Jaen

by Betty Burton

  Jaen curled herself into Dan's back as she had always curled protectively about Ju, hoping for reassurance from the closeness. This was what she wanted, wasn't it. A man. A body to curl around her too. Somebody who would cradle her in their arms and be kind to her and talk to her softly sometimes. And now she had what she wanted — and there were tears gathering in a pool in one eye and trickling into her hair from the other.

  How had she come to get herself into this muddle, exchanging the safe, bare little chamber at Croud Cantle, with its smell of apples ripening and rotting in the loft; the soft, limp arms and rough calloused feet of Ju, and the sound of familiar animals, for this enclosed room, for the huge mound of muscle, for strange male breathing and the sounds of beasts who were so unfamiliar that she could not distinguish one from another.

  Jaen Hazelhurst was there because she did not know that people can be as hungry and thirsty for affection as for sustenance and drink. She was there because, for a brief moment she had wanted to be supported by the great buttress of his body, to feel light-hearted at his trivial nonsense, to believe that she was beautiful, different, worthwhile. She was there because she had not realized, until it happened, that she could lose control of herself.

  She realized now.

  Ju loved her, idolized her even, and she loved Ju; twelve years she had loved Ju, and it couldn't ever stop even if they never saw one another again, but that wasn't a kind of 'need' love, not like that first time had been, with Dan.

  Last November, Jaen Nugent had come to the point where what she needed was somebody to touch her gently, hold her, kiss her, take away an unidentified fear. Unidentified because she did not know that such a fear existed, it was the fear of loneliness. Her inventive imagination used to work magic and fantasy for herself and Jude into the milking, tilling, churning and heavy humping and carrying of everyday life. That imagination, when turned upon a void within herself, created dread and fear which lurked like ghouls behind her pretty, smiling gentleness.

  Last November, St Martin's day, at Pewsey Farm, near the small town of Rathley, not many miles from Up Teg.

  The Pewseys had a good reputation for their small flock of Weald Whites, a high-yield breed of goat. Bella Nugent had a reputation for goat-milk cheeses and she wanted to improve their own flock, so she, Bella, had sent Jaen to choose an animal for Croud Cantle. 'It's about time you done something like that. You can't leave it all to me.'

  Jaen had been surprised at her mother's sudden decision, but she did not question it and took the chance to get away from home for a few days with both hands. November was not the best time for walking between Cantle and Rathley, but it was one of the few times when Jaen could be spared.

  The Pewseys were distant cousins cf the Nugents so Jaen would likely be a welcome visitor if bad weather set in. Perhaps that had something to do with it. 'It won't do you no harm to meet a few fresh faces,' Bella had said. Perhaps Bella, having prospected locally for a son-in-law, had found none suitable. Perhaps. Perhaps that thought had never entered her head — you never knew with Bella Nugent.

  Last November, Dan Hazelhurst rode over to Pewsey's. He had come upon the sight of the slight, pretty, red-haired girl in the pen of goats, dealing with Old Man Pewsey himself, doing a deal like a man, confident, knowledgeable. That vision had roused in Dan Hazelhurst a fantasy, a desire to have a woman who had something about her. There was something about her reminded him of Prancy. She was the dainty chestnut mare all over again. The one who had tossed and kicked and rebelled until she recognized him as master. Nothing before or since had given him as much pleasure as those weeks breaking in the chestnut mare.

  Dan Hazelhurst, at twenty-eight, had known any number of girls. Servants and dairy-maids at Up Teg and other farms in and around Newton Clare. He liked a woman to be quick and responsive to his immediate need, like Nell Gritt who, in her hovel mended with old hurdles and roofed with turf, took any man who brought something that would feed her and the silent, twisted man who had been a husband — her husband — before a bull had tossed and gored him back to infancy.

