by Betty Burton
Once they had jumped into Chard Lepe Pond and lay in the water without clothes. It had happened that they had suddenly felt like lying in the green water and hadn't thought twice about it. Yes, it did seem to be in their nature to be like that. Ju and her reading and writing, it was something she suddenly thought she wanted to do, and she had got her way.
And their father . . .
Tomas Nugent.
She had one image of him, ah such a wonderful picture to carry in the memory — the handsome man in a beautiful blue coat. She had been a very small child, and he had stayed only a short time, but Jaen remembered him.
He went as abruptly as he had come and their mother never mentioned him. It was only in the last few years that she had come to realize who the handsome man had been. That was after the whole dark story of him had come out.
She gradually panned the assorted ore of thoughts and was left with a residue of one nugget of truth — she had inherited her father's self-indulgent, capricious nature.
Tomas Nugent who had loved Mother and married her not long before Jaen was born. Then he had suddenly gone off and left them for five years. As suddenly he had come back.
That was what Jaen remembered.
He had come back and the days had been light and warm. A man, his blue coat hanging from one shoulder, taking the pins from Mother's hair, and Mother laughing, with her cap off and her great mass of thick, golden-red hair, unpinned and tumbling down to her waist.
That image and memory was a glowing charcoal in the midst of grey ash.
Then suddenly, he had left again, for ever.
Ju had been born a few months later. Jaen had not connected the two events at the time. Ju had been glowing charcoal too.
It had all come out a few years back. Their father had run off with a girl of twelve or thirteen. One of their own milkmaids. Then he had run away from her too, and had been drowned at sea. They had found this out years later, since Jaen had come to Newton Clare, when the girl, who was now a woman, had turned up in Cantle.
Once she began to think of it, she knew that she was right, her weakness was in her nature — born in her.
She only hoped Ju was different.
8
On a day soon after Jaen's encounter with France, Jude brought Hanna to visit her parents. Bella did not come and, as it was an occasion when Baxter desired to see a pew full of Hazelhursts in church, Dan had taken the older boys there. Once Hanna's duty of answering Jaen's stilted questions were over, she went off with one of the Up Teg child-servants to look at the Ham Ford animals and to poke about in the outhouses. Then Jaen had the rare pleasure of having Jude to herself.
Jude always looked full of health and vitality. Of the two, Jaen had always been the prettier, but now that they were women, it was Jude who caught the eye. Like Bella, she held herself erect, but with an extra tilt to her chin that might be thought of as too above herself in a girl who worked barefoot in the fields of a tiny holding, a speck compared to Up Teg.
Like Hanna, Jaen, Bella and their Estover ancestors, Jude had the hair. Red and gold and strikingly noticeable. Anyone who had the notion that character might be ascertained from hair-type, would have been interested in these four 'Estover' women. Hanna's hair, like Bella's, was thick and flowing and solid. Jaen's fringed her face, light, pretty and curly, whilst Jude's sometimes appeared to be a wild, buzzing cloud that was always bursting from any twist or tie or cap.
The morning that Jude came was real March weather. The kind of day that, when they were children — Jude four or five and Jaen ten or so — Jaen would have drawn the back helm of their skirts between their legs and fastened it at the front waist, leaving their legs free to run in the blustering winds. Although Ju never really liked high winds, she did whatever Jaen did, perhaps going out to find primroses, or taking strips of rags to run streamers or to make sails that would billow in the winds that rebounded off the downs.
This morning, damp and glowing from the exertion of walking with the donkeys on the last, steep part of the journey down the sides of Keeper's Hill, with her hair stuck all over with celandines and tied on top as carelessly as a child's, Jaen sensed a change in her sister.
Ju had grown really beautiful lately, but it wasn't only that, she seemed soft, easy and sure of herself.
If only Ju need never go away. It would all come right again. Then France . . . No! She could not bear to think of France, not whilst Ju was here. She pushed France away.
Forget that now.
