Jude

by Betty Burton

  On the Estate farms, harvesting was under way and the whole of the Cantle valley was greased with sweat and laden with heat. Men, women and children were out in the fields, where the rhythmic swish of sickles sounded like a breeze. But there was no breeze. Dust settled on sullen trees and bent backs.

  The cutting of the first swathe was accompanied by the voices of the lines of men cutting; of women following on, binding and stooking; the chattering of children working at whatever they could manage. But day after day of unrelenting toil and heat gradually silenced them. Slowly, with the sun striking their backs, heat rising from the earth and dust and salt of sweat stinging their eyes, the corn was cut. The larger the area of stubble grew, the less was the talk. It was only when the sun had dropped behind Beacon Hill to restoke its fires, ready to rise again over Tradden in a few hours, that the villagers returned home. Men and women, almost all barefooted – the women with their skirts pinned between their legs – rocked home on wagons or dragged their feet along the tracks.

  During the day, the only Cantle people left in the village were the aged men, whose spines were frozen sickles; the old women, who looked as though they were still yoked to pails, and the Reverend Mr Archbold Tripp, who was greatly occupied with an unprecedented crop of peaches, ripening against the rectory wall.

  The weather held right through. Then, on the day before the cutting of the last stand of corn, the first cloud for weeks appeared far, far to the west, off the coast of Devon. Skies over Hampshire were still white-blue, but cattle and sheep began to become restless. Workers going back to the village, or to the out-houses of Park Manor, sniffed the air.

  “Will it hold?”

  “It’s more’n a day off, I reckon.”

  “It’d better be!”

  And so it had. Of all the days of toil and slog that had gone into getting the crops in, only the last was the one worth getting up for. And the rain had better not come and spoil the sport of clubbing, stoning, and setting-the–terriers-at: sport with wild-eyed hares and rabbits, rats and birds that had retreated into the central stand of corn, before the breeze of sickles.

  It was not often that Bella chose, or had the time, to mix with Cantle people. The cottages, houses and church that comprised Cantle village was clustered west of the Dunnock. Croud Cantle was some way off, south-west. Most of the villagers either worked for the Estate or the tenant farmers, shared wells or drew water together at the ford, and so lived in close contact with one another. The only times that Croud Cantle had anything to do with their neighbours, except in passing on the way to market, was briefly after Sunday service – and at the cutting of the last corn.

  It was one of Bella’s few holidays and she never missed it. When Jaen and Jude had been little, like the rest of the village children, they had joined in chasing the bolting animals, clutching heavy sticks. Bella was quick and accurate, always taking home a good bag for their own dinners and some to take to market. It was the only time that the villagers could walk home openly with a game-bird slung over their shoulder.

  Bella was up well before dawn, seeing to things before her day out.

  Dicken, Johnny-twoey and the other hands came into the kitchen as always for breakfast. “Here.” She put out large dishes of fermity. “Fill yourself up Jude, it a be a long day.”

  When he saw Jude’s obvious lack of appetite, Dicken said, “I reckon Miss Jude ha’ got worms, Master. She’m that pasty-faced these days.”

  Jude tried to eat the porridge at the same fast rate as usual, but it did nothing to fill out her hollow cheeks and eye-sockets.

  Dicken was unusually full of chat this morning. “If it in’t that, then it’s some young feller breaking her heart. It an’t worth it, is it, Master?”

  “I can’t see how you’d know Dicken. Your heart haven’t felt nothing this many a year.”

  “Ha, only heartburn, and that’s a fact.”

  All this unusual chit-chat gave an air of festivity at the breakfast-table and Jude made the effort to join in. She talked to Hanna about the day ahead, and went off with her to pack some food to take.

  The last corn left standing was in the fields that had once been part of Croud Cantle Farm, before Tomas had sold them to the Estate. From the house-place window, just as the sky was lightening, Hanna, who had been keeping watch, called that people were coming. So they left the kitchen to walk across the stubble of the cut fields.