  Dan Hazelhurst boasted that there was nothing anybody could tell him about maids or women. He knew that he could charm the birds off the tree. He guessed that Jaen would respond to charm, so he was charming. He thought that she was the kind of girl who would respond to gentleness, so he was gentle. He sensed that she was tinder, so, finding her alone at dusk, looking at the goat she had bought, he created a spark by taking her face between his hands and kissing her. For a minute her passion had burnt more brilliantly than his own. He had been confident that he could get her to return his kisses, but he had not expected such sudden passion. He was as careless of the consequences as he had been once or twice before, ages ago when he had been little more than a youth.

  If she had been thirsty for affection, the unexpected draught of physical love had been so sudden and so strong that, after the initial intoxication, it had made her mentally retch. Then, on Christmas morning whilst milking the house-cow, she had physically retched, and there began the bewildering slither down the slope that rushed her away from Croud Cantle, from safety and familiarity — and from Ju.

  5

  Jaen did her best to fit into the new routine and do things exactly as Nance bade her. Nance had an easy-going nature and, if it had not been for Baxter's likes and dislikes, she would not have minded how anybody did anything, just so long as it got done. But as it was, it was necessary to remember that Baxter preferred one platter to another, to sit this side of the hearth to that; he liked to carve the meat himself, but would never cut bread. That's an 'ooman's job. As far as Jaen knew before she was plunged into this household, people always cut bread as they wished, but Baxter expected bread to be cut ready for him. From time to time he changed his mind about his likes and dislikes, or forgot that he had made a fuss on some earlier occasion. Sometimes Nance would challenge him, but only if she was feeling particularly fed up with his nonsense and she always knew just how far to go.

  'For goodness sake, husband, it an't more'n a week ago since you said you can't abide a doughy middle to a loaf, and now you'm saying you can't abide it dry.'

  'I never said that. In any case there's a difference between not liking a wet middle to a loaf and not liking dry bread.'

  During the first weeks, whenever Baxter had something to criticize, Jaen immediately flushed and felt guilty. The master of Up Teg hardly ever made reference to her directly, or actually said that she was incompetent, but Jaen was sure that every word of complaint was directed to her.

  Unspecific references — 'What's this pie-crust then?' And Jaen, whether she was involved in its making or no, would assume that the blame lay somewhere with herself, because his tone indicated that so poor a pie-crust was something he had never encountered until lately, and she was ashamed at letting Dan down.

  Sometimes, Nance would defend: 'What's a matter with it?' If he was in a bad mood, she would add no more, leaving it open to give vent to whatever bad temper he had brought into the house. But if she knew that it was 'just him', showing what was what and who was who, that he was Master in his own place, keeping them all on their toes, she might add, 'I can't see there's anything wrong with it.' Or if she knew that he was only complaining for complaining's sake, she would be sharp with him: 'Be thankful you got a pie at all.'

  The bickering and complaining were normal family exchange to The Boys. You don't want a take no notice of he — it's only his way, was their attitude once they had become grown men and were working equally with their father.

  'But I feel such a fool, Dan. I feel as if I don't know anything when he goes on at me.'

  'You a get used to it.'

  But she never did, even though she had been trained in Bella Nugent's hard ways. Back home Jaen knew that although she seldom did anything that reached her mother's standards, she had done as good as anybody else would expect. But under Baxter Hazelhurst's eye, she felt inadequate.

  Her only ally was Vinnie No
rris.

  Vinnie was just eighteen, the same age as Jaen almost to the week. Until four or five years ago, the Norrises had worked a small strip of land that adjoined Up Teg. Then, all in the space of a few months, Vinnie's mother died of the bad lungs that had wasted her body for years, and Vinnie's father pierced his leg on a spike and fatal lockjaw set in. Up Teg, being neighbourly and kin into the bargain, took in the two Norris children, Lavinia and James, Vinnie as milk-maid and dairy-maid, and Jim, with his mother's burning eyes and flushed cheeks, as yard-boy.

  Up Teg took in as well the Norris acres.

  Vinnie was as robust as Jim was weakly. She was full of spark and life and appeared quite undominated by Baxter or any of The Boys. No matter whether she was muddied from working in the ankle-deep mire, bedraggled from pressing against the flanks of cows or sweating from turning the heavy churn, she seemed always to be lively. Her father had been hefty and stocky, Vinnie was like him.

