Jude

by Betty Burton

  Fred Warren occasionally saw something like it elsewhere in nature – a few ears of corn that were taller, more productive, or could better withstand the extremes of weather than the rest of those in the field. It was from such sports that cornseed continued to improve.

  “Aren’t I right, Judeth?”

  Before she replied that of course the story had nothing to do with Cantle people, Jude reflected – as Fred had taught her to do when she was a girl.

  “Then you don’t think that Lady Geraldine is really a lady?”

  “Is she?”

  “I don’t know any ladies,” she smiled, remembering his old tactics. “Oh, Fred, I think my brain would have gone rusted ages ago if you didn’t come and make the wheels turn sometimes.”

  “So?” He adopted his old schoolmasterly tone. “What do we conclude, Judeth ?”

  “That Lady Geraldine is nothing like a true blue-blooded lady, and I ought to have put her into a farmhouse and called her Polly Nettleship.”

  They were laughing together at Lady Geraldine’s great surprise at suddenly finding herself transformed into Polly Nettleship. They had slipped into their old, relaxed, familiar way, their earlier discomfort apparently abated, when Bella’s voice cut in.

  “Well, it’s nice for some people, Fred Warren. Sitting about whilst you gets others to do your work for you.”

  They looked up. Jude avoided everybody’s eyes when she saw Will Vickery coming through the gate with Bella, Hanna and Johnny-twoey. The mob of emotions, suppressed a short while ago, threatened to riot again.

  “I met Mister Vickery coming out of Eastfield’s farm and he been getting down crab-apples for us like nobody’s business, all along the lane there.”

  It was as much as Jude could do to keep any tell-tale expression from her face when the full meaning suddenly came to her. Fred was not the man she hazily recollected bending over her on Tradden; it was not his coat that had exuded the evocative, comforting smell as she swam in and out of consciousness; it was not Fred who had removed her petticoat and torn it into bandages.

  As he took Hanna down from his horse and helped Bella with the baskets of fruit he had been carrying, Will Vickery was also forced to put on an expression consciously hiding his thoughts.

  When Will first met Jude, he had been very taken with discovering such a girl in that God-forsaken little farm. She had a look about her which conveyed intelligence, eagerness and curiosity. After that first meeting, he believed that he had come upon as near a perfect woman as he had ever thought to exist. Unsophisticated – a girl who scarcely ever left this place; yet, apparently, a serious reader. Simple – doing the hard-labour of growing and rearing; yet, according to Fred Warren, a good businesswoman and an amateur local historian and recorder. The idea of the work-hardened hand of a young woman being employed in researching and writing excited Will Vickery’s imagination. To add to all that, she had the most striking looks and colouring.

  Then he had opened the door of the office and seen her enclosed in Fred Warren’s arms and he felt that he had been let down. Will Vickery was a man to reason intelligently with himself and had come to the conclusion that to feel like that was very foolish. It was not his business what she did and it was hypocrisy on his part, for he professed an open way of thinking about all kinds of freedoms. He concluded that it was not up to him to give an opinion on the girl’s behaviour.

  Yet, of course, as soon as he saw them with their heads close, laughing together, he did.

  When Mrs Nugent spoke, Will saw the expression on the face of the woman he had once thought to be near-perfect. He noticed her avoidance of their eyes.

  Jude, likewise, saw his expression.

  Bella had recently done a deal with a packman carrying coffee beans. It was never Bella’s policy to take much notice of the claims of packmen, but this one had held some of the crushed beans for Bella to savour. “Tis like a tonic to get you going twice as fast” was a recommendation to Bella. So she exchanged some of last season’s sweet-jar for some of the beans. She had to admit that she was rather partial to the taste as a treat, and it was worth the trouble pounding and crushing the beans. She insisted that Fred and Will try out this new drink.

  For the rest of the short visit they talked of nothing except what a treat the coffee was; whether it was better with some cream; what a great season for sloes it was; did that mean a good or a bad winter? Will remarked that most likely it meant there had been no frosts when the sloes had been in bloom, which drew from Jude a spontaneous exclamation at the sense of his observation: then she quickly avoided his eyes again.

