The Clouded Hills

by Brenda Jagger

  Although I had agreed that it would seem most odd if they were not included and that I knew of no reason why I should mind, I found myself looking closely at this girl, a woman now of twenty-five or twenty-six, who, by waiting for Joel, trusting him, had landed herself, it seemed, firmly on the shelf. She was tall and well proportioned, with bright, almost bold dark eyes and high colour in her cheeks, her dark hair fashionably arranged beneath a dashing military bonnet, her hands hiding themselves in a feathered muff dyed to the exact blue of her gown. She looked smart, self-possessed, capable, the kind of girl who could dance all night and be first downstairs, fresh as a daisy, the next morning. Quick-tempered, perhaps, and flirtatious; disappointed, certainly, although she did not show it, and I would have been less than human had I not wondered what she thought of Joel now, what he thought of her. And, pondering her situation, I saw Crispin Aycliffe nodding to me from the other side of the aisle.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Barforth,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Aycliffe,’ I replied.

  And I found I had clenched my hands tightly, gripped by an uncanny, unnerving sensation that of all the people here assembled this pale young man was the only one who knew me; the only one, besides myself, who was entirely, real.

  There was champagne later, Elinor still in her blissful dream, her husband, and his son, too, looking, as if they felt the cold, and it was not long before he whisked her away on the honeymoon I could scarcely contemplate, escorted to the coach by Messrs Hobhouse, Oldroyd, and Rawnsley, who, for one night at least, would gladly have been in his place, while Hannah, free at last from the obligation to smile, broke a plate, kicked my old bitch, and reduced Marth-Ellen to tears.

  I had given a great deal of thought to a wedding gift, settling finally on a dessert service, complete with sauce tureen and ice pail, decorated with painted roses in more shades of pink than I had believed possible. And driving to Blenheim Lane to present it, after their return, I think I expected to find Elinor sunk in shock and despair and bitter regret.

  ‘Is Mrs Aycliffe at home?’ I enquired of the manservant, nervously preparing myself for a denial, but instead the door of the room we had been brought up to call a parlour but which was now a drawing room burst open and Elinor herself, ringlets and ribbons dancing, came tripping out to greet me.

  ‘Oh, darling, how marvellous,’ she said, without really looking at the china dishes, which had been purchased, in any case, to impress her husband. ‘Wilkinson will put them somewhere, and then Mr Aycliffe will put them somewhere else when he comes home. Wilkinson, do see to it, and then tea, please, in the drawing room, with lots of cakes.’

  And I concluded, from the faceless Wilkinson’s almost imperceptible shudder, that the first Mrs Aycliffe had never presumed to take tea with friends in the drawing room, among all the precious glass and porcelain – or, indeed, had perhaps never invited friends at all.

  ‘Are you well?’ I asked her, puzzled, because although she looked well, it hardly seemed likely. But Elinor had a certain toughness, a certain coarseness, in her nature that not only enabled her to find her husband’s marital endeavours amusing but made her quick to appreciate the power his desire gave her.

  ‘My dear, he’ll do anything for me,’ she said, letting me see the new ring on her hand and the wide gold bracelet around her arm, ‘Anything – I have only to ask – and all because he just wants to look and look at me. My dear, you can’t imagine – I thought I’d be quite frightened, but he’s so careful. I suppose it comes from handling all this porcelain. And do you know, that’s exactly how he makes me feel – precious porcelain. I’m not even to worry myself about the housekeeping. We have Wilkinson and Mrs Naylor for that, and a host of girls.… I’m just to sit here, looking pretty, and whatever I want I just have to ring for it. When he comes home, he’ll just gaze at me all evening – I don’t even have to think of clever things to say. And he gave me champagne on my first morning too – oh my, I’ll never forget it – although I do wish strawberries had been in season.’ And she broke off, giggling not in the least coyly.

  ‘You find it all quite – quite pleasant, then?’

  ‘You mean …? Oh well, naturally, one has to make a fuss at first, because it’s expected, but, as they say, one doesn’t die from it, and I think I may well endure ten minutes of purring and panting for all this. In fact, I believe one could actually get to like it if – well – I do, that’s all.’