  'There an't no mistaken when Vinnie comes in, she'm like a blimmin heifer.'

  She seemed to take their comments in good part, as she did the fact that, although she was in effect working her own family land, she had never had a place with the family proper but had slept with the other girls and servants, in a place over the dairy. The tumbledown hovel that had been the Norrises' home had, after a year of neglect, fallen down and was now just a mound of ivy and bramble, with a splurge every spring of gilly-flowers and Molly Norris's wise-woman herbs thriving on the rubble.

  Vinnie made no bones about it. She had liked Peter ever since she was a girl, and there was a lot about Vinnie that Peter Hazelhurst liked, particularly her good, solid body and her willingness to clasp him to it at the drop of a hat, as you might say. So when after two years of good luck, and a little knowledge from her wise-woman mother, she eventually did get herself pregnant, neither of them minded much. Now she would be family and anyway it was time Peter settled down a bit.

  And the Norris land could properly be considered as Up Teg acres.

  When Jaen arrived at Up Teg she was five months pregnant and Vinnie was three, but size for size the reverse looked to be the case.

  'You sure you fell, Jaen? I knows a girl who thought she was . . . you know, for six months, but she wasn't. She just started again, but by that time she'd a got wed.'

  They were in the dairy, just the two of them putting curds in the wooden cheese presses, and for answer Jaen placed Vinnie's hand on her small mound and let Vinnie feel the strong movements.

  Vinnie looked amused. 'Ah well, you can't get over that, can you, he's a real strong little toad, an't he. It's what I'm waiting for, to feel mine move.'

  'Don't you mind?' Jaen asked.

  Vinnie did not answer instantly as she usually did, no matter what.

  'What, mind having the baby?'

  'Not only that, don't you mind . . .' What she wanted to ask Vinnie was, didn't she mind the total surrendering of herself to Peter, to having to be, you might say, owned by him so that he had legal rights to do anything he wanted, even if you didn't want him to. But Jaen's nature was to withhold, be private. To say things like that out loud meant admitting them to yourself, making them real.

  'I mean, don't you mind . . . like, not being yourself any more?'

  Vinnie laughed good-naturedly. 'An't much good minden when you been and got yourself poddy. We shall be all right. Peter's all right. Peter's the best of the bunch.'

  Vinnie, always putting her foot in her mouth. Straight away she was sorry.

  'Ah well, I expects we all think that, don't we. Anyway, your Dan's the best looking of all of them, better than Peter. Dan got a real way with him.'

  And he'd once tried it on Vinnie.

  Only once though. For all that Up Teg treated her the same as the hired workers, Vinnie was nobody's fool. She knew the Hazelhursts all right, knew they wouldn't want no trouble between The Boys — because of her father's bit of land.

  'I shall tell Master Baxter on it if you don't keep your mitts to yourself,' she warned him. Thereafter Dan left the rights to her bodice laces to Peter, and satisfied his self-esteem by telling her she wasn't no oil painting anyway.

  From the first Vinnie felt protective toward Jaen. It was funny really, them being the same age. In some ways she seemed really young, yet she knew more than the rest of them put together, and she didn't think anything of going to Blackbrook market. Vinnie had never been to Blackbrook and longed to go there.

  Vinnie took to Jaen as she had never taken to anyone. Jaen was different, yet she didn't seem to realize it. Kath and Myrtle too agreed about Master Dan's wife when they chewed her over in low voices on their pallets of bracken on Jaen's first day at Up Teg. 'If you put her in a silk gown, you wouldn't hardly know her from a lady.'

  'The way she stands, with her hands folded.'

  'And the way she talks — an't she got a nice way of talking.'

  'Ah. You'd a thought she'd have a hard voice being on the market and that.'

  Instinct, or perhaps perceptiveness, told Vinnie that Dan's wife had got herself into deeper water than just being married to one of The Boys. Jaen seemed out of her depth, frightened and bewildered. She jumped and started like a deer whenever Baxter or one of the older Boys spoke direct to her, and seemed near on the verge of tears when they started on, like they did to everybody, criticizing and that. Especially the old man.

