The Clouded Hills

by Brenda Jagger

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Conscience, Mrs Barforth – or your husband’s conscience? You’ve come, with your basket of goodies have you, ma’am, to case the last moments of the dying. Very commendable, except that you’re too late, I fear. They’ve all gone – all fifteen of them – so there’s nothing left for you to do but buy them a headstone – something really splendid, with a nice inscription, I should think.’

  ‘That’s enough, Mark,’ Crispin said very quietly. ‘We’re not campaigning against women.’

  But the man – Mark Corey, certainly, of the Cullingford Star – his face quite ghastly, having just come downstairs from viewing those nightmare bodies, was devoured by a need to strike out at someone, anyone, and he paid no need.

  ‘Are we not?’ he said, speaking rapidly as if he had so much to say, so much protest inside him, so much outrage that he must rid himself of it or choke. ‘Are we not campaigning against them all? She’s Joel Barforth’s wife, isn’t she? And what objection has she ever made to living on his blood money – and living well? Can she be innocent, Crispin – really – or even decent, when she lives with a man who picks twelve-year-old girls up from the streets, locks them in his sheds, and throws the key away? Maybe she’s just never thought about it, Crispin, so ask her, tomorrow, in your article – and all the others like her – and see if she can reply—’

  ‘Easy, Mark,’ Crispin said, for indeed the man was very close to tears. ‘Easy, old friend,’ and, as they clasped hands and drew close together, the understanding between them excluded me, their absolute certainty of being right defeated me, a woman who could see fragments of right and fragments of wrong everywhere.

  ‘I’ll take you to your carriage,’ Crispin said, his hand giving Mark Corey’s a final, reassuring squeeze, and turning, walking quickly outside – running away – I could not speak to him, had no idea at all what I could possibly – ever – say to him again.

  ‘Well, I did warn you,’ Hannah told me as our carriage clattered smartly up the hill, away from the town and the silent, shawl-clad figures standing around the infirmary door. ‘And now I suppose you have got yourself soundly insulted, for you must know who that young man was No, no, not Mr Crispin Aycliffe, we all know about him. That was Mark Corey, who calls himself the editor of the Star, which he calls a newspaper. And, indeed, I hardly think he has the right to call himself Corey for that matter. He may be a natural son of Colonel Corey’s – although the colonel himself has never said so – but that would not make him a Corey, would it? However, somebody paid for his education, for he was at the grammar school with Crispin Aycliffe, and then they tried to make a churchman of him, which was clearly doomed to fail. He went to France, of course, as they all do, to get their revolutionary ideas, and since then he has been persecuting us with his dreadful newspaper. I know all this because Mr Morgan Aycliffe has told me.’

  ‘But you know so many things, Hannah.’

  ‘I am not stupid,’ she said robustly. ‘And one thing I do know, and that is why Crispin Aycliffe and Mark Corey were at the infirmary. They are going to write an article about the fire, not because of Ira Agbrigg – for who has ever, heard of Ira Agbrigg? – but because they believe they have found something to use against Joel. And whether it is the truth or a lie will in no way concern them. And so if Mr Corey insulted you just now, you must let Joel know of it so that he can take appropriate action – so that people may understand they are dealing with a bully and a liar, not some kind of avenging angel.’

  But when we returned to the Top House to find Joel most unusually at home in the middle of the day and he demanded, ‘How did you get on?’ for the first time in my life I took refuge in assumed frailty and answered, ‘Oh, I am not quite well, Joel. I have been too long in the heat and dust and my head aches. Hannah will tell you about – it. I think I must really lie down.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The Cullingford Star made its appearance some two or three days later, a shoddy publication printed on coarse paper, as different as could be from Mr Roundwood’s Courier and Review, which, on the whole, told us things we were glad to know, such as the progress of Mr Morgan Aycliffe’s political campaign and the brilliant success of our Assembly Ball.

