Jaen

by Betty Burton

  Silent Grandmother. Silent Rosie. Silent Hanna.

  And when she is there, Jude's silence is worse than any of the others'.

  Jude works, gives orders, makes decisions, runs the holding and the house as she has done for years. When Jude speaks she sounds normal enough, for her silence is a silence of her spirit. Jude's is the silence of the newly-dead, when the body is still turgid and warm but the soul has flown.

  So, even if Hanna could forgive Jude for abandoning her to the Hazelhursts and try to speak to her, there is no one inside Jude.

  Soon John will come into the house.

  A man now, John.

  When she lived here before, he was a boy; they played together, worked and told one another secrets.

  Twenty now, John. With a lovely black beard that Hanna finds so dear to her. During the time that Hanna has not lived here, Jude has taught him to read. From the child who came to live on the farm in the way a stray animal would come, he has become part of their tiny society, part of Croud Cantle and the family.

  Soon he will come into the kitchen, bringing with him the noisy clumping of his boots, the hust-hust sound made by the rubbing of the rough cloth of his breeches as his thighs move, and the smell of animal and grass and himself, and the sage and thyme that he has been trimming back.

  He will pull a wooden stool to the table and sniff with pleasure at whatever Hanna or Rosie puts before him, tearing his bread with his strong, earth-blackened fingers, perhaps stirring in a sprig of one of the herbs that he has become so knowledgeable about.

  'Taste that, Hanny.'

  She will take a sup from his spoon.

  'What do you think on it, Hanny? 'Tis that cross of sage that have come out with mottled leaves. Do you like it, Hanny? Do you think I should grow it on?'

  John Toose will bring life into the silent kitchen.

  Jude is away. Hanna knows, with a certain part of her mind, where Jude has gone, but she will not allow herself to think of it.

  Rosie looks at Hanna. She smiles and pushes up the corners of her mouth to indicate that Hanna must smile too, and when Hanna does not immediately respond, Rosie pretends a moue of disappointment. Hanna responds.

  There are times when Hanna believes that Rosie knows what she is thinking, especially when the thoughts are being wretched, when the thoughts conjure up sound. The terrible crack of a dead branch breaking.

  Then, Rosie's eyes glisten. She shakes her head as if to deny what Hanna is seeing, then, with her firm arms about Hanna's tense young shoulders, sits and rocks her. It is Jude that Hanna really wants. Whenever Jude makes a move towards her, the image of Jude leading the donkeys away . . . the memory of Jude forcing Hanna's arms from her neck . . . the irrational blame she lays upon Jude . . . that it was Jude who had abandoned her, always compels Hanna to be distant. The image of Jude and the empty donkey is vivid still.

  Slowly, over the weeks, the nightmare comes less often, but when it does come . . .

  'I made a pact to be a good wife and mother, Ju, but I never kept my part.'

  'I'm Hanna. Not Jude. I'm Hanna.'

  'Oh . . . a course you are. Hanna. Yes. You looked just like Ju standing there. Hanna. A course.'

  The crack! as the dead branch breaks again.

  Grandmother Bella is now an old lady with hair the colour of heavy cream. She must be helped to move, and her mouth and an eye look as though they will slide from her face. Sometimes though, coming back momentarily from wherever she lives, into the real world, Grandmother will look up sharply at Hanna, and Hanna will catch her breath at seeing a glimpse of the straight-backed red-haired Grandmother who used to call her 'Lovey' and who, with Jude, had been mother and father to her for eight years.

  Now that Hanna is in her sixteenth year, anyone can see that she only superficially resembles Jude, only superficially looks like Jaen. Jude's face is intelligent and her eyes are always looking inside her own mind or out at something distant in space or time. Jaen was born pretty, with delicate features and an upward curve at the corners of her mouth that gave her the trompe-l'oeil smile that fooled everyone — everyone except Jude and, later, except Hanna too.

  Hanna looks like Bella — Bella Estover all over again. And, as Bella did, Hanna will eventually deal with whatever nest of writhing snakes she encounters. Though not as her mother did, by laying bracken over the snakes, leaving them to breed and then to be fed by her emotions.

