed of the wagon are Martha and Luke and their four children, Betrisse, Kit and Laurie the twins, and the new baby. Martha suckled the baby whilst the others, fagged-out by the excursion and soothed by the familiar boom of voices and the rock and creak of the wagon, slept.
In the following wagon Francis and Annie distanced themselves from one another, Annie sitting with Richard's wife Elizabeth, awkward in her eighth month, France sitting with Richard and jiggling Richard's two-year-old Lucy playfully on his knees. Peter with his arm about Vinnie, whispered about their own wedding day. Edwin chewed leaves and shot plugs at them from the hollow stems of last-year's cow-parsley, deaf to the familiar family arguments about what government ought to be doing, and the new farming methods.
'You never did have no sense when it comes to buying a decent ram, our France.'
'Hark who's talking. Who pays above coppice price for a pile a hurdles?'
'Lord, an't you never going to forget summit as happened years ago.'
'Ah, well . . .'
As the oxen plodded their way out of the village Jaen too is deaf to them. She keeps her head bowed and concentrates upon her shining wedding band so that she shall not see the dissolution of her childhood. But every inch of the way, from the ford at the Dunnock Brook, down Raike Bottom, past Chard Lepe Pond and up, up across the face of Tradden Raike, is so familiar to her that she has no need to look up to know where she is. They reach the pond, which has known their green, childish secrets — hers and Ju's — Jaen knows that if she looks over her left shoulder, she could glimpse the ragged thatch of Croud Cantle.
Croud Cantle with its little acres and orchards, its house-cow, goats and pigs and chickens — and the house with its red-tiled houseplace floor. Croud Cantle, from where she has come a few hours ago — Jaen Nugent, Spinster of the Parish of Cantle in the county of Hampshire. Jaen Nugent is gone, and even if as Jaen Hazelhurst she ever returns to Croud Cantle, it will be as a visitor. Jaen Hazelhurst, wife of Daniel, of Up Teg Farm, Newton Clare in the Parish of Rathley, county of Hampshire, now belonged to Up Teg Farm and the Hazelhursts.
The men, intent on the arguments that are shouted back and forth between the wagons, take no notice of her. The women too seem preoccupied, making the most of the holidaying the other side of the downs.
Even Jude, in unseeing, blind misery, trailing along the bottom of Tradden Raike, does not see her sister's exodus.
Once they were over Tradden Raike Jaen felt able to look about her. The last time she came this way was with her mother when they returned from Up Teg. Bella, for the hundredth time, spitting out her humiliation at the high-handed way old Baxter Hazelhurst tried to treat her when she went to confront him with Dan's obligation to Jaen, Jaen swallowing her humiliation at the same scene.
'They'm a coarse and biggitid lot, and I'd as soon a seen you marry a packman.'
It was a figure of speech, for Bella Nugent, although disappointed at the kind of family Jaen had got herself in with, knew almost to a foot the acreage of Up Teg and the security it would provide. That had been in February, the feast of St Valentine when the birds are supposed to become betrothed, but Jaen had noticed little except the fierce and noisy battles going on among the blue-tits.
And now it was St Mark's Eve.
Sixty-nine days. If there was one thing Jaen was good at, it was working numbers in her head, necessary if you were a good market trader, starting with counting how many eggs each hen had produced, then how many that made in a month, how much they fetched. Without realizing that it happened Jaen had learned, at a very early age, quite complicated methods of calculation. Marrows times pence; twelve carrots to the bunch; bushels, dozens, pounds, stones, rods and acres. And twenty-eight dried beans that Bella had given her. When they had been transferred from one place to another it was time for the rags and tapes — so you don't get caught napping when you'm out in the fields.
Sixty-nine days between St Valentine's Day and St Mark's Eve, this day, wedding day. There had been the first twenty-eight days and then another twenty-eight, after Dan had held her warm and close; after he had told her she was beautiful and not to be afraid — and she wasn't, only very happy and a little heady at his touch and the hardness of his muscles and the unexpected softness of his beard.
'You all right, Gel?' Nance poked an elbow at her.
'Oh yes . . .' She smiled to pre-empt any possible further questions. 'I was miles away — not used to so much apple wine.' Jaen smiled reassuringly at Dan's mother.
Nance nodded off again.
Twenty-eight days of anxiety that something was wrong, then another twenty-eight days. And then telling Bella. That had been the worst part . . . almost the worst. The real worst part was the Hazelhursts. She pushed it from her mind.
They had travelled quite a long way now, six or seven miles. Down the east slope of Tradden and then along the northward curving Wayfarer's Way, the broad rutted cart-track that grew wider as each drover or carrier tried to avoid the churned-up mire of earlier travellers. The children were all asleep; from time to time Jaen felt her own baby trying out its new-found ability to move its limbs. It kicked her sharply in the bladder and she jerked her knees together.
'You want to get down?' Dan asked, rightly interpreting her need.
'No, no, I'm quite comfortable.'