In the kitchen alone the sisters pressed cheek to cheek. Jude patted Jaen's belly.
Jaen hunched her shoulders. 'I got some time to go yet, but I swells up so these days. Don't let's talk about that. I got some beans.' She smiled with pleasure, knowing Jude's passion for a rare drink of coffee. They sat together in the quiet kitchen.
'Oh Ju, the peace of it. You got no idea.'
'Ah, I dare say they make themselves heard when they'm all in here at once.'
Jaen gazed into her bowl of coffee and saw the order and quiet of the kitchen at Croud Cantle, her mother's bright red-tiled floor which was treated like an object of ornament. The busy, quiet evenings with Mother k'chack-k'chack-k'chack at the spinning wheel, and herself and Jude combing and carding or perhaps in the orchard putting a maggot-wash on embryo fruit. Whenever Jude came, and they were sitting together, Jaen's memories were always of the two of them inseparable — until Jaen had proved traitor to her young sister. She pushed that thought away too.
Forget that now. Forget that unhappy time of Ju's withdrawal.
'I wish you wasn't so far away, it's so lonely.'
Ju said that she wished so too, then she could visit more often, but Jaen was not sure whether she meant it or no. The thoughts she was trying to push away, pushed back. Ju was probably thinking Jaen hadn't cared much about loneliness when she had gone off with Dan.
Over their coffee-drinking, Jaen observed her sister as she passed on the Cantle gossip Dicken Bordsell provided, then it came to her . . .
'You got a young man, Ju.'
At first Jude held back, but Jaen was sure that she was right.
Ju's soft, easy manner was love. Oh Ju. You could tell that Ju had met somebody who was more than just a passing fancy. When Jaen asks her about it, a bright flush springs to Jude's cheeks as she says the name, 'Will Vickery', and Jaen knows.
Jaen knows, and she feels a kind of violence expand within her at the certain knowledge that Ju has been with the man. Whoever he is, this Will Vickery, he's not good enough. Whoever he is and however much Ju thinks of him, he's not worth half nor quarter what she got from his kisses and the few seconds of elation. None of that was worth it; worth losing the only things that had ever been your own, your own body, your own self. Even if Will Vickery was the King, what difference would it make? Ju could finish up with her legs swelled up and her insides feeling they was dragged down.
Jaen wants to cradle Ju as she used to, but that was years ago. She feels awkward. In her anger at the thought of Ju repeating her own mistakes, Jaen forces Ju to look at the ravages all her pregnancies have wrought; forces her to look at her thin hair, her waterlogged flesh. 'Look at me, Ju. Go on look! This,' she stands with the cap she has dragged from her head, 'this is what comes of that,' she runs her hand through her sparse hair, 'comes of half a minute of enjoyment.'
Jude stares at Jaen. Jaen does not move, hoping that she can get something into Ju's head. Jude does not respond as Jaen presses on with her angry advice but watches as her sister ties her cap and pulls forward the few ringlets that have helped to make-believe that constant childbearing has left her as pretty as ever.
At last though, Jaen has no more to say and goes to sit with Jude, and put both arms about her. It is a mature gesture. Now, they are two women, with equal knowledge of love and desire . . . except that Jaen believes that Ju can't see where it all leads.
The violence of her feelings calmed, she says quietly, 'It an't worth it,' and begins talking openly
of her feelings, and of Dan.
She talks as though France does not exist. As though the only time she ever allowed her feelings to get out of hand was that first time with Dan. Somewhere — here, now — must exist the recent memory of her needful fingers raking France's virile beard. Somewhere the knowledge of France's damp brow close to her own; his dry, warm hands; the admission that she was aroused by France with an unchaste look in his eye, his mouth heavy as he talks of the sin of his passion for her.
At the moment of speaking, her counterfeit truth was genuine.
'You need not go on so, Jaen, I haven't got no intention of marrying him. Him nor anybody.'
Jaen wished that she could believe Jude.
They slipped back into talking of the years when Jude was growing up, when they had been at the centre of one another's days.
