Jaen

by Betty Burton

  Yet she had believed him — that girls could not make straight furrows — believed him because he was a boy, and he said that it was so. And the kick he received was because she had believed it true: maids would never be able to plough a straight furrow, and so were condemned to pick stones for ever. She had been desperate to take the plough and show him that she was as good as he was.

  Why was it unwomanly to want to do that?

  Of all the men that she can think of, from Luke and his brothers, to Ted Scantlebury and 'Captain Jetsam', she can think of none who is her equal. And of all the women, from her mother and the aunts of Up Teg to the tough oyster-women and Annie, she can think of none less able than their men.

  Womanly!

  Why did I not think of that before? Nothing to be ashamed of.

  Womanly, to be self-sufficient and capable, like Annie.

  Yet . . . ?

  Starting with nothing, Annie has made a better life than she would ever have had at Up Teg. She lives with the man she loves, has the child she wanted. Yet . . . she is owned still by France Hazelhurst.

  Ted owns his share in Scantlebury's, Bertrisse owns his. Yet . . . France Hazelhurst owns Annie's. Betrisse's stomach clenches at the unfairness.

  As those thoughts worked on one level of consciousness, she looked eagerly at the closely-built streets thronging with people.

  The thought 'this is where I belong' was fed by small crumbs — the great number and variety of shops, houses with stepped up entrances, stone pillars, the way that passers-by saw nothing remarkable in the startling and fashionable vehicles that were on every street.

  She could scarcely wait to walk in those streets. So, as soon as she had secured her room and her bag was taken up, she went out.

  The sun had settled everywhere, fresh as dew, making every direction she might take inviting. As the lawyer she was to visit on the following day had premises in High Street, she went in that direction, so that she would not on the morrow go out unprepared.

  The street was wide and seemingly endless compared with Emworthy's High Street. She found the lawyer's premises, the impressiveness of which gave her a moment of apprehension, but no . . . to deal with such men would be a test of her ability as a woman whose future lay in a city. At the heart of the street, the butter-cross. Not as Emworthy's cross, a simple stone, but elaborately carved and looking like a spire that had fallen from some well-endowed church. She laid a hand upon its grey stone as though it were a talisman.

  A solemn bell began to toll out the hour, then was mimicked in all parts of the city by jolly carillons of the less dignified timekeepers. Scores of chimes from every direction. She was impressed by the extravagance of such a surfeit of information on what hour of day it was. Yet people continued about their affairs apparently not hearing, at least, not listening, accepting as normal the multiplicity of bell-towers.

  She turned down a narrow alleyway and found herself in the shadow of the great cathedral. It was awesome viewed from the base of its walls. The stones that had appeared light and yellow from the hill outside the city, now seemed to have been thrust up with force from the earth. Do people kneel and pray in such a place? Yes, if God is anywhere he would be in a place like this. Betrisse kneels for a minute and lets her thoughts rise like steam into the vault high above. Condensed, there comes back a droplet of an idea. Suddenly she knows what she will do, and that she can succeed.

  The vast windows that had appeared mud and slime coloured from without burst into colour as occasionally Betrisse's dreams do. Upon awakening from her coloured dreams, she has always felt that her mind and body were like a pan of milk at the point of boil. The bright sun throws the stained-glass in patchwork upon the grey flagstones. She tries to put her hand in the path of the rays to capture a piece of vivid blue. A black-frocked and buttoned man frowns and she leaves showing more dignity than she feels. She would like to unpin her hair and stand where rough on-shore winds can send it streaming free.

  With the fizzing mood growing, she wandered the streets for hours. At one gate she stopped so long that a keeper dressed like a beadle asked her what she wanted.

  'What is this place?'

  'This is The College.' His words implied, 'Is it not obviously The College? Hub of the universe.'

  The college. Surrounding a wide courtyard, yellow stone buildings, windowed, niched and statued.