  It was coming up to Plough Fair Week at Blackbrook. As the men were preparing to leave, Fred said that if they were going to ride over for a day or two’s holiday, then they should use his house as a base from which to visit the fair on any day they chose. Bella said she didn’t know, what with Jude’s leg this year and that kind of thing. He suggested Jude might stop with Molly and him for a few days. When Hanna insisted on being included, he said, “The more the merrier.”

  “I couldn’t, not with all the fruit and that to be done,” said Jude, aware of her weeks of idleness when she hadn’t even earned her bread. Yet really she was longing to go. Bella had taken them to Plough Fair Monday ever since she and Jaen were able to walk the distance. It was one of their few holidays.

  Jude loved to be part of the crowd: to hear the raucous music, the shouts of horse-dealers, and see the sights and side-shows.

  “I don’t see why not,” said Bella. “After all, in a week or ten days it’ll all be done with. Anyway she an’t a lot of good about the place like that.”

  That was just like her mother. She would grump and make you feel uncomfortable if you didn’t pull your weight, then suddenly do something like this. Jude had learned to take Bella’s good moods while they were going.

  In Bella’s opinion, Plough Monday ought to be enough for anybody; but if Mrs Warren was agreeable – and you’d better be sure she is, Fred Warren – then Jude and Hanna might go over and stop a day or two.

  Harry Goodenstone’s strange visit to Croud Cantle originated from the meeting of Jude and Lotte on Bell Tump and Lotte’s removal from Park Manor, but the actual dash from Lotte’s lodgings in Old Portsmouth took place that morning.

  A change had come over Lotte since the Sunday encounter with Jude on Bell Tump: not dramatic or noticeable to anyone who knew her less well than Harry or Mary; but something subtle was changed in her whole demeanour. It was as though she had been a shiny chess piece this last twenty years: moved by others, easily, on a slithery board. Now she had become magnetised on a metallic board, a resisting pawn. Her old chess-masters were nonplussed.

  Lotte appeared to be growing a shell of protection against their playing upon her feelings of guilt, responsibility and duty. Ever since Tomas Nugent had sailed off and Mary had found her – then later when Harry Goodenstone had offered his protection – Lotte was never free of the awareness that she must be grateful, always grateful to those who had saved her from herself.

  It was true that, in the Bristol days, anything might have happened to Lotte without Mary there. Mary had given up a good job and tramped scores of miles to find her. Mary had been a mother to her, and twenty years of reiteration of this truth gave Mary a strong claim to gratitude. It was true also that with Harry Goodenstone around, jealously guarding his expensive fantasy, she was to some extent – at least whilst not in the theatre – protected from other men with other fantasies. So Lotte had a duty of gratitude to him as well.

  Lotte was not entirely dependent upon Goodenstone money. But the style of living that he had set for them had put Lotte to a great deal of expenditure from her own income on the kind of gowns and flowers that went with the smart carriages and good addresses he provided. Had she led a simpler life, she would have had a nice nest of savings against the day when there would be no more offers for her to play the country wife or young messenger. As it was, she had a little put by to provid
e for Mary, Rosie and herself in a simple way.

  Although Mary was plain and drab and took no interest in her appearance, she wanted to live no other kind of life – unless it be in greater style. It did not matter to Mary when visitors took her for Lotte’s companion; or handed her hats without a glance, as though she were a maidservant; or even that people were openly incredulous that she was the sister of the beautiful and graceful Charlotte Trowell. Mary had everything she wanted. She was living in greater luxury than she had even known to exist when she was a milk-maid. So when Lotte had shown reluctance to accept Harry Goodenstone’s offer of a grand life at Park Manor, Mary had played on every one of her sister’s weaknesses – particularly “poor little Rosie”.

  “Don’t you care about nobody except yourself?” was always Mary’s stab to Lotte’s conscience whenever there was a difference of opinion.

  But this time, for almost the first time, the stab was deflected.