  And, as Bella did, she will live her life with no fancifulness. Not like Jude with her dreams and passion for change. Like Bella, she will settle her mind on practical matters. She has never had any understanding of what Jude used to tell her of the wildness of the two sisters when they were girls, nor what they saw in dreams and stories, why Jude was always reading things, and wanting others to read also.

  Hanna, old head on young shoulders, has seen where that leads.

  When Hanna was quite young, Bella would take her to look at the rows of preserves, the wrapped cheeses, the well-bunched rhubarb and other medicinal stems and roots, and cooking herbs ready for market. Bella had filled her mind with the business of producing. Neatness. Order. No room for fancies.

  Look at that, Lovey, an't that worth everything?

  Rosie and Grandmother Bella have made their slow journey out of the room.

  In the kitchen, only the sound of the soft plopping broth in the iron skillet hanging over the glowing logs.

  Broth plopping in the quiet kitchen.

  'Ju, give the pot a stir.'

  'Yes (Cannot say 'Mother'). . .'

  'Yes (Must not say 'Jaen' . . . He has forbidden it).'

  'Yes, I have seen to it.'

  'Do you remember, Ju, that time when you was stirring the broth and the soot fell? And you beat it in like it was powdered herbs. And Dicken said that he liked soup that had a well-smoked bit of bacon boiled into it. Oh Ju, you was terrible good for keeping a straight face and me bursting to laugh.'

  I am not 'Jude'. I am not 'Jude'. I am not 'Jude'.

  'Oh Ju. I'm glad when you comes to see me. I been that lonely out here.'

  I am not-Jude-not-Jude-not-Jude.

  Why did you marry Him?

  Why did you come to this awful place?

  Why didn't you stop at home with Grandmother and Jude?

  I could a been born there. And we could a lived together the four of us.

  We could a run our farm together — without Dicken or any of the hired men . . . except John.

  You never wanted Him. Only Jude you ever wanted. If you had stopped home and let me be born there, you would never a had all they boys. Your legs wouldn't never a swelled up . . .

  The dead branch breaks with a loud Crack!

  Into the silence falls men's voices telling one another 'see thee in the marn'n.'

  John comes in.

  4

  WICKHAM TO WINCHESTER

  Betrisse was up at her usual early hour, and by the time the coach was ready, she had become fidgety with waiting. Dormant doubts that had germinated during the night, now grew cotyledons as she watched the comings and goings in Wickham's wide square.

  Annie's questions, which at the time Bertrisse had brushed aside — about whether the lawyers would be willing to deal with a young spinster, and would they even be allowed to draw up documents — began to put down roots of doubt. Could she manage? What should she do if they turned her away? It would be no good telling lawyers that it was quite unfair!

  A local solicitor had made out notes of authority which Ted and Annie and Ed had signed or marked, and which were intended to give Betrisse carte blanche in any decision she might make on their behalf . . . but local solicitors were — local solicitors. It might be entirely different in Winchester.

  She walks out through the front door of the King's head, over which is painted a notice: MANNERS MAKYTH MAN — Bishop William of Wykeham.' She can read it, but is puzzled.

  As she walks past the grand new houses that she now covets as she sees them, she thinks o
f 'manners', and wonders, as she often does, why she lets herself think on such matters. Where do the thoughts spring from? She has enough on her mind without wondering why old bishops said such foolish things.

  Manners. She has learned from Captain Jetsam how to be mannerly, but it is hard gold that is enabling her to carry out the Scantlebury/Saint John/Lord Oak plan.

  By the time she has seen all she wants to see of Wickham, the coach is ready and they are away.

  Milestones — Droxford Four Miles. Corhampton Three Miles. Cantle Three Miles. Blackbrook Seven Miles. Winchester Fifteen Miles.

  Signposts — Hambledon. Winchester. Warnford. West Meon. East Meon. Alresford. Motte. Blackbrook. Newton Clare.

  Newton Clare. Newton Clare. The horses' hooves beat out messages. Luke is gone. Newton Clare. Luke is gone. Newton Clare.