  To think that there were men who went daily in and out of that place and probably thought no more of it than she did of Scantlebury's. Yet only to walk through the gate must confer status.

  On her way back to the coaching house, she stopped at another gate. Another beadle-like attendant.

  'This is the castle.'

  A universe with two hubs. Three, for surely the man who had frowned when she had tried to take hold of the glory of the window there, would assert that the cathedral was at the centre, had always been, would always be.

  A castle? She had never known that there was a castle here. Had lived her childhood not many miles distant but had never heard there was a castle close by. Again doubt that she would be a match for city people. People who went about their business when a hundred bells in a score of towers chimed, whose daily life was conducted in the shadow of a cathedral, a castle, and colleges whose gates were protected by men in pompous costume.

  After dark, the city still continued in motion. She lay awake a long time that night listening, and had never felt so vulnerable, yet strong, so confident yet doubting. A runaway child of ignorant farmers, a work-scavenging girl, an oyster-drudge who happened to have learned a thing or two about putting travellers up for the night. A woman. A woman without a man, to have aspirations that men think unwomanly. Even Ed — the great Lord Oak — has said he could not have managed without his friend and aide to help and advise.

  Next morning, however, her faith in her own ability was restored. The lawyer, accepting her credentials and the worth of the partnership, set in motion the sale of certain lands, rights and properties known as Up Teg in the village of Newton Clare, Hampshire.

  She thought, why, it is all a scheme to put the likes of me in fear of agreements. Parties of the First Part is Them, and Parties of the Second Part is us, hereinafter is from now on, and when you have sorted our Rights and Dues, it is all quite clear. So with her faith in herself entirely whole again, she asked the lawyer, 'Can you tell me anything of coffee-houses?' His superior manner and way of looking down his nose in no way perturbed Betrisse; it was little different from Annie's natural manner.

  'Can you tell me of any central premises likely to be suitable?'

  In the manner of his profession, where it is never wise to admit plainly, or immediately, that it was a fact that the weather is set fair, he did admit that, he, ah . . . might be aware of . . . ah . . . certain premises. And, if she would return to his offices later . . .

  As it was still early in the day, she changed from her new full skirt and fine bodice and jacket, to a plain skirt and top and strong boots. On the previous day, she had come to a river and a path leading to a hill which had aroused her interest.

  The college gate-keeper had said it was Saint Catherine's, a bare mound of downland with tufts of trees on its summit and patches of gorse and juniper and white patches of bare chalk over its surface. On reaching a point on its lower slopes, she sat where she could look across the city, over the colleges, the flat-towered cathedral, spired churches, to the castle.

  It was quiet here, where city-dwellers came only when travelling. She often sat alone in the open air at Emworthy. It was an odd thing for a young girl to do, but Betrisse Saint John, in many ways, was a trifle odd. Why else would she be sitting, wondering where in that mass of brick and timber and stone will she eventually settle. For by this time, she has no doubts that this place will be her home from now on. When she returns to Emworthy, it will be only to tell Annie what she has discovered here.

  I feel like I have found my home, Annie. I reckon it must be the most interesting place in
the world.

  Annie would nod and say something like, well, you only got so many years Bet, just make sure you don't waste none. Annie would not ask whether it was suitable that Betrisse should think of leaving to live in such a place, if it could be done, or was wise, or if it was like a straight furrow and could not be done by a woman. Annie's attitude had always been, get hold of the plough handles and see if you can.

  She slowly walks downhill and sits on a fallen tree and watches a kingfisher flashing from willow-stem to river-bed in an iridescent streak.

  It's years since I saw a kingfisher.

  The times we children tried to down them with pebbles for fishing in our part of Th'ammet. We always missed.

  Through the dark barrier which has cut her off from any bright memory of her early years at Up Teg, gleams that one of the village children hooking-off from their tedious clattering at crows or stone-picking, to idle beside Th'ammet.

