The Clouded Hills

by Brenda Jagger

  ‘Yes,’ he said at last, each word a dead weight on his tongue. ‘Go to Patterswick.’

  ‘Thank you. And I think – with your permission – that I would like to take Caroline too. May I do that?’

  Although I believe his mouth opened to say, ‘No. Never,’ the words came out, laboured, unwilling, ‘Yes. Take her,’ his lips closing on the last word, biting back whatever remained in him to say.

  Yet later, through all my tears and confusion, my thoughts of love and freedom, of grand gestures and calculated risks, it did not escape me that he had at no time offered to release Crispin’s debts.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  And so my life narrowed, adapted pleasantly to the small, cosy doings of Patterswick, to my mother’s daily inspection of her flower garden, her tranquil afternoons when I, drowsy with sunshine and indolence, would watch her ply her needle. There was a pony for Caroline, the squire not understanding why we were here but happy if it made my mother happy, spending his last, good-humoured years in perfect harmony. And for a week, or two, then three, I wanted no one, was no longer afraid of decision but was content to let it grow naturally inside me, strengthening as my restful body strengthened in the sun and air, the tautness of my nerves relaxed, became well oiled and smooth with resolution. And gradually the things which had appeared impossible became not simple but well within my capabilities. I found the key to myself and knew, above all, that I was my own person. I discovered Verity Barforth, hiding inside me, and learned to value her.

  At the end of the third week my mother spent a day in Cullingford, so clearly wishing to go alone that I made no move to accompany her. The next morning, as we breakfasted together, she had a whole parcel of news to impart. Mark Corey was out of jail, busily retrieving his printing presses. Miss Boulton had gone to Scarborough, with her mother and sister, to convalesce. At the millhouse Hannah was brisk and purposeful, giving the impression of a woman at least ten years married, while a suggestion had been made that Elinor should spend part of the winter in London, in a rented house large enough for her to entertain. My dogs were noisy and mischievous, Mrs Stevens very tender, Nicholas had blacked his eye, Blaize had been most charming to his grandmamma, both of them were dining now, every evening, with Joel, who had upset the governess by allowing them a sip of brandy. Emma-Jane Hobhouse was pregnant again. Lucy Oldroyd, who was not pregnant, was thinking of adopting a child.

  ‘Oh, and one other thing,’ she said airily. ‘I think you must expect a visit about midmorning, I imagine – from Mr Crispin Aycliffe.’

  ‘Mother, what is this? What have you done?’

  And her face as she turned it towards me was as cleareyed and innocent as the face of my son Blaize in his blackest moments of mischief.

  ‘Well, my dear, I have meddled a little, I must confess, which is not at all my habit, so I fed sure you will excuse me. I have merely given him the money to pay his debts, that is all, for I am quite certain Joel does not mean to release them, and it struck me the other day how much easier you would find it if you were perfectly free to make up your mind. This way, my love, there is no pressure and no excuse. You can never say to yourself afterwards, ‘I was forced to it. I had no choice.’ Now you can all choose, quite freely. I do not wish to influence your choice, dear. I merely wish you to know that it has been entirely up to you, and as for the money, I am well able to afford it, for my dear Dalby will not let me spend a penny of my own. In fact, he still persists in believing I am quite penniless, although he knows quite well I am very far from that. Well, dear, your Mr Aycliffe must certainly have gone to see Joel last night to redeem himself, and then he has only to look to the hiring of a horse and ride over here, so I think we may safely expect him in an hour. If you wish to run upstairs and tidy your hair, I will not detain you.’

  Crispin came promptly, as soon as he was able, the same frayed blue coat, the same intense feeling of harmony swaying me as I stood by my mother’s parlour window, a warm tide of feeling carrying me towards him, although my body did not move. And we stood for a while without speaking, content simply to be under one roof together.

  ‘I am free now,’ he said. ‘I have paid my debts.’

  And no one else existed anywhere. We were alone, body and spirit blending together as rivers blend at their joining place, a complete and final moment of love, as I told him, ‘The time has come now, hasn’t it? As we always knew it would. Perhaps we can both bear it now.’

