The Clouded Hills

by Brenda Jagger

  And I had my own, quite separate pleasures, my long, moorland ramblings through grey-veiled, cool spring mornings, saffron-yellow summers, biting, steel-tinted, winters, with a dog sniffing close at either side, a sudden, soot-coloured bird rising up startled in my path, an awareness of small creatures, busily nest-building, life-building in the damp, roughly springing grasses, the interlacing of old trees. And, as those seasons blended and re-blended, first one toddling child, then another, emerging from the cocoon of babyhood to explore the wide, amazing world of the Top House garden.

  I was not, it seemed, a woman who could take much joy in pregnancy, unlike my friend Emma-Jane, who had become pregnant on her wedding night, or thereabouts, and who viewed her body’s basic biology with great pride, making it the constant subject of her conversation. Pregnancy to me had been a loss of freedom, a small invasion, but motherhood I found to be quite otherwise, and although I did not constantly wish to increase the quantity of my offspring, I was well pleased with those I had.

  I had thought babies to be all alike, until the unique miracle that was Blaize. For a while, I pitied other women with their quite ordinary children. Then in the months before Nicholas came, I had worried in case this second child should be no more than a pale copy of the first. And it had taken me a day or so to accustom myself to adoring this new variation of the Barforth face, to understand that I could love them both, differently yet equally.

  There was little more than a year between them, with – their identical dark Barforth curls, their insistent Barforth voices making their requirements known from the start, and then the wonder of two Barforth natures growing together yet quite separately. Blaize was the winning one, the artful one, his hair fading from black to a deep brown, his eyes the same smoky grey as my mother’s. He would always get his way by a sweet, guileful smile, would always bide his time, while Nicholas, the true black Barforth, ebony-curled and amber-skinned, the handsome one was ever resolute and impetuous.

  Blaize from their earliest nursery days would say, ‘I don’t think I’ll do that’; Nicholas, scowlingly, standing his ground, would declare, ‘I will not do it.’ And far more often than not, it would be Blaize, bowing gracefully with the wind, transferring adult tempers to his belligerent brother, who would obtain the favour, the forgiveness, who would avoid whatever task he had not wished to do, while Nicholas would end in angry, pent-up tears, taking his own punishment furiously, proudly, and even his brother’s if I were not there to intervene.

  ‘You can’t deceive me, Master Blaize,’ I would tell him, my heart bleeding for my younger son, understanding very well the pride that made him hide his weeping face in a corner, that made him pull away from my consoling hands. ‘I know what you’re up to, Blaize Barforth, getting your own way with Liza, blaming everything on your brother. You’ll not get your way so easily with me.’

  But Blaize would smile his pointed smile, so like my mother’s, his clear grey eyes as innocent as hers, something behind their untroubled surface telling me that for all my scolding it was his unquestioned belief that I loved him best. ‘Oh yes,’ those eyes told me, ‘I know you have to defend him, but he’s only Nicholas and I’m Blaize.’

  The enormity of his self-esteem, his complete certainty that the world properly belonged between the palms of his brown. Barforth hands, seldom failed to move me to laughter.

  And then there was Caroline, my daughter, the female born of my own female body, without whom I would not have been complete. My daughter – beautiful from her moment of entry into the world, with black silk hair and eyes the colour of a midnight sky, an enchantment who, on the battleground of the nursery floor, knew of no reason why she, a girl, should not be the conqueror.

  ‘She’s very strong, and very noisy,’ the nursemaid Liza old me, with less than wholehearted approval. ‘She’ll take some quietening down, ma’am, I’m telling you, when the time comes.’

  But the time had not yet come when it would, be necessary to explain to her that a young lady must be meek, with the appetite of a bird and motionless as a lily, and so when she put her fist into Blaize’s mocking eye, stole Nicholas’s pudding, and raced them both, shrieking, around the garden, I refused to listen when Liza clicked her tongue, when Hannah said, ‘That child, Verity, really she gives me the headache,’ refused to wonder when Joel, who rarely noticed his children, announced, ‘That one should have been a boy.’

