by Betty Burton
“Serious about what?”
“Like . . . well, like today. Looking at babies through glasses!”
“I don’t see why not. It doesn’t do anything to the baby.”
“And it don’t do much for you neither.”
“It does. I can see things I never dreamt was there. There wasn’t much on the baby’s hand, but there might have been. That’s why you have got to just keep looking at everything, everywhere. You never know what you are going to see.”
“Don’t twist what I’m saying. I mean it don’t do much towards what people will think about you. You’re twelve now, but next year you’ll be thirteen. What’s people going to think? A man’s going to run a mile if you suddenly take it into your head that you want to see what his whiskers look like under that glass. Or what if somebody catches you looking at maggots . . . I saw what you was doing with that bit of blowed-meat.”
Jude held her apron to her face. For a moment Bella thought that Jude was going to weep. She couldn’t stand tears. Jude could hold it in no longer; suddenly she burst into explosive laughter. Bella held her face straight. At last Jude subsided with a sigh.
“I’m sorry. Truly I am. I wasn’t laughing at you. It was just I remembered seeing Jed Parker and Polly Allen courting and you know how close Polly has got to get to see, and when you said . . .” She trailed off, suppressing the desire to start giggling again.
“I don’t want people to think I’m queer, but I don’t see that it’s any different from people who uses eyeglasses.”
“I’m not saying that, and you know it. It’s about proper behaviour for a girl. It’s about what is expected. It’s bad enough as it is in our position.”
Bella stirred the fire and a log fell.
“What position?”
Bella carefully placed the log where it would flare up again. “How many other holdings or farms in these parts do you know of as is run by women and girls?”
“We’ve got Dicken, and there’s Bob and Rob and Johnny-twoey, and Gilly comes.”
“They don’t run it.”
“They work it.”
It had never occurred to Jude before. She had grown up with Bella always working, doing the same jobs as any wife of a farmer or smallholder; going to market and selling produce, with the hired men doing the rest. The fact that it was Bella who made the decisions and gave the orders had entirely escaped Jude.
“You mean because you’re a widow?”
Bella did not respond, but gazed at the log that had burst into flame.
Jude continued. “I can’t see why I have to be specially behaved because you are a widow.”
“Jude, there are times when I just can’t make you out. You can talk the hind leg off a donkey; you can read and write; you aren’t anybody’s fool. People talk! Women don’t run places on their own. People have been waiting years for me to come a cropper, to see the place go to rack and ruin.”
Amazed, Jude saw that her mother was vulnerable.
Bella’s self-assurance was like a coat of thick pitch on timbers. The dry rot of neighbour’s disapproval and the worm-holes of her own doubt were hidden.
“Oh mother,” was all that Jude could say.
Staring at the flames, Bella went on: “When Jaen . . . when she and Dan . . . You don’t know the half of it. Jaen wasn’t no worse . . . and anyway I blame Dan Hazelhurst, ten years older . . . but then I blame myself.”
Through the half-sentences, Jude realised Bella’s anguish. Anguish concealed during the months before Jaen got married. The worry about whether the Hazelhursts would agree to their Dan marrying Bella Nugent’s girl. And for those months she had continued the day to day work at Croud Cantle.
“I never thought.”
Bella sat, withdrawn, her bottom lip thrust up.
“Jude, there’s a thousand things you have to watch when you’re a woman on your own.”
By the August when baby Hanna was a year old, Bella and Jude were well settled in their routine without Jaen.
The Hazelhurst Boys had mended the thatch on a cottage, and Dan had taken Jaen and Hanna to live there. By Christmas Jaen was pregnant. At first she did not see how she could have fallen again, because she was still suckling Hanna. Like many another woman, she soon discovered that there were a good many tales about that kind of thing. Her milk disappeared almost overnight.
Next Christmas there would be a second child.
Dan was pleased and said that next time it was sure to be a son – a Hazelhurst with heighth and breadth, and no red hair.