  We walked for a while then, in the garden, although I saw nothing of the flowers or the grasses, nothing at all that I recognized but his face, his hand loosely clasped around mine, felt nothing but the same childlike wonder of our first night together which had been leading us gently, irrevocably ever since to this moment of goodbye. And I would not speak the word, had no need any longer of my voice to reach him.

  I knew his destiny now, and I would not dimmish him; I would believe in him and in myself. We had come together scarred and hesitant and full of need, but now, at our parting, we were free and whole, no longer self seeking but self-sufficient, aware of the strength and the harmony within ourselves. We had healed each other, discovered our true selves within each other.

  ‘Will you go now, Crispin?’

  ‘Yes.’

  And then: ‘ Verity, I must know, before I leave, how your life will be.’

  ‘I shall be well, Crispin, and free. That is your gift to me.’

  And my eyes did not see him go. My hand did not relinquish the clasp of his hand, although for one brief moment I shivered and felt the cold.

  My mother came to me afterwards, held me for the first time in our lives, although I was not weeping, stroked my hair and made little murmurings over me as I did sometimes with Caroline.

  ‘You have not harmed him, dearest,’ she said. ‘ Don’t think it, for one learns so much from sorrow. In fact, without it, we can leam very little at all, and he will know now how to use his knowledge well. Other women will fall in love with him, of course, but now, because of you, he has no need to fall in love again himself. I believe your memory will suffice to set him free as he so ardently wishes to be free. He may do great things now, or he may not, but you, darling, what now?’

  I slept through the night, waking to a sun-drenched sky and my mother calling, from the pathway below my window, to bid me a good morning.

  ‘I am gathering roses for the parlour,’ she told me, ‘since Lady Winterton is invited to tea. I mention it merely in case you should wish to avoid her.’

  ‘I don’t greatly care to see her. But if I decide to avoid her where could I go?’

  ‘My dear,’ my mother said sweetly, with perfect innocence, ‘the thought had already crossed my mind, I confess it, and I really couldn’t say.’

  We breakfasted together as usual, Caroline, rapidly adapting to country hours, having risen with the lark and set off long ago to race her pony in the meadow. Sipping my tea, enjoying my mother’s efficient grace as she lifted the lid of the honeypot and passed me a jar of her rose-petal jam and her home-churned butter, I asked her, as I had once asked before, ‘ What must I do, Mother?’

  ‘Ah,’ she said, her narrow, elegant hands pausing a moment above the toast rack. ‘As to that, my love, I have a notion you will do exactly as you think best.’

  ‘And will you help me?’

  ‘How may I do that?’

  ‘Well, you have set Crispin free.’

  ‘So I have. I have paid his debts, which, of course, will allow him the freedom to incur more, if he chooses. But you must know that my purpose in so doing was to widen your alternatives – not his – so you would be free to consider – well – the alternatives I mentioned.’

  ‘Are there really so many?’

  ‘Oh, I imagine there are always at least two: to do something or not to do it. You will know what I mean.’

  And bestowing on me her lovely, pointed smile, she got up and, in her own unique fashion, melted away.

  Lady Winterton arrived at t
he earliest possible moment at which one could decently expect a tea kettle to be on the boil. Sitting down in her brusque manner, her hands, which had clearly done their share of stable work that morning, immediately busy with the cream jug, the sugar tongs, the chocolate cake, she fixed me with her inquisitive, arrogant eye and said, ‘You are still here, then?’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  ‘Well, you know your own business best, of course, but I wonder that your husband can spare you for so long.’

  And she was only prevented from asking me more, having not quite shed the habit of interviewing manufacturers’ wives as if they were housemaids, by my mother’s smooth intervention with a dish of almond slices Her Ladyship was unable to resist.

  But the almonds and the apricot preserve served only to delay her curiosity, not to abolish it, and it was soon apparent that, having almost decided to marry her son to my daughter’s dowry, she considered my affairs, matrimonial or otherwise, very much her concern.

  ‘You will be going home presently, I daresay.’

  ‘I daresay.’

