The Clouded Hills

by Brenda Jagger

  It was a Friday afternoon, and, Thursday being payday, the streets were full of men with money in their pockets, who would not go back to work until the cash ran out; men who had been gloriously drunk last night, less gloriously today, who would snarl and prowl tomorrow at the stale tag end of pleasure, until there was nothing else to do but go home to be cursed and clouted by their wives, to push one brood of children out of the door and set about making another.

  There were children too in the streets, as there always were; children locked out of their homes while their mothers were at work, children abandoned altogether or just wandering, the infants who had not yet been sent to the mills straighter, chubbier than their wizened seniors but puny just the same, pasty of face and foul of tongue; splashing their feet in the sewage channels and pelting filth at passing carriages.

  ‘One should do something about those wretched creatures,’ Mrs Stevens said tartly, clearly having deportation to Australia in mind, but, leaning forward to smile at one ant cluster of tousled heads and receiving giggles and vulgar gestures in reply – for these were not my cousin Hannah’s worthy causes who had had their hands and their imaginations washed in Ramsden Street – I thought of Crispin, who had chosen to live among them, and smiled again.

  And from Crispin my mind went to his friend and now, apparently, his associate, the Tory member for Newark, Mr Michael Sadler, whose Bill for the introduction of the ten-hour working day had found scant favour in Westminster, resulting in nothing more definite than the appointment of a Select Committee empowered to make further enquiries. But Michael Sadler, addressing the House of Commons in March, when the agitation for parliamentary reform had been at its height, had shocked even that sophisticated body by displaying one of the black leather thongs, a necessary tool, it seemed, of the West Riding overlooker’s trade. The House heard of the heat and dust of the sheds, the stench of grease and gas and sweat, the deformities, the degradations, and, when it refused to act – since the manufacturers could always find enough doctors and parsons to swear that such things toughened the body and purified the soul – the Short Time Committees decided to act for them.

  There had been a massive Easter pilgrimage organized by Richard Oastler and his friend, the fiery Parson Bull, curate of Bierley; Mr Oastler himself marching put of Huddersfield with brass bands playing, to meet contingents of Short Timers from all over the West Riding, who had gathered in Leeds. I was not sure how many came, for the number varied depending on who was telling the tale and no one could guess how many fell by the wayside, for it was twenty-two miles from their starting point to the old Castle Yard in York and many of them were ill-shod, undernourished, poorly equipped to handle the rough overnight going and the continually pouring rain. But a great many, certainly, were there the next morning to stand around Mr Oastler in the Castle Yard and to exchange with him that burning promise which had been the main purpose of the ordeal: Our children shall be free.

  And although newspapers like the Cullingford Courier and Review and the Leeds Mercury had made fun of the whole affair, suggesting that Oastler saw himself as a king dispensing justice to a grateful populace, their very malice brought the plight of the factory children and the activities of the Factory King to the attention of many who had been unaware of them before. My maid, Marth-Ellen, told me that when Oastler returned home, after that Easter, day, having walked a total of ninety miles, the soles of his feet peeled away as he removed his boots, a small matter, which in no way delayed his journey to London, to give evidence before Mr Sadler’s committee.

  Parson Bull had gone to London, too – and Crispin Aycliffe – armed with the names and circumstances of hundreds of families whose children were deformed from stooping and straining in the mills. They had taken with them a few terrified examples of oppression: the girl from a Leeds poorhouse who had pulled her six-year-old bones out of place by dragging heavy baskets; the boy who, at the age of eight, had such pain and weakness in his legs that he had to be carried a mile to the mill, every morning, by his brother and sister, all three of them getting a beating if they were late. The committee heard of the ten-year-old child who was tied to an iron pillar and beaten by his – overlooker, then gagged and forced to run round and round a loom, past this same overlooker, who would sometimes strike him and sometimes not. They heard about the fourteen daily hours of labour, the appalling accidents, the promiscuity, the tub in the yard which was all some factories had by way of privies, for men and women alike. They heard how impossible it was, in such circumstances, for parents to educate their children; to do little more than put their exhausted, unwashed bodies to bed on Saturday night and wake them in time for work on Monday morning. They heard of fathers who, unable to find employment themselves, were refused Poor Relief unless they agreed to send their children to the mills; of fathers who were heartbroken and bitter at the harm they were forced to do to their own infants; of fathers who would sell their children’s souls, for a drop of gin.