  Idling now, she lies back and looks at the spring-blue sky. She has crushed water-mint underfoot and now the warmth of the sun brings out the strong aroma. At Emworthy there is always the smell of the sea, the stranded, rotting weed, the strong stench of mud which is revealed each time the sea retreats, the smell of decomposing fragments in discarded shells. Rough, uncomfortable smells, exciting to encounter, but quite unlike the spring-meadow perfume of crushed water-mint.

  Back. Back, back and over the dark barrier.

  Kit will be a woman. So will Rachael. Kit might be a married woman. I have four sisters. Laurie would have been a young man.

  It is like stepping into a dream landscape, familiar yet strange, and she finds that it is not easy to stay there for long. She draws herself back to think of her future in Winchester.

  It was the droplet of condensed thought in the cathedral that started her thinking of the coffeehouses of London and Bath. Information implanted by several visitors to Scantlebury's had begun to germinate into an idea, and now that she had successfully done what had been entrusted to her by the Enworthy partnership, and her mind was clear of that business, she could allow herself to think of coffee-houses.

  The more she thought, the more stimulated she became at what she might do.

  This city was the most important in the county and still retained status as the ancient capital of England; it was full of colleges and public offices . . . teeming with the kind of men who frequented coffee-houses . . . To open up such a place would need only premises and the knowledge that she already possessed. It would be a much simpler scheme, far easier to run in every way than Scantlebury's. No rooms to clean, no beds to turn, linen to launder, no fetching and carrying, or the roasting of meats and brewing of ale.

  In her mind's eye, she saw the place. And from that picture an idea exploded upon her. Not a coffeehouse . . . yes that too perhaps . . . but another establishment, a place where women might meet and be at ease with one another in the way of men.

  How fine to open a place where women might sit with other women, respectably, as she and Annie and the oyster-women used to do, at ease, confiding in one another their ability to make a better job of the world than their menfolk had. Just as she remembered groups of women at harvest time, exchanging irreverent opinions. Rough men had their ale-houses, gentlemen had their coffee-houses. There was probably nowhere in a city where women might gather as they did in dairies, or on field-edges or shorelines.

  She wishes Annie was here so that she could test her ideas against Annie's commonsense.

  Back in the High Street, she sees that the people who took no notice of the city full of the sound of bells were now standing about as though a parade was coming. Betrisse stopped too, beside a woman with two large market baskets.

  'Always seem to have a good day for it. It's queer, an't it?'

  'What is it? Is it a parade?'

  'The Seshins,' the basket-woman announced with pride, as though Seshins were hers, whatever they were.

  'What are they?'

  'The Spring Seshins. The Assizes. Here they come.'

  Like the rest of those lining the street, Betrisse strains her neck to see.

  Led by a menial in lordly regalia, came the parade of Assize judges and officials. Whitely wigged, costly gowned, stiffly frilled and lace-cuffed, the Quarterly judgement on Hampshire's serious offenders paraded before the inhabitants of Winchester its bleak authority.

  'An't you never bin to the Seshins? Oh, if you'm a stranger, you ought to go. It's the best show next to the fair. I never misses, not if I can help it. It's the one time I gets a woman in to help me (with the pies you know I makes the best pies in Winchester) but when it's the Seshins I gets a woman in to cut up the meat and that, so I can be free to go.'

  By the time she left the basket-woman, Betrisse had much information about the Assize Courts, and decided that she would indeed like to see a great judge on his throne, with the barristers and the jury; so the next morning she was, as told by her adviser, outside the courts well before they opened.

  Her new acquaintance was already there, apparently well-provided for the occasion with bread and a jug of something.

  'You come then. There's a few murders.'

  'Oh!' Betrisse had not expected to observe such a dramatic event.

  'The one today, he says she slipped and fell. I don't reckon she did.'

  'Why's that?'