  We no longer took our dinner in the middle of the afternoon. We had luncheon now, at midday, which, by pushing our dinner hour into the realm of moonlight and candlelight, enabled us more easily to entertain and wear, our evening clothes, as the landed gentry had ever done. And if Mrs Hobhouse and Mrs Oldroyd, who believed the gentry had no morals, did not quite like it, family pressures soon obliged them to follow suit. While Mrs Aycliffe – my cousin Elinor – liked it very well, and although her husband did not permit her to give large parties, fearing possible damage to his porcelain, she could be counted on to sparkle at any gathering of mine.

  I gave a dinner one warm evening for no better reason than to show off the new pale blue watered silk on the drawing-room walls, and the new pale blue chairs to match, which toned well, I thought, with the deep red velvet sofas we had purchased the year before. And, as usual, Elinor was the first to arrive, coming early – before her husband – to chat and chirrup and arrange herself advantageously in the light, so that the next person who entered my drawing-room door would see her perfect pose and might lose the desire to look at anything else.

  Strawberries and champagne, perhaps, were no longer served for breakfast in Blenheim Lane, the honeymoon and the first intensity of her husband’s enraptured gazing being long over, but the glow of his possessions still warmed her and the pleasure of curling up, kitten like, with her vast saucer of Aycliffe cream still appeared to suffice. And even the arrival, one after the other, of two little girls and a series of miscarriages to follow had barely disturbed her blissful dream.

  The children, who could clearly never be admitted to the hushed Aycliffe drawing room, had been from birth so absolutely confined to the nursery, to the back stairs, to a world apart, that Elinor, when they were brought down to her for ten minutes at teatime, treated them carefully, with a faint air of surprise. Children, certainly. But her children? Incredible. And it was always with relief that she gave them back to Nurse.

  But tonight she was clearly agitated, and since painful, emotion in Elinor was usually associated with her stepson, I settled myself to listen, and was not sure I would be able to sympathize.

  Crispin Aycliffe had indeed spent some time in France but had soon been called home again. His designs had been required for Joel’s new mill at Lawcroft, for an extension the Oldroyds were building at Fieldhead, for those rows of uncouth cottages, and although he went away again whenever he could, his father – especially now that the other children were beginning to arrive – had no intention of dispensing with his services. Morgan Aycliffe, perhaps, had never looked too closely at his infant daughters – had certainly never wanted them – but they were a responsibility and a burdensome one at his age. They had to be provided for, as Elinor had to be provided for, and having lost his own inclination for the building trade – preferring to pass his days in financial manipulations of a more subtle nature and his evenings gazing at his porcelain and his wife – he began to rely more and more heavily on his son. Crispin was needed at home, and at home he must stay. But he remained unwillingly, fretfully, and in everything but his professional capacity as an architect he was a most unsatisfactory son. Or so Elinor had told me, and so she was about to tell me again.

  ‘I am come early on purpose to say they will be late,’ she said. ‘And if they come at all I shall be astonished, for they have had such a set-to. He has not slept at home for three nights, so where he has been sleeping you may well imagine, and you know my husband cannot abide such a thing. And when he came in this evening – looking exactly as one would suppose – he laughed and said he would
gladly go away again if his appearance gave offence, and that it would suit him well enough to take rooms some where and spare us the sight of him altogether. Well, and I wish he would, but my husband will not hear of it – he thinks people would talk and say it was because of me. A young man’s place is at home, he says, until his wedding day – which means I shall be burdened with him forever, for he will not look at the girls my husband proposes, and the girls he does look at – well – you will know what I mean. And he will not leave without his father’s consent, because of the money. So – there they are, having their set to in Blenheim Lane, and your dinner spoiling. And what about Hannah? If Crispin does not come we shall be odd, numbers at table, and Hannah will very likely refuse to dine.’

  But the sound of new arrivals wiped all thoughts of Hannah, and of both Aycliffes, from Elinor’s mind and she was altogether composed, dimpling with delight, as the Hobhouses were shown in, the more so when she realized that Bradley’s wife, her old rival Emma-Jane Rawnsley the banker’s daughter, was dressed, like herself, in yellow.

