by Betty Burton
'Yes you have.' Betrisse, who had been sitting quietly, taking in every word, leaned forward eagerly. 'It an't any different from any other kind of cooking and cleaning, and we both done plenty of that. It only means it would be for more people. What part of the business would you be doing, Mr Scantlebury?'
No smacksman was used to being straight questioned by a young girl, but Betrisse's manner was polite and as straightforward as his own. He surprised himself at not taking exception to it.
'I wasn't thinking of nothing more than putting up the money and buildings at first.'
Annie looked from Betrisse to her landlord.
'At first?' Annie said.
'Mistress Saint John, I an't getting any younger, and the sea an't getting any calmer. Apart from that I reckon, with all the foreign vessels that's coming to fish our waters, it won't be many years before this part of the coast is fished out. I'm looking a few years ahead, for what you might say is a nice little harbour to drop anchor in.'
'You mean that you'd still go out dredging?'
'For a year or two more, then I should become a landsman.'
'It still seems a queer sort of arrangement. Inns needs muscles, men and boys, stables, casks, there's no end of heavy work . . .'
Betrisse cut in. 'Since when haven't we been able to move a cask between us? And in any case, you can hire labour can't you?'
'Oh Bet, don't get carried away. Master Scantlebury, I appreciates you asking . . .'
'Annie, we can do it!'
'Bet!'
Betrisse sat back, but it was obvious that she had not finished.
Annie resumed. 'Mr Scantlebury, as far as I can see it, you — who an't never had no experience of inn-keeping — is asking me — who an't neither — to start up a inn. Since me and Bet came to live here, we have worked at anything that came our way, to get food in our mouths and a roof at night . . .'
'I know that. It's why I asked you.'
'But inn-keeping!'
'Perhaps I shouldn't a called it inn-keeping. It an't inn-keeping in the usual way.
'You know what it's like when it's weather. Vessels can't get out for high seas — vessels with a few passengers aboard. Landsmen like to sleep ashore when they can, and where's there a decent place to stay here? They an't all fishermen who's used to any old hole to curl up in. There's plenty like I am myself — taking it rough as part of the job at sea, but likes a clean and decent bed ashore.'
Betrisse held back. She could see that Annie was tempted.
'What about when you finishes with the fishing then?'
'I should be the labour.' He smiled and flexed his biceps. 'Strong enough for hefting things about.'
Annie smiled back and wagged her head. 'I don't know. You see, Master Scantlebury, we always been used to being our own mistresses.'
'We should still be, Annie. We could take on this job just the same as we took on all the rest. Was you thinking of paying us by the month or by the year?'
'Don't take no notice of her forwardness, Mr Scantlebury. She been like that since she was two.'
'When you been dredging for shellfish as long as I been, you'm used to bartering with oyster-wives, but they'm usually a sight less decent a vision than your daughter. I was thinking, as we was doing business over more than a basket of scallops, we would have a yearly agreement.'
'Would you give us a free hand?' Betrisse asked.
'A free hand?'
'To run the place our way?'
'I don't see why not, so long as it was respectable.'
'We wouldn't run anything that wasn't.' Annie's tone was sharp with this interjection.
'I know that, Mistress Saint John, or I shouldn't a had you under my roof in the first place.'
'Well that's all right then.'
'But . . .' He held out his empty beaker and Annie made a motion to fill it. 'No,' he said, 'I wasn't meaning that.' He paused, choosing his words. 'When we says respectable, I hope we means the same thing.'
For a moment, Annie looked puzzled; then Betrisse spoke up.
'Come straight out, Master Scantlebury. You means the French wine and brandy business?'
Scantlebury started momentarily, then laughed aloud.
'You miss, would do very well in the Excise. The way you takes somebody unawares would startle an admission out of even a man who'd been in the business all his life.'
'Like yourself, Master Scantlebury?'
'Betrisse! You never did know when to stop.'