  Then suddenly, the coach reaches a crest and there it is, Winchester!

  Breathtaking to see if from the top of the downs.

  The coachman draws in the horses, for he knows that passengers who have never travelled here before and may never do so again, always want a moment to capture the scene to take back home to those who will never have the opportunity of visiting the old capital of England. Such consideration of his passengers is usually worth a coin or two, or a pot of ale and a pie at the coach-house.

  Winchester, the vast city that Betrisse thinks that she can manage on her own.

  Red brick and grey stone. Grey roofs and red roofs. Hundreds of roofs climbing out of the valley or sliding down into it. Spring sun shows up the newly-leaved trees and the fresh-green overlay of the chalk-hills. Hampshire abounds in valleys. Valleys set in green downlands with a stream running through, a huddle of houses, a church, a few tracks and lanes. Newton Clare is just such, bounded by hills on three sides with the Hammet its life-giving vein.

  But this!

  She has never visualized such a city. Great buildings, perhaps they are the colleges she has heard of, but had never thought to be so large. Spires everywhere, how many people are there here to need so many churches? It is a Newton Clare of great proportion:. not with a stream, but a wide river flowing through; the river is not forded, but has bridges built over it; not with a church, but a great pile of a cathedral squatting at its heart. Its stone looks warm and yellow; its grey slated roof gleams in the spring sun.

  How many people!

  The coachman has opened the door so that they may stretch their legs. Betrisse walks to where the land falls away.

  A feeling of déjà vu.

  She is at Vinnie's wedding feast. Dressed in a yellow shift with yellow flowers upon it. Her Granfer lifts her up on to the table and her perspective changes. Looking down upon everything and everyone in the barn, the small girl is assaulted by unwomanliness. None of you is better than me!

  Lord Oak, her Uncle Ed, had first brought her 'unwomanliness' to her notice for her to speculate upon.

  'Why an't a handsome girl like you never got married?'

  'Would you enter a one-sided contest with your hands tied and your legs fettered?'

  He had roared with laughter.

  'You got me there, Gel! Still the same as you was. "It an't fair!" I remember you shouting it, then you hit him with the platter.'

  She smiled. She had never regretted that moment.

  'I hit him with the platter after I told him it wasn't fair.'

  'I'll tell you summit. If it wa'nt for all this . . .' he slowly looked over her bosom, and shaped his hand in an imaginary caress of her hips, 'well then 1 might of wondered if you should be wearing flap-front breeches.'

  'And have all my brains bunched up behind that flap, like men do?'

  He had shaken his head with pleasure at her quick wit and the authority of her Snows-greatly voice.

  'Ah Gel, Gel. If you was a man, and you did keep your amount of brains bunched up there, then the prominence of it'd be a permanent embarrassment to you, and you'd a had to keep your hands held before you in decent company. But you got to admit that 'tis a might unwomanly to be "businessing" the way you do.'

  'What businessing?'

  'Man's businessing.'

  'Man's business! You think that running "Scantlebury's" is not womanly?'

  Although he had not known the adult Betrisse for very long, he recognized the look she gave him, and saw that he was again running into the quicksand of her quick mind. But he was smitten by the glorious woman that had grown from the little maid who had picked stones before the importance of his plough and himself, when she was four and he twelve. And, as she ticked off on her fingers the list of work which was involved in the running of an inn such as Scantlebury's, he could see where she was leading.

  '. . . and what did Annie do back there but cook and clean and make a farthing buy a pennyworth. And Martha . . . milking and butter-making, sewing, spinning, carrying water, earthing the midden pit. And your mother? What about her?' Stabbing at him with her forefinger.

  'All you lot, one after the other. A Clean and Decent Bed for the Night, Sir? Supper and breakfast for you and your six sons, Master Baxter Sir? Rooms for your harvesters, Your Honour? Believe me, there wasn't one job on that farm that Annie and me — I — could not have done. And made a lot less noise about. Running a place like Scantlebury's man's business? There is not a job in the land that a woman might not do better than a man!'