  By now the sun was up over Tradden. Most of the men were in clean smocks and the women in white aprons and large, old-fashioned, floppy linen bonnets. The children were in anything that didn’t matter, which meant rags and tatters and short togas of sacking. Wagons crunched over the pebbles at the ford, carrying workers from other farms in the valley. Casks of special brews were put in cool ditches.

  Nobody mentioned the smell of rain coming from the west.

  It was bad luck.

  Soon there was a ring of men, their thick smocks now abandoned, short stick in one hand, sickle in the other, swishing rhythmically into the brittle stems. Behind them, women and girls, barefooted, barelegged, bodice-strings hanging loose, petticoats pinned up between their legs, gathered armsful and bound the corn into sheaves. Bella and Jude joined in. Bella was in her element.

  As soon as she set foot on the field, she made it quite plain that whatever scandal had been buried twenty years ago and had worked its way to the surface lately at the House, nobody had better mention it today. The few who liked something to chew on said that Bella Nugent was putting a good face on it. But the majority were in a genial frame of mind, glad to see her enjoying herself for once. They knew her great fault was her pride and her tongue, but for the most part people had to admit that she had gone like a bull at a gate to make something of that place after . . . well, after what happened, and she hadn’t made a bad job of it.

  There was nothing like a whole day’s work for the number of people gathered there: what with those who had come for the day out, the chance of a hare and the excitement. So the pace was slower and there was time for a bit of a bite and a sip or two. Just before noon, thunder rumbled from the direction of Tradden and every sickle hesitated for a split second: only the sound of the wagons coming back empty. By this time there was not much corn left standing, and a premature rabbit broke cover and surprised everybody by escaping across Raike Bottom track.

  Jude had spent the morning in the circle with the girls and women, gathering and binding. The air was still and pressure began to build up in the valley. She felt as though she was strung up by her ears. Just after the bit of fun about the rabbit, the reapers and binders retreated to the comparative cool of the hedge-bottoms to rest. Lads took their chance to sit with girls they had hopes of, or had their eye on; most of the women gathered together to shriek at their own bawdiness and plait corn-stalks. Men swigged their fair share of cider and took forty winks.

  Jude sat in the group with girls she had maypole-danced with; spent other Harvest days with. All but one or two were now suckling babies. She had not realised how much she had grown away over the last year. Last Harvest they had all been eighteen or nineteen. None had been married that long, yet only one or two had not given birth. This year, they seemed to have nothing to talk of except strong suck and salves for sore nipples.

  “You better hurry up, Jude, or all the best one’s a be gone.”

  “You mean babes or men, Kath?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  And, with their new intimate knowledge of both, they were perked up with superiority. In their laughter was the bawdy shriek that would develop with each Harvest day, with every year.

  Jude’s mind needed some peace and rest. She would have loved to be able to take something from the placidity of the girls with wide-spread legs and sucking babes. There was not a single grizzling red-gummed Hanna among them, but then there wasn’t a confused and tense Jaen, either. Subconsciously, Jude started to try to sort out what it was that separated her from them. Her ears became even more t
ightly strung.

  She put on a good show of light-heartedness.

  “Well, you know me. You always said I should have to get one made special.”

  “Man or a babe?”

  “If she don’t get a man, than she’ll have to get the babe made special.”

  The breast-fed babes, indirectly fed strong cider, were put to sleep on straw in a wagon. It was the young mothers who first articulated the coming break in the weather.

  “We shall have to watch out,” nodding at the now massive bank of cloud coming from the west. It did not matter now, mentioning rain. The sport would be over by the time the cloud broke over the valley, and the Harvest supper could be held in one of the barns.

  The corn left standing in the centre held a mass of small creatures, which had retreated before the swishing sickles.

  This was the sport.

  Ancient tribal ritual.

  A shared lust to kill.

  The other climax.