'That's true,' Betrisse said. 'I'm sorry, Mr Scantlebury.' She grinned at Annie. 'You can't blame me — 'tis the way I been brought up.'
11
LINE OF DESCENT
Towards the end of the decade when Jaen's seventh child was born (a sixth son, George), Baxter took the long ride to Winchester to consult the Law and the Church, and returned with some documents which none of them at Up Teg could read, but which were intended to make Dan and his line eventual masters of Up Teg.
Assurance of Hazelhursts at Up Teg.
Upon his return the old man summoned the family into the kitchen of the main farm.
'Till I be gone on, you all stays on living where you be now. After the Almighty have seed fit to take me, then Dan moves in here. When he passes on, Young Dan'l gets the tenancy.'
Bald statements. Until the Almighty did call him, even when seated, Baxter Hazelhurst was undoubted Master of Up Teg.
A moment's silence. They all knew that he had gone to get the tenancy renewed, but he had never indicated what his intentions were.
'And . . . what do that mean . . . for we then?' Luke spoke slowly, tight-lipped, angrily.
The father replied in a similar, deliberate manner.
'What it means . . . you got a interest in the land. And a roof over your head . . . and so have Martha and they little gels.' 'And what about oldest sons?'
'You an't got none!'
'You knows what I means. You'm quite a one for forebears and descendants, and family name and all that, yet you'm passing over me what's next in line — along with France . . .'
'I don't want the place,' France said.
'I waddn't talking about "the place". Not the house just.'
Baxter pointed the same silencing finger as he had pointed when they were small boys.
'Bide quiet till I finished . . .'
Luke turned his head away from the old man, furious. 'Be damned bide'n quiet, Father.'
Old Baxter fought with his lungs. He would not be defeated by rebellious sons, but what he could not stand up to were the millions of particles of chaff and dust that had infiltrated his lungs over many years. He could not answer Luke for coughing. Luke did not even defer to his father's lungs but pressed on with his outburst.
'I'm the eldest son. If it was France it wouldn't be so bad, but Dan's a younger son.'
'Only two years younger,' Dan said.
'It an't nothing to do with years. There's France and Dick between theece and I.'
Dick too was angry. Having no axe to grind so far as the tenancy of Up Teg was concerned if it went to Luke or France, this new arrangement incensed him. Dan, Master of Up Teg! They were all of them better farmers than he was. Even France with his blimmen ideas about going over to sheep would have been more sense. At least France was level-headed.
None of them had suspected that they might end up with Dan as Master, even though they thought that the place would eventually go to Young Dan'l.
Peter opened his mouth to say something, but Baxter waved him aside, saying, 'There an't no other way of me making sure of Up Teg for the next generation, and so on down, except by getting it handed on to Dan. 'Twadden only me, the Commissioners would have it that way as well, in case any of you lot lived to be a hundred. If it was to a been willed on down through you lot, Young Dan'l could find hisself seventy year old and still not Master.'
There was a shuffling of feet at the extremity of that foolish argument.
France said quietly, 'Same thing could happen if
Dan lives to be a hundred.'
Baxter held up a hand to silence them. 'It's all done and settled. I meant to have it done whilst I still got breath enough to do it.' A fit of dry coughing stopped him, and his statement stopped the rest of them. At once they realized what the years of their father's laboured breathing, his coughing and spitting into the hearth meant. His disease had come as a child comes, small and insignificant, had grown imperceptibly; then hitherto unnoticed signs of full development appeared seemingly overnight.
Suddenly, they realized his mortality.
Saw that you'd have to be a reckless gambler to put your money on his having more than a year or two to go.
Baxter Hazelhurst was a dying man.
And, using the ruthless tactic of the sick of playing on opponents' feelings of guilt, Baxter forced acceptance of his plan to see that the Hazelhursts continued to populate Up Teg and the Newton Clare valley.