  ‘Yes – and what is this I hear, Mrs Dalby, about your old cottage? Mrs Chase informs me that you are having it done up, quite extensively improved, and I was bound to notice, as I drove by just now, that she is right. What is afoot then, Mrs Barforth? We wondered, Mrs Chase and I, if you were planning a little country retreat for yourself, or if Mr Barforth intended to use it for a hunting box, which surprises us, since there is ample room here at the Hall.’

  And when, in all honesty, I could give her no information about the cottage, and my mother, very intent on her tea kettle, would not, she swallowed her almond slices in a great huff and went away unsatisfied.

  We walked down to the village later that day, Caroline frisking ahead of us, a pair of the squire’s half-grown hound puppies at her heels, my mother leaning gently on my arm, not in frailty but because she had acquired during her second, comfortable marriage the habit of being protected.

  And with the sweet-scented air of the country evening in our faces, the fast-dropping twilight draping itself all around us in an illusion of privacy, I said, ‘So they are gossiping about me already.’

  ‘I fear so.’

  ‘And are you really improving the cottage, Mother?’

  ‘Why, yes, dear. I have walked down here with you on purpose to view it.’

  ‘And the cottage already in sight, we strolled silently to its wooden gate and the garden, where the roses my mother had planted in her early widowhood were still blooming, the honeysuckle riotously spreading, her lilac trees and cherry trees and apple trees still offering leafy shade.

  ‘See,’ she told me. ‘All is clean and fresh inside – the walls new-papered – just a few chintzy covers, I think, on these chairs, and anyone could be perfectly at ease …’

  And as Caroline raced upstairs in a wild spurt of exploration, the hound puppies rooting and sniffing outside, I asked her, ‘Why, Mother?’

  ‘Oh, just a question of choice, dear. You chose to set Crispin free, as I hoped you would, and now you may choose your own freedom, or something altogether different. This little cottage of mine could serve any one of a dozen needy Dalbys or it could be yours, just as you wish. And whether you take it or not, you will always know that you could have taken it. And I was always extremely happy here.’

  ‘But you married again.’

  ‘Ah yes. That is what I chose to do.’

  ‘And Joel?’

  ‘What of him? Joel is not at all my concern. Are you strong enough to see him now?’

  ‘I must see him eventually.’

  ‘Yes, and you must have your answer ready, for he is a clever man, your husband. Shall I let him know?’

  But Caroline, tumbling downstairs, excitedly repossessing this cosy corner of her childhood, ‘her’ cottage now, ‘ her’ meadow, ‘her’ pony, ‘ her’ squire, who would pluck the moon from the sky at her asking, spared me the necessity of a reply.

  My mother made another journey to Cullingford early the next morning, clearly to see Joel, although, on her return, I asked no questions and she offered me no information. And, expecting him in a day or two, late in the evening or on a Sunday – for when had Joel Barforth ever lost half a day’s business on my account? – I was surprised to see him that very afternoon, his phaeton tearing up the gravel, entering the house like an invader, an imperious hand held out to me with a blunt request to ‘Come out into the garden. This crumbling old pile gets me down.’

  ‘I don’t know why I am here,’ he said, striding irritably among my mother’s roses. ‘God knows if I’m right or wrong. I don’t understand myself anymore, and I’ve never understood you. It’s just that I felt I ought to come. I’ve been on tenterhooks to come ever since Aycliffe threw his money at me the other night.’

  ‘And you took it?’

  ‘Of course I took it. Whyever not? You’re thinking of grand gestures, are you? Well, that’s one I wasn’t prepared to make. A paltry thousand pounds I didn’t need and he’s desperate for, all he has in the world, I reckon. Oh no, I may not be able to stop him from seeing my wife, but I’ll be damned before I’ll pay him.’

  ‘Am I your wife, Joel?’

  And stopping in his tracks, he put hard, heavy hands on me, forcing me to stop too.

  ‘He was here, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you say to him?’

  ‘Take your hands off me, Joel.’

  ‘What did you say to him?’

  ‘Take your hands off me, Joel, if you want me to say anything more to you.’