  With a younger man, I thought, a handsomer man. And, not realizing he was in my mind, I asked, ‘And what of Mr Crispin Aycliffe?’

  ‘What of him? He’s gone. Didn’t you see his sour face at the wedding? Looking down his nose at everything as if there was a bad smell? Well, he’s gone to France, where there probably is a bad smell, and if he never comes back I shan’t be sorry. Although he will come, of course, because my husband needs him to look after the business and our other financial affairs. Oh my – did I really say that? Our financial affairs – how absolutely splendid that sounds. Anyway, that’s why we need Mr Crispin.’

  A princess, I thought, looking down from a palace window, pink towers and spires, rose-tinted sky and water; and it suited him. A rich and royal bride coming back to Cullingford to put Elinor’s nose out of joint. And because that suited him, too, I found myself smiling; I was glad that he, at least, if only for a little while, was free to find his own way.

  ‘Perhaps he won’t come back,’ I told her. ‘Perhaps he’ll make a rich, exciting life for himself somewhere and have a new adventure every day …’

  ‘Or they’ll hang him,’ she said, quite viciously, ringing her bell for more tea and then, when it arrived, leaving it to go cold as she took me upstairs to see her silver-backed brushes, her scent bottles her trinket boxes, but not as yet, I noticed, that marvellous double strand of her predecessor’s pearls.

  Yet she was well and I was glad of it, as one must be glad for anyone who sees a dream come true, and if I was uneasy, perhaps it was only because I disliked the idea of describing it all to Hannah when I got home. But the necessity, as it happened, never arose, for, as I descended from the carriage, Ira Agbrigg, that bringer of evil tidings, was standing there, cap in hand, his odd, lashless eyes respectfully lowered as he handed me a message from Mrs Stevens that my grandfather was ailing.

  I had known, I suppose, that he would die eventually, sooner rather than later – as Mrs Stevens had known it – but knowing is not believing and we were both of us unprepared and terrified, she at the loss of her livelihood and I at the loss of this supreme authority who, by standing between me and the lesser authorities of father and husband, had offered me the possibility of appeal. ‘Father says you may not,’ they had told us as children, and both Edwin and I had always answered, ‘But Grandfather says we may.’ And it had always sufficed.

  But now the doctor – the smart new Dr Overdale from Blenheim Lane – decreed that it would be a matter of days, a week at the most, and felt obliged to defend himself by repeating the warnings he had given on his previous visits about the effect of the wine and the food and – although he did not exactly say so – of Mrs Stevens on the overweight, overage bulk that was still, although only barely, Samson Barforth.

  ‘He has had these attacks before,’ Mrs Stevens told me desperately. ‘Five or six these last two years, and he has always recovered. Dear Mrs Barforth, surely, there is hope?’

  But I did not think so and she did not think so; and, as she moved sadly away, I was aware for the first time of age in her face, the tiny lines around her eyes, the slackening of her jaw now that her mouth was not smiling, the sheer fatigue of a woman who has turned forty and dares not admit it.

  My mother was sent for, Hannah and Joel came, but my grandfather, waking from his drugged sleep to the realization of his end, was not reconciled. Death was just another enemy to be grappled with, and when he understood that he could not defeat it, that it had mottled his cheeks and clogged his chest for the final time and that soon it w
ould be at his throat, he lay back in the ornate bed where I had spent my wedding night and consoled himself by hating us all.

  ‘You were the ruin of my son, Isabella Baxter,’ he growled at my mother. ‘You took him from spite and broke him, and now you lead a harlot’s life – playing the whore for Dalby like Emmeline here plays the whore for me – except that she’s a silly whore and I’ll wager you’re a sour one.’

  And when Mrs Stevens, tears streaming down her face, leaned forward to adjust his pillows, he struck her quite hard, making himself cough again, and told her to take her fool’s face out of his sight.

  ‘What good are you to me now?’ he shouted. ‘And I’ll not have your weeping and wailing – that’s not what I paid you for and I don’t want it. You’d cry as much for a sick cat woman – damnable, stupid woman. Get out. Get out, now. I don’t want you, haven’t wanted you for a long time. Get away. I want my wife.’

  And that, after ten years of her devotion, was his goodbye to her.