  ‘Oh, look, Emma-Jane,’ she said wickedly, ‘look how alike we are.’

  Patting her own gauzy, primrose skirts into artful disarray, she went skipping across to Emma-Jane’s side so that all of us – especially Emma-Jane’s husband – could see that if Elinor were a primrose, Emma-Jane could only be a full-blown, well-fleshed dandelion. But if he still retained a taste for primroses – as he may well have done – he was a Law Valley man, with his priorities in good order, and before he had finished shaking hands with Joel, I knew his acquisitive eyes had tracked down every new item the room contained, and calculated its worth.

  Not that Bradley was himself short of money, his father’s recent death having made him the master of Nethercoats and the several hundred handlooms it contained. And if Joel had been an easier man, Bradley – notoriously easy himself – would have been ready enough for friendship and praise; he might even have taken his advice about the power looms he was now anxious to buy. But Joel was not easy, and I suppose Bradley knew, as my next guest, young Matthew Oldroyd of Fieldhead, knew, that he had little respect for men like themselves – and my brother Edwin – who had never had to struggle.

  And as they stood one on either side of him on the hearthrug, downing their sherry and ready for their dinner, talking yardage and how much one could expect to get for it, I sat with Emma-Jane and Elinor, and Lucy Oldroyd, who had once been a Hobhouse, and waited nervously for the Aycliffes.

  Hannah came into the room, in her favourite brown silk, looking very aloof and very handsome, and received a nod and a faint smile from Emma-Jane and Lucy, a good enough greeting for a spinster lady of no particular fortune and autocratic temper.

  ‘Is your husband not well?’ she asked Elinor, rather as if she were about to add, ‘And is it any wonder?’ But just then, as I was about to slip away and warn Mrs Stevens that we might be less than ten at table, we heard the doorbell again and the Aycliffes, father and son, were among us.

  ‘Oh, there you are,’ Elinor said, obviously startled. ‘And not a minute too soon.’

  But, ignoring her, they took my hand in turn, the father first and then the son; their lips spoke courteous words without meaning, their mouths smiled, and no one would notice – except Elinor and me – that throughout the entire evening, and tomorrow evening, and very likely the one after, they would not address a single word to each other.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she whispered, pressing her hands together. ‘I can see it was very bad. They have been talking about her – his mother – and my husband will not forgive him for days and days. Oh dear – the dreadful boy, if only he would get married and go away. There must be someone, Verity – someone respectable – that he could take a fancy to. And if not, then I hope he runs off with a married woman and disgraces himself entirely, so that I may be rid of him.’

  We had dinner then, Mrs Stevens’s favourite soup rich with its liaison of eggs and cream, turbot and ducklings and spicy fruit tarts, wine from my grandfather’s cellar, by no means exhausted yet; and the table decorated with garlands of rosebuds at every corner, with a vast arrangement of ferns and fruit and flowers in the centre.

  ‘My word, this is very nice,’ Morgan Aycliffe said accusingly, raising his glass to the light, admiring the crystal as much as the golden, altogether impeccable liquid it contained. ‘Very nice indeed, Barforth – mighty well done.’

  For the first time that evening Joel glanced at me, from the other end of the table, seeing the woman I had created to fit his requirements, the sensible, quiet little cousin grown up to be a sensible, self-possessed wife, wearing his diamonds in my ears, his silk on my back, a woman other men would look at – as he had told me on our wedding night – and say, ‘By God, he must be doing well to afford a woman like that.’

  As I took the ladies back to the drawing room after dinner, leaving the gentlemen alone, I wondered as I passed Crispin’s chair how he would amuse himself: if he would merely drink his port and stare at the wall or if, quite casually, he would toss some hot, controversial stone into their pool of conversation, making the sluggish, after-dinner waters sizzle. Catching my thought, he looked up and smiled, his eyebrows making their fine arch, and, as clearly as if it were happening inside me, I knew that his head ached, that those three nights of low company had soured his stomach and his spirits, that if there had been pleasure he could no longer remember it.