  “Yes, I care about everybody except myself.” A hint of character overlaid Lotte’s bland features of enduring youthfulness.

  Mary did not know how to handle her sister’s rebellion.

  Mary had managed to contain the first outbreak. This was at Park Manor, when Harry Goodenstone had walked in on their packing and asked what Lotte should have told him years ago. Mary had jumped in before Lotte could speak and confessed to him that it was in Cantle village that they had spent their early years: a touching performance of a true story without its essential central theme and lacking some of its important characters.

  Harry Goodenstone had said dammit, he didn’t care a faddle where Lotte came from, if he wasn’t master of his own village to do as he pleased, then where was he master, and as for the rest of the county bores, they could cut him dead if they chose to, he did not need them. He and Lotte had enough of their own sophisticated and entertaining friends not to need the kind his father had.

  He had put down Lotte’s determination to leave, to her being away from the theatre and needing to act up a bit, so he indicated to Mary that they should humour her and allowed the packing and the exodus to go ahead. He followed them.

  Lotte’s order to the coachman to drive to Portsea had no thought behind it. It was the first place that she could think of near enough to drive to at that time of day – and where she was a stranger. They found lodgings that night and the next day took rooms in Crown Street.

  It was outside Lotte’s rooms in Crown Street, some weeks later, that Harry Goodenstone had flung himself upon his horse and rode back the fifteen miles to Cantle.

  He had only got as far as the top of the Ports Down when he realised how unsuitably dressed he was for racing off like that. He had got himself up in his new, fashionable, rust-red coat, intending to have it out with Lott and insist that she go back to Park Manor. After all, he’d waited long enough to gain his inheritance. He was convinced that the old man would not have hung on to life so tenaciously had it not been for the fact that he knew his son was waiting to step into his place. Since their arrival in Portsmouth, Harry had taken rooms at a hotel that was full of naval officers. He had not much liked it, but had no option. It was the only place with rooms of any size. Lotte’s lodgings were out of the question. She was still acting up.

  From the hill, he could plainly see the tracks over the downs on the Isle of Wight, the Langstone mudflats, and the shining harbour full of small craft and naval vessels. Uncultured place, swarming with seamen, rough and full of themselves in their gold braid and buttons. He longed for Bath. Of all the places Lotte chose to act up in! Of all places to discover that one had been betrayed, lied to, deceived. Of all places to find oneself in and be told that the little messenger who ran on to the stage in tabard and hose was a woman near his own age; that the naughty, innocent, country-wife with baby-like hair who ran round the stage dressed in rose-bud gowns and hiding in cupboards had hidden her whole history . . . All these years there had been a child hidden away somewhere. A child! Twenty years old!

  Lotte had spoken like a peasant. Not just acting up. Streaming out her dirty history. She had had enough! The sister could do nothing but stand and watch. She had had enough. She kept saying that. Acting, acting, acting: twenty years pretending to be somebody else. If you want a girl to live with, then clear off and find one – or a boy!

  He could have coped if she had been a sweet, mad Ophelia, singing naughty songs . . . but this! The thirty-four-year-old peasant had taken from him his little messenger.

  The Goodenstone in him came out. The trait that caused them to get whatever they decided they wanted, be it boy/woman or the farms and commonlands of Cantle. The trait that caused extra wings to be built on to the Park Manor House; that caused cottagers to be put out so that game-birds might be brought in. That trait which made it impossible for two male Goodenstones to live under the same roof rose up within the rust-red breast and he hit out. Earlier that day he had demurred for half an hour over whether to buy a riding-crop with a tail of animal hair or a short silver-inlaid stick. He had chosen the crop.

  With it he struck out at Charlotte Holly, the woman who had taken from him beautiful Charlotte Trowell, messenger and naughty country wife.

  For the first few miles’ mad gallop out of Portsmouth, Harry Goodenstone had gone without direction. It was only upon finding himself on Ports Down, overlooking the naval town, that he took stock of where he was. He had no conscious desire or plan to go in the direction of Cantle, but it was towards there that he started his horse into a gallop again.