When it was near to dinner-time, Hanna came in and chattered in her serious way about the bits and pieces of work she had just helped the girls do; it was her usual way of filling in the time until she could go back home to Cantle. Soon after came the sound of light cartwheels, then chattering little boys. They burst in and filled the room. What Hazelhursts they were. When Jaen had come to Up Teg as a bride, Nance Hazelhurst had said that the one thing about marrying into this family was that they never wanted for a decent meal. And you could see the truth of that in all the fat little knees.
To see Jaen with them was to call to mind a wren with cuckoos in the nest.
Then Dan came in, ducking down in the low doorway and stooping when he passed under the beams. Jaen went to attend to the food and Dan came to stand astride the hearth. He could not help himself. Although he made no bones about not liking his wife's sister, he looked her up and down slowly, watching the rise and fall of her breasts, inspecting the curve of her back as he slapped the warmth of the fire into his thighs and stretched his arms. His thighs, his potent arms, his wide chest, sinews, biceps, illustrated the male, showed what Dan Hazelhurst was made for. He provoked the young woman into looking at him. Again and again she drew her eyes from him, always they returned to look him up and down.
Dan was as impressive and physically attractive in his middle years as he had been when young.
As Jaen cut up bread and handed the little boys their bowls she caught glimpses of Jude, noticed how in spite of herself she was captured by him. And glimpses of him. 'Coming over all Hazelhurst' was how she and Vinnie had described their way of looking down from their full height. Vinnie dealt with Peter by catching him around the waist and treating him playfully, telling him he needn't come the old giant with her. And for all the fact that they had been married as long as Dan and Jaen, Vinnie and Peter often behaved much like their children, tickling and chasing.
'An't it time you two growed up?'
'What for?' Vinnie would say. 'We should only get like the rest of you.'
Jaen heard Dan say, 'Still not married then' in the challenging way he had with Ju. She did not hear the answer, but Ju had her defiant look on. Jaen hoped that she would not irritate him by asking him about corn-prices and things she seemed to know more about than he did.
He was very touchy at the moment about arguments that had been going on between The Boys about Dan's wish to go over to all one crop. He had been furious when Jaen had offered an opinion on being cautious.
If Ju got his back up now, he wouldn't get over it for days. Jaen suspected that, for all his protesting 'I knows what I be doing of. I dussn't need theece to tell me,' he knew that his new ideas of cropping were like playing hazard in a fair booth.
9
In the garden of Coppice Cottage, Vinnie, with Fancy helping, was pinching out the tops of beans when she saw Jaen's sister crossing the ford on her way back to Cantle. Jaen's sister was alone.
'Wave Fancy, wave to Auntie Jaen's lady.'
The child ran to the fence but Auntie Jaen's lady, riding one donkey and leading another, stared ahead.
'That's funny, Pete, she haven't got young Hanna with her.'
Peter, sheltered in the porch, sunning himself and having a quiet Sunday smoke, said, 'Well, what about it? Women always got to make summit out of nothing.'
'When she come she brought Jaen's girl, and she've gone home without her. That an't nothing.'
'I'll tell you one thing — it an't got nothing to do with you.'
Vinnie went back to her task. There was summit up. She knew. Summit unexpected. Jaen would have said something when they met out wooding yesterday and Vinnie asked, 'How's my little Goldy-girl these days?'
Jaen had said, 'I shouldn't be surprised if they don't bring her over to see us tomorrow.'
If Hanna had a been going to stop, she'd a had a bundle with her that morning. She didn't have a bundle; Vinnie had seen them as they passed along the lane at the back of her cottage. And going up the lane just now, not taking a bit of notice of Fancy . . . Jaen's sister never acted like that. She wasn't one to be all over you, but she always waved and told Hanna to say something. Hanna had been brought over from Cantle times enough over the last years, sometimes Jaen's sister and her mother together, sometimes just one of them, but they always arrived a couple of hours after sun up and left a couple of hours before dark. When she was little, Hanna would be riding with the mother or the sister, but these days she often came riding with her own donkey.