  They arranged themselves in rings around the corn, each person placed so that if one missed, the one behind might not. Some men had fierce little terriers, quivering, scenting the fear in the corn. Some had ratting mongrels on short ropes, which they snapped across the dogs’ snouts if they growled. Men, women and children held thick sticks and any bit of old metal that came to hand.

  For them, at that moment, their field was the eye of the universe, the patch of corn the eye’s pupil. Only that existed.

  Individuals had melded into a whole. No leader, no led. All would know the moment of action. They waited, still and quiet, lulling the creatures in the corn into false security. Exhilaration fermenting, building towards climax.

  Jude was on the outer ring, by the field gate which opened on to Raike Bottom Lane. The silent wait was probably no more than a minute, but to her it seemed endless. Her scalp seemed to shrink. Great nimbus clouds were spreading over the blue sky like dark, fast-growing lichens. Within their mass, lightning crackled. Tremors ran through her. She wanted to run into the corn. Run away. Run. Run. Any action that would release the upward pull on her ears and scalp.

  First, the silence erupted.

  Lightning hurled a clap of thunder into the echo-chamber of the valley. The dogs started: yelping and frenzied barking.

  The stillness was broken.

  The dogs were unleashed and bounded into the corn. Whoops and shouts rose from the hunters. They banged sticks against bits of metal. Everyone took an involuntary step towards the patch of corn.

  Then the field erupted. First a pheasant ran out. Accurately aimed flints downed it. Before it had dropped, the dogs had flushed out the rest of the animals. More pheasant; rabbits racing in all directions at once. Hares bounding, turning, twisting. Rats, voles and dormice running. Every creature that ran met the hunters with their sticks head-on. Every creature that froze in terror had hunters after it, or was seized by the dogs. Every creature that had gone to cover in the tall corn gave up its moment of bloody excitement to the Cantle harvesters.

  Jude had been involved in the excitement from the time she had been laid on straw in a wagon, alongside other babies. As a girl she had excitedly joined in the chase, running with the others amidst the thud of sticks and the blood and the lust that was still embedded in the canine teeth.

  Only Hanna saw Jude leave the field.

  Her mind a jumble of images, Jude ran along Raike Bottom; around the marshy edges of Chard Lepe Pond, startling cows into jerky flight; over a cattle-gate at the bottom of the raike, and on up Tradden. She stumbled over every small undulation and mole-hill. With her breath coming in sharp gasps, she ran on, until the slope became too steep. Her path seemed impeded at every step. Sharp hooks of brambles and dog-roses clawed at her skirt, and fallen branches tripped her before she even noticed them.

  She was scarcely aware of herself, or where she was going, except that she had to escape the scene in the field. The sudden image, as she stood holding her stout stick, of her neighbours – the girls she had played with; the lads who had been flirting; the bawdy women and laconic reapers – changing into a savage, bludgeoning tribe. The pent-up desire to kill something – not only hare and rabbit for food, but any creature that ran from the corn – anything. And it was not only the image of the villagers she ran from. She ran from her own image, child and woman. The image of a hand holding a bloody stick, cracking bones, pounding out life.

  She ran to kindred spirits. Those who understood her, those she understood; those whom she could caress and who would caress her. She ran to the arms of the downs that surrounded the Cantle valley.

  Eventually she sank on to the parched grass and lay panting.

  By now the sky was heavy and dark. The sun was above the west downs, and as the cloud bank raced towards it, everything was briefly bathed in brassy yellow and threw dark purple shadows. Then the light went out, and the valley looked as though December had come suddenly.

  Holding the stitch in her side, Jude saw the people she had just run from moving quickly about. Watching them, as though they were under her magnifying glass, she saw a knot of reapers finish off the last of the corn. Wagons moving; tiny dots of people going towards the field-gate; a stream of dots. Then, like disturbed ants, they went quickly in all directions, as a grey net curtain came between them and Jude.

  The hissing grey came swiftly across the valley and the storm broke.

  From the winter-dark clouds, lightning forked and sheeted around the hills. Sudden, brief, bright, white, shadowless glimpses of every bush and tree. Thunder like cannon-fire, crashing so loud that the ground seemed to vibrate. Then, along with lashing rain, hail-stones, large as beads, thudded and bounded off the dry, hard surface of the hills.