  Within the cloud of jealousy and spiteful, thwarted possessiveness that enveloped him, an ice-crystal of reality formed. The reality of the names and places he had forced Lotte to tell him – degrading her, hurting her, salting his own wounds, working up the Goodenstone in himself. The first crystal to form was about the name, Nugent. Not about the man who had been the violator of his fantasy, but about the girl who had attended his father’s funeral; the same one he had seen in the vestry and then in the library. The daughter was another woman who belonged to the violator, and for a short while he had turbulent thoughts of avenging the old harm with some new.

  As he rode inwards from the coast – up over the windy hills, down into the moist, moss-ridden, Meon valley then up, up again on the south-west face of Tradden Raike – his dementia slowly withdrew. He was left fatigued; left only with a voyeuristic desire to look at the previously insignificant, independent little state within the Goodenstone kingdom: Croud Cantle farm, where the violation had taken place.

  On the high point of Tradden, where the enormous beeches forever rustled leaves and clicked twigs; where red-brushed squirrels bounced about or watched what was going on as they chewed beech mast; where fur hunted fur and feather swooped on feather, Harry Goodenstone reined in his horse and saw none of this.

  His full attention was upon the valley. His valley. The Goodenstone valley.

  He sat astride his horse and viewed the main source of his wealth and power. He suddenly saw it as he had never seen it before; as his father and the grandfather who had made the first move to enclose and claim the valley, had seen it. Not as Jude saw it, as a thing with a life of its own; ancient, independent of god or man. Jude saw it as a creature; a spirit to be venerated and loved, yet untouched and untouchable, owned only by itself. Fashionably-clad and perspiring, the owner of plans showing fields and commons, the legal possessor of rolled documents with seals and ribbons viewed the valley. He was suddenly seeing, vaguely, that this valley had something to do with what made him Harry Goodenstone; with what made him Squire Goodenstone, Master of Park Manor and its surrounds.

  Throughout his Young Harry years, his father and other landowners had appeared ridiculously obsessive about the possibility of losing a few acres of land, or the rights to something or other, or even game-birds and the odd sheep. They talked as though the hordes were at the gate: death, bankruptcy, litigation, natural disaster and men who wanted a share. The most frequent subject of their conversation was how to maint
ain their hold – strong laws and strong fences. The ownership of good land was their birthright and theirs only. How to keep out the hordes was an ever-present problem. One of their best strategies was to unite, consolidate and entail, and the most effective means of bringing this about was through marriage.

  As soon as Old Sir Henry knew that his first child – and, in the event, his only child – was a son, he felt that the Estate was properly secure, and that eventually it might be united with one of the adjoining estates. He had not bargained for a silly and wayward son who thought that the wealth and power he had been born to was indestructible. Had he perhaps taken Young Harry to the top of Tradden in his most impressionable years, said all this is ours and on the other side of Winchester Hill is the Berol estate, explained the compound interest of joined estates, instilled in him a fear of cracks in defences and a horror of letting in the hordes – then he might have saved himself years of anxiety about his foolish son.

  Instead of the practical demonstration, Old Sir Henry had imposed restrictions, made rules and attempted serious argument with a boy who was interested only in pleasing himself. Young Harry could not see that his relationship with Charlotte Trowell had anything to do with his father, or the future of the Estate. Old Sir Henry saw her as a pleasure-seeker, like his son, who would assist the Estate down the slope to bankruptcy. She destroyed, as well, his hope of joining the estates of Cantle and Motte through marriage. Fortunately he died in ignorance of the origins and biography of his heir’s mistress – and in ignorance of the possibility that his lands might get back into the hands of the peasantry.

  Harry Goodenstone was beginning to realise.

  The valley was his and the valley was himself. Without it he was nothing but a small man on a large horse. Without the fields of corn, barley and wheat; the flocks of sheep, the herds of beef; men, women, dairy cattle, pigs, and the land on the valley floor, plus whatever could be dug from beneath its surface – without these possessions, the Goodenstones existed only on the level of ordinary humanity.