There was summit up; there always was when people acted different from normal. Vinnie knew that she was not wrong. The sister was going home with the empty donkey, and she had not waved to Fancy.
10
SCANTLEBURY'S
At somewhere near the time of year when France had been holding Jaen's hand to his face, Annie was feeling the cold cheek of the old man Scantlebury, who did not respond when she took him his bowl of sops, and saw that he was dead. He had gone to sleep quietly, then drifted nicely into death, so that when Ted Scantlebury returned on a tide two days after the old man's interment, Annie could truthfully say that the father had gone on as peaceful as any good body could a wished for.
'I'm sorry I wasn't with him at the end.' Annie was genuinely sorry, she and Betrisse had grown to like the old fisherman.
'You always done more for him than was agreed between us.' Ted Scantlebury, always polite in his rough way, stood with her and looked at the place that had been allotted to his father's remains.
They walked slowly back to his cottage, which was Annie's and Betrisse's as well, by the payment of rent.
Annie said, 'You a be wanting a new agreement now, Master Scantlebury: I shouldn't mind getting it settled as soon as you feels like it, so me and Betrisse knows where we stands.'
He drew his brows together.
'About the rooms,' she added.
'Ah. Rent, you means?'
'Yes. Now the old man's gone. When you'm ready.'
When he was ready, which was the day the oyster fleet was due out again, he went round to the back door, which it had been agreed should be for the use of Mistress Saint John and her girl. Although they rented a very small part of a very small house, it was because they had this separate entrance that Annie and Betrisse felt that they were not lodgers in the usual sense.
'I a come straight to the point,' he said, accepting the stool and the drink of wine Annie offered. 'I wants to make you a proposition — you don't have to make up your mind straight away, but if you don't want to take it up . . .' he trailed off and drank deeply of the wine . . . 'That's as good a drop of May wine as I've tasted in many a day.'
Annie held out her hand for the beaker and refilled it as he continued.
'I was saying . . . it won't make no difference to you stopping on here for the time being, but I should like to have your answer by next time we comes in.'
Annie smiled at the man. Her liking for him had begun with the concern that he had shown for his aged father and had slowly grown when she observed other traits she liked in people: 'A no-nonsense sort. A body knows where you are with somebody like that.'
He was a middle-height, s
turdily built man at the beginning of his middle years. His hair, which was rust-coloured, heavy and dead straight, he wore scraped back and tied tightly. Typical of someone of his colouring, beneath salt-water and weather-damage his skin was very light, his lashes which fringed very deep-set eyes were pale, as were his thick eyebrows. His hairline, which was inherited, rather than created by age, went far back giving him a lofty-browed appearance, a. wide expanse for hundreds of small freckles. It was the freckling which Annie always said was what made him look honest — and his eyes a course.
'For somebody what's coming straight to the point . . .' she said.
'You'm right. It's just a question of which way to . . .' He plunged in. 'Since the old Drag Anchor closed down, there an't been a decent inn at the harbour end, and I thought about opening up one. I don't mean a alehouse, but a good, clean place with a dormit'ry and one or two little sleeping cells for decent kinds of folk that has to put up for a night or two.'
He peered at her, but she made no response except to say, 'Go on.'
'They two places,' he indicated some cottages across the yard. 'I got refusal of them if I wants. They an't much bigger than this, but the three on'm together would make a decent enough size for what I had in mind.'
'You means you wants to have these rooms back then?'
'No, no. I was wondering whether you'd care to go into business with me.'
Annie looked with unbelief at him.
'In business?'
'Yes. It'd be a business arrangement. If I should take they cottages and have some alterations made, they'd be the . . . the sleeping quarters as you might say. This place would be the kitchens and eating room part. You and your daughter could have the room above here.'
'And what would be my part in this here business?'
'To run it.'
'Run a inn? My eye. I an't never done nothing like that in my life.'