  Vinnie was used to him now, and had never been really afraid of him; even when she first came to Up Teg as a girl she hadn't never been scared of him like Jaen was. And it wasn't just him. There was only young Edwin who didn't make Jaen tongue-tied. Why? It was obvious to anybody that she wasn't no ordinary girl. By all accounts she had been helping with the running of her mother's farm for years, as well as having the buying of animals and doing business in Blackbrook market. She must be a sight more clever than Dan Hazelhurst, or any of them for that matter — except Peter, Peter was the clever one of that family — but even Peter couldn't count up things quick, like Jaen could.

  Vinnie was lucky it was Peter who took a fancy for her — a serious fancy, he really wanted them to be wed. Peter was all right.

  On that first night, the wedding night, when Jaen came to Up Teg, Vinnie hadn't been able to go to sleep for half an hour or more thinking about her. Not once had she smiled in the church . . . not even when the vicar had said 'man and wife'; she had just sort of looked to the side, where Mrs Nugent was standing, not at Dan at all. At the feast, she never ate a crumb, and hardly spoke two words all the way back from Cantle.

  'I heard Miz Nance say there wasn't no men in Mrs Dan's fambly. It's probably that as makes her jump when they comes shouting in at the kitchen door,' was Myrtle's explanation.

  Kath had a more lewd suggestion — she always had. The huddle of girls in the out-house had a good laugh at the expense of they-in-the-house, having a good laugh at them behind their backs always did you a bit of good.

  The better Vinnie got to know Jaen, the more she liked her but the less she understood her. How could she a got herself poddy like that? You couldn't really picture Jaen letting a blimmen hulk like Dan getting his great red hands down her bodice, let alone up her skirt, and you couldn't never in a hundred years imagine her enjoying it, not like herself with Peter. It was funny really, Dan wasn't the biggest of The Boys, but there was something about him that made you think that he was.

  In the end, Vinnie came to the only reasonable answer to it. Dan Hazelhurst had just took her . . . he was like that . . . it was the sort of thing he would do, and she wouldn't a had a chance, hardly up to his chest and looking as though a puff of wind would blow her away.

  Vinnie was scarcely taller than Jaen, but she was equal to the Heighth and Breadth of any of The Boys.

  6

  Towards the end of May, Vinnie felt the first quickening.

  'Is that it, Jaen?'

  Jaen agreed that the small flutter was the baby.

  'I should a thought it'd been a bit different than a bit o
f wind, it an't no different than a little ramper running round in your belly after eating peas.'

  Jaen had begun to establish a place for herself in the dairy. She was good at that kind of work, and it gave Them less chance of picking holes in her; They couldn't say anything about her butter-making, people in Blackbrook had been paying good money for the butter she used to make back home in Cantle.

  The two pregnant girls worked there long hard hours, scrubbing, skimming, churning, separating, cooling, patting, pressing and talking.

  Talking.

  Quiet female voices, talking in the cool, dim outhouse. Low female voices using the ancient language — words strung together in half-sentences. The language whose vocabulary includes intuition, humour, sensitivity, and looks that go in through the darkest dot at the very centre of the pupil. The universal language . . . understanding.

  My eyes red?

  It hurts . . . but it's better than . . . better than keeping it to yourself . . .

  You know?

  Don't take no notice of me

  . . . a good cry, you'll feel better.

  Don't worry too much.

  All kids is like that.

  You'll get over it.

  I know, I know! Yes. It was the same with me . . .

  . . . same with my mother.

  . . . same with my old Gran.

  Oh, it does you good to laugh.

  The language of good women who, from earliest times, said I know, I know. They brewed bitter herbs for one another to expel the rape-child; they made concoctions of oil to hold the wanted child in a fragile womb until it could be born; they impregnated little pads of fleece with lard or butter and told one another it was the best way they knew. If that didn't work and there was another miscarriage, protracted labour or half-formed child, they held one another and said I know, I know, it was the same with me.