The Clouded Hills

by Brenda Jagger

  Feeling the tight agony of Hannah’s nerves, I said, ‘It has all gone very well.’

  ‘Oh, I do hope so.’

  ‘Of course it has,’ Elinor trilled, and, getting to her feet, began a dancing, twirling promenade around the room, her skirts flying so close to the objets d’art so perfectly displayed on their low tables that I painfully held my breath. ‘Of course it has – of course – it’s as good as done He just wanted to see if you matched his statues and his vases, and how best to place you – an inch to the left, an inch to the right. Well, let’s give him something to think about.’ And as she came to a halt by the mantelpiece, her wicked hand shot out and set the black basalt urns quite roughly askew.

  ‘Stop her,’ Hannah said desperately, too horrified to move, and, jumping up, knowing how destructive her mischief could be, I slapped Elinor hard across the arm and sent her back giggling to her place.

  ‘Put them back,’ Hannah said. ‘Put them straight. Please.’

  But somehow I couldn’t get it right.

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh – I can’t do it. Is that it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh – heaven help us, there’s somebody coming.’

  And the door opened, bringing Crispin Aycliffe to my side.

  ‘Allow me,’ he said. ‘Oh no, don’t be alarmed – my father is not directly behind me. He is still at the table with your husband pretending he don’t care for the port, so we have ample time. Now then, I have often heard him say four inches from the edge of the mantel shelf, four inches from the Meissen bowls – so, how does that seem? Is that it?’

  ‘I think so. I think it will do.’

  ‘Yes – although I cannot suppose it will do for him. But don’t be concerned for that. It is fairly safe to assume that when a man rearranges his vases as much as my father does, he enjoys it, so you have actually afforded him a pleasure. Will you take a little more coffee or tea? I was told to entertain you, and you must really give me the chance to be obedient.’

  ‘No, nothing more, thank you,’ Hannah said, her stomach too cramped with anxiety, I thought, to cope even with tea.

  But Elinor, still mischievous and giddy, accepted as eagerly as if he had promised her a pearl in the bottom of her cup and, stirring in her sugar, said, once again indiscreetly, ‘Was that your mother in the dining-room – the portrait, I mean? She must have been a very lovely lady.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say she was lovely,’ he answered, his face completely without expression. ‘Not a bit of it. That likeness was taken long ago, before this malady of the nerves you will have heard about. She became very wasted, very spoiled – not lovely at all the last time I saw her.’

  His light, sardonic eyes moved slowly from Elinor’s face to Hannah’s and remained there.

  ‘How terrible,’ Hannah said, her voice barely under control, knowing how pointedly she had been reminded that, in his view, his father had not waited overlong to find a replacement.

  And without meaning to speak at all, I heard my voice say, ‘I am so sorry for you.’

  ‘Are you?’ he said, the fine arch of his eyebrows raising in surprise, taken aback, as I was, yet ready enough, I think, to say more, to ask me why, had not Joel and Mr Aycliffe come back just then. At the sight of his father, he gave me a slight inclination of his head and withdrew not just his body to a far corner of the room but his personality with it, the kind of escape I had often seen my mother make.

  A difficult young man, certainly, who would be a sharp thorn in Hannah’s side; a dangerous, complex enemy to her peace of mind, who would have no reason to listen if I tried to explain that Hannah meant no harm, that she was a good, sensible woman who should be allowed her chance in life. A young man who was unlike anyone I had ever met, who aroused my curiosity and my compassion, Yet, driving home that night, more than half asleep, I had room in my head for only two things, the pinched face of Morgan Aycliffe, entering the room after dinner, noticing at once that his urns had been tampered with again, and the realization that throughout the entire evening he had, not addressed one word directly to his son.

  We did not see Mr Aycliffe for some days after that. His half hour alone in the dining room with Joel had provided him with an ideal opportunity to speak his mind, but he had not done so, and when his absence extended to three days, five days, we began to be puzzled and alarmed.

  ‘He’s decided you don’t match his furniture,’ Elinor said with wicked glee. ‘You’re too tall to fit on the mantelpiece and you’re the wrong colour for the hall table.’

