Jude

by Betty Burton

  She was sorting out her latest episode of Lady Geraldine when she heard a horse being ridden quite fast from the direction of Corhampton. And just as she had hauled herself to her feet to see who it was, Harry Goodenstone rode into the yard.

  He was beautifully, fashionably dressed: all red cloth, shiny buttons, ribbons and roll-top boots, and another of the large hats with a buckle in front, blue to match – clothes not at all suited to galloping a horse over Corhampton Down. He reined in his sweating mount and sat for a moment looking about him, as though he had come to a crossroads and did not know which direction to take. Then he saw Jude and dismounted. Jude greeted him. He did not respond, but stood holding the reins of his horse, looking at the house, the yard and outbuildings.

  “The trough’s there,” she said. He appeared not to hear. “Or that’s the stable.”

  He still said nothing, but led his horse to drink. Then he let it go to graze the grass close by.

  “You look hot, Mister Harry. Can I get you some cider?”

  “Yes,” he said, in the high, tortured-vowel voice that was as fashionable and awkward as his clothes. “All right. Cider would be . . .” He trailed off and sat down on the chair Jude had been using. Leaning on her stick, she hobbled into the house and came back unsteadily, carrying a mug of cider. Harry took it from her and drank it off. Jude stood before him, leaning on her stick.

  “D’you want to come into the house, Mister Harry?”

  “No. No.” He spoke slowly, preoccupied. “Is this all?” “All?”

  “I thought it might have been larger.”

  “It used to be. The land . . . there used to be more, at one time. But all that part down by Howgaite was sold to Old Sir Henry – Mr Goodenstone. All those bottom fields belong to The Estate now.”

  “Yes. Hmm.”

  She began to feel apprehensive. The years of unquestioning security had long gone. The more she read about land and small farms throughout the whole country being absorbed into the large estates, the greater was her realisation that any holding as small as theirs was insecure; particularly since she had been told about the casual way her father had sold off the land and then left. It was quite possible that Croud Cantle was not even legally her mother’s.

  Jude was not able to stand for longer than a few minutes at a time. Soon her leg ached badly, but she could not politely ask him to get up from her chair.

  “I’m sorry, Mister Harry, but I shall have to go inside. You’re welcome to sit there, long as you like.” She left him sitting outside still looking around at the outbuildings and barns.

  Since the Sunday when she had last spoken to Mrs Trowell, Jude had heard nothing of anybody at Park Manor. The only person likely to have brought news out to Croud Cantle was Fred Warren, and he was busy riding all over the county buying up crops of cereals. It was a queer situation. Jude did not know what to do next. It did not seem probable that he had come to Croud Cantle accidentally. No one coming from Corhampton to Cantle would use that track, unless they intended coming to the holding. She could not go and ask him what he wanted. Perhaps he didn’t want anything. Perhaps the fancy just took him to ride into the yard. Men like the Goodenstones were seldom held back by want of time, money or arrogance from doing what they wished on the spur of the moment. Perhaps he was riding by and just thought, I’ll go and have a look . . . Perhaps it was something more serious. It was queer and she was uneasy.

  She could see him from where she sat. He struck her as a pathetic-looking creature. For some reason his clothes always appeared to be a bit large for him. Possibly he thought it disguised his narrow shoulders and thin neck, whereas they emphasised those features. And why, as his beard was so pale and meagre, didn’t he go clean-shaven? From where Jude observed him, he had the appearance of a silly youth. But he wasn’t. He was a rich and powerful land-owner in his mid-thirties, and Jude was uneasy, not knowing why he had come.

  After about five minutes he rose, came towards the house, walked straight in and, apparently apropos of nothing, said, “Tell Warren to take the books. I shall arrange it.”

  “Yes. Thank you. When I next see him, I’ll tell him.”

  As suddenly as he had come into the house, he went, saying as though finishing a conversation he had been having, “ . . . but of course it was all before your time.”

  Jude followed him out, but before she got to the door she heard him riding off, not towards Park Manor, but back in the direction from which he had come, to Corhampton. No sooner had he gone than she heard another rider coming towards Croud Cantle from the opposite direction along Howgaite. It was Fred Warren.

  Compared to her last visitor, Fred looked solid and normal. He greeted her with a good handshake and smiles; cheerfully running on a bit to hide some self-consciousness that he occasionally felt in Jude’s company these days.

  “Judeth! I have neglected you. I hope you didn’t take it amiss, me not visiting the sick. There was nothing I could do about it, though. Needs must when the Devil calls, et cetera. We have been so busy, I can’t tell you! There’s a business going for sale up near Salisbury. Mr White is thinking of buying it up: though why he wants to spread as far as Wiltshire with all his rheumatics and gout, I don’t know. He sent me to look it over, and what with that as well as everything else, it’s a blessing I’ve got Will, and that’s a fact. And here am I going on . . . So how is the invalid?” He seated himself on the ground close to Jude’s chair.

  “As you see. Almost well. Fratcheting because I’m so tied down here.”

  Jude offered him a drink of cider, but he refused, saying he would rather talk. The talk, however, was no more than polite comment about Bella and Hanna and prospects of good harvests. There was an awkwardness, a kind of formality between them.