'Father, pull over, Jaen wants to get down.'
'I don't, Dan, really, I'm all right.'
'Time for one anyway,' said old Baxter, and halted the swaying, plodding oxen.
Most of the women stayed put, but the men all went a few yards off to relieve themselves of the large gallons of ale and cider Bella had provided.
They'm a coarse lot, Bella had said, and Jaen knew that they were.
There an't no room for fine manners on the land, but there's room for a smidgen of decency, was what her mother always said. And decency to Bella meant not behaving like the beasts in the barn or the fowls of the yard, when it came to things like that. Long ago, she had made the men dig pits well away from the house and put up hurdles round them.
'She's a queer one, and no mistake,' was the opinion of Dicken Bordsell on such innovations as the hurdles round the pits, and the rule that no one walk in yard-muck boots on the red tiles of the Croud Cantle houseplace. Dicken and the other men always took their food at the end of the room where there was an ordinary earth floor covering with rushes, like any other kitchen. But to Jaen, never knowing anything different, Bella's
standards were not queer, only normal. Bella Nugent had brought them up to wash pretty often too — hair and all. Neighbours said there was summit wrong with her always cleaning things when they wasn't soiled, either that or she must be a sight dirtier than anybody else.
By early aftgernoon they were on Up Teg land.
Dan's three older brothers who were married had small ordinary labourers' cottages on Up Teg. The wagons stopped to let the women and children down and the rest of the party went on up to the farmhouse. As the farmhouse came into view Jaen awoke to reality.
That place was her home from now on.
Suddenly, the day lost its late-April warmth. The landscape lost its colour. She saw it through murky, unclean grass. Dun colour. Greyness. Black and paleness. Mourning-bleak. The budding crab-apples were not fisting pink buds, primroses had no gleam, swallows taking mud to the house were dull, dull, and the first painted-lady and peacock butterflies of the year were as dusty brown as evening moths.
Jaen shivered.
'Don't worry,' Dan said; 'we shall be all right when we gets going on our own.'
Jaen smiled brightly at her husband.
'I an't worried, Dan. It's going to be nice.'
'Well, you a have plenty of company.' He laughed. 'A lot better'n you been used to over your place. Lord, I never knew how you stuck it. Two women and a funny little gel like your Jude, you must a been like pecketty hens.'
The Boys laughed.
'Well then,' said old Baxter, 'you have to get used to a yard full a cock-birds round here.'
Master Baxter was a rare one for cock-bird jokes. They all roared at their father.
They'm a coarse and biggited lot!
4
Nance Hazelhurst had played this scene three times before — four really, if she counted herself. A little bit of a thing, with a swelling belly, coming into the big Up Teg kitchen and having to get used to the bull-bellows and the clatter of them, even to the lack of space there always seemed to be when the Hazelhursts were about.
She had been seventeen when Baxter brought her here thirty years ago, not that far gone with Luke and France, but far enough to make her realize that it was this or nothing. As it turned out it hadn't been too bad. At least she had made improvements in the kitchen, the indoor sink, the wheeled spit with the little trained dogs, and lately a new bottle-jack spit, and a whole row of pewter platters on the dresser.
'Come on in. She there's Myrtle helps in the house' — Myrtle bobbed to Dan's wife — 'and there's Kath somewhere about. And a course there's Vinnie, and she still does the dairying, and she still lives out there along with the rest of the girls till her and Peter gets wed.'
Nance Hazelhurst was a wiry, brown little woman with newt-like movements, fast, sudden, and jerky. Within a minute or two of coming through the door, she had blown up the fire, adjusted the chimney crane, hooked over an iron pot, and generally pattered about seeming to do half a dozen things at once.
'I dare say you a find things a bit different here, but you a soon get used to it. Main thing is, you does things my way. I'm easy going enough, but Baxter don't like no changes. He likes his same place by the fire, just so much salt in his butter, and his jacket behind the door where he can put his hand on it . . . that kind of thing. So don't go thinking you're helping by doing anything different. Martha, then Annie and then Elizabeth, they all started off doing things different. He likes things his way.'
'I'm use to that. Mother was just the same.'
'Ah well, I suppose she's the master at your place.'
'Yes, she never stood no nonsense with us or anybody who works there.'
'It an't the same when it's men though. I dare say you'll find it a bit funny having to buckle down under a man.'
'I expect I shall soon get used to it. Work's work, no matter who tells you to do it.'
'Except you an't never had a man to tell you to do none.'
The new Mrs Hazelhurst considered for a moment, then smiled but didn't reply, but took the wooden spoon Nance handed to her, and stirred the pot she indicated.
'Do you remember your father?'
'Not much. I was only five. It's his coat I remember; but just when I'm going to sleep, or waking up, I get a real picture of him, then soon as I wake up it's gone. Most likely it's a dream.'