  But at the end of the week, on the eighth day, a note was delivered announcing Mr Aycliffe’s intention of calling that afternoon, if Joel could spare an hour of his time. Hannah and Elinor, as it chanced, had driven over to Patterswick to visit my mother, and I made sure I was in the kitchen when Mr Aycliffe arrived, coming out at the end of an hour only to peer from the window to take note, from his manner and Joel’s, that all had gone well. And so, going back into the kitchen to supervise Marth-Ellen’s cakes, I was unprepared for Joel’s voice yelling. ‘Verity – come quick,’ and downright alarmed when I found him in the front parlour shaking with laughter.

  ‘Joel – what is it? Whatever is it? Didn’t he propose?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said, wiping his eyes and then succumbing again to those undignified whoops of delight. ‘He proposed all right. By God, Verity, he proposed. The damn fool has asked me for Elinor. Yes, you may well stare, for I did the same. I thought he had mistaken the name and told him so, which didn’t please him. But rib, it’s Elinor he wants. Elinor. Damn me, I always knew he was the kind to have one hand on a prayer book and his other tip a housemaid’s skirt, but I never thought he’d lose his head this way. The fool – I ask you – with all his urns and his vases and his Napoleon brandy – has there ever been such a fool?’

  Chapter Ten

  It was, of course, perfectly disgraceful – scandalous, even – and, beneath my immediate pity for Hannah, I too could feel laughter stirring, for I did not like Morgan Aycliffe and would not be sorry to see him discomfited. But then, as Joel began to whoop again with his unkind mirth, suspicion bit into me and I said, experimentally, hopefully. ‘So that’s the last we shall see of Mr Aycliffe.’

  ‘Oh – hardly that.’

  Altogether aghast, I sat down, shuddering slightly as the ludicrous image of Morgan Aycliffe in a nightshirt suddenly burst into my mind, sickening me.

  ‘Joel – you can’t possibly … Oh, Joel, you can’t consent.’

  ‘Why can’t I?’

  ‘Because Hannah—’

  ‘Hannah has nothing to do with it anymore,’ he said, laughter draining out of him, leaving him hard and hurtful in the face of my opposition. ‘If he can’t have Elinor he won’t come back for Hannah, you can be sure of that. He didn’t find it easy – believe me – standing here, asking me for my seventeen-year-old sister. He knew exactly what I was thinking, and what everybody else is going to think – and say, behind his back – and he didn’t like it at all. But he did it. That’s how mad he is for her, and if he don’t get her he’ll bolt – so Hannah’s lost her chance either way.’

  ‘So you consented.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And Elinor? You mean to force her, then?’

  ‘Force her? What the devil makes you think I’d have to force her?’

  And, as that grotesque image of the grey-faced widower in his night attire once again danced into my mind, I cried put, ‘Because she won’t take him willingly – you know she won’t.’

  ‘I know no such thing,’ he said, and as he looked at me keenly, recognizing the disgust in my face, I saw his temper snap and felt it reach out for me with a crouching snarl, designed to hurt.

  ‘You don’t understand us at all, do you, Verity – me and Hannah and Elinor? Won’t take him? She’d give her eye-teeth for him – yes, yes, yes, indeed she would – for him and for the dress allowance he can give her and f
or the pearls he can put round her neck, and for her own carriage so she can stop begging rides in yours and Emma-Jane’s. That’s what’s been biting her these last few weeks, because she thought Hannah was going to get all that, and she’d be left on the shelf. And if he’s not pretty, then neither is Bradley Hobhouse, who’s just younger, and that don’t last. But how could you understand, Verity, when there’s always been your grandfather to put his hand in his pocket every time you had a whim or a fancy? So don’t judge what you can’t comprehend. Elinor would do anything to get out of the hole her father left her in – as Hannah would.’

  ‘As you would?’

  ‘I reckon so,’ he said, the sting of his anger so venomous now that I turned and walked away from him, finding, to my own surprise, that by the time I had reached the refuge of my bedroom and bolted the door, I was in tears.

