The Clouded Hills

by Brenda Jagger

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ Bradley Hobhouse told me, meaning it, although most women seemed beautiful to him through the brandy fumes so often in his head, and when one thought of Emma-Jane…’

  ‘You are looking extremely well,’ Morgan Aycliffe said peevishly, having had rather too much of pretty women for his taste these last few years.

  ‘Stunning,’ Sir Charles Winterton proclaimed, while my new stepfather, Squire Dalby, grew quite sentimental and shed a few tears because he had not known my mother at my age.

  But Joel, his eyes sweeping brusquely over my lovely, lustrous gown, had merely reached into his pocket and tossed, at me, as casually as he had once tossed me my pearls, a thick rope of gold, elaborately twisted and set with diamonds, which now was an unaccustomed weight on my arm.

  ‘I had thanked him – quite meekly, I think, having nothing else to say – and, nodding, smiling a little, be had walked past me on business of his own, giving me no clue as to his meaning. The bracelet, I supposed, had cost a great deal of money, since Joel would not have bought it otherwise, and, as with my pearls, he would not ask me what I had done with it tomorrow morning. He would not require me to return it to him for safekeeping, would not grumble if I wore it in the garden when I exercised my dogs. The bracelet was mine, although I had not asked for it and did not greatly care for it, manacling my wrist and weighing me down, for it was heavy, as this house was heavy, as Joel’s apparent indifference to me, which should have been light, was heavy. And I could see no point in further resistance. I was Verity Barforth and would never be any other, and I must go to Crispin as soon as I could and tell him so. I must admit to myself that he could be happy without me; that I, without him, could be reasonable again, sensible and safe. And when I was older, quieter, surely it would not matter so much? Surely I could immerse myself in my children’s lives, as other women seemed able to do, and remember him in small, permitted doses, with pleasure? Surely it would be enough to know that, recognizing his need for freedom, I had willingly, lovingly, set him free?

  At three o’clock in the morning, four o’clock in the morning, when the Aycliffes and the Wintertons and other respectable people had long since ordered their carriages and gone home, the house was still full of the hard-core drinkers, some of them in small scatterings, here and there, most of them in the smoking room in various stages of intoxication. Bradley Hobhouse, who had taken Emma-Jane safely back to Nethercoats as soon as she had eaten her supper and then come back alone, was asleep now in a deep leather armchair, his legs a peril to unsteady passersby. A young Winterton cousin had collapsed neatly on a sofa; a certain young lady, her matrimonial prospects now somewhat impaired, had been obliged to retire to a spare bedroom, to the mortification of her mamma, who quite understandably, refused to leave her side. But my presence now among men who were turning bawdy or nasty or stupid with drink was not required and, approaching a much-mellowed Joel, I asked him ‘I could say good night now, I think?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, a warm hand on my shoulder, his body richly at ease, the wine inside him, it seemed, inclining him to a universal goodwill. ‘Go to bed now, if you wish. In fact, I’ll light your way, madam, as a husband should.’

  He led me from the smoking room and up the stairs, which had no need of bedtime candles, his hand still on my shoulder, leaning against me a little as if his balance was no longer altogether accurate. And, having rarely seen him so completely in his cups, I smiled up at him, finding it natural, appealing almost, that he had drunk so deeply to his own triumph.

  ‘I think it has gone very well. Are you pleased?’

  The deserted, corridor was like a strip of cool water flowing above the tumult downstairs, hushed and dark. His hand lingered about me in the beginning of a caress, an indication, perhaps, that once again there could be peace between us, deceiving me so totally that even when he straightened, held himself erect and well away from me, hawk-faced and keen, no longer drunk at all, I did not begin to be afraid.

  ‘I walked up here with you to thank you,’ he said, each word coming by itself, distinct and dangerous. ‘For a husband should thank his wife, should he not, Verity, when she has served him well?’

  ‘Oh – as to that—’

  And still I was not afraid, but ill at ease.

  ‘What is it, Joel?’

  ‘Why, what should it be?’

  ‘You seem strange. Have I done something amiss?’

  ‘I wonder. But we’ll come to that later. I am here merely to thank you, as I said, for a job well done. It went well tonight, very well. Everyone says so. And I am glad to see you still so faithful to my interests, however unfaithful you may be to me in other ways.’

