by Betty Burton
His experience of girls had been frivolous and playful on his part, and his experience of women had been erratic and flirtatious. He had never been serious for much longer than it took to persuade them to respond. The loud voice in him said that Jude was very different.
Her enigma was the combination of reserve and quiet exuberance, naivety and knowledge. For Will Vickery there was also the excitement of the farm-girl whose fingers could equally well manage the teats of a goat or the shaft of a pen – milk and ink; the girl who could read the signs of potato blight and read Dean Swift. He had the strange notion that she was a blank page on which the most profound knowledge had been written. He was sure now that his first impression had not failed him – she was a near-perfect woman. He was beginning to love her. Sacred-profane. Spiritual-carnal.
Jude’s emotions were not like his. She was excited by his presence and would have been glad to have been walking about only with him. There was something open about him; almost as though his past, present and future were written in his look. He was no enigma. Her feelings for him were those of Lady Geraldine, who had wanted a wholesome man – compassionate, to be sure; intelligent and non-conformist; a man out of the usual – but above all wholesome, smelling of grain.
The week seemed both endless and fleering. The Thursday was the day when the Blackbrook market-day and the Fair combined.
They had arranged that Bella would come as usual, would sleep at the Warren’s and go home the next day with Jude and Hanna. It needed a great amount of organisation and orders for the farm to be left in the care of Dicken, Johnny-twoey and the hired labour. Dicken didn’t know what had come over the Master, traipsing off up Blackbrook twice in one single week, and wondered if there wasn’t summat up, what with Miss Jude gone and all that. There’d been a lot of traipsing off like that before Mrs Hazelhurst had got herself wed.
The dress was ready on Wednesday evening. The dressmaker brought it in a large wicker basket. Jude, with Hanna taking in every inch of the sapphire stripe, had to stand on a stool in the little sitting room whilst the dressmaker made adjustments upon the advice of Mrs Warren. Peg, now that she had discovered that they had all unconsciously been living next door to an exceptional young man who found her charming, was happy to watch. Apart from the removal of a bow which they all said wasn’t Jude, the dress fitted well. Peg did up the red hair in a simple bandeau style. Jude was experiencing sensuous fabric against her skin for the first time.
As she viewed herself in Mrs Warren’s mirror she said several rimes, “I never dare be seen in it,” but not meaning it, and, “I don’t dare think what Mother’s going to say,” but not caring. She knew that she was outwardly transformed and that when she walked she would be inwardly transformed also. “I could nearly pass for a lady if it wasn’t for my hands.” She was sure that Fred still thought of her as the child who wanted to learn to read, and thought that he would be astounded at the woman in the latest fashion. But most of all she wanted to astound Will Vickery. As she sat before the mirror she gazed inwardly at Will Vickery standing behind her, his hands tracing the line of the stripes over her waist and hips.
“Look at her, she’s miles away.” They laughed good-naturedly at her momentary confusion.
“I was just wondering when I shall ever be able to wear it after today.”
Next day was the usual market day. It was raining; the first of the cold rains that brought down whatever remained of the scarlet and gold autumn to trample it into winter mire. Jude set out early for their usual place outside the Star to wait for Bella, but it was the best part of an hour before she arrived, leading the laden mules.
“Trust everything to go wrong at the same time,” was her greeting.
As they unpacked and set out their produce under a little awning to keep the rain off, Bella went on and on about the things that had gone wrong: the unreliability of the casual women, the hens, and this rain, and winter was setting in and that was the end of using the short-cut because the Dunnock was up, and all that drag over Winchester Hill. She was sullen and terse. In no time at all she had pulled Jude down from the high plain of enjoyment she had been on.
On Monday her mother had been a different woman as she had walked about in her pretty jacket with Mrs Warren, relaxed and almost smiling. Jude had expected to see her like that today. Instead she was in the trough of one of her moods and made Jude feel guilty about her few days of idleness and pleasure.
It was unfair. It was Mother who had persuaded her to go. Jude had said right at the beginning about all the work. Mother had said she would keep the casual workers on. It wasn’t her fault that they weren’t reliable. It wasn’t her fault that the Dunnock was rising, as it did every October. The women were probably all right anyway. It was just Mother – never satisfied with people’s best. She probably went poking around as she always did, instead of leaving people to get on with things.
Why had she said they should come to Fair Week if it was going to be like this? Why had she given Jude money to spend if it had to be paid for by being made to feel guilty?
Jude had looked forward to telling her mother about the trumpery things, the bits and pieces of little use and value she had bought this week. She wanted to introduce Will Vickery’s name into their conversation. And the dress. She had looked forward to putting it on to surprise Bella, but she knew how it would be received by her in this mood. The sideways glance from head to toe would say, “It’s all right for you, my girl. Some of us had to work hard while you was traipsing around.” She could not bear the thought. Neither could she mention Will Vickery’s name and allow her the opportunity of taking the light out of it.
Bella dreaded these moods descending upon her out of the blue. When they came, she hated herself. She knew what she was doing and could not stop it. One day she would go to bed feeling normal, then wake up the next day looking out through a black curtain, with a great lump of anger, bitterness and misery in her.
