Jude

by Betty Burton

  Jude

  Betty Burton

  Copyright © 1986, Betty Burton

  All rights reserved.

  For Russ, Brendan

  Simon and Tania

  CONTENTS

  Part One . FARMGIRL

  Part Two . WOMAN

  Part Three . MATRIARCH

  Part One

  FARMGIRL

  Jude Nugent, small, strong, with square practical hands, rough from work and weather, sits on Tradden Raike.

  Judeth Nugent: her pale red hair – the legacy of her mother’s family, the Estovers, who had come into Hampshire from Devon a couple of generations ago – complements the green of the chalk-hill.

  Jude kicks rabbit-droppings from a well-grassed molehill and sits looking. An image of her sister Jaen, as she had seen her earlier that morning, tries to thrust itself upon her. Jude resists it, not allowing herself to cry, and concentrates upon the far side of the valley.

  People used to live there. Gilly Gilson had said that it had been a fortress. He knew such a lot that Jude thought that it must be true, though it wasn’t easy to believe when you were actually there, scrambling for sloes or blackberries. But from Tradden Raike it was possible to see squares and lines, which you could imagine were the outlines of dwellings of some kind. And the skyline there was straight for about a mile, where there were the walls of the old stone fortifications which, apart from lichens and moss and the occasional gap where stone had been filched, were much the same as when they had been erected.

  In spite of her misery Jude wondered if there were places that were better than here. There probably were, but she could not imagine what they might be like. Behind her the county sloped slowly away. On clear days in early summer it was possible to see the glitter of the sea, Portchester or Portsmouth, Gilly said. Jude would love to go to the sea. Gilly said that in one day’s walk you could be standing on Portsmouth mudflats and looking at the Isle of Wight, close enough to see roofs and trees on the island. Jude had a great desire to look at most places she heard of, except Winchester City, which looked as though it must be grey and dull from what she had seen of it from an engraving in the rectory hallway.

  Thoughts of the rectory close in the shadow of the church brought Jaen flickering into Jude’s mind. She poked a finger into the ground and hooked out a knob of chalk using it to whiten her short work-roughened fingernails. She never tired of Tradden Raike. Just now, larks were spilling out ribbons of notes, clear as the air and sky, into which the birds seemed to dissolve.

  Later would come the chalk-hill butterflies and moths flittering crazy paths from blue scabious to purple, stunted thistles, bee-orchids and ox-eye daisies. From March, through high summer and on into the time of old man’s beard and wayfarer-berries, there was always scent, colour and movement on the chalk hills.

  Small bits at a time, Jude let Jaen in, remembering when they were here together.

  Almost as soon as Jude could walk, Jaen, six years older, had taken her on to Tradden. As they grew more capable of climbing they went higher and higher to places where there were nuts and berries. But as they grew older, there wasn’t so much time to spare. There was always work to be done.

  “There an’t time to be always off up there, messing about, not doing nothing.” Bella Nugent’s words – their mother’s words. Mother could not do with people who messed about, doing nothing.

  Yet there had been a time when their mother had been indulgent if they played on Old Marl or Tradden – but that was when they were very young.

  As soon as they could walk, the girls had chores for which they were responsible: carrying wood, collecting eggs, feeding the chickens. As they grew older, the work they had to do became harder and more important to their livelihood, although some people thought that some of the work the girls had to do was just Bella Nugent making a rod for their backs.

  Bella had some queer standards, especially about keeping things clean. In matters of scrubbing and laundering and dairy work nobody ever matched her standards. Most of her criticisms of work that was not up to scratch were prefaced by, “I know I’m a bit particular, but . . .” So as, over the years, Jaen and Jude slotted into the routine of the work, it was Bella who scoured floor-tiles and the soft pine of the table, it was Bella who boiled and pounded and scrubbed clothes, and it was she who drew water from the deeper of their two wells. A yoke with its two dragging pails seemed sometimes to be part of Bella’s frame, but she seldom let them get the better of her and drew her shoulders down and her head forward.