  And all this in a Christian land, the richest, most progressive nation in the world; all this beneath my feet, inside my nostrils, behind my eyelids, sleeping inside me, as I had slept myself until Crispin had opened my heart; and my eyes, of their own accord, had opened too.

  He had said nothing to me that morning of his visit to London, his meetings with Michael Sadler; the devout politician, the battling churchman Parson Bull; with Richard Oastler, the land agent, the countryman whose flamboyance and sincerity could so move and uplift city crowds. He had said nothing to me about the pathetic scraps of humanity who had told their harrowing tales to Sadler’s committee, nor how he and Oastler and Parson Bull had persuaded them to speak, had soothed their fears of retribution from their employers, had fed them and consoled them on the bewildering journey to London and back again. He had said nothing of all that, but I understood now that he had half hoped I would fail him not merely because of the dangers and distresses inevitable in an affair with a married woman but because he had no real room in his life now for personal affairs at all. Perhaps, as Hannah said, he had joined Oastler’s campaign in the beginning to obstruct his father – in fact, I felt fairly sure he had – and I believed, as he had told me at the dance, that there were indeed many times when he wished he could walk away from it all and be free again. But I did not think he would walk away, and I wondered – with sorrow and affection and a whisper of jealousy – if he had already found his total commitment, his intense relationship, in a way he had not bargained for.

  Yet I had done nothing from which I could not withdraw. I had not committed adultery and could see no likelihood of ever committing it, since the moment of wild passion necessary for an act so contrary to my education could hardly take place on a stretch of public moorland and I knew that to visit his lodgings in secret, or find some other place of concealment, would be totally beyond me. And so we could not be lovers, from lack of opportunity and from a certain incredulity inside me that made the idea seem almost laughable. Men committed adultery, and women like Rosamund Boulton who had little to lose; women like Estella Chase, perhaps, with enough noble blood to despise the conventions. Our late Queen Caroline had done it, and there were plenty of factory girls who, in times of unemployment, would take to walking the streets. But what had that to do with me? Was it even what I desired?

  I tried to see myself in bed with Crispin – tried to find a bed to put us in – tried to see myself dressing hurriedly in some unfamiliar place, rushing home breathless and fearful, lying, covering my tracks, perpetually ill at ease. And I could imagine no love strong enough to survive such furtive, hasty couplings, such shoddiness. Yet, even so, I knew I was no longer prepared to set aside the one real relationship life had offered me. I was entitled to something, surely – entitled to claim a small measure of love and freedom, so that at least, later on, I would have something to remember. And I understood now, even more clearly, why I had almost suffocated at Emma-Jane’s bedside and trembled at the sight of the cradle, knowing that I could have a
dozen children yet and that my own fertility would prove to be my jailor.

  ‘And was it a pretty baby?’ Mrs Stevens asked, catching my thought.

  Leaning towards her confidentially, making sure of her attention – knowing full well she was hoping to hear some spicy detail of Bradley. Hobhouse’s sexual appetite, reputedly prodigious – I said, ‘Very pretty – like all babies. But, do you know, Emmeline dear, I’ve just been thinking it over, and it strikes me that I’m in no hurry to have another child.’

  ‘Ah well, dear, that I can understand,’ she said, suddenly very interested in the shop front, the passers by. ‘But one takes what God sends.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘My dear – of course I think so. And we all know what a lottery it is, how some of us bring forth every springtime and think nothing of it, whereas others go for years and years with never a one.’