Old Baxter Hazelhurst had developed farmer’s chest and was obliged to delegate much of the running of Up Teg to The Boys. For years now he had been buying up little parcels of land adjoining his, so that when Dan moved down to the farm at Ham Ford, Up Teg had a sizeable acreage; enough to provide all the Hazelhursts with some security and comfort in return for early mornings and long hard hours of labour.
Ever since that evening when Bella had talked about her position, Jude’s admiration for her mother had grown. She could hardly believe how naïve and thoughtless she had been hitherto. Bella’s reputation as a lone woman with two daughters – what with vigorous men coming and going, eating at the same table, working in the same dim barns and outhouses – must have come under close scrutiny from their neighbours. But never a word could be said against Bella. When Dan Hazelhurst got Jaen pregnant, it must have been a blow to Bella.
In the room that she and Jaen used to share, Jude put up some rough plank shelves on which she kept the great variety of things that she was either watching or thinking about or wondering what to do with. It had the makings of a kind of laboratory, and what Bella called, “fiddling about”, was simple research and experiment.
Every day they rose early and ate a good breakfast of bread, creamy fermity and a piece of fruit or a carrot. Recently, Bella had allowed Jude to discuss the day’s work with the men, and to give some of the orders to them. All of them except Johnny-twoey, the small boy, had been at Croud Cantle for years. Although at first they were a bit resentful at having to discuss fence-mending and ditching with young Jude, who not long since had been begging shoulder-rides from them, they soon began to respect her knowledge and serious approach to work. She was interested in their skills and they responded by taking pains to see that she didn’t neglect any job that needed attention. Jude was making a good little farm manager.
“A chip off the old block,” said Rob.
And they all agreed that Jude was an Estover to her very fingertips.
On Christmas Day of that year, Bella and Jude went over to the cottage at Ham Ford. The daylight hours were short and the ride took a good part of them, so it was a flying visit. Dan was proud of his cottage, his furniture, and of being recognised as a man with a family. Jaen was suffering sickness and young Hanna was a handful; grizzling with red-gum and teething.
“Will you let me take Hanna out round the field-edge a bit, Jaen?” asked Jude.
“I could show her the . . .” She realised it wouldn’t be wise to be specific. “The sun is out and you could wrap her up and I’ll have her inside my shawl.”
And so Jude was allowed to have Hanna to herself. She walked for an hour, talking to Hanna as though the child understood, which – if the intent gaze she bestowed upon Jude was anything to go by – she did.
Bella, in a roundabout way so as not to appear to be interfering, asked Dan if he didn’t think that Jaen looked a bit peaked.
“Mother says she’s got thin blood,” Dan said. “She’s told her to take raw liver.”
Raw liver was a popular and well thought of treatment for any anaemic condition. The only problem was getting women in Jaen’s condition to accept it.
“Have you been taking any?” Bella asked Jaen. Jaen glanced at Dan before replying. “I tried, Mother, I tried really hard. I can’t bear the stuff; it just won’t stay down.”
“You an’t supposed to like it. You just have to get it down,” Dan said.
&n
bsp; The dinner Jaen provided was beautifully cooked and plentiful. She and Dan appeared to be happy enough: it was just the look of frailty about Jaen that concerned Bella. During the meal, when Hanna started grizzling again, a look of hatred at the child flashed across Jaen’s face. It was gone again in a second, but Bella had seen it and remembered what it was like. Hatred, guilt, resentment, love. Immediately Jaen picked up the baby, kissed and fondled it and rubbed salve on its sore gums.
There were times when Jude’s intuition or mature perception surprised Bella. She wouldn’t have dared ask herself for fear of interfering.
“Dan, do you think you would let Hanna come with me and mother for a few days? You and Jaen” – she was going to say something about having a chance to be alone or getting a good night’s rest, but she thought twice before speaking these days – “You and Jaen could then go and visit Mr and Mrs Hazelhurst and not have to bother too much about taking baby out after sundown. And a change of water is supposed to be good for red-gum.”
She had said exactly the right thing. Nobody asked how Jude knew about red-gum and its possible cures; it was the reason they were all looking for to get the baby away from Jaen, to give her a rest from the child’s grizzle.