  The Courier, predictably, had reported the fire at Low Cross as a tragic accident, finding it unnecessary, in an area where industrial fires were common, to indulge in speculation about keys and what may or may not have been the reason for those locked doors. But the Star, which some kind soul pushed under our door in the early hours of the morning, not only speculated, it accused, assassinated, presented, with a pen dipped in venom, a picture of man’s brutality to his own species that curdled the blood.

  No relatives of the dead girls had yet been found. No proper record existed of their names and ages. And so who were they? And were there others, confined somewhere in a slavery baser than any West Indian plantation? How many young persons from Simon Street and Gower Street and Saint Street were missing from home? And since, as always, there were dozens, hundreds, unaccounted for; had they perhaps been taken into captivity? Was this then, how profits were made? Had a certain well-known local industrialist found a speedier way to amass his millions? Had it come to him one night around the second magnum of champagne that instead of paying low wages he would do better to pay no wages at all? And so a picture was built up of Ira Agbrigg scouring the Simon Street area in the dead, of night like a vampire, looking for vagrants, the little lost children, the straying lambs, to lure them back to Low Cross, lock them up, and work them until they dropped.

  One was asked to consider a Roman galley with soldiers patrolling the benches with whips, pausing here and there to unshackle a dead oarsman and toss, him overboard while a replacement was fastened in his place. And on the deck of such a galley would be a cold-eyed, cold-hearted gentleman who saw nothing amiss with using the bodies of his fellow creatures to speed his transportation, consuming them as casually as a present-day engine consumed coals. And the readers of the Star were asked to pity such a Nero, to understand that such a man, so devoid of humanity, would surely bring about his own destruction. They were asked to bear in mind the tale of King Midas, who, having requested of the gods that everything he touched should turn to gold, found that his food and drink became metal on his tongue, and his wife a golden statue in his arms and that such a man was doomed to spiritual decay, a vast inward rot, and was certain to putrefy in the midst of his splendours.

  ‘You will take action against them, of course,’ Hannah said, handing the paper back to Joel as if it were a dead rat, her nostrils revolted by its imagined odour, and, taking it from her, folding it carefully, he put it in his pocket and smiled.

  ‘I don’t know that I shall, not direct action in any event, for if I put them out of business, I’m Nero again, aren’t I, and they’re martyrs to their cause. And every cause needs its martyrs – my word, yes, the more the merrier – so I doubt I’ll oblige them in quite that way.’

  ‘But you won’t simply ignore it – let them get away with it?’

  ‘Did I say that? I don’t think I did, you know.’ And, pushing back his chair, he said to me, ‘And how is my wife this morning? Does your head still ache? You’d best not sicken just now, my girl – unless you’re breeding against for we’ve a funeral to go to tomorrow, and if you’re not there some fool is going to swear I’ve turned you to gold.’

  And, seeing through his eyes, I had a vision of Rosamund Boulton encased in precious metal in her shop window, and of Estella Chase hardening in places since she was perhaps, not yet entirely possessed; and I understood the content of his smile.

  My old bitch was not inclined for exercise that day, preferring the comfort of a hearthrug to the first snap of cold in the autumn air, but the young one did not fail me and went loping ahead, knowing her way by now to Old Sarah’s Rock. There was a fine veil of rain in the air, a pale grey sky with a patchy grey mist beneath it, and the ground was so heavy with water that t
he hem of my dress became unwieldy, my progress unsteady, my spirits as dark as the bare fold of the land before me, cowering at the approach of winter. And when I came upon Crispin, standing in the shelter of the rock, Mark Corey’s words were there, like poles in the ground, between us: ‘Can she be innocent?’ And because nothing, to me, had ever been entirely black, entirely white, I knew there was no answer.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you are looking at me very strangely, and so you must have read the Star. Is he going to sue?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I thought not. And you are angry with me?’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Verity,’ he said, throwing back his cloak and opening his arms and his mind towards me in a gesture that always moved me, always drew me irresistibly towards him like a homecoming, a return to the source of my true self. ‘Verity, Verity – I am sorry for what happened at the infirmary – sorry for what Mark said to you – but he doesn’t know you and you don’t know him, which is a pity, for you would like each other.’

  ‘Do you think so? Would he permit himself to like me, when I have gorged myself for so long on blood money?’