  The caring of the animals, the planting and harvesting, ditching and hedge-laying on their small acres were done for the most part by Dicken and Rob, and by casual and travelling workers who sold their skill or strong backs to Croud Cantle.

  Bella worked them hard. She liked order and routine and things to be done when they needed to be done.

  Thoughts of Jaen would not be repressed any longer.

  “Jaen,” Jude said aloud, releasing the pent up stress of the last few months and the unhappiness of the morning; obliterating the ancient, ruined settlement across the valley, the larks, wild-strawberry flowers and Cantle village in a grey cloud of misery.

  Dan Hazelhurst. Why did she go with him? Why couldn’t Jaen have gone with somebody else? But Jude could not think who. There wasn’t a man in any of the four parishes who had brains enough to love Jaen properly.

  Jaen had always been the one who started things, had ideas and schemes, had dreams and imaginings that Jude adored listening to. Even an ordinary job like collecting blackberries, Jaen could turn into an event that stayed with you.

  Jude remembered, when they were still very young, climbing up Tradden or Old Marl with sticks and bowls and Jaen saying, “We shan’t go blackberrying today, Ju. We shall go after some special fruits that nobody has ever found before. You have to walk a long way to get them, and witches have put tiny, sharp knives to stop people getting them. That’s what we got sticks for. We can hook them over and the witch-thorns on the sharp stems can’t get us; then we can rescue the special fruit that the witches want to keep in prison on the bushes.”

  “What shall we do with the fruits, Jaen?”

  “When we have filled our bowls, we shall take them home and hide them in the big black pot on the fire-back where the witches won’t be able to find them. In the morning the fruits will have let out all their sweet selves. Then we shall take a great lump of special rock, that looks like ice but isn’t cold, and crack it into pieces and pound it up. That has to be mixed with what the fruits have give up, and then put to the fire. And the fire works magic. When the special fruit and the ice have been fired and it gets cold, it turns into the only food that will make sick fairies better.”

  Jaen. Only Jaen could make a magic out of bramble jelly.

  And she had gone with Dan Hazelhurst.

  The image of Jaen close to the great work-horse body of Dan Hazelhurst was too painful for Jude even to think about. It was like when the great prancing black cockerel went after one of the little red bantam hens; if Jude saw him she would brave him to rescue the hen. But Jude hadn’t even known about Dan Hazelhurst going after Jaen.

  That was what some of her misery was about. Pain that Jaen had not shared the greatest secret of all, and anger at Dan Hazelhurst. For the first time Jaen had excluded Jude, had not told her that when she had gone over to Rathley for a few days she had met Dan Hazelhurst. When it all came out two months later, Jude withdrew into wretchedness and would speak to no one.

  And this morning Jaen Nugent had gone into the church with Dan Hazelhurst and had never come out. In her stead had come Dan Hazelhurst’s wife with a baby inside her.

  This morning, Jaen had taken not only herself and belongings over to the Hazelhursts, she had taken . . . Jude did not kno
w the word to put to it . . . Jaen had taken her presence. Jaen had gone – total.

  Jude rose and began walking downhill. Around her, deep within the jungle of brambles and dog-roses, and more openly among the new bread-and-cheese shoots of hawthorn, thrushes and blackbirds and dunnocks – mostly the dunnocks – were noisy at making this year’s broods. She saw a sparrow-hawk almost motionless before it plummeted and soared in one curve of movement. Watching it, her spirit rose. The grey cloud began to dissolve.

  She wondered whether the white violets had come yet: Jaen used to say that the white ones had given up their colour to put into a cloak for God, and were blessed – like palm leaves on Easter Sunday. They had come every spring to pick white violets. You could never rely on the time they bloomed, which added to their mystery.

  She found a clump of them, blooming in the usual place. She picked some and made a posy with new ivy leaves as Jaen did. As Jaen used to do. The tears that had trickled out as Jude sat on the sparse grass at the top of Tradden Raike, drained from her the pain that had grown around Jaen like pus released from a boil. The wound was still tender but would heal. She could think about her again.