Jaen protested as much as she thought proper for a mother to do, and she would probably experience pangs of guilt, but both Bella and Jude could see that she was relieved and pleased at the thought of being free of the baby.
The decision to take Hanna over to Croud Cantle for a few days cut the visit short. Jaen and Bella collected a bundle of the baby’s necessaries. Soon the donkey-cart containing Hanna, her Aunt Jude and Grandmother Nugent was creaking over the downs: Jude holding the reins, Bella revelling in the feel of a child asleep on her bosom again, and Hanna sweetly peaceful with never a suggestion of the grizzles, and the red-gum not troubling her at all.
They arrived back at Croud Cantle just as the first snow-flakes of the year fluttered down.
“Bank up the fire, Jude. Empty the dresser drawer. Put some new milk to warm. Skim it a bit so as it’s not too rich.”
It being Christmas Day, work was cut to only that necessary for the animals. Little Johnny-twoey had been minding the place all day. As the snow started, Dicken and Rob trudged in to feed and water the beasts in the barns. Before they went back down the lane, Bella had tucked Hanna up in the dresser drawer and had a red-hot poker ready to mull some ale to keep out the night air.
Proudly, Bella drew aside the wrap so that the men could look at Hanna.
“My eye Master! but she’m a Estover, and that’s a fact.” Dicken would have said that even had it not been true. He did not think Bella would have been pleased to say she was a Nugent, or yet a Hazelhurst.
“They reckon she’s got the Hazelhurst mouth. What do you think?” asked Bella, cocking her head to one side.
“Never!” said Rob. “Hazelhursts’ mouths is a lot nearer their ear’oles.”
And the men agreed that the peaceful child was the spit and image of an Estover, and just as well, seeing she was a girl-child and all that, for “what ’ooman in her right mind would want the heighth and breadth of a Hazelhurst?”
On Christmas night there was a blizzard.
In that easy, mild southern county where Croud Cantle and Up Teg were tucked in, one on each side of the downs, there had not been such weather in living memory. Snow drifted up to hedge-tops. Sheep on some exposed hillsides astounded people by surviving beneath layers of snow, but many died of cold and starvation.
There were tales of bravery – or foolhardiness, according to how you looked at it – on the part of some shepherds, who risked their own necks to bring down some of their flock. It was the weather of Yorkshire moors rather than of Hampshire downlands.
The Croud Cantle men shovelled their way from the village and Johnny-twoey, having been shoulder-carried through the worst drifts, curled up in the barn beside the house-cow. He had spent the first seven years of his life sharing a dilapidated estate-cottage with his mother, father and seven siblings: presumably finding the barn more pleasant, he stayed on there.
On looking out next morning, Jude saw almost unbroken snowfields stretching as far as Winchester Hill. Small streams were frozen and snow-covered and only The Dunnock, fast-flowing from the chalk-hills, marked the white plains. No question about it, Hanna’s stay would have to be prolonged. Of course it was terrible weather, terrible, but it’s an ill wind that doesn’t blow some good.
“The babe will be here for a while yet.”
“Ah, I reckon she will.”
“Jaen will know she’ll be all right with us.”
“Even if we can’t get over there for weeks.”
They smiled at one another at the prospect of having the baby in the house.
It was four weeks before any road was fit to walk. The tracks melted a bit during the days, became surface mire and froze again at night, until it was impossible for even a donkey to make the journey.
In January, one of Baxter’s men came over with a message.
“Master Dan’l’s missis have lost the child. Miz Dan’l says she’s not bed-rid but will you see to the little one till the weather is better?”
He was sent back with messages of reassurance.
Just to be sure that all was well with Jaen, Bella sent Dicken over a few days later to the cottage at Ham Ford.
“I rely on you Dicken. You know Jaen well enough . . . Don’t say I’m worried, because I’m not, and don’t say anything that might worry her, because there isn’t anything. But you take a good look and see if she’s all right.”
Dicken returned with a full appraisal of Missis Daniel’s high spirits and good health.
