The Clouded Hills

by Brenda Jagger

  It was, of course, to be the best trousseau ever seen in the Law Valley, for Joel would not have his sister go out a beggar, and even though Morgan Aycliffe was willing, to take her on promises alone, he would at least give her the means to cut a dash. And since cutting a dash was a matter well understood by both Joel and his younger sister, we were busy indeed.

  ‘Oh, do stay just a little longer, Mrs Stevens,’ she would plead. ‘Just fit me into this yellow silk again, for I’ve a dreadful feeling I measured wrong last time and it needs another inch off the hem. And if I don’t know for sure it will nag me and nag me, and I’ll never sleep tonight. And you will come tomorrow, dear, dear Mrs Stevens won’t you, because you are so good and clever—’

  And Mrs Stevens, whose burden was growing every day heavier as my grandfather’s temper grew shorter, his constitution weaker, would smile through her fatigue – for Mrs Morgan Aycliffe was a different matter entirely from a Miss Elinor Barforth – and promise to come if she could. Indeed, she rarely failed, for, as my mother had once told me, she had her future to consider, and her attentions both to Elinor and to me were most marked.

  ‘Dear Mrs Barforth, dear Miss Elinor,’ tripped from her tongue like summer rain, and, whenever there was a dispute between us, which happened not infrequently, her tact was altogether a work of art.

  ‘I think Mrs Barforth is right, Miss Elinor, my dear, because this pattern is certainly gay – excessively so, Mrs Barforth, as you say. But then, glancing at it again, although it wouldn’t do for Mrs Barforth at all, since she likes simple, elegant designs which suit her so well – perhaps on Miss Elinor, who is in quite another style – So pretty. What do you think?’

  And, holding up a length of sprig muslin, having called me elegant and Elinor pretty, she would leave the decision to Fate, or to my mother, on whose taste we could all rely.

  Yet there were times when Elinor’s bubbling excitement and Hannah’s rigid control were hard to bear, and times when Joel’s odd blending of self-satisfaction and ill temper distressed me. Could it be that, after all, he had his doubts about giving his sister to this dry, difficult man? Was his conscience indeed stirring, while ambition and self-interest forced him to ignore it? Yet we were the same age, Elinor and I, and capable of making the same judgements, and although I was often overwhelmingly anxious on her behalf, I could detect nothing in her own manner but unsullied delight.

  Even when she heard the news of Emma-Jane Rawnsley’s engagement to Bradley Hobhouse, she merely chuckled and said, ‘Poor Emma-Jane. She will have his mamma to contend with, and I hope she may find a way to deal with her, for I am sure I never could. If she thinks she is to be mistress of Nethercoats she will have a rude awakening, for Mrs Hobhouse is quite the most managing woman I ever met, and I should not like her putting her long nose into my cupboards. Well – thank goodness there is no mamma-in-law in Blenheim Lane to bother me.’

  But did she ever give a thought to other things in Blenheim Lane that could bother her to the silence, to those perfectly spaced basalt urns, to Mr Aycliffe himself. And had she considered how Crispin Aycliffe, who had been hostile to a stately woman like Hannah, must feel now that his mother’s place was to be taken by a girl of seventeen? Had she considered that his presence could prove far more disturbing than any mother-in-law?

  We dined once again at the Aycliffe house – Joel, Elinor, and I – this time with Mr and Mrs Rawnsley as fellow guests, neither Hannah, who had not been expected, nor Crispin Aycliffe, who most certainly had been, choosing to appear. The next morning, unable to stand Hannah’s extreme politeness, her absolute refusal to ask how the evening had gone although she was longing to know, I called my dogs – in whose company I was never ill at ease – and took my familiar walk past the Top House and out to the moor.

  It was high summer then, the sky behind me yellow with the slow penetration of sunlight through, the pall of factory smoke, but I turned my back on the town, striding quickly away from it to a point where the tufted upland grass was sharp-scented and even the sky shredded, first to a cleaner grey and then to blue.