He had agreed with the Commissioners that, in return for a change in the tenancy agreement, the Hazelhursts would pay higher rents and a larger percentage of what they produced in tithes. The tenant and master of Up Teg would be responsible for the upkeep of all the buildings, the improvement of the land, drainage, and management of water-meadows, payment of Parish dues and the upkeep of any roads, tracks and foot paths that bordered the tenanted farm. Rent and tithes would be paid together every Lady Day, with a penalty for any delay.
It was a harsh agreement, but no worse than many landowners imposed upon their tenants. When they had taken the land away from the people whose right to it was equal to their own, the landlords took over the whip hand. And with that advantage, the entire burden of responsibility was removed from the owners and placed upon the tenant.
None of The Boys immediately realized the full implication of the new tenancy agreement, and when they did, Luke and Dick began to wonder who had the worse bargain — Dan who was responsible to the Commissioners, or themselves who would have to trust that Dan had enough brains not to ruin them.
With the new agreement, they were forced to behave as a family unit; if they fell out with one another — then they would have to fall in again.
But it wasn't over yet.
Baxter was now down to the details.
'Teg is your mother's home as long as she draws breath — that's understood. If Ed an't settled by then . . . well, the fambly must arrange about that when the time comes.'
Ed spoke: 'You can leave me out of it. I shall be gone.'
Edwin, massive and brawny at twenty-three, had never come to terms with being the young'n of the family, so he felt compelled to prove himself better than all of them. He had become secretive lately, always going off on his own, returning often with — bruises and a puffed eye, sometimes wearing some new noticeable shirt or waistcoat, fashionable, more suited to town.
He would offer no more information that that he had 'been to the fair' at Blackbrook, Wickham or wherever 'fair' meant booths and sideshows; and when Nance berated him for throwing money into the packman's purse and getting himself in with bad company, Baxter would tell her to bide quiet for he was only making a man out of hisself.
Had Nance known more about it, she would have realized that the shiny buttons and silky linings of some of Ed's garments were not tawdry purchases from a cheap-jack. But why would she think otherwise? Ed had very little money of his own.
So, with his reputation for not telling nobody nothing or, to put it as his brothers did, 'close as a bull's arse in August', when he said 'I shall be gone', he got the attention he sought.
'Gone? Gone where?' Baxter demanded.
'Anywhere it takes me.' Dramatically, he took a small drawstring pouch from a pocket, untied it slowly and tipped four bright coins on to the table. A ray of deep-golden setting sun caught them and doubled their value.
'Where d'you get all that?' Baxter's hand made a move towards the coins, but Ed put his own over them then placed them before him in a neat line.
'Prize-fighting.'
Had he said highway robbery, his announcement would not have got such a stunned reception.
Prize-fighting?
Prize-fighting!
'I'm joining a travelling booth in a fortnight.'
Baxter started to his feet: 'No son of mine . . .'
Ed too stood up. Like Baxter's disease, he had leaped from unimportance to significance.
'What you going to do, tie me to the table-leg like you used to?'
'I shall die before I let any son of mine drag the Hazelhurst name in the mire.'
Ed smiled, satisfied that the playing out of the scene had gone better than he had ever imagined it would. None of them had been able to place four gold coins in a row. He had proved himself better than all of them put together.
And still it was not over.
'Theece needn't worry about dying, Father. I shall be gone before then. Prize-fighting's a decent enough way of earning your bread so don't you go talking about mire and that. I shan't use my old name — it an't much of a name for a fighter. Here.' He took off his jacket and shirt.
'Lord!' said Nance. 'Go and wash yourself, you looks like that heathen who used to show hisself at fairs for a farden.'
'That won't never wash off. That's tattau. 'Tis under my skin.'
The blue and purplish patterns on his back and arms showed up well against his white skin. His brothers gathered around him to look. On the biceps muscles of his arms were crude representations of a sturdy tree which were clear to all; what nobody in the room could understand were the words printed across his back.
'What in God's name do that say, Boy!'
'It says "Lord Oak", which is my name from now.'