  Nor would he allow Joel in the room with him.

  ‘Tell him to wait downstairs,’ he snarled, ‘like the lackey he is. He knows where to find the will afterwards – that’s all that bothers him – and so he can wait. Maybe he reckons I’m taking too long and he’d like to slip up here and hold a pillow to my face – aye, he’d like that right enough. I should never have let him have the Girl. I should have given her to Morgan Aycliffe’s lad, as I intended. Aye, you didn’t know that, did you, Verity? Aycliffe spoke to me and I was agreeable, but then Edwin died and I didn’t want Aycliffe’s bony hands on my mill. No – but I tell you this – if I’d strength left I’d go down now and fire it myself, just to spite yon lad downstairs. That I would – just to spite him.’

  And then, for a long, aching time, he was quiet.

  I thought he would not wake again, for his breathing became shallow as the night wore on, and his face chalk white where the purple mottling had not touched it, but death was neither so simple nor so clean, and towards morning he awoke, his eyes shooting fiercely open but his body limp and feeble and needing care. Even then there was another long day, with the September sunlight slanting in through the drawn curtains, hardly sweetening the foul air, Mrs Stevens somewhere outside, pathetically hovering, and Joel waiting for his inheritance, while my mother and I sat one on either side of the great bed, hypnotized by the shallow breathing that seemed sometimes to stop and then, by the sheer effort of will, started painfully up again.

  The doctor came, shook his head, made his murmurings, and then went downstairs to wait with Joel, who, after all, would be the one to settle – his fee, and even then, as the night fell again, my grandfather did not die, his body and soul welded together, it seemed, by his determination to keep Joel waiting a while longer.

  ‘Would you like to rest?’ my mother offered, and, when I refused, she fell asleep gracefully, her head resting on the chair back, her hands folded.

  Perhaps I dozed, too, for suddenly I was wide awake, aware that the candles had burned low, that something was wrong and I was to blame.

  And then he whispered, ‘Verity.’

  ‘Yes, Grandfather.’

  I had to come close to hear him, for his voice was dying before him, the touch of his hand as it grasped mine like crinkled old paper that would flake and shrivel in the fire.

  ‘I don’t like him,’ he said. ‘Yon Joel – he’s like me, I know it, but I don’t like him. But I’ve left him the mill for your sake. I could have cut him off, sent him to the devil – but you’re his wife and you’d have had a poor time of it then. So I’ve left you everything, Verity, which is the same as leaving it to him since you can’t touch it while he lives – and he’ll live. By God, he’ll live. I should have given you to Aycliffe’s lad – cut my losses and married you as I’d intended – but I wouldn’t be cheated, you see. I thought I could have Edwin again. Thought I could – but no – and it doesn’t matter now – damn it – doesn’t matter.’

  And slowly, the room became empty, terrifyingly, totally still.

  ‘I think,’ my mother said, quite coolly, ‘that he has gone.’ And, reaching forward, she unclasped his hand from mine and then smoothed my hand with both of hers, washing his dead touch away.

  ‘Poor man,’ she said with no expression whatsoever in her face. ‘He admitted defeat at the end, and I shall try not to be glad of it. He absorbed so many people’s lives – your father’s certainly – and there is no doubt that he was a selfish man. I used to hate him so dreadfully. Yes, Verity, really hate him. I used to long for his death. Yet here it is, and, as he said, it doesn’t matter now. Go quickly, dearest, and tell your husband and our poor Emmeline. She at least, will shed an honest tear.’

  And, bending over him, with a steady, almost impersonal flick of her wrist, she closed his eyes.

  Hannah, and Mrs Stevens were in the darkened hall, Hannah maintaining the solemn face she believed to be death’s due and Mrs Stevens sobbing quietly for those ten years of devotion that were ended now and for the next ten years which might well prove lean indeed. But before I could speak, the parlour door flew open and Joel, pushing them both aside, took me by the shoulders, his fingers gripping hard, as if he felt the need to shake the news out of me.

  ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ he said; the same words he had used on another occasion, the same excited glitter in his eyes, and when I nodded, although his lips didn’t move, I heard his mind say, ‘Thank God for that. I thought we’d have the old devil to shoot.’

