The Clouded Hills

by Brenda Jagger

  I would never try to see him again, I knew that, but, one flowery, sun-flecked afternoon when I had taken my children and Elinor’s to Patterswick, I saw Dinah McCluskey swinging her brazen hips towards me down a quiet lane, and my need to know how Crispin was – just to know that much – became too acute for caution. I didn’t ask myself how she came to be in such a place, alone and bareheaded, walking as if the lane belonged to her and everyone else should be ready to make way. I simply knew that Joel was safely away in Liverpool, that there was no one else to observe me here but ‘dear Maud’, who was too hotly in pursuit of my scampering children and Elinor’s, too alarmed by the dangers lurking in this placid countryside, to notice what I did.

  As she came abreast of me, keeping her eyes downcast, leaving the decision to me, I called out, ‘Good afternoon, Mrs McCluskey. What brings you here?’

  ‘Oh, you’ve decided to know me, have you?’ she said. ‘And what about that woman over there? I doubt she’ll want to know me. But never mind. You can tell her I’m a gipsy hawking pegs.’

  ‘She doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Happen not. But before she comes and pokes her nose in – well – how are you, Mrs Barforth?’

  ‘Well – and you?’

  ‘Oh, middling.’ And tossing her head, her eyes bold and black as any gipsy’s, she laughed. ‘But you’ll be wanting to know about Crispin?’

  ‘Oh yes – please. Did you come here to find me?’

  ‘I did.’

  And pushing the gleaming tumble of her hair back from her forehead, she paused and smiled again, enjoying her power, knowing I would go down on my knees to please her.

  ‘Well – he took it bad, Mrs Barforth. He knew it was bound to happen, but when it did he wasn’t ready. You should have told him yourself, really you should, instead of sending your husband. That wasn’t nice of you.’

  ‘He came himself, then? I didn’t know.’

  ‘Of course he came himself,’ she said sharply, scornfully. ‘You wouldn’t expect him to send his shed foreman, would you, or his butler?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘So you should be. Well, we used to see a lot of your husband in the old days before he was your husband, when he couldn’t afford the prices at the Swan. But that was the old days and I wasn’t going to let him get near Crispin. “He’s out,” I told him. “Gone to Manchester on the Flyer,” and when we’d had our few words, he says to me, “Right, Dinah. Tell him my wife sends her regrets. Explain to him she’s seen the error of her ways, and let him know if he can’t quite understand why, then I’ll be happy to call again and go through it with him myself.” First off, of course, all Crispin was bothered about was if he’d hurt you. But I sent somebody to have a look at you and you seemed all right. “Leave it,” I told him. “Let it go. Don’t put anything down on paper.” But he had to write those letters you didn’t answer, and when Mark Corey was arrested we understood why. I reckon it was Mark who told his sister about you and Crispin, and she told your husband. Well, Mark should have kept his mouth shut, and I’ll tell him so if I ever see him again, but there’s no forgiving the spiteful bitch for what she’s done to him. He’s her brother, after all, wrong side of the blanket or not, and she could spare him that thousand or two, after what she’s raked in from her old man. Crispin went very quiet after they took Mark – very quiet. Shut himself away upstairs, thinking things out, I reckon, and it struck me he might decide to go away. After all, there’s no money now to run the Star, and to tell the truth I’m about ready to move on myself. But no. He comes downstairs with some scheme to raise the money to buy Mark out – not that it’s likely to work, because Crispin has the best will in the world but no sense where money’s concerned. And then he asked me to come and see you.’

  She paused again, letting her eyes roam over the smiling summer fields, the leafy branches twining their arms over our heads, very obviously disliking her task, having promised to perform it for Crispin’s sake but with no confidence in the message – whatever it might be – and with no faith in me at all.

  ‘Mrs McCluskey, please. What is it?’

  And I think I knew how much she wanted to stride away from me, leaving me in ignorance of the request, telling him that she had delivered it and that I had refused.