  For a moment in that narrow, empty space, his words danced like sharp needles over the surface of my skin, piercing a slow passage to my brain.

  ‘Do you hear me, Verity?’

  And although my mind, recovering its courage, answered, ‘Yes, I hear you, and you have only yourself to blame,’ my tongue was too heavy, too cold either for protest or for defence, my body lost in a wild snowdrift of fear. Yet I knew that from the very beginning this moment had been waiting, biding its cruel time, certain of its own strength and my utter powerlessness, and, pressing my back against the wall, adopting the stance of any other trapped and terrified animal, I could hear my breathing labouring in my chest, hurting.

  He took a step or two backwards and then slowly walked towards me, halting a bare inch away. ‘You dirty bitch,’ he said, his face quite blank. ‘So it’s true, then.’

  And, holding me with one hand, he hit me twice across the face, viciously and accurately, so that my neck muscles wrenched in agony and my head, reeling backwards, struck hard against the wall.

  ‘It’s true, isn’t it? Say it. Damn you, Verity, say it. It’s written on your face clear enough, but I’ll hear it, one way or another. Are you unfaithful to me? Say it.’

  Appalled by that terrible blankness in his eyes I understood that to allow him to shake a confession out of me would be to cheapen everything I had felt, tarnish everything I had valued, and lifting up my head and my voice, I whispered, ‘It’s true.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know. I’ve known these past six weeks, known and not known. So it’s true. And the man’s name?’

  ‘You must know that too.’

  ‘Of course I know it, and where you meet him and for how long. Of course I know. Now say it.’

  ‘He’s not to blame; he didn’t force me.’

  ‘No, by God, but I’ll force you. His name.’

  ‘Crispin. Crispin Aycliffe.’

  ‘Yes, Crispin Aycliffe. You breathe it to me like a prayer, but it won’t help you, neither of you. Now get to your room and wait until my guests have gone and I have time for you. Get to your room, damn you. Get out of my sight before I indulge myself and thrash you.’

  My maid was waiting, sleepy but determined to do her duty, and it was easy to let her undress me and brush my hair, somehow possible to answer her chatter with a nod and a smile as she got out my jewel case and locked away my pearls and my new bracelet. But when she had gone I took off my nightdress and put on a dark wool gown suitable for morning, twisted my hair into a low knot, similar to Elinor’s, the best I could manage unaided, afraid, I think, of appearing in any way naked before him, afraid of losing control and rushing outside in my bedgown like Elinor. And sitting, hands folded, waiting as he commanded, I was frightened most by my own veneer of outer calm, my body encased, as so often before, in glass. So had I been on the night my father died, and on the next night when they had murdered my brother. So still and quiet that no one had noticed my agony. And so was I now, drugged by my determination to bleed unseen, to retain intact those fragments of myself which neither Joel nor my grandfather, in some ways not even Crispin, had been able to dominate. Yet now, perhaps, I would, be obliged to sacrifice that ultimate freedom for Crispin’s sake, would be obliged, to plead and implore, forgiveness, like Elinor. And the taste of the sacri
fice was cold ash on my tongue. Joel would require vengeance, as my grandfather would have required it, and, somehow I would convince him that, as the blame had been mine, the punishment must be mine too. So I would even incite him to punish me, so that, free of the need to hurt, he might even reach some measure of understanding.

  ‘I heard the carriages leaving, one after the other, until even Bradley Hobhouse had been poured into his equipage and rolled away. I saw the sky lighten with the start of a cold morning and heard Joel, I thought, in his own room; I held my breath a moment, waiting for the dressing-room door to finally open, but he did not come and I had to wait a half hour longer before one of Mrs Richmond’s faceless maids came to summon me downstairs.

  He was sitting behind his desk in a high-backed chair, a coffee tray with one cup, a honeypot, and the remains of a crusty loaf before him. He had changed his clothes shaved, breakfasted at his leisure, a man as alert and refreshed as if he had slept soundly the whole night.

  He said, master to maid, ‘You had best sit down, although there is not a great deal I want to say and I shall not keep you long. Have you anything in particular to say to me?’

  And chilled by his complete self-possession when I had prepared myself for the scorching heat of his anger, my mouth turned dry, my stomach lurched uneasily.