'And well it might be,' said the defeated father. 'For, mark my words — he a finish up dangling from "Lord Sycamore" along with the rest of the villains that travels along of fairs, and I shouldn't want nobody to hear no mention of the Hazelhurst name on no gallows hill. I only hopes you got the decency to take yourself off where nobody knows you.'
'Never fear, Father. Lord Oak's next fight will be at the Goose Fair in Nottingham, where there's that much gold in prize-money that I shall need to buy a iron-bound chest and a pistol.'
He achieved his moment of glory with his brothers.
12
The family gathering about the new tenancy was the first occasion on which Hanna was with her entire family. Not that she considered that she was with her family — her family was 'back home'.
Sitting close to Vinnie in the crowded room, when the men were having their loud argument, Hanna watched them with solemn detachment.
'Have a nice plum, Hanny.'
Vinnie polished one and held it up like a prize. Hanna took the plum and sucked at it. She made the gesture because Vinnie — Aunt Vinnie — remember to say 'Aunt' — because Aunt Vinnie would look sorry for doing the wrong thing — like when Hanna had said she didn't like being called Goldy. Then, Aunt Vinnie had started to say 'Hanny'. Only John, back home, ever called her Hanny, but there was nothing that Hanna could do about it, she could not tell Aunt Vinnie again. Hanna put up with hearing Aunt Vinnie keep using John's special name and bringing him to mind.
John and Hanny. Hanny and John. She would be John's wife when she was a woman. Hanny Toose.
Aunt was the only one of Them whom Hanna did not want to be dead — Vinnie and Fancy.
Vinnie patted the poor little thing's hand. 'I dare say you an't used to so many people all at once.'
Hanna gave a nod that could be taken either way. Grandmother Bella had taken her to harvest suppers, and they had harvests in their own barn, but the only time before this that she had been in a large gathering of people in a house, was when she and Jude went to Black Fair and they had stayed with the Warrens. There had been parties then, with people crowding one another, all squashed together, all talking and noisy and jolly and laughing. There had been such excitement in the Warren's house.
They were all squashed here too — and crowded, and noisy but ther
e wasn't nobody looking pleased. Hanna looked at her mother. Jaen was smiling. Always smiling, always strange and smiling. Hanna often wanted to scream at her, 'What you smiling for, Jaen?' But she never did, for since They had made her come and live here, Hanna spoke only when necessary.
'Sullen little maid.'
'Answer me when I speaks to you, Gel!'
'Be cust if I knowed such a long face in a chile.'
There wasn't nobody to say anything to, nor nobody you wanted to hear.
Sometimes Hanna wanted to hit Jaen hard to stop her smiling. She felt a kind of excitement when she thought of it. Hit her and keep on and on and on. Hitting her. But there was something worse about Jaen than her queer smile. That was those times when she was being her ordinary self. When she came back from her dreaminess, when she stopped talking as though she was thinking about something else. When she was like that, Hanna could not stand the torment, because then you could see that she and Jude were sisters.
It made her insides burn and ache so much that she had to go somewhere where she could not see Jaen.
Once she tried to run back home, run far along Ham Lane, but she went the wrong way and was fetched back. 'He' had put a switch across the back of her legs.
She never tried again. Not because of the sting of the switch, but because she had never been struck before and it made her hot with shame. She would never again let Him do that to her, treat her like you treated animals that wouldn't go into their pen, or like a spit-dog that wouldn't tread. 'Their' children never seemed to mind much when he switched them, just jerked their buttocks together and said 'aw'. Then, they was a bit like little animals. Except the baby. The baby was nice.
Months ago, when Hanna had first arrived back upon the Up Teg scene, Vinnie had told Peter, 'There's times when I looks at her little face, and it fair makes my heart bleed.'
'You always was soft. I 'members when Jaen first come here, you was just as soft with her as you are with that one.'
'I can't stand to see a child so pining and miserable. You'm right, her look minds me of Jaen — when Dan first brought her to Teg. They ought to let her go back.'