  ‘He wants you to go away with him,’ she said harshly. ‘He says it will take time but he thinks he can arrange it. First he’ll have to make peace with his father, which will take some crawling, but he thinks the old man would be glad to do it, now that Dan Adair’s gone, and would agree to pay his debts. Then, of course, being Crispin, he says he’d have to work for the old man awhile, put his affairs in order for him before he’d feel right about taking a job in London or wherever. But, if you’ll agree to wait for him, that’s what he’s ready to do. He doesn’t think your husband would bring you back once you’d actually gone. He says it’s pride with Barforth, not heart, and that rather than make a fool of himself running after you, he’d snap his fingers and set up a stable of high-priced hussies in your place. Anyway, that’s what he’s ready to do for you – give up everything he cares about, which he reckons is only fair, since you’ll have to give up a few things too. That‘s what he asked me to say.’

  I walked a step or two away from her, needing badly to be alone, needing the whole world to fall silent so that I could contemplate unhindered the intense joy and the intense sorrow of what she had just told me, this act of love and sacrifice, this challenge, this whispering of hope where there had been no hope at all, growing to a wild sea-roaring in my ears. And then Dinah McCluskey came up behind me and put her shapely but rough-textured hand on my arm.

  ‘Well then, Mrs Barforth, I’ve given you his message, like I promised – two days and two nights it took him, staring out of his window, to make his mind up to it, so the least I could do was deliver it. So now I’ll go back and tell him you said you’d like nothing better, but it can’t be done. That’s what you want me to say, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Oh yes, I think so, Mrs Barforth. You’ve got too much to lose, love, just think about it – those fine children tumbling about over there in the field, for one thing. You’d never see them again. And what about him, Mrs Barforth? Oh yes, he means every word he says and he’ll do everything he’s promised, if he gets the go-ahead from you. But I reckon, at the bottom of him, he’d as soon go to jail as go back to his dad. Can you make up to him for that?’

  ‘Can you?’

  ‘Happen I can.’

  ‘Oh, I doubt that, Mrs McCluskey – indeed I do.’

  ‘Why?’ she said. ‘Because I’m a common barmaid? That doesn’t upset him. He thinks there’s romance in the working class – and dignity – and he’s right, except that he forgets we’re good and bad same as everybody else. And if you put a bonnet on me, you know, and gloves, and a high-necked frock, I’m not so bad. I’d pass, in a crowd, as a lady.’

  ‘You don’t imagine he’d marry you?’ I asked her, astounded, wounded, hating her, terrified of her.

  And her voice throbbing now with urgency, she put her face too close to mine, offending me with her breath, the healthy fresh-air odour of her skin, the tang of spirits and tobacco clinging to her clothes.

  ‘I don’t know. But if he did he wouldn’t regret it. You may have a lot of feeling for him, Verity Barforth, but I doubt you can give him what he really needs. Haven’t you read him aright yet? He wants a woman who can be wife and mother to him at the same time, and you can’t be either. Content yourself with what you’ve got, and leave him to me. I’ll have no man but him, and no child but him, and although I don’t doubt he’d take some persuading to it, it would be the best thing for him in the end. My life’s been hard, Verity Barforth. They sent me to your grandfather’s mill when I was five, and I was on the streets at twelve, peddling my wares for pennies, and then for shillings when I got a bit wiser, until Jack McCluskey set me up behind his bar and then married me. Big, beer-swilling ox that he was –
drinking his profits – finished up a raving madman, seeing spiders in his soup and thinking I was trying to kill him. Swore he’d kill me first and damn near did more than once. Well, if I could survive Jack McCluskey, nothing else is going to put me down, and there’s nobody can take advantage of Crispin if I’m there to look out for him. I’ve had no bairns of my own, you see. An old woman aborted me with a knitting needle when I was thirteen, twenty years ago, I reckon, and there’s been no sign of anything since then. So he can have that side of my nature too. You should step aside, Mrs Barforth – really you should – and give me the chance to show him he needs a woman like me.’