  And I did not know why I had spoken so sharply when the last thing I wanted – the one thing I could not bear – was to quarrel with him.

  ‘Don’t,’ he said, growing sharp in his turn. ‘Don’t, Verity. Mark Corey may not please everyone on first acquaintance, but he has strong feelings, sincere emotions, and after the horror we had just seen – after that – he was not in command of himself and neither was I And because of that horror – to ensure that it never happens again – can you blame me, Verity, for my need to strike out? Yes, yes, I know my words were inflammatory – a deliberate play on the emotions – a savage personal attack on a man I happen to dislike for very private reasons – I admit it freely. But there was enough truth there to justify every syllable of it – and if you had seen those girls you would understand why. Verity, we must settle this between us, for it is not the end of it. I know how awkwardly you are placed, but I could not bear it – and I must tell you this – if you tried to defend him.’

  I disengaged myself from his arms and walked a step or two away from him, knowing how easy it would be to offer him my wholehearted support, to say, ‘Yes, Crispin, tell them anything – take any atrocity you can and enlarge it, invent it, anything, because the end justifies the means.’ And so it did, for the children had to be protected; I knew that now as well as he. A way must be found, somehow, anyhow, to allow them their childhood, to guarantee them shelter and time and space in which to grow and, when childhood was done, an opportunity to live with dignity. But was it not too easy, too obvious, to fasten one’s hatred on Joel and others like him, to imagine that curbing him or removing him would solve everything? Did we, in fact, know how to recognize our oppressors, or were we all oppressors, all self-seeking, all of us to blame? An accident of birth had made Mark Corey a radical and Joel Barforth an industrialist, just as that same accident could so easily have reversed the roles of my grandfather and Jabez Gott. And how many, I thought, even down there in the mill yards, once their own needs were satisfied, would lift a finger to help others? Not many, it seemed to me, not many, and although it made none of it right, it made it difficult, a maze of human good and ill through which I could not find my way. And concluding that our salvation could only come from inside ourselves – from a maturing of our own greedy, childish, grasping, frightened human; hearts – and because I saw no possibility of such a universal change, I wondered why I could not tell Crispin an easy lie, settle it as he wanted it settled, and think only, of myself and him.

  ‘I am not making excuses,’ I told him. ‘It is just that I know someone else who saw those girls, someone who went to the infirmary with them and stayed there until they died, and who has barely spoken a dozen words since.’

  ‘Mrs Agbrigg?’

  ‘Yes. I think it unlikely she ever learned to read, but she has a clever son who can read for her. And if he doesn’t tell her about your article, then someone else will.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know I met her at the infirmary, and however sorry I’m inclined to feel, I can’t afford it, Verity. She’s a nice woman, but her husband did lock that door, and because that door was locked those children died. Verity, it’s as clear-cut as that, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, Crispin. Nothing could ever be so clear-cut as that – not to me. I would want to know why he locked that door. He says it was to keep them off the streets, and although I don’t say he was right nor that it was right for them to be there – because that certainly wasn’t right – what I do believe is that he was trying to do the best he could, as he saw it.’

  ‘Agbrigg? My God, Verity, the man’s a positive disease. They detest him at Low Cross.’

  ‘Only because he’s close to Joel, and they detest Joel.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  And suddenly it was no longer a question of Low Cross or the Cullingford Star but our own personal triangle, its spikes threatening now to impale us.

  ‘I cannot bear to: hear you defend him, he whispered, his face blanched with jealous anger, as perhaps mine had blanched with fear. Yet instead of throwing myself against him and vowing that I detested Joel as heartily as anyone at Low Cross – as Crispin wanted me to do, as I wanted to do – I said, much too calmly, I am not defending him. I know what Joel is – after all, he is my cousin. I have known him all my life. And even if I wanted to defend him it would be a waste of time, since he doesn’t care what people think of him.’

  ‘No, he doesn’t care what men think of him, that I grant you, but where women are concerned – You know he has other women, don’t you?’

  ‘Stop it, Crispin.’