  She and Jaen had picked white violets here. She and Jaen had looked after the house-cow between them. She and Jaen had slept curled around one another. Now Jaen was married. Soon Jaen would have a baby.

  The baby.

  At last the smooth mound that was the cause of the metamorphosis of Jaen into Dan Hazelhurst’s wife stopped being a malignant growth inflicted upon her by him – it was Jaen’s baby.

  By the time she reached the lower slope of the hill, she was lighter-hearted than she had been for months. She had not noticed the passage of time on Tradden, but now saw that the April sun was beginning to slide down to where Winchester and Beacon hills merged, and was reflecting off the Croud Cantle duck-pond.

  The Croud Cantle holding was a good walk from Cantle village; past the triangle of green which was bordered by the Dragon and Fount, past the church and the common pond, along Howgaite Path, or take the cut across Manor Farm fields. The holding was small – a marshy meadow, some cultivated land for vegetables, and grassland at the foot of Tradden Raike.

  The cottage, barn, cow-shed, piggery, latrine and dairy formed an “L” around a yard. There were a number of rickety-looking hen-houses, and some pens for geese and ducks. Goats and three donkeys grazed a small orchard. There was a shallow well and a deep well; the deep one being a fair distance from the house, but nearer to the cattle-troughs in the meadow. The Dunnock Brook ran close by but, being downstream of Cantle village, Bella never fancied it.

  There was no cohesion in the buildings, but they were so old that there was an air of satisfying degeneracy about them. The outhouses were shingle-roofed and the cottage had a quite good but shaggy thatch. The cottage had, in earlier times, been a single room in which people and animals had lived communally, but now, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, the ground floor had a separate scullery with a stone trough, and the upstairs was divided into two rooms.

  When Jude reached Croud Cantle, Bella, pail-carrying as always, was crossing the yard.

  “Well, Miss? Nice of you to honour us with your company. Don’t you worry, the cows have milked theirselves into the pails and the milk have had a good jump about and made itself into butter, so all you got to do now is tell the logs to set on fire and it’ll all be done.”

  It’s a wonder Bella Nugent’s tongue don’t cut her lip!

  Jude’s quiet, “I’m sorry,” caused Bella to give her a sharp look. That wasn’t like Jude.

  “Here.” Jude tucked the violets into Bella’s cleavage.

  They both knew that the violets were intended to take the place of words – less frightening, no involvement, you could pretend that they were just flowers – but words? They were something else.

  Bella had never been good at accepting even their childish offerings.

  “Ah, all right then,” off-handedly, was all that she could ever bring herself to say when they brought her a few primroses, but later she would arrange the flowers in a pretty pot; or if they brought in some interesting stone or shell, Bella would wash and shine it and place it on the mantelpiece.

  Bella looked down at the violets. “Better take them indoors, case they falls down the well.”

  On her way into the house, Jude collected a basket of logs from the pile. Although the yard was dry that day, Jude automatically hooked off her boots at the door, as she had been taught from the day she first had boots. Most of the time she went barefoot, or in pattens when the mud was deep. A good many people thought Bella Nugent a bit on the queer side, but Bella seldom made rules without, what was to her, good reason. Once made, she enforced them, not caring what anyone thought.

  Most of Cantle’s cottages had pounded earth floors strewn with reeds or bracken, but in Croud Cantle red clay tiles had been laid. Bella had few comforts or pleasures, but one of the few was to see her kitchen when the tiles were still wet. The men, when they came in for their food, came in their muck as any would – but not in the living end of the kitchen. At the end where they all sat at the long table, the tiles were reed-covered, and fresh reeds brought in frequently, but the house-place end was clean according to Bella Nugent’s rules.

  Bella was quite strong about mud and muck indoors.