  There was a rustling in the hedgerow, some small field animal busy about its own concerns, a bird persistently singing, children’s voices rising in the distance to a pitch of high excitement, a quarrel brewing, Maud Hardisty’s wail of terror at the prospect of torn trousers, a grazed knee which could lead to certain blood poisoning and heaven knew what else; a chill little wind suddenly rose up from the grass, bending the clusters of buttercups, the fragile pink-tipped daisies, and breathing down my spine. And I saw that the children and Maud Hardisty were coming towards me very fast.

  ‘So,’ Dinah McCluskey said, ‘I’ll give him your regrets, shall I?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No. What do you mean, no? Have your wits about you, girl? What else can you say?’

  But rounding on her, loathing her, I said, ‘Tell him I need a little time – not a lot – but time. Tell him I have to think it out – as he did himself – for his sake. Tell him that, left to myself, I’d come away with him in my petticoat, but that I have to be sure it’s right for him.’

  ‘Damn you,’ she said, her hand fastening around my wrist like a talon fallen from the sky. ‘Selfish bitch. You know it’s not right for him. But you’ll play with him, won’t you? Use him like your husband uses his women. You’re tarred with the same brush, all you bloody Barforths.’ And pushing me savagely against the hedge, she strode off.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  I went home, exercised my dogs, spent a bedtime hour with my children, sat at my dinner table, with Joel’s rope of diamonds around my arm, and tried to imagine myself otherwhere. I tried to root out the self-seeking element from my love, to hold it up and examine it in a strong light. I thought of courage and punishment, and remembered the texture of Caroline’s hair, her squeals of protest when the brush caught in the tangles. I thought of solitude, a deserted landscape, an empty, pale sky, and chatted to my guests. I slept, much later, in an uneasy cocoon of dreams where Crispin’s face, emaciated almost beyond recognition, peered at me from behind his father’s shoulder. ‘I couldn’t get away,’ he said, and, as Morgan Aycliffe stepped gleefully aside, I saw Crispin’s body, manacled, shackled, hideous, and Elinor, frantically laughing, pointing. ‘We feed him twice a day,’ she shrieked. ‘And he sleeps in the countinghouse. What more can he need?’

  I woke to a break in the weather, rain lashing my window, a listless morning of headache and tension, unable to decide on the lighting of a drawing-room fire, much less the course of my life, and Crispin’s, and Joel’s; an afternoon with Joel himself unexpectedly home, dressing almost at once to go out again; an early evening, fine and still, bringing news that reduced some things to their proper size, gave stature to others.

  I was crossing the landing at the head of the stairs when, looking down, I saw Mrs Stevens and Mrs Richmond with their heads together, recognized the signs, and, going downstairs, was at once detained by Mrs Stevens’s hand on my arm.

  ‘Oh, Mrs Barforth – such a terrible thing. It is Miss Boulton. I fear she is dead.’

  ‘What? Rosamund Boulton?’

  ‘Yes, poor soul – poor, tragic soul.’

  ‘But how—? She has looked ill lately, but so suddenly—’

  ‘Yes, dear, so ill – we have all remarked it,’ Mrs Stevens began, meaning to break the news gently, but Mrs Richmond, who was little concerned by the death of a dressmaker and knew of no reason why it should concern me, said flatly, ‘There was no illness. She cut her wrists, it seems, with a kitchen knife. Quite shocking, and I am not at all sure if they will bury her in hallowed ground; or if they ought to.’

  ‘Oh dear – dear me,’ I heard Mrs Stevens say. ‘Come, dearest, come and sit down.’

  And while I stood, both hands clenched on a chair back, too frozen to bend my body into the chair, she hurried away, brought me a smelling bottle, hurried away again to contact her sources of information, and returned an hour later with the whole pitiful, atrocious tale.

  Miss Boulton, it appeared, had slashed her wrists early that morning in her room above the shop and had lain there behind the door until her father, quite by chance, had called with some message from home.