Ah well, it would be, thought Nance. She seems a bundle of dreams if you asks me. Miles away half the time. Inside her own head. It's always the quiet ones you have to watch. Let's hope The Boys gets on and mends that roof and her and Dan's out of here before Peter and Vinnie gets wed. Vinnie was just the opposite to this one, Vin probably didn't know she had an inside to her head.
She'd be glad when they were all married and settled down. For the last six or seven years it'd been one after the other tumbling girls in the fields — not that it could a been the fields with this one. Goodness knows where Dan and her found on Pewsey's place in November. Same place as Peter and Vinnie found last January she wouldn't wonder, the hayloft. It was a funny thing, a pile of hay anywhere always seems to set a man off. It was a pity though they didn't wait till they had got a place ready.
Lord knew where they'd find anywhere for Ed when his turn came. There was only so much room on Up Teg, and the little place at Ham Ford The Boys were supposed to be going to mend for Dan really was scraping the barrel when it came to the cottages. Perhaps they'd have to build on. Don't go looking for trouble, let it come and find you.
And when all was said and done, she was lucky to have had such a good healthy bunch of sons, and now she had them, she thought the world of them, there were just too many of them. Each time, after the twins and then Richard, she had wished the new one to Kingdom Come, till they were birthen, then once you saw them, give them a name, you soon forgot you hadn't wanted them.
Compared to Croud Cantle, Up Teg Farm was very large and the farmhouse spacious. To Jaen, used to one ground-floor room divided by nothing save the presence of the red floor-tiles, and above a hurdle partition, Up Teg House seemed to be huge and complicated.
At Croud Cantle the sleeping floor was reached by an opentread stair not much better than a ladder, and the two chambers had no doors, just a coarse-woven draught-curtain. In warm weather, her mother slept in one part and Jaen and Jude curled together on a rough wood-framed cot in the other. In winter Bella Nugent returned to the recess in the kitchen.
At Up Teg, however, there was a staircase made by a joiner and upstairs were several proper rooms, with lath and plaster walls and dormer windows, and each chamber had a door made of planks, with an iron latch.
'I've put your bits and pieces in the Yard Room above,' said Nance, and took her up to the room that was to be hers and Dan's until The Boys had seen to the thatching of the little cottage at Ham Ford.
It was a bright chamber, in which a ceiling had been put up. The ceiling had the advantage of warmth, but on the dormer side it prevented anyone taller than Jaen from standing up.
'I said before, it's as well they don't marry tall girls,' Nance said. 'Baxter reckons he only wed me because nobody else would a fitted.'
Jaen smiled, grateful for the older woman's attempt to put her at ease. 'It's really nice,' she said, wanting to please her mother-in-law. 'You been very kind and that. I never thought we should have such a nice room as this.'
Nance Hazelhurst, sentimental from remembrances made charming by the passage of thirty years, as well as mellow from the heady very fine apple wine Bella Nugent had provided, thought of her own coming into the Up Teg farmhouse and unexpectedly put her arms about Jaen.
'As long as you'm a good wife, you a be all right. The Hazelhursts have never gone short of much. Even when times is hard, they always seems to do all right. There's always that to think of.'
Jaen's nature was to be pliant. She smiled at people. She swallowed any disturbing feelings such as anger or misery. She was gentle.
Bella Nugent had brought her daughters up to hard work and not much pleasure. From an early age, Jaen knew th
at she was the cause of her mother's sharp manner, and her lack of affection; that there was something estimable in her mother because she always chose to do everything the hard way; that never giving into 'soft' feelings was commendable. There were times when Jaen could have cried out with the need for a gentle word or even a hand-pat from Bella.
On the first night at Up Teg, long after Dan had twice heaved himself away from her, Jaen lay wondering about them back home. That morning Jaen had kissed her mother, and had been surprised to find her lips brushing a warm and soft cheek. She tried to remember the feel of her mother's hands but could not recall it, nor when there had been any physical contact between them.
She suddenly thought how strange it was that she and her mother had worked so closely for years without their hands ever touching. There was no reason why they should: churning, hoeing, milking, spinning and all the other jobs needed no contact . . . but other working hands had touched hers.
Dicken's hands, yes, hard, gnarled over her own, showing her, when she was little, the way to hold carrots and rhubarb so as to make a clean pull; Bob Pointer, Rob Netherfield, yes, from time to time during work their hands had met her own in the natural way of people working together, removing splinters and thorns for one another, yes, easy to recall their warmth and strength; and little Johnny-twoey, yes, she had often held his wiry little hands, washed the rolls of dirt from between his fingers before dabbing salve on the blisters he had raised by long hours of clapping boards together to scare the crows, or putting green ointment on chilblains or the cuts he got from sharp flints when stone-picking.
But her mother? no. Even on this day when she had quickly kissed her daughter, they had not touched hands. She had been shaking hands with everybody, but she had gloves on, new gloves she had bought for the occasion, and tried to behave as though she was used to gloves. Only the dugs and teats, only the bristles, only the hair and feathers of the farm-animals ever felt the touch of Bella Nugent's hands.