  And I saw the anger blazing in his yes, cooling slowly at the command of his reason, which also, just as slowly, unlocked his fingers from my arms.

  ‘All right. What did you say to him?’

  ‘We spoke privately.’

  ‘Dear God, what am I coming to? You’ll have to tell me more than that.’

  ‘Well, I’m here, with no immediate intention of leaving. And he won’t be coming again.’

  Triumph first. ‘You sent him away?’

  And then a growl of suspicion. ‘What do you mean – no immediate intention of leaving? You’ve no damn fool notions of staying here indefinitely, have you? Verity – I want you to come home.’

  ‘Yes. But you didn’t answer my question.’

  ‘What question?’

  ‘Am I your wife? I said I would be married or not married. And you know very well what I mean.’

  We walked for a moment in silence, Joel’s eyes brooding darkly on the roses, not seeing them, although their colours moved me to a new awareness of life – a certain excitement growing inside me – their perfume tantalizing my nostrils, making me giddy, a girl again walking in a garden with this powerful, handsome man who had not wanted me as a girl, who had given me no opportunity to want him.

  ‘I could say anything,’ he told me, ‘to get you back. Words come cheap enough. I could say any damn thing I thought you wanted to hear, whether I meant it or not. Could you tell the difference?’

  ‘Oh – who knows? Let’s try, shall we?’

  And his lowered lids snapping wide open, he said, ‘Verity, are you flirting with me? You’d best take care, for I’m in deadly earnest.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘What? I’ll tell you how I’ve lived these last three weeks. I’ve tried. I’ve dined at home every night with my sons, which hasn’t always been a pleasure, and I’ve missed my daughter. I’ve counted my successes, and, commercially, they’ve been enormous. I’ve made my million several times over, and every night, these three weeks, I’ve felt like a poor man. I’ve missed you, Verity – yet I’ve spent so little time with you lately that the reason couldn’t be simple. And so I reckon I’ve been missing what I think we could have together now – what I want us to have. And so I’ve done certain things to please you – I’ve given Hannah the Top House, and I’ve convinced Morgan Aycliffe he’d best take Elinor to London and treat her right if he wants to
keep on the right side of me. I’ve made my peace with the Boultons and put Mark Corey back in business. And I’ve put the children at Low Cross on ten hours a day, with Lawcroft and Tarn Edge to follow if it’s a success, which has made me the most hated man in the Piece Hall – again – and is going to make them hate me worse if I can do it, as I think I can, without loss. So you’ve made a philanthropist of me, Verity. I even had a letter from Richard Oastler congratulating me on having seen the light – leading the way – impudent devil, good as told me I hadn’t turned out nearly so bad as he’d thought me, and when he writes again I reckon he’ll be asking for my contribution to his campaign funds. And they’ll take a dim view of that at the Piece Hall – although I’ve yet to see what the Cullingford Star will make of me now.’

  ‘Oh yes – I can’t wait for the first edition.’

  ‘I’ve missed you, Verity.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What do you want me to say now?’

  ‘I expect you’ll think of something.’

  And taking my wrist again, this time very lightly, he held me in his arms and kissed me, in a rose garden, as he should have done years ago, and then kissed me again, most urgently, no longer in any way my cousin.

  ‘Will you marry me, Verity?’

  And there, in full sunlight, face to face, we laughed wholeheartedly.

  ‘Really marry you?’

  ‘Yes. I understand your requirements, madam.’

  ‘And you can fulfil them?’

  ‘I do believe so. And if I fail it won’t be for want of trying.’

  ‘Well then – I’ll let you know, Joel.’

  ‘What! What do you mean, you’ll let me know? You can’t say that to me, dammit!’

  ‘Joel – I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Devil take you,’ he said, his sudden tension relaxing, his mouth beginning to smile. ‘Very well – very well, I deserve that – or do I? Just don’t be too long. Shall I come for you tomorrow?’

  ‘Joel—’

  ‘Yes – yes, I understand – you’ll let me know. I’ll go now, while my temper holds. Will you excuse me to your mother – tell her I’ll be over to see her presently?’