  It was his affair, then; his and Elinor’s and Hannah’s, the three of them together. Deciding to take no part in it, I called my dogs and, walking up the path past the Top House, followed the track beyond my grandfather’s garden that led to the open moor. And when the dogs had had their run and my shoes were full of stones, I sat with Mrs Stevens, drinking tea and watching, from my grandfather’s hillside perch, as the carriage returned from Patterswick and stopped at the millhouse, and Hannah and Elinor went inside.

  ‘I’ll take some more tea, Mrs Stevens, if you please,’ I said, and sipped it slowly, allowing the time to pass – an hour at least – before I saw Joel come out of the house and walk across the yard to the mill. And then, after having another slice of gingerbread and calculating that the coast would be reasonably clear, I took my leave, entering the millhouse cautiously by the kitchen door and hurrying up the back stairs to find Liza, the nursemaid, and give Blaize his supper.

  I put my son to bed, sat for a moment enjoying his total contentment, and then went back to my own room, hoping for solitude, but it was not long before there was a discreet knock and Elinor’s fair head appeared enquiringly around the door.

  ‘I expect you are very angry with me,’ she said, walking flat-footed like a little girl across the floor and sitting, hands neatly folded, in front of me, waiting for her scolding.

  ‘You mean to take him, then?’

  ‘Oh yes, indeed I do.’

  And when I began to ask her how she could, she made a decisive movement with one hand that reminded me very strongly of Joel.

  ‘How could I not? And I didn’t steal him from Hannah, no matter what anyone has to say. I never even thought of him, for he seemed positively to dislike me, except that I suppose he did that on purpose, to stop himself showing that he liked me too much. Or so Joel says, anyway.’

  ‘And what of the things you said? That he was old and stale and that he frightened his wife to death?’

  ‘Oh that,’ she said, half sighing, half laughing. ‘Well, I talk a great deal, don’t I, and mean less than the half of it, you know that, Verity. But I am not so stupid – really. Sometimes it’s better to appear stupid and go prattling on because otherwise who would ever notice me? Emma-Jane can afford to have buck teeth and never say a word, because half the men in Cullingford owe money at her father’s bank. But I’m a poor relation, and all I’m entitled to say is “Please” and “Thank you kindly.” And, you see, if I did that, then I’d be treated like a poor relation, which is even worse than being one, and I made up my mind long ago not to let that happen. Joel and I, you know, we’re both the same; we’d do anything for money. I sometimes wonder what we’ll ever find to strive for once we have it. So I’m not stupid. I know Bradley Hobhouse would never run off with me, Verity – and, far worse than that, I don’t think I’d have the courage to go in any case. And that’s quite terrible, you know, when you think how just dreaming about it has kept me going. So I have to do the best I can. And Mr Aycliffe must love me enormously, wouldn’t you think, to risk the gossip, because they won’t take kindly to it at Ramsden Street, I can tell you.’

  ‘Elinor,’ I said very slowly, ‘if I catch you flaunting yourself, just once, in front of Hannah, then I shall slap your face until it swells, even if it should be on your wedding morning.’

  ‘Oh, Verity,’ she said, laughing, rubbing her check with a hand not entirely steady, ‘how fierce you can be in your quiet way. But Hannah can defend herself, you know, and you may save yourself the trouble of slapping me, for she has done it already. She flew at me like a spitting cat and boxed my ears soundly, I can tell you, with Joel not lifting a finger to stop her. But listen, Verity, Hannah doesn’t love him, you know, and now it makes no difference to her whether I take him or not – except that if I don’t take him there’ll be two old maids at Low Cross instead of one. And I’m not cut out to be an old maid, I’ve told you that often enough. I can’t go on prattling and dreaming forever, and what else can I do? I don’t care for the chapel and good works like Hannah. I don’t want to teach Sunday School, and I can’t manage, somehow, to feel sorry for the slaves when I’m not free myself. And those sugar plantations and cotton plantations are so far away. I can’t even begin to imagine them. But I can imagine myself, Verity, in a few years, if I stay at Low Cross. And there won’t be another Mr Aycliffe.’

  ‘But he’s so much older than you, Elinor, and so stern.’