  Hannah, I knew, did not approve of my lonely ramblings; she had even spoken to Joel about my breach of convention, the necessity for a suitable companion, but he had made nothing of it, and, that morning, leaning against the wind, letting the dogs run free – the puppy now as big as her mother and not always ready to obey either of us – my mind was so full of the bare, brown curve of the land, the nearby music of moorland water, the tangy freshness of space and solitude, that I failed to recognize Crispin Aycliffe until he spoke my name.

  I had seen him approach in the distance, a man walking a horse, a dark-green-coated figure that could have been anyone, and I had thought only to call up my young dog, who would be very likely to snap at the horse’s legs. But it was the old bitch who came obligingly to heel, the young one pausing for an instant, flighty and nervous, dancing away, and then pausing again, taunting me to give chase.

  ‘They are very large dogs, Mrs Barforth,’ a man’s voice said, ‘for a lady.’

  The wind striking me a capricious blow, whipping the ribbons of my sunbonnet into flight and my hair into disarray, I looked up and saw him, hat in hand, smiling, his mouth no longer sulky, his face almost boyish without its studied boredom.

  ‘Should you be walking here, Mrs Barforth, quite alone?’ He asked, and, knowing that his father shared many of Hannah’s narrow views, I shook my head.

  ‘No, I daresay I should not, for I always go home with stones in my shoes, but someone must walk the dogs.’

  ‘Your dogs?’

  ‘Yes – at least the young one is mine, and the old one belonged to my brother, so I may say she is mine now too.’

  ‘Your brother Edwin?’

  ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘Oh – barely. We shared a term of two at the grammar school, but I cannot say we were friends. You are not in the least like him.’

  ‘I suppose not. But do you often take this road, Mr Aycliffe? It seems a little out of your way.’

  ‘Indeed it is,’ he told me, his eyebrow making its fine, quizzical arch, ‘since it leads only from Cullingford to Lawcroft Fold, and then on to nowhere. I was coming to pay you a visit, to apologize to you and to Miss Barforth for my absence at dinner last night. At least, I intended to come, but somehow my horse rode, on, until your house was behind me – so I dismounted and I am walking back.’

  ‘Why? In case you should ride past us again?’

  And for an odd, uncomfortable moment, I saw him in that sombre, beautiful house, hiding his bruised feelings behind that quizzical, insolent lifting of the eyebrow, that sardonic curving of his mouth, while his father ordered him to saddle up and ride over to Lawcroft without fail to pay the visit that common courtesy demanded, that filial duty absolutely required.

  ‘The girl is to be my wife, and you will go to her, as you should have done a month ago, and you will say everything that is proper, everything that is due to her as my intended, everything that is due to me as your father. I am not answerable to you, boy, but you are answerable to me, and you would do well not to forget it.’

  And because he was indeed answerable, because his father held the purse strings and would not hesitate to draw them tight, he had ridden over to Lawcroft, looked down at it from the moorland road – sick, I thought, with anger and disgust – and ridden on, needing a moment more of clean air and space to equip himself for the ordeal of taking Miss Elinor Barforth’s tiny hand and declaring himself ready to love her as a son.

  ‘It would seem,’ he said quietly, ‘that I gave serious offence by my failure to dine—?’

  ‘Not to me, certainly.’

  ‘Possibly not. But to your husband and to – your cousin?’

  ‘Oh, as to them, they are both quick to take offence and quick to recover.’

  ‘But you will nevertheless accept my apology?’

  ‘Of course.’ And, feeling again the abhorrence in him that prevented him fro
m even speaking Elinor’s name, I quickly added, ‘And I will convey it to my cousin. She is not at home today, but she will gladly forgive you. You may tell your father so.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘thank you,’ his hand adjusting something at the horse’s head, his attention apparently elsewhere, until my young bitch, planting herself at a safe distance from flying hooves, set up a howling that caused the fine bay animal to shiver. It was not until my flighty young dog had gone dancing off into the wind and his horse stood, sullen and offended but peaceful again, that he looked at me very carefully and said, ‘Is Miss Elinor Barforth really not at home?’

  ‘Well … yes, as it happens, she is at home, but she is very much occupied with my mother and our housekeeper, and I know they don’t wish for a visit from anyone today.’