  Genially he applauded, then said gleefully, 'You couldn't a pole-vaulted Th'ammet like us men though.'

  Flicking away male immaturity. 'Of course not! We should never waste ourselves on such foolishness. There's a ford for crossing the Hammet. Pole-vaulting. Can you imagine any grown woman being so nonsensical as to try to outdo another grown woman in getting over a river in the most difficult way anybody can think of? Hooking yourselves over on a bit of a stick! Pht! Women'd make a bridge or a sensible raft and row ourselves over six at a time . . . and we should have had sense enough to keep our backsides dry!'

  Until she met Ed, she had never met a man to whom she would have given one moment's thought in the one-sided contest. He was the kind of man she would have given two moments of thought. But he was Luke's brother. Uncle Ed.

  As Lord Oak he was more than her kith and kin. He was her kind. As they were now, and she unmarried, Betrisse was, in every respect other than body, the heavier weight. Once married though, he would have Church on his side, Law and Custom in his corner. Then she would have cried out, 'It an't fair! It an't fair!' until she was known for a scold and a shrew.

  As Annie had once looked upon the glitterish sea at Emworthy and formed a dream, an ideal, so then, as the coach winds its way down into the heart of Winchester, does Betrisse hold the gleaming city to her.

  The thongs that hold her to Emworthy — ties that she has always supposed and wanted to be unbreakable — stretch. If she pulls, she will see that they have become as fragile as spiderweb, and they will release her.

  And she can release Emworthy.

  Annie is happy with Ted and fulfilled by young Leonard. Annie too is a woman inside the laws of the land but outside the rules of the Church. She is not a bigamist, but she is a woman to cast stones at. If Betrisse is able to have documents drawn up in the name of Saint John and without reference to the names Hazelhurst or Scantlebury, then Annie and young Leonard may have some security against men who could claim to own her. Not, Betrisse is sure, that Ted will ever do anything but continue to admire her and treat Annie as beloved wife, but security for a woman is as fragile as a cobweb in a field of bullocks.

  Scantlebury's is established and will remain a solid 'Clean and Decent' place keeping them in security and comfort. If it expands it will be Leonard who will do it. Ted and Annie are of an age when, in more common circumstances, they might be dandling their grandson rather than a first son.

  The transformation from small inn to Scantlebury's was an idea of youth. Without Betrisse, the gadfly sons and daughters of Big House people will, in their tethered freedom between childhood and marriage, settle o
n some other capricious idea, Scottish mountains perhaps, the Isle of Wight, lakes or foreign places with fountains and public marble eroticism — anywhere that has not been fly-blown by their elders.

  So, as the coach rattles over the street cobbles of Winchester, the web-thin tie stretches.

  This is where I belong.

  She does not know what she will do here, but unwomanly ambition excites her. Call it what you will, self-confidence or arrogance, determination or stubbornness, the sense of her own worth that she has felt since childhood has never left her; the episode at Vinnie's wedding when Baxter had lifted her on to the table, and that other, at the last family gathering when her childlike belief in herself had been affronted, that sense of her own ability surges up again as the coach wends its way on the final mile or so of its journey.

  I could do anything if I lived here.

  She carried no specific images of herself except one of herself organizing, influencing, making changes. Why should Ed think that this side of her nature was unwomanly? He accepted her with a certain pride — 'You'm the very little devil, Gel.'

  Why unwomanly to want to do some interesting thing? Why did men like Ed think that women were — or should be — content to have the blanket of domesticity thrown over them?

  Yes . . . it was like that . . . smothered beneath a dull blanket — like Martha had been. Luke has gone. Has Martha's blanket gone? Even when she was a little stone-picker in the fields, Betrisse had wanted to do Ed's work, more interesting work, ploughing.

  She smiles to herself at the sudden recall of herself as a small child and Ed as a youth. 'Ploughin's boys' work. Maids an't no good at making straight furrows.' She had to leap high so as to reach his swaggering rear with her hard, bare toes, but her very fury charged her muscles and manifested itself in a dog-leg furrow which dignity forced the superior young Ed to ignore.