  ‘And so rich. And I’ll be good at being rich. He likes beautiful things. Didn’t you see him, the other night, with his statues and his fine wines. I won’t help him with his Sunday Schools, like Hannah, but I can look pretty – that’s what Joel told me to do: to look pretty and keep my mouth shut. And that must be what he wants. There must be two sides to his nature, I suppose: the serious side that wanted Hannah and the fancy side that wanted me – and my side won. Oh, Verity, don’t be too cross. I’m going to have such a lovely time. Strawberries and champagne for breakfast, just like I always told you, except that I’d stopped believing it and now it’s coming true. Hannah will get over it, and you don’t want to spoil it for me, do you?’

  ‘No, I don’t. But, Elinor, do you really understand about marriage – I mean?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said airily, ‘about kissing and being in the same bed? Well, it’s not such a mystery.’

  But Elinor’s mother had been dead a long time, and because I could not imagine Hannah explaining in any great detail, or even fully understanding the details herself – and because Morgan Aycliffe was repulsive to me and I assumed he must repel her, too – I said rather primly, There’s a great deal more to marriage than kissing.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘a great deal more, and I won’t be the first to live through it. We kept dogs, Elinor, like you, and pigs, and I’ve heard my mother say many a time that men were just the same.’

  I did not expect Hannah to appear at breakfast the next morning, but it was Elinor who shirked, Hannah sitting straight-backed at the table while serving buttered toast and honey to Joel, when he came up from the mill, as if nothing of any importance had occurred. And I was aware of the bond between the three of them: a shared determination, bred of their shared poverty, that no personal sacrifice was too great if the interests of their family would be served; a bond which prevented Hannah from blaming either of the other two, although I knew she was mortified, horrified, sick at heart.

  She had wanted that marriage herself, desperately, but now, having boxed her sister’s ears and called her a thieving minx, after a night of self-torture and humiliation, she was almost awe-inspiring in her calm.

  ‘I have a great deal of plain sewing to do,’ she told me when Joel had gone back to the mill. ‘I will take it upstairs and sit in the window. The light is better there.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  And then, visibly drawing herself together, she said, ‘Naturally you will have heard that my sister is to be married?’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  ‘Yes – and I daresay you may have been surprised, although you must admit that there has been nothing in any way improper. When a gentleman becomes a regular visitor at a
house where young ladies are to be found, he must eventually declare himself – we all know that to be the rule – and since Mr Aycliffe has declared himself, I can see no occasion for talk – gossip – you will know what I mean. Certain acquaintances of ours – Mrs Rawnsley, for one, and Mrs Hobhouse, I daresay, since they are always together – have expressed the view that Mr Aycliffe’s interest was in my direction. But that was no more than supposition – I always said so, you have heard me say it – and I should not like it if they were to – to—’

  ‘They will not,’ I told her, knowing she meant ‘to commiserate.’ And, watching the proud, painful squaring of her shoulders as she picked up her work basket and walked away, I made up my mind to see Mrs Rawnsley and Mrs Hobhouse as soon as I could, and to suggest to them, without exactly telling a lie, that Mr Aycliffe may well have proposed to Hannah first and been refused.

  My grandfather, as expected, was not pleased at this piece of good fortune which had come Joel’s way. He had ordered him to get his sisters married and out of Low Cross, certainly, but he had had a shopkeeper or a schoolmaster in mind, not another financial giant like himself who could encourage Joel’s habits of independence and disobedience. Although he might well have given Elinor the wherewithal to settle herself nicely into a dairy or a schoolhouse, he now elected to give her nothing. But Mrs Stevens, for whom weddings were occasions of great heart-searching, came down from the Top House whenever she could, to help with the trousseau, and, once again, it seemed that marriage was a purely feminine matter, a choice between lilac gauze and sky-blue satin, with which the bridegroom – once he had been securely attached – had nothing to do.

  My mother came quite often too, adding her fine stitching to the growing pile, and, while Hannah undertook the plain sewing of the household, my mother, Mrs Stevens, Elinor, and I sat in the stone-flagged kitchen – Blaize gurgling in his cradle beside us – concealing ourselves behind the companionable hum of our voices and the plying of our needles, with fashion books, strewn all about us and a pot of tea constantly brewing by the fire.