  And Jude sat and watched the storm lash the Cantle valley and hills. Then she lay back and welcomed the stab of ice and the scourge of rain on her sun-reddened skin. As the hail and rain soaked through her clothes, through her skin, through her body and into the parched grass, it drained away her hysteria. She could have slept there without the terrible dreams she had had of late.

  Presently she got up, chilled and stiff. The hail had stopped, but the storm still flailed the valley. The rain was falling so heavily and the surface of the hills was so hard with a dry crust of thatch and soil, that water ran off the surface and began to flow downhill in rivulets.

  At the first heavy spots of rain, Bella and Hanna had cut back across the fields and arrived home just before the storm broke. Dicken, and the other hands who had gone down for the sport, trudged in and began their work, pleased with the furry bodies they carried and looking forward to the supper later that evening, which was laid on by the Estate for anybody who helped with the reaping.

  Hanna set about seeing to the fire and seeing to the chickens, whilst Bella went to help with the animals.

  “I reckon ’tis trapped, Master,” Dicken said to Bella as they forked hay together.

  Bella agreed with the local belief that a storm could not escape from the valley, but had to blow himself out. And it did appear so with this storm. The cloud had become a static slab of lead-grey.

  “Where’s Miss, then?”

  “I don’t know,” said Bella. “I didn’t see which way she went. When the rain started I cut off over the fields.”

  “She never did mind the wet.”

  Behind the farm, beside the Dunnock where it flowed south to the Solent, was a little-used track. Bella and Dicken heard the sound of horses come from that direction. They paused and frowned at one another. “Horses on The Track!”

  “I’ll see,” said Bella, and went to the cow-shed door just as two riders came into the yard and up to the shed.

  “Fred Warren, you’m soaked! See to your horses then go on in. Hanna’s got things going in there.”

  Fred Warren and Will Vickery, on their way back from farms at Wickham, had been caught by the storm on the bare Corhampton Downs and had galloped the few miles to the nearest shelter: Croud Cantle.

  They had weather-
capes, but the rain had soaked into their neck-cloths and hats and boots. When Bella got back into the house, they were seated barefoot beside the fire, where their boots steamed. Hanna, the proper little farm-wife, had given them hot cider with cinnamon and ginger, and bread and cheese.

  “Well, Fred Warren, you chooses some funny times to go gallivanting round the country,” said Bella, as she removed the sack from round her shoulders and took off her muddy boots.

  Fred and Will, bare-necked and barelegged, stood as she came in.

  “And a pretty picture, too.”

  Bella perched on the edge of a stool in her usual, can’t-hang-about-here-wasting-time attitude. She listened to the news from Wickham – the increasing land being given over to strawberries; a new mansion being built; the usual trouble there had been on Fair Day – to the sound of rain hissing straight down the chimney and pattering on the thatch.

  Eventually Bella commented on Jude’s absence.

  “I can’t think where Jude can have got to. She should have been back ages ago. Even coming up the lane don’t take that much time.”

  “Perhaps she’s sheltering in somebody’s house,” Will Vickery said.

  “Jude ain’t likely to do that.”

  “She went up the hills.” Hanna’s statement caused them all to look out at the sheeting rain and back at the girl.

  “Up the hills?” Bella sounded as though Hanna must have meant something else, but at once guessed that Hanna was right. Jude had been acting strange this last week or two.

  “I saw her go up Raike Bottom.”

  “But that only leads over Tradden, doesn’t it?” asked Fred.

  “How long ago?” asked Bella.

  “Just before the rabbits came out. When it started to get dark. I saw her go off, then the sport started and I didn’t see her no more.” Hanna felt important at the interest being shown in her.

  “That’s hours ago.”

  Fred and Will watched the growing concern on Bella’s face.

  Fred rose. “We’ll go and look for her. Come on, Will.”