  ‘Oh, come now, Emmeline,’ I said, warning her by my unaccustomed use of her first name that although my tone was light, I was not in jest. ‘Can it really be such a lottery as all that? You lived with my grandfather for ten years, and with other men before him, and you don’t look to me like a barren woman. Was it really chance, Emmeline?’

  ‘Dearest,’ she said, colouring slightly, ‘my situation was never, in any way, similar to yours. You should be aware that one of the things a man values in his wife is her fertility, and one of the things he values in his mistress is her lack of it.’

  ‘Then there is something – I knew it – something one can do?’

  ‘Verity,’ she said, and I could see she was both shocked and alarmed, ‘what are you asking?’

  ‘Not a great deal – Emmeline dear. You have brewed me potions to make my hair shine, and perfumes, and tooth powders, and tonics to make me strong. I have conceived four times already – is there no way of ensuring me a little rest?’

  ‘No way that is certain – and, Verity – please, dear – your husband has a right to his children. I think it could be considered criminal in a wife to deny him knowingly – certainly he would think so. Why, Mr Hobhouse was saying just now that you need more sons, and I am sure Mr Barforth would not quarrel with that.’

  ‘But I would quarrel with it, Emmeline,’ I said, and, taking her by the wrist, I fixed her with a stare I knew she could not withstand for long. ‘It is my body, Emmeline. They call it “labour,” and so it is, hard and dangerous; and they call it “confinement,” and it is that too. And my body has laboured and been imprisoned four times, and, for a little while, that is enough. We are not all made the same. I cannot lie in bed and stuff myself with cake for three weeks every year like Emma-Jane and talk about my “next one” like she did, with her new baby less than a day old. You had better help me, Emmeline – really – you had better.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Oh, Verity – how is it that you have become so hard? You were never hard…’

  ‘No – not hard enough. But I am still sensible, Mrs Stevens, and so are you. And you will help me, dear. You know you will. What else can you do?’

  ‘There is more of your grandfather in you than I thought,’ she told me. ‘Your grandfather and your mother blended together. My word. My goodness – yes, of course I will help you, Verity – naturally dear, anything you say.’

  And we completed the rest of our drive in silence, having much, I believe, to consider privately.

  Chapter Twenty

  It would end, I decided, with the fine weather, when the hazy, amber mornings of October choked themselves in November fog and sleet; when the white-cold of December and the nasty, sodden miseries of January and February made it impossible for us to linger on the moor. And by the time spring came again he would be too engrossed with his Ten Hours Committee and I would be pregnant, perhaps, with Joel’s child, since Mrs Stevens could only offer me help, not certainty. He would have thought better of it, or forgotten, and I would be in no state to remind him. But, before the snow came, I went out as often as I could to Old Sarah’s Rock, allowing him each time to possess a little more of me, wanting him to possess the whole, so that when he told me, ‘You’ll come to my lodgings, Verity – yes – yes, you’ll come soon,’ I was beginning to, believe, him. And although I was often afraid, I felt no shame since, of the three of us, the only one who really enjoyed his life was Joel.

  Joel had taken exception, certainly, to the findings of Michael. Sadler’s committee, but he saw it merely as a nuisance, not as a threat.

  ‘Let them legislate,’ he said, ‘if they will – if they can – which I doubt, for Parliament, after all, is composed of men of affairs who are more likely to see things my way than Richard Oastler’s. And there’s always a way round it. If I have a likely lad who wants to work more than the law allows, what’s to stop him putting in his ten hours at Lawcroft and another four or five, or as much as he likes – or as much as I like – at Low Cross? And even if our Mr Michael Sadler has thought of that, I doubt he can find a way to stop it. And I don’t whip, my employees, I don’t even whip my horses, or my wife. Do I?’