  ‘Poor man,’ Mrs Stevens said, tears in her eyes. ‘She was still alive. In fact, she was still breathing an hour ago, but her family have been told there is no hope. Oh dear – Verity – dear Verity – I am afraid she was pregnant, there is no doubt about it. And although she has bled massively from her severed veins, they say it is the miscarriage that will kill her.’

  I didn’t know where Joel was and would not have dared send for him if I had, and so I waited, my sitting-room door ajar, for the sound of his phaeton, and then hurried to meet him in the hall, seeing at once from his face that I was too late, that he already knew. And when he walked past me without a word, I waited a moment, followed him, and entered his bedroom for the first time.

  He was sitting in a tall armchair by the fireplace, staring into the empty grate, an unlit cigar in his hand, his face, which this morning had held all the arrogance of a man in his prime, suddenly showing the years, the strain of commercial combat, the strain of philandering, the accumulated lack of sleep. He looked spent, emotionally bankrupt, and, never having seen him in pain before, I hesitated, not knowing how to comfort him and surprised that I felt so strong an urge to try.

  But before I could speak a word his narrowed eyes shot open and he almost shouted, ‘Well, you will be wanting to know if the child was mine.’

  ‘Oh no – what does it matter?’

  ‘It matters to me. And it mattered to her, because if I had been the father there’d have been no need for this. I’d have paid – and handsomely. Why not? I’ve been sending money to your brother’s bastard ever since he died. I can afford one of my own. I’d have set her up somewhere, away from the gossip – made life easy for her. She knew that. But the child wasn’t mine – couldn’t have been – and, as you say, it makes no bloody difference because I’d have seen to her all right in any case. All she had to do was come and tell me – no more than that.’

  But how could she have admitted to him, I thought, when he had twice deserted her, that she had allowed herself to be used and then abandoned by another lover? And, kneeling on the rug beside his chair, not quite touching him, I said, ‘Joel, were you ever in love with her?’

  And it was very far from anything he could bear me to say.

  ‘Go to hell, Verity,’ he said, so calmly that, the tone of his voice bearing no relation to his meaning, I was unprepared for the swift pressure of his hands on my shoulders, dragging me to my feet and hurling me backwards against the wall.

  ‘You’d best leave me,’ he said. ‘Just go – for God’s sake, leave me alone.’

  And glancing at his sombre face, I fled.

  I sat, then, in my little back parlour, watching the evening come on, listening as the clock counted the seconds, droplets of time hurrying away, all of them in the same direction, forwards, never backwards to that vital moment of decision when one could choose again, differently, when one could lay down the knife, reject a lover’s advances, when one could hope again. And I did not know how far back the fault lay. If my brother Edwin had not died, Rosamund Boulton would not be dying now; she would be Mrs Joel Barforth of Low Cross, harassed, perhaps, and hard-pressed for cash, ironing Joel’s shirts herself to save a maid, pinching and scraping to make a decent
show when her sister-in-law Hannah came down from Lawcroft to tea. And I, perhaps, would have been in Blenheim Lane, keeping the peace between Crispin and his father, while Elinor might well have been the spinster in Rosamund Boulton’s place. And would this different settling of the kaleidoscope have made us happier, better, or would we now, from the inherent discontent of our natures, simply be calling our grievances by other names?

  Perhaps I heard the doorbell, perhaps I was merely expecting someone, some new dimension to the catastrophe, so that when my door opened and Mrs Stevens, considerably shaken, told me, ‘Mrs Barforth, it is Mr Boulton,’ I was shaken too but not greatly surprised.

  He was standing, an ordinary, elderly man, just within the empty hallway, the look of a good tradesman about him, serviceable, with big-knuckled hands, stooping a little at the shoulders; Rosamund Boulton’s father, who had warned her from the start that Joel Barforth would bring her nothing but trouble and who, ever since the opening of her shop – knowing, one supposed, whose money had been used to launch it – had made a point of never being in the Piece Hall at the same time as Joel and had avoided, quite openly, shaking his hand or meeting his eye. I remembered, too, that, at the election, he had voted most surprisingly Tory, unwilling to share even the politics of the man who had first seduced his daughter.