  ‘And is it so very obvious that I don’t wish to pay one?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, my eyes drawn directly to his face. ‘And there is no reason in the world why you should apologize for that. I perfectly understand why.’

  ‘Do you?’ he said, his eyes half closing with a weary gesture I had observed in him before. But he was not ready yet to accept my sympathy, and when his eyes opened there was no weariness in them any longer, but keen, cool sarcasm, tinged unmistakably with spite.

  ‘And why is that, Mrs Barforth? Do you imagine I object to my father’s choice of a second wife?’

  ‘I think it can scarcely please you.’

  ‘Oh, but it does. It pleases me enormously.’

  And when I shook my head he laughed, not pleasantly, a snap of malice once again in his face.

  ‘You are quite wrong, Mrs Barforth – so very wrong, believe me. I’m delighted – totally enchanted – with Miss Elinor. And if there is something undignified or questionable in the spectacle of a man of my father’s years cavorting with a child – and I imagine she is very much a child – then, well; that delights me even more. I am not, as you may have noticed, particularly attached to my father, but even I – Mrs Barforth – in my worst moments – could never have devised so complete a punishment for him as this. They have the very greatest chance of unhappiness I think I have ever observed, and if you knew me better you would understand that I could hardly object to that.’

  But it was too much, too personal; I was too aware of the hurt in him, smarting beneath his cruelty, too ready to sympathize, and I said stiffly, ‘Mr Aycliffe, we do not really know each other, and you should not speak to me like that.’

  ‘No,’ he said, instantly the courteous young gentleman minding his manners, his smile rueful and charming, expecting to be forgiven. ‘Of course, I should not. I know that very well, and yet I allowed myself, the liberty – indulged myself – because, well, you feel so very sorry for me, don’t you, and so I knew you would forgive me. I have taken advantage of your kind heart, you see, just as I used to do with my mother, for it is quite true that I have been very much indulged. Have I really offended you?’

  ‘No. But I must be getting back now.’

  ‘Then I have offended you.’

  ‘No, not in the least.’

  ‘Then why must you hurry back to Miss Elinor – who is not at home? But, of course, if you must, then I am sorry for it, especially since we may not have the chance to talk again.’

  ‘Why is that? Are you going away?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, smiling. ‘Indeed I am, and you may tell me how glad you are of it, if you wish, for your cousin’s sake. I am going to France and, hopefully, to Italy, in pursuit of architectural knowledge not forever, alas but for long enough to prevent my sour face casting a gloom over the start of your cousin’s marriage. Naturally I shall attend the wedding, for it would be thought odd in Ramsden Street otherwise, but I shall leave straight after. I am at pains, you see, to spare my new mother the slightest degree of awkwardness.’

  ‘No, you are not,’ I said sharply, speaking to him very much as I would have spoken to my brother Edwin and, throwing back his narrow head, he burst into a peal of real, uncomplicated laughter.

  ‘You think I am merely feeling sorry for myself, then?’

  ‘I don’t know about that, and perhaps you have good reasons. But this is not of my cousin’s making, you know. She is young and her life has not been easy, and really, when it comes down to it, she can only do as she is bid.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ he said, suddenly very serious, gentle, almost. ‘You are right, of course. How terrible to be a woman. I have often thought so. God knows, I am not so free as I could wish, but a woman has no freedom at all. And, worse than that, she knows she never can be free. I think that would drive me mad. There is always someone pursuing you, isn’t there – father, brother, husband, children, eating your time and energy and believing they have a right to it, allowing you no rights at all. I find it terrible, and yet I have done it myself, for I laid all my burdens on my mother’s shoulders, no matter how weary she was. And if I take a wife I shall doubtless do the same. But you are quite right, Mrs Barforth; your cousin is not to blame, and you clearly would not wish to see her made, miserable.’

  ‘Indeed I would not.’

  ‘And I have worried you on her account. Please forgive me. The fact that my father and I cannot live in peace together does not exclude the possibility of his being at peace with someone else. I have a bitter nature, I think, and often I make too much of things. Your little cousin may be exactly what my father needs, and, in that case, she will do well enough.’