  And, pinching my chin, he went breezily on his way, too busy with the purchase of Carter’s mill at Tarn Edge and his pursuit of Estella Chase to wonder about my sudden interest in Reform.

  The Ten Hours Bill, if it ever came, was to be set aside, then, at Lawcroft an obstacle, like all others, that Joel would not long allow to block his way. But one evening towards the end of October he came striding into the house, his face so black with rage that I, who had seen his rages often enough before, stood hastily back from this one, knowing it to be different. And then, because it could concern my meetings with Crispin, I hurried after him, carefully opening the study door he had slammed so violently shut and stood for a moment on tiptoe, wondering if I could weather the storm.

  ‘What is it, Joel? Has something – gone wrong?’

  ‘Wrong? Oh no, no – what could be wrong? In my superbly run enterprises how could anything go amiss? One of the old sheds at Low Cross has burned down, that’s all – early this morning.’

  And, for a moment, I was infinitely, blessedly, relieved.

  ‘Oh – but it didn’t spread? It wasn’t a big fire? For we saw nothing—’

  ‘No. It didn’t spread, and if you had seen smoke on the horizon, would it have concerned you? There’s a deal of smoke hereabouts, and mill fires are common enough. And the shed was due to come down anyway.’

  ‘So it wasn’t serious?’

  ‘Did I say so? No, it wasn’t serious, or shouldn’t have been – except that there were fifteen children inside.’

  ‘Oh, Joel – no, Joel—’

  ‘Oh yes – locked in, I might add, and nobody could find the key—’

  As I struggled against nausea his fist came crashing down on the table and he snarled, ‘That bloody Agbrigg. He’ll make Low Cross pay, he tells me – and so he has – but there’s cheap labour and cheap labour, and if he has to bring in Irish brats by the dozen from God knows where – if he has to take in waifs and strays from off the streets and let them doss down in the old sheds – well – I warned him, no trouble, nothing that the Cullingford bloody Star can get hold of. And so he has to lock them in at night – for their own good, he tells me – to keep them off the streets or stop them from entertaining men on my woolsacks, or some such bloody nonsense. He wants to keep them respectable – playing the parson, doing his own bit of reform – and so he locks them in – and goes off to a prayer meeting and lets them burn themselves to death. God knows what the real Reformers are going to make of that.’

  I sat down in the deep armchair by the desk, suddenly very cold, as if the ice of an intense winter had entered the room, a living presence, blue-lipped, skeletal, making me shiver.

  ‘They were all girls, then? Young girls?’

  ‘Yes – twelve-year-olds, I reckon – fourteen, some of them, maybe.’

  ‘And some of them younger?’

  ‘Agbrigg says not. And I intend to believe him.’

  A
nd he sat down, too, on the other side of the desk, took a cigar from the heavy silver box and inhaled deeply once and then twice, his eyes narrowing against the smoke; he was intensely shaken, I thought, and unwilling to admit it, determined to show nothing but the indifference of a Matthew Oldroyd, the defensive bluster of a Bradley Hobhouse. And I was surprised, puzzled – oddly disturbed – to see that he felt more than that, to realize that, whether he liked it or not – and he did not like it – he could not view this tragedy impersonally, that those fifteen Operatives had acquired fifteen quite separate faces – young faces which, because they mattered more than he felt they should, had weakened him.

  ‘Are there no relatives?’

  ‘Not yet, though no doubt they’ll appear should I decide to put my hand in my pocket. And maybe I would. I’ve paid compensation often enough before, looked after the widows and orphans and doctors’ bills, which no law in the land obliges me to do and which is more than the Hobhouses have ever done. But then, if I do it now and some clever devil from the Star gets to know about it and mentions my name to Richard Oastler – says I’m buying silence, or easing my conscience – no, no, no – if they get their Bill through and try to enforce it they can’t inspect every mill in the country. They’ll pick out the names they know and come ferreting in what they hope are the right muckheaps. And I won’t stand for it.’