“She’s as fine as I ever have seen her, Master.”
Bella and Jude didn’t quite know what to make of it, but accepted Dicken’s shrewd opinion.
So with messages being carried back and forth over the downs, Hanna stayed on until Easter Sunday and was tottering about when she saw her parents again.
Easter 1782
Went to Jaens. Jaen will have a new baby it will come November. Hana will stop with muther and me (I)
Judeth Nugent
This time Jaen was neither sickly nor fragile but they agreed, to be on the safe side, it would be as well if Hanna stayed on for a bit at Croud Cantle.
At first it was only until the new baby came: he was Daniel, a Hazelhurst to the last hair. Then a bit longer, in case the introduction of Hanna back into the family disturbed Jaen’s milk-supply for young Daniel; then Hanna had thrush followed by chicken-pox; and so on, until there was some kind of understanding that Hanna was best off at Croud Cantle.
And she was. She had Bella and Jude.
The years between the coming of Hanna to Croud Cantle and Jude’s seventeenth birthday were not uneventful, but the events were minor, and personal to the family and the freeholding.
Jude took Hanna everywhere with her. She held her on a donkey even before she could walk, and grasped the small hands beneath her own as she milked the house-cow. Talked to her endlessly, humping her up into the loft to look at bats and nests of barn-owls. She scolded her, chided her, taught her and loved her.
Hanna’s Estover legacy of red hair, like Jude’s, was less foxy than Bella’s, and when Jude carried Hanna slung in a shawl about her, the two russet heads close, it was not surprising that neighbours remarked that, “Anybody would think twadden Jaen Nugent’s babe but Jude’s, if you didn’t know like.”
All the while Jude was learning. She had a few books, mostly picked up for her by Gilly Gilson at some fair, or by Fred Warren. Jude had finished with her Sunday lessons, but still visited Fred and Molly. He continued to be absorbed in Jude’s progress and often went up to Croud Cantle to give her some paper or pamphlet he thought would interest her. The book which was most important to Jude was the one Bella had given to her: ruled, white, unused, inviting pages for Jude to write in.
An idea that was formed from the conversation th
at she and Gilly Gilson had when she was a child, about collecting all the knowledge in the world, never left her. As soon as she got the book she started to enter information. At first she wrote haphazardly, but soon realised that her entries would be difficult to retrieve, so she created her own system of indexing. As far as Jude was concerned it was just “putting the right things together so you knew where they were”. By the time she was seventeen she had perfected her system, which was intelligent and workable.
“Whatever you find to write down, I shall never know,” was Bella’s attitude.
“I wrote how Gilly does a pig and about talking to bees, and I write down the words of songs, and that sermon when Mrs Dunnaway ran out of church shouting, ‘For shame! for shame!’ ”
“Poor soul! I don’t think you should put down things of that nature.”
“It happened, and I always put down interesting things that happen. In a hundred years, nobody will know things like that unless they get put down. Things that get told by word of mouth can get changed, but written things can’t.”
Bella shook her head. “But still . . .”
“I put the Croud Cantle pickle receipt in.”
Bella’s expression!
“That’s our secret thing. Supposing somebody else should get a hold on it? Folks could make their own and they shouldn’t want to buy ourn no more. There’s many that’d like to know our receipt.”
“Oh mother! And supposing the chimney should come down on us and we should be killed, Hanna would never know how to do Croud Cantle walnuts.”
Bella could see the logic of this, but her authority rested in always having the last word.
“Well just you see you keep the cupboard locked on it.”
When Jude was eighteen, Ben Hannable called upon Bella.
In the area of the four parishes, and in the village of Motte and Cantle in particular, Hannable was well-known and respected. His father had been the local elliman, dealing only in oil. When Ben joined his father in the tuppeny-ha’penny little business he saw its potential for expanding into other areas, so that by the time he was forty-five he was virtually the only retailer of hardwares in the area. At forty-five he looked about him for a wife and he decided to honour Bella Nugent’s younger daughter and take her to his large, new house in Blackbrook.