  “Haven’t you never seen dust-motes floating about in the sun? Stands to reason, that an’t nothing but dried up muck and dung. Anybody who wants that flying around when they’m eating is welcome.”

  Some people might have wanted to retort that a bit of good clean muck never done no harm, but Bella Nugent had bright eyes and foxy, flaring hair and a sharp tongue. People said that Bella Nugent was a queer piece of goods, always washing and scrubbing and on about dirt – but not so that she could overhear. Bella Nugent was a real Tartar.

  Jude made a neat pile of the logs on the hearth. By evening they would become warm, filling the room with a mellow scent, bits of moss would shrivel and the bark make small cracking sounds as it dried. There were times when Jude would sit for a whole evening and think of little else but those things.

  What was a smell? How did noses work to smell anything? Was there something in the skin? Once, at a pig-killing, she had offered to make the brawn so that she could minutely examine the pig’s nostrils, but found nothing that accounted for the sense of smell.

  She had asked Gilly Gilson, who had done the pig. Sharpening his jointing knives in preparation for the resurrection of the pig as pork, bacon and ham.

  “How do noses smell things?”

  Gilly had raised his head for a few seconds whilst looking around in his mind for an answer.

  “Blowed if I know.” He thought on. “Now that’s interesting, Young Jude, cause come to think about it, how do smells theirselves come about? There’s nothing there to see.”

  Gilly – full of knowledge picked up on his travels doing pigs, on farms and holdings where an extra pair of hands were needed to do a pig.

  “Oh Gilly!” Ten-year-old Jude had said with exasperation. “Why do you always wind up my brain so when I ask you something?”

  “Better wound up than letting him run down slow. I heard people say too much looking wears out your eyes, and too much thinking wears out your brain. And I asks if they don’t think jawing wears out your mouth. And they got no answer to that one.”

  “Don’t you know how noses work?”

  Gilly had started up slicing away at the belly-pork. “I never know anybody so full a questions as thee’s, young Jude – ah . . . not unless it was me.”

  “How do you find out all the things you know? About Africa and the men who never cut their fingernails? And about trees that are wide as a house, and the sun being a fire?”

  “I listens. Sometimes I asks. I reckon between all of us in the world we got the answer to everything. It’s just getting it all together.”

  “Couldn’t it all be put down in a book? A big book like the chur
ch bible?”

  “I reckon it’d need a sight bigger book than that.”

  Young Jude’s imagination couldn’t conjure up anything larger than the church bible.

  “Two then. Big as the church bible.”

  “I reckon that’d do it,” Gilly had agreed.

  Jude placed a couple of logs on the thick bed of charcoal, careful, as had been drummed into her, not to disturb the white ash.

  The room felt empty.

  The whole cottage felt empty.

  Jaen had gone.

  But work and routine soon took over. Bella rattled a scoop of wheat into a pan and Jude fetched milk to pour over it, then set the grains to sprout for tomorrow’s fermity. She took down two plates, aware that the third remained on the dresser. A pity it wasn’t dinner-time when the boy and the yard-men would have been at the table with them.

  “There’s enough rabbit stew, or shall I get cheese?”

  Bella didn’t answer. Jude peered into the scullery through the round window-light in the door.

  “I said ‘cheese’?”

  Bella was sitting drying tears with her apron corner. Discovering her mother like this was quite a shock, and Jude felt guilty. It had not occurred to her that her mother would miss Jaen. She had tried hard enough to get her married.

  “Don’t cry. We shall see her all the time.”

  Her mother pushed her hair back and let out a sigh.

  “Ah well, that’s my howling over and done for this little lot. Every birthen, marriage and death is due for one good cry – then be done with it.”

  Jude had never seen her mother show such emotion, and although she was embarrassed, she felt as she occasionally did when a ewe nudged its dead lamb, she wanted to offer comfort, but did not know how.

  “Did you cry when I was born then?”

  “Ah, twice. You wouldn’t wait till the hay was in, and we had a thunderstorm and it got beat down.”