  ‘Perhaps all can say is that I thought, sometimes I was almost certain, that you knew—’

  ‘And condoned it? Then you understand nothing of my nature. I was very far from suspecting you, Verity wondered at your motives for defending Elinor. But I decided it was because I had neglected you, and Hannah had interfered. And there was a moment when I was almost pleased to think you cared enough to complain. Yes, just think of that. You’ve contrived to make something of a fool of me, Verity, for a man believes, generally, what he wants to believe, and I didn’t want to believe you false. That’s why you had to tell me yourself believe it now.’

  ‘Why tonight, with the house full of people?’

  ‘Why not? The opportunity presented itself, as opportunities always do, if one bides one’s time, a lesson my sister Elinor has learned to her cost and somewhat too late.’

  ‘I am not Elinor. It is not at all the same.’

  ‘Ah no, naturally. Her sins are mean and slightly ridiculous; yours are splendid. That is always the case. But the fact of the matter is that you are exactly the same – you less greedy perhaps, less simple, less easy to manage, but still birds of a feather.’

  And, seeing no reason to be meek now that I had nothing more to lose, I said, ‘Yes, birds of a feather, all of us, following our family traditions.’

  He brought the flat of his hand down on the table with a mighty slap, setting the coffee tray jangling, warning me that he had it in him not only to hurt me badly but to enjoy it.

  To divert him, remembering that he could also hurt Crispin, I said quickly, ‘May I know who told you?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  He got up, strode irritably to the fireplace, threw his cigar into the fire, restraining himself, I thought, from immediately lighting another, and then, as if the whole conversation had suddenly wearied him, sat down again, staring at his cigar box, drumming his fingers against it.

  ‘I heard it from Estella Chase,’ he said, still contemplating the massive gold-and-onyx box. ‘And she had it from her half brother, Mark Corey – a friend of Aycliffe’s.’

  And, each word cutting like a drop of ice water through the thick silence, I answered, ‘In fact, you heard it from your mistress.’

  ‘So I did. She has nothing to do with you.’

  ‘Oh – I should think about as much as Crispin Aycliffe has to do with you.’

  He pushed back his chair, got up again, putting distance between me and the abrupt; unleashed snarling of his temper, taking a cigar with him this time and lighting it from the fire, inhaling deeply before he returned to lean against the desk, in command of himself again, and to look down at me.

  ‘I have kept my distance from you for more than a month,’ he said, his lips hardly moving, his eyes dark slits pin the gloom, narrowly glittering, I waited deliberately until I had mastered my impulse to flog you – not because I care about giving you pain but because a woman with a cut lip and a black eye is a pitiful spectacle and I have no mind to see you the object of anyone’s pity. You are going to suffer, I suppose, but you’ll suffer in private. There’ll be no one to say, “Poor soul, poor lamb,” because no one will even know.’

  ‘Very well, Joel. I’ll suffer. I’ve always known there was a good chance of it. But tell me first, what have I done to you that you haven’t done to me? What has Crispin done to you that you haven’t done to Godfrey Chase and heaven knows how many others?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said, his eyes still slitted with rage, but his mouth was hard and cold and sarcastic. ‘And what has that to do with it? Are you asking me for justice? I’m not interested in justice – only in reality. I’m no blustering hypocrite, Verity. Have I said a word about sin and shame? No, no. I’ve talked about surprise, because I didn’t think you had it in you, and I’ve talked about anger – but as for guilt or remorse, I don’t give a damn. I don’t want you on your knees begging my pardon – like Elinor with Morgan Aycliffe – because all you’re likely to be sorry about is getting caught. And, I repeat, let’s see things as they are and forget any high-flown notions of justice. I outwit my competitors, but that doesn’t mean I admit their right to outwit me. And no matter how much of a fool I may make out of Godfrey Chase, no man – understand me – no man does the same to me. You should have known that, Verity, indeed you should.’

  And my fear, at that moment, must have been so apparent that he smiled.

  ‘What do you mean to do?’

  ‘To you? Or to your paramour? I could take a horsewhip to him, I suppose, if I wanted to. No one would blame me and he wouldn’t know how to defend himself. I reckon Dinah McCluskey could stand up to me better than him.’