  'Well . . . they always do. You can't tell what happens really. If a man clouts his wife or a maid with a stick and there an't nobody else there, and it cracks her skull, and he says she caught her foot in her skirt-hem and fell . . . well.' She opens her hands to demonstrate the obviousness of her reasoning.

  The public gallery seats were cramped and hard, but there were plenty of people willing to sit upon them. The public seeing justice seen to be done, but in fact satisfying a desire for a good drama, and if in luck the ultimate denouement of the black cap and the splendid idea of a legitimate violent, public death.

  Betrisse was soon caught up in the pageantry of an Assize court in session and thought that she might spend a whole morning here. Some boring defendants of mundane offences were despatched quickly — at least as quickly as the ponderous system allowed; then the public gallery shuffled its feet and readjusted its buttocks.

  'This should be the one what done his wife in.'

  The circuit judge composed himself upon his throne, flanked by the Lord Lieutenant and various others who never found themselves in any other position in any court, except when seated upon the Magisterial Bench or in the Jury Box. The Sirs, Hons, Barts, MPs and JPs of Hampshire.

  The court falls silent.

  A name distorted by echo rings out.

  Betrisse's sinews shrink; and she shivers.

  The basket-woman nudges, believing that this young woman is thrilled at her first sight of a murderer, even if he has been charged with Manslaughter.

  But it is the name that causes Betrisse's thighs to tighten, heat to spread over her head and shoulders.

  'Call Daniel Hazelhurst.'

  And even before the tall, broad, manacled figure appears in court and is led to the dock, Betrisse knows that the name is no coincidence of baptism.

  The coincidence is in the time that she has chosen to visit Winchester, the day that she has laid aside to watch an Assize Court in session.

  As she draws in her breath, so does another woman at the far end of a row, the front row, as close to the well of the court as one can sit.

  It is a face that is vaguely familiar . . . connected in a way with Back There . . . yet not one belonging to any of the servants so far as she can remember . . . nor any of the women who came in at harvest, nor any of the occasional dairy-maids. She tries to place the woman.

  As the accused man entered, the woman stiffened and leaned slightly forward. There was a man with her, older than she, probably about thirty years old. He had an intelligent, generous expression, not handsome, but the kind of looks that Betrisse found attractive in a man, a man who would be passionate but not forcef
ul, and for a moment, when he covered the woman's hand resting upon her knee with his own, Bertrisse would have liked to be the woman. But only to receive so sensitive a touch from such a man.

  The woman was full of anguish.

  Betrisse looked at her again and again as she stared at the man in the dock. Then Betrisse remembered. Back behind the dark barrier . . .

  My sister Ju always said . . . When me and Ju was little . . .

  Her Aunt Jaen's voice returned. Aunt Jaen's sister . . . Ju. She used to visit Jaen in the little cottage next to Annie's. Yes . . . it was she of course who had brought up Jaen's little girl, whose name escaped her.

  Annie used to say that the whole of life was made up of coincidences. 'You can't meet somebody in the street without it an't a long line of coincidences that got you there at the same time.' And so it had brought Betrisse, right into the drama where members of her own family were centre stage.

  The charge was not Murder, but Manslaughter. As Betrisse remembered her aunt, she was pretty with sad eyes and a lovely smile. Manslaughter. She had had lovely reddy-gold hair in pretty curls that sprang from beneath her cap, hair which the little Betrisse had wished for.

  Manslaughter? The word was chilling in its implication.

  Impossible to connect that word, let alone the act, with the dainty Aunt Jaen. It was hers and the uncle in the dock's baby who should have had the seal which Betrisse wore as a pendant beneath her bodice.

  Never once did the Uncle raise his eyes towards his wife's sister; even so he must have felt her emotional presence. Daniel Hazelhurst, the woman, Bertrisse, all linked to the victim of Manslaughter, yet isolated from one another — even the man with the quiet passionate nature was isolated because the woman appeared not to be aware of anything except the man who stood accused of killing her sister.

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