  Fred felt ill at ease because he knew that something was wrong. On the day of her accident he had noticed that her dress was pinned up for field work and that her legs and feet were scratched and cut, as though she had been running from something or somebody: she had not mentioned the incident and he did not like to ask her about it. Also, since the day when he had glimpsed her figure through her thin dress, he found himself sometimes remembering it, uneasily.

  Jude’s contribution to the awkwardness sprang from the show she had made of herself in his office. She did not want Fred asking her how she came to be on the downs that day in that state. There was also the fact that she had become aware that Lady Geraldine’s mysterious rescuer was recognisably a more youthful version of Fred Warren.

  “Young Harry was just here. He says you are to take the books.”

  There was the awkwardness; politeness, as though they were newly met.

  “Ah yes, we must get down to it.”

  “Yes, soon as I can get about again.”

  And so they circled around one another and the unspoken things.

  He asked her how she had been spending her time. Jovially: “I see you’ve got the old book out.”

  Jude felt uncomfortable at what was beneath Fred’s hand as he patted the binding that concealed grown-up Lady Geraldine. She told him that she had written a story for Hanna. When he asked to see it, she said, “Oh, it isn’t any good.” But he pressed her into reading it to him. She had just begun when she was interrupted by one of the hired women wanting to know where to store some beets. Jude put down the book and went with the woman. A breeze riffled the pages, showing Fred a great more close writing than Little Lady Geraldine. When Jude returned he asked her about it. She protested, saying that it wasn’t anything.

  “If it wasn’t anything, Judeth, you wouldn’t have written it. You were never embarrassed before to show me what you have done.”

  “That was only my histories and notes. This is different. When you make things up they come from inside your head. They’re part of you, your own thoughts, and if other people read them, it’s like . . . well, you are really letting them see right inside you. You haven’t got any protection; you’re letting people know what you are like.” />
  Jude sat with the open book clasped to her protectively.

  “Why go to the bother of writing them down? Why not leave them inside your head then?”

  “Because I wanted to make up a story.”

  “What good is a story if you won’t let anyone read it?”

  “It is just to please myself.”

  “Then you needn’t have gone to the bother of writing it down, need you? You already had it in your head.”

  Slowly they were getting back somewhere on their old footing. He was the Fred of five years ago – Mr Warren the tutor – arguing with her, making her see things for herself, not telling her, making her work it out.

  The short silences between them became more relaxed. Eventually, giving no explanation as to how she got to this point in her argument, Jude said, “ . . . and that is something I never thought about before . . . you don’t think about Shakespeare being a real man . . . I shouldn’t want to let anybody know I was thinking things like that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of what people might think.”

  “About what?”

  “About me, I suppose.”

  “I see. It runs like this then: if Judeth Nugent wrote a story called Macbeth, then people would be sure to go about thinking that she must have secret thoughts of murder. Or if she wrote Hamlet, then there must be a bit of a mad Ophelia in her, or a bit of an incestuous queen.”

  Jude flushed at his directness. “Well yes, I suppose that is it.”

  “Do you think any the worse of William Shakespeare that he had a bit of mad Ophelia and bad Gertrude in him?”

  “People never think so badly of a man as they do a woman in that kind of thing. They would think a woman shouldn’t write about such feelings.”

  Fred broke a short silence by saying, “You’ll be wasted, Judeth, if you never do anything but give orders about clamping beetroot.”

  Jude felt elated at this confirmation of her own secret estimation of her ability. But her mother’s denigration of people who were too clever for their own good or who got above theirselves always coloured her opinion of herself. Bella’s conscience was always perched on Jude’s shoulder, so she put herself down, laughing.

  “You think I should write plays about mad girls and bad women?”

  “Be serious, Judeth.” He spoke as he used to when she had occasional fits of waywardness as a young girl. “Back in the summer I tried to get you to talk about it, ‘Don’t push me Fred’ was what you said. Remember? ‘Don’t push me.’ ”

  Still clutching her book, Jude studied her fingernails.

  “Can you write stories?” Fred asked.

  “I don’t know. Honestly. I don’t know how to judge what I’ve done so far.”

  “Do you want it judged?”

  “I suppose I do.”

  “Well?” He stared her down and she handed him the book with a pretence of negligence.

  “All right, Fred Warren. Now you will know what I am like.”

  She went indoors, not bearing to watch as the mad and bad in her was revealed to Fred; worse, wondering whether he would recognise himself in the young man. As she waited she began to realise how important it was that he should have a good opinion of what she had tried to do. Slowly, apprehensively, her unconscious ambition became conscious.

  I want to write proper books, real books.

  Elation and hope, deflation and dashed hope. Libraries and books with “J. Nugent” embosed in gold. Endless milking, churning and frozen earth. Images in quick succession. Books were not written by country girls who milked cows and stood on Blackbrook market.

  There was about half-an-hour’s reading in grown-up Lady Geraldine. After about that amount of time and with as much nonchalance as she could affect with her stiff leg, Jude took out to Fred a dish of small cakes.

  He sat deep in thought, staring at the cover of the closed book.