  Mrs Stevens sat down, just that, with no apparent intention of ever getting up again, and although my mother was to pass the night at the Top House, Hannah, considering them both somewhat featherbrained, decided to stay too. But Joel dismissed my offer to remain, with them and I soon found myself walking down the stony pathway beside him.

  It was a crisp night, the sky twinkling with cold stars, the air coming down from the moor spicy with autumn, and, as I let it wash over me, I was aware of my own aching weariness and a certain silence within me that should have been grief. But there was no silence in Joel and once we were out of earshot – the black bulk of the mill just discernible below us in the night – his hand closed around my arm with the effect of an iron claw.

  ‘Did he say anything about his will? Has he left it to you – as we agreed?’

  ‘Yes – everything.’

  And, as he came to an abrupt halt, his tension and his triumph poured out of him with the effect of a long, shuddering sigh, telling me that until this moment he had not been certain.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘That’s it, then. The first thing I do tomorrow is talk to my brother-in-law Aycliffe about building. And as soon as we get the old devil underground I’m away to Lancashire for the best power looms I can find, and a man who can adapt them to suit my purpose.’

  But the mention of power looms chilled me, and I whispered, ‘Won’t there be trouble?’

  ‘Machine breaking? I reckon not. Ira Agbrigg keeps me well informed and there’s no Jabez Gott now to stir them up. I doubt they even need reminding what he looked like, swinging in the Castle Yard at York, but if they do Ira Agbrigg can take care of it. There’ll be no trouble.’

  ‘Will we move to the Top House?’

  ‘Yes – not that I relish it, with your grandfather’s mark all over it – not when I’ve a mark of my own and the wits and the guts to make it. But the mills and the machines come first, and the Top House will serve until I’ve cash to spare. And I need the millhouse at Low Cross for Ira Agbrigg, since I’ve a mind to make him manager there, and he has a wife and a parcel of brats to come with him. So there’s Hannah to fit in at the Top House, too.’

  Although the prospect of accommodating Hannah made my heart sink, the face of another woman – even more in need of a home – swam into my mind.

  ‘What will happen to Mrs Stevens?’

  ‘Mrs Stevens? What should happen to her?’

  ‘Well, something – surely?’

  ‘Oh, as t
o that,’ he said, shrugging his total indifference to her fate in a manner I found displeasing, ‘women of that sort should know what they are about. I believe your grandfather may have left her five hundred pounds, and I daresay she feathered her nest, these past ten years, at his expense. More fool her, if she didn’t.’

  And, remembering my mother’s light voice telling me, ‘She is quite accustomed to being discarded, our Mrs Stevens,’ I was suddenly very angry. I had disliked her because I had seen her as part of my grandfather, had laughed at her honeyed wooing of every man she met, her cloying, transparent self-seeking, but the reality of her – her no longer being young; knowing that when her beauty finally faded and her five hundred pounds was done, she could well be faced with the stark choice of the brothel, the workhouse, or the street – that reality touched me very deeply. Emmeline Stevens, the woman who no longer mattered to the men who had used her once her usefulness was done – men like my grandfather and Joel, for they were alike, who took women for a variety of purposes, to satisfy a range of appetites, as they would take any other commodity. And her plight convinced me of two things: that no woman could really grow accustomed to being discarded and that it was no particular virtue on my part but merely an accident of birth which prevented me from standing in her shoes. And I made up my mind that when we moved to the Top House I would ask her to stay.

  I went home then, feeling the cold, leaving Joel to contemplate his new possessions a while longer, but I was still at my toilet table, brushing the tangles from my hair, when he came into the room, carrying a tray with a bottle and glasses, and a branch of triumphant candles.

  ‘Champagne,’ he said, vibrant, victorious, and totally joyful.

  ‘Champagne?’

  ‘Yes – champagne for a funeral. Shocking – but then I’m not always a hypocrite, you see, Verity, and I’m a free man tonight. He was a bad old devil, your grandfather – I know that, you know that – and maybe I’ll be the same at his age – so, if you outlive me, you have my permission to celebrate my passing with champagne, and good luck to you – you and my son together. But this is my time now – just starting – and I’ll do the celebrating.’