  ‘Verity?’ Hannah enquired from the doorway, puzzled, thinking I had found something amiss with the table.

  Shaking my head, I hurried away.

  ‘I hope they will not be too long,’ Emma-Jane said, taking up the whole of a red velvet sofa with her wide skirts, not really caring how long they were since men were of little interest to her now that she had one of her own. But Elinor, who cared a great deal, sighed and shook her head.

  ‘Then you will be disappointed, for I expect they will be hours – discussing their dirty politics – how long it is going to take the poor old King to die and when he does will the new one agree to extend the franchise – and if he does, who is to get the vote and who is not. And for my part I’m weary of it – absolutely – so that I don’t care if they give the vote to the sheep and pigs, or shoot the Duke of Wellington, as Mr Aycliffe seems to think they should, or ask the Pope to come and sit in the House of Commons.’

  ‘Lords,’ I said, well used to Elinor’s vagaries. ‘I expect he’d feel easier in the Lords.’

  But Hannah, always ill-tempered at dinner parties, especially when the gentleman invited to partner her was the neglectful, moody Crispin Aycliffe, said tartly, ‘The franchise is of great importance, Elinor. Think a little before you speak, and then perhaps you’ll understand that Cullingford – with upwards of 40,000 people – must have its own Member of Parliament. It is really quite vital.’

  ‘Oh, stuff,’ Elinor told her. ‘And if we get him, he’ll end up in Sir Giles Flood’s pocket – or in my brother Joel’s – and even if he doesn’t, what exactly can he do for me? Will he build us a suite of assembly rooms like they have in Bradford and Leeds, so we can give real balls occasionally instead of having to make do with the market buildings and all those foul smells from the shops underneath? Oh no, he’ll just try to get the Corn Laws done away with, if he’s Joel’s man, so they can bring the price of bread down and Joel can pay lower wages. And if he’s Sir Giles Flood’s man he’ll try to keep the Corn Laws in so the farmers can charge what they like. And, whatever they do, I don’t care, because I’m in the family way again and I don’t expect to survive it.’

  ‘Oh, darling,’ I said, laughing, ‘how nice – and you’ll survive.’

  But this news, which should have been of interest to both Lucy and Emma-Jane, met with a sudden, stiff silence, a blank staring into space that was caused by the presence of Hannah, a single woman, before whom it was improper to speak of anything remotely connected with the marriage bed. And their quite spiteful determination that Hannah – who was far
more intelligent than either one of them – must be excluded from any kind of adult conversation, must be kept totally in the dark, was somewhat amusing but considerably unkind.

  Yet there was nothing very much wrong with either Emma-Jane Hobhouse or Lucy Oldroyd. They were neither malicious nor angelic, neither brilliant nor stupid, just ordinary women who enjoyed the good things of life and wanted more of them but were not uncharitable, Emma-Jane being mainly concerned with her pregnancies, Lucy with her apparent inability to become pregnant at all. They were, I supposed, happy, yet, thinking of Bradley Hobhouse and the penny-pinching Matthew Oldroyd, I could not imagine why. Clearly then, marriage to them was not about personalities but about position, security; nor was it about surprises, since neither Lucy nor Emma-Jane would ever wish to be surprised. It was enough for them that the days should follow one after the other, comfortable, cushioned, peppered with identical joys and sorrows, their calm broken by nothing more serious than a tiff with their mother-in-law or a chipped plate; enough that nothing should be asked of them that they did not immediately understand; enough for them to say, ‘I am Mrs Bradley Hobhouse or Mrs Matthew Oldroyd. And this is my house, my son, my new blue chairs.’

  I am Mrs Joel Barforth, I thought, with no identity apart from his. Mrs Joel Barforth. Not Verity any longer but a serene, cool-eyed woman – Mrs Joel Barforth – who could discuss porcelain and poetry and politics, who knew the names of dozens of French sauces and how they should he served and which wines should accompany them who understood pleasure and need, now that her body had matured – and was sophisticated enough, even, to understand that sometimes her husband took his pleasures elsewhere. And since I had accepted the limits of our relationship, there was no reason – surely? – why I should not be happy, too.