  “Go on then,” Jude said. “You can say what you like.”

  “That’s easy to say. But what you said earlier . . . Won’t you take criticism personally? What if I don’t like Lady Geraldine?”

  “You aren’t supposed to like her.”

  “Ah!” Fred looked pleased.

  Fred was the best sort of critic. He took her seriously and knew what she was capable of. He wanted her to succeed and did not find it necessary to make polite compliments or useless comments. Between them they took Lady Geraldine apart: talked about her, criticised her and speculated on her future.

  “What are you going to do about it then, Judeth? And don’t you dare tell me not to push you.”

  “Do you think I can write? I mean really write, so that people will want to read it.”

  “You don’t need me to tell you, do you?”

  “I believe I could do it, but would people want to read a serious book by a woman? Let alone somebody like me who haven’t ever done anything except grow things and stand on Blackbrook market.”

  “Well, well, so it’s to be all Lady Geraldine, and Princess Lavinia or Bishop Somebody and Admiral Whatnot? Judeth! People who stand on Blackbrook market are the ones worth writing of. You have said so yourself. The others aren’t one in a thousand; their loves and lives are trivial in comparison.”

  “All right. Supposing I did manage to write something about ordinary people, would somebody print it?”

  “Women are writing.”

  “Farm girls?”

  Fred recited a few lines of “Drink to me only with thine eyes”. “A bricklayer wrote that – Jonson – you know.”

  “I know. But he was a man. Ben!”

  “There’s nothing stopping you calling yourself Ben.”

  “But not Judeth!”

  “Would it matter what you were called? The important thing is for somebody to write a book where the characters are people thrown off their land; people tramping the roads looking for work; hungry children. And about girls and boys in villages like yours who have been falling in and out of love like the Lady Geraldines.”

  “And half of people are women!” Ideas that had been collected and stored burst out like wheat from a ripped sack.

  But Fred was in full flight with his own ideas.

  “In France at this very moment there are farriers and bakers and stonemasons – the kind of people we see every day in Blackbrook – who are rising up together, trying to make their lives better. That’s exciting; worth writing about.”

  “The women are part of it. They are affected by it all.”

  “Right, that’s what I am saying. This life is by far more important and more interesting than Squires and Duchesses. You could write about them.”

  “But not as Judeth or Jane or Dorothy!”

  “It is what is between the covers of a book that is important, not the name on the spine.”

  “You can say that because you won’t ever have to pretend that you are Judeth or Dorothy to get taken seriously.”

  “What you must do is to write. Forget the details about your name. Writing should be all about how people deal with the problems they are faced with. Dammit, Judeth – the greatest problem your Lady Geraldine ever has to deal with is to discover the identity of Will Vickery!”

  The fire of argument that had started furiously in Jude’s mind was suddenly quenched.

  Will Vickery?

  Will Vickery! Jude fairly blushed. Not Fred Warren at all. Will Vickery.

  She had allowed somebody to step into her mind and ferret about finding out secrets about Judeth Nugent. Not just that: to discover what she had not realised was there. Fred was right. Will Vickery was Lady Geraldine’s rescuer, the man with the smell of grain in his clothes, the man who aroused the lady’s passion. The man Jude liked very much to write about.

  It was what she had been afraid of, what she had tried to explain to Fred before she had allowed him to see the book. Revealing herself. Exposing herself to criticism. Allowing others to make assumptions about her from what she wrote, with them not knowing everythin
g. Writing was like rumour and gossip: people could never know the whole truth; only enough to chew over and make something of. Jude had been a bit prepared for Fred seeing himself in the hero’s character. She could have made a joke of it, saying: “I don’t know any men except you and Dicken.” But she was not prepared for the discovery that Will Vickery was roaming about in her unconscious.

  “I hardly know enough of Mr Vickery to put him in a book.”

  Fred did not answer immediately, but idly turned over the pages of the old accounts book, then said suddenly, “I write verse.”

  “Fred, I never knew that.”

  “Nor does anybody – till now. Oh, it isn’t any good. The reason I’m telling you is that I feel somewhat guilty, and it seems fair I should tell you. I got you to let me read what you had written, and put to you all those arguments about what’s the good of writing if nobody’s going to read it . . .”

  “And you haven’t never let anybody read your poetry.”

  “Verse, Judeth, and not good. Anyway, the merits of them don’t make any difference. It’s just that I’m saying I know you’re right about letting people see right inside you; letting them know your most secret thoughts that you sometimes don’t even let yourself know. Like Will Vickery.”

  Jude blushed again and could not meet his eyes.

  “It’s the test, Jude. If you are going to write about flesh and blood people, love, passion and so on must be there. It’s already there. Lady Geraldine is not really about aristocrats: it’s about Cantle people.”

  Life on this farm was little different from others. In Judeth’s childhood she had worked as hard as any: had her feet and hands frozen and aching with chilblains; been wind-blown, sweat-soaked, and rain-drenched. Yet somehow she had survived with her mind intact. There were others like her: delivering unorthodox sermons in tin chapels; printing and handing out political broadsides; addressing any small gathering of people who would listen to their belief in a radically new kind of society.