  ‘Why? You do know, don’t you, about Miss Boulton? And Mrs Chase now too, it seems, according to Mark, who is, after all, her half brother—?’

  ‘Yes I know. It doesn’t seem to matter.’

  ‘It matters to me – because he has you too.’

  And, covering, his face briefly with his hands, he shuddered, quite violently, a movement of distress that banished all my hesitation and brought my arms around him.

  ‘So that’s jealousy, is it?’ he said, smiling, nuzzling his head against mine. ‘I thought I was above it, you know, but I’m not, and it hurts. What are you going to do for me?’

  ‘And when I merely held him tighter he laughed, making a joke of what we both knew to be the most urgent thing in our lives.’

  ‘I know what you can do. You can come and live with me, on my fifty pounds a year, in my attic at the Red Gin. How would that suit you?’

  ‘In some ways it would suit me very well.’

  ‘Yes – or I could move away from here and find responsible employment, in London perhaps, for I am, after all, an architect not without talent and there is money to be made. I could earn the wherewithal to keep my own carriage and a cook and a parlourmaid, and all the little niceties we’ve both been accustomed to. And you: could spend your days waiting for me to come home and saying, “Yes, dear. Quite right, dear,” every time I expressed an opinion, like my mother used to do. And we could feel, very triumphant because Mrs So-and-So had left a card, or very desperate because she hadn’t. Would that suit you better?’

  ‘It would hardly suit you at all.’

  ‘I suppose not, and I might not even be very good at it, I have often wondered if I could ever turn sour, like my father, if I began to feel out of place with my life. Perhaps there is enough of him in me for that. So what now, Verity?’

  What indeed? The sky, I noticed, had clouded over, and there was a chill wind sighing across the surface of the moor, bending the stiff grasses: a dull, clammy morning, promising more rain, heralding a cold ending of the year. And feeling the numb misery in him, knowing what he was steeling himself to say, I knew it would be an act of love, to say it for him.

  ‘Perhaps we should not meet again – not for a while, at any rate.’

  ‘That is not what I want,
Verity.’

  ‘Oh – I think, in a way, it is. ‘There are too many things standing between us, and I think you are afraid to find me more of a Barforth than you imagined – or that circumstances may force me to become so. I think you are afraid I may turn you away from the path you have chosen – and I think you may be right.’

  He leaned, for a moment, quite heavily against the rock, and my own body, too, was weak; a great weight, it seemed; was pressing against my forehead, a certain bewilderment that I, who was not brave, had found the courage to say these things.

  ‘How clear your eyes are,’ he whispered, ‘and how small you make me seem. I am no more reasonable, you see, than any other man. I knew you would dislike my article, yet I wanted you to lie to me and call it brilliant. I wanted you to be unquestioningly on my side. I need that exclusive devotion, and yet I am not prepared to give it. I have found something to do with my life, and it seems I cannot part from it. I am a poor creature sometimes, Verity, for it is not in me to say goodbye to you.’

  And it was a blessing that my dog came suddenly careering back to me and, rearing up, clapped muddy paws on my shoulders, almost overturning me.

  ‘Foolish animal, you are quite wet through – get down, be still. I had better take her home, for she is shivering and the moor must be running with water. Silly girl, you have no sense at all.’ And, brushing my hands against my cheeks, I said unnecessarily, ‘It is coming on to rain,’ knowing that the sudden flurry of raindrops would offer me some concealment if I began to cry, ‘Crispin, I had better run, for Mrs Stevens is obsessed with the weather and she is likely to send the carriage for me, as far as it can come.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Of course – Verity—’

  ‘No,’ I said, wildly perhaps, for me. ‘No’ – forbidding him to hold me back, refusing absolutely to listen, and, obsessed with my determination that we must part this way, as loving friends, I turned and fled, unaware until I reached the road again that my dog had not followed me and then leaving her, for the first time, to find her way alone. And that day I truly understood how necessary it is sometimes to fall ill, how the only way to survive is to draw the bed curtains and creep inside the sheets, remaining motionless, untouchable, until one can bear to face the daylight again.