  I turned and walked forward, towards Lawcroft, my back now to the thin blue sky, my face to the smoke, and he fell into step beside me, his horse following with supercilious grace while my old yellow bitch pressed close to heel, the puppy continuing her frenzied ballet on the borders of the track. It was late afternoon, the earth heavy with the accumulated heat of the day, the town a charcoal sketch in the distance, the roof of the Top House just visible now, beckoning me home to a world where the uncomfortable truth was rarely spoken. And, looking up at Crispin Aycliffe, accepting his presence lightly and naturally, as if I had known him as long as Edwin, I said, ‘Was your mother very unhappy?’

  ‘My dear Mrs Barforth, whyever should you think of such a thing?’ he said, his brows raising again in that defensive arch of sarcasm. ‘My mother was surely the happiest creature alive, for she had everything any right-minded woman could desire; I have heard my father tell her so a hundred times. A house in Blenheim Lane, her carriage, pearls … My word – happy? I should say so.’

  And I could only hope that if these grand possessions had not sufficed for the first Mrs Aycliffe, they would surely content the second.

  We strolled the rest of the way to the Top House in silence, and, as he bent over my hand, I told him, ‘I shall envy you when you go to France. I have been to Leeds and twice to Sheffield to visit my mother’s family, and if I get to London before I die I shall consider myself well-travelled. So I shall think of you, when you are looking at your palaces and your churches.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘do think of me. Who knows, I may even find a beautiful princess looking down at me from one of those palace windows and come home with a royal bride to dazzle Ramsden Street.’

  And so there was laughter at our parting, a surface gaiety, draining abruptly out of me and causing me to speak sharply to the dogs as he rode away. He would go to France and Italy; Joel, to London or anywhere else he chose; Elinor would go to Blenheim Lane, which in her eyes was as exciting as Samarkand, and Hannah, surely would grapple with her disappointments and wrest something out of life, while I would stay here, neither happy nor unhappy but smiling, maintaining order, keeping the peace, and being quiet, reasonable, and serene. And for one brief moment of fierce intensity – a moment I did not relish at all – I wondered when life was going to begin.

  Chapter Eleven

  They were married on a cool September morning that spoke of summer’s end, Elinor in a cloud of white gauze over satin, looking like some frail creature of air and moonlight as she entered the church on Joel�
��s arm, followed by two little girls, cousins from her mother’s side of the family, whose presence spared Hannah and me the embarrassment of being bridesmaids. And I suppose, when one accustomed oneself to the stark contrast of dainty, fairytale bride and long, grey, withered groom, that it all went very well.

  Hannah was there, of course, smiling through her ordeal, clothed in brown silk and the grand mantle of her Barforth dignity – the brooch of Edwin’s hair on her collar again – and a fine gathering of Hobhouses and Oldroyds and Rawnsleys attended, brimming with good wishes and curiosity. The professional classes, too, were represented: Mr Corey-Manning the lawyer, bringing his spinster sister, and Mr and Mrs Roundwood of the Cullingford Courier and Review, arriving, a bare second before the bride, with a cousin of theirs, Dr Overdale, who, having recently moved to Blenheim Lane, was fast establishing himself as Cullingford’s most expensive physician.

  My grandfather had agreed to come, declaring himself eager to see Aycliffe go to his doom, but somehow he had not found the energy, was not up to it, although Mrs Stevens was there, and my mother, on Squire Dalby’s arm, their appearance causing considerable excitement among the ‘manufacturing’ ladies, who, having no good opinion of Isabella Barforth, would, nevertheless, have given a great deal to make the squire’s acquaintance. And occupying a pew near the back of the church were Mr and Mrs Isaac Boulton with their younger, married daughter Catherine and their elder, still single daughter Rosamund, who had been abandoned by Joel for my sake.

  ‘You will not mind my asking the Boultons,’ Elinor had said. ‘It would seem odd to leave them out, for we have known them forever. I have stayed at their house often enough, and Rosamund, who is so clever with her needle has always helped me with my dresses.’