  ‘You know her, then?’

  ‘Of course I know her. Everybody knows her. She was the biggest whore in the Law Valley before McCluskey took her on. But rest easy, for if I thrash him even Bradley Hobhouse could work out the reason, and that wouldn’t suit me. I don’t mean to give them the satisfaction of seeing me down, and what a satisfaction it would be, eh, Verity? Barforth with his mills and his money and his fancy new house – high and mighty bloody Barforth, with a wife, who takes her petticoats off for a nobody like Crispin Aycliffe. No, no, Verity. You’ll not do that to me. We’ll keep it between the two, or three, or five, or six of us, I reckon. I can fix Dinah McCluskey and Mark Corey, and I can fix you too, my girl.’

  And I knew that if I was ever to make a plea for my freedom, for my right to decide the course of my own life, for the simple right to be heard, it would have to be now.

  ‘Joel – let me tell you—’

  ‘Nothing. Tell me nothing.’

  ‘Joel, you have to listen to me – try to understand how I think and feel. And you have to know you can’t order me to stop feeling as I do—’

  ‘Have I tried to?’ he said. ‘You haven’t been listening, Verity. Perhaps I don’t, care how you think and feel. In fact, you may think and feel exactly as you please. It’s your behaviour that concerns me. Your behaviour I can and will control. Why discuss it any further? You will do as you have always done, Verity. You will look after my house and my children and my guests – all of which you do very well. Nothing will change, except that, until further notice you may consider yourself safe from my physical attentions – and of course you will not see Crispin Aycliffe again, nor receive messages from him, nor even open any letters he sends you. Is there anything else?’

  ‘Yes,’ I howled, jumping up, my whole body clenched tight with outrage. ‘You can’t dismiss me like that. You have to listen to me, hear my reasons. You have to stop treating me like a child or like an employee. I’m a living woman with a brain as good as yours; and you can’t lock me away.’

/>   But, once again, I should have known him better than to imagine he would threaten anything he could not enforce, and perhaps I was not too surprised when he opened a drawer and threw a sheaf of papers heavily onto the desk.

  ‘But I can.’

  ‘And who will you have as my jailer? You are not always at home to watch me yourself. Who will do it for you?’

  ‘No one. No one could. I appreciate how clever and resourceful you are – be sure of it. And who should know better than I that if a woman wants to misbehave she’ll do it, one way or another. Fear of the law never stopped a hungry man from stealing a loaf of bread, nor a hungry woman from stealing an hour or two in a strange bed. However, in your case, I have the means to remove your appetite. You remember Colonel Corey, do you?’

  ‘Why yes. What has he—?’

  ‘And you know that he was the father of Mark Corey, as well as of Estella Chase? Not a satisfactory young man, Mark Corey – illegitimate to begin with, and sour about it. Upset Mrs Chase a great deal when he insisted on calling himself Corey instead of Smithers, or whatever his mother’s name really was – although the colonel was too fond of him to complain, which upset Estella even more. Spend thrift too, our Mark, always in and out of trouble, so the colonel not only made him an allowance but lent him fairly weighty sums from time to time – most of which lost itself in that newspaper of his, and created more bad blood than ever between him and Mrs Chase.’

  ‘And—?’

  ‘Yes, you are looking worried, Verity. Are you already a step or two ahead of me? These documents were Colonel Corey’s property – Mark’s debts, in fact, and a few paltry sums advanced to one of his cronies. A hundred or two; here and there, a thousand, perhaps, in all, which is the same as a million when you’re living on fifty pounds a year and can’t pay it. You do follow? Yes, I thought you would. This money is now owing to Colonel Corey’s estate, or was, until Mrs Chase made me aware of it, when I purchased the debts from her – Mark Corey’s and Crispin Aycliffe’s – to relieve her of the unpleasant duty of calling them in. If Mark Corey cannot pay me he will go to jail, and in any case, it will be the end of the Cullingford Star, something that has been in my mind for a long time. And what happens to Crispin Aycliffe is up to you. He doesn’t strike me as particularly robust, and life in a debtor’s prison is very harsh. A year or two of that and he could well find himself prone to the same nervous ailments as his mother – unless the jail fever or the rats got him first.’ And we both know there was nothing more to say.