Nobody understood. People went on leading their easy lives: no responsibilities, taking her for granted, laughing and joking. She ached to tell somebody, yet it was the last thing she could bring herself to do. It was weak. People would show pity. That was about the worst thing that could happen to Bella, being pitied.
She wished that she had been able to say to Jude, “Don’t take no notice of me, I feel that rotten today.” When Jude would have said, “That’s all right. Why don’t you go on round to Mrs Warren’s and have a talk to her? It’ll cheer you up?” And Molly Warren might have said something jolly and the black curtain might have lifted. If only . . . But the darker her mood, the heavier and more bitter the lump, the less able she was to say anything except what hurt other people.
Bella knew that Jude was expecting her to ask what she had been doing, how her leg had been, and had Hanna been enjoying herself, but she could not bring herself to do it.
In the middle of the morning Molly Warren and the children came to see them. Hanna chattered away, tumbling out everything she had seen and done. Bella arranged her mouth into a tight smile for the child.
“Well, you have got a lot to say for yourself,” was as enthusiastic a response as she could manage.
“Shall you come to the house?” Molly Warren asked.
“Thank you, no. The river was coming up, so I dare say I shall have to trail back over Winchester Hill.”
“Perhaps I had better come home today,” Jude said.
“Oh not today, Jude!” said Hanna. “Mrs Warren is going to have a party. We never had a party.”
Bella fed her resentment. “No, you stay. I shall be all right. You stay and have your party . . .” the unspoken end of the sentence implicit. “You go on and enjoy yourselves while I’m dragging back to the farm.”
Jude flushed with anger. They were being punished for enjoying themselves. Why was she like that! Why did she get like this with people? Why couldn’t she be a bit more bending like Mrs Warren was? This rime Jude was not going to be intimidated. Usually Jude
was placating, allowing her mother to take her mood out on her. And it did no good. She wasn’t going to start on Hanna too. So she said in a falsely pleasant voice, “Well, that’s nice. We shall have the party and go home Saturday then, like we said.”
They had not really settled when they would go home, but Jude settled it then and there.
Molly Warren sensed the tension between Judeth and her mother and did not stop long. She asked if Bella was sure she wouldn’t come in for a bit of something, but Bella refused.
For the rest of the morning Bella and Jude spoke only when necessary. Bella was nonplussed by Jude; Jude was determined not to climb down. They packed the panniers.
“There,” said Jude, “I’ve packed it so you can ride home.”
Bella’s immediate response was to reject any easement. She needed to foster her resentment, but Jude was out-flanking her. It would have suited her to let Jude watch her having to walk, but she had no excuse.
“You a be back on Saturday then?” Bella said tersely.
The first-time stand that she was making against her mother’s intimidation gave Jude a feeling of elation. She felt powerful standing up to the black mood. She would not give in.
“I expect so, Mother. It’s a shame you won’t come back to Mrs Warren’s, but there, if you want to get on back home . . .” Jude planted the suggestion that Bella preferred to go back home without visiting, that Bella was doing what she wanted to do.
The rain that had started that morning set in. People still came in from the rural areas. Many travelled on foot, trudging clayey tracks and slithery raikes to have a look at the old fair. It was often the only time they left their hamlets and villages. They wondered why they couldn’t hold Plough Fair in May, like Wickham, or July, like Portsmouth. The weather was always treacherous at this time of year. For some, the rain decided them. They were too old for that sort a jaunt any more, and anyway it wasn’t like when they was young, you never saw a good cock-fight these days, and the dogs seem half-afraid to have a go at the bull, and bears wasn’t half the fun they used to be years ago.
Young people didn’t seem to mind. After all, you had to work in the rain so you might as well enjoy yourself in it, and Plough Fair only comes once a year, and who knows what next year might bring? For a good many the answer came in less than a year – the weeks just before harvest always brought its crop of Plough Fair Babies.
When Jude got back to the Warrens’, Mrs Warren had everybody getting on with a good bake-up. Used to the Croud Cantle evenings of pie-making for market, Hanna got cheek-burning praise from Mrs Warren and the two women who had been hired for the day.
“Just look at that. Neat and pretty as you please. You a have to teach Peg to crimp pastry neat as that.”
“Look, Jude,” Hanna said, all excited. “It’s for the party.”
Molly insisted that Jude have a bit of a rest of her leg, seeing as she’d been on it since early. Jude sat in the hot, busy kitchen, where the boys were put to take turns at the spit and keep the fire in, and the women and girls prepared the very substantial courses that any grocer’s daughter considered necessary for a party. None of the fidgety little bits of more elegant society, but heavily encased game pies, huge roasts, meats – cold-cut, jellied and pressed – and a whole poached salmon.
The kitchen, scullery and pantry were filled with people, talk and movement. Lamps had been lit and it was warm, in contrast to the wintery October weather that had pushed its way into a late September afternoon. An image of Bella and the pack-horses going over Winchester Hill came briefly into Jude’s mind, but she had made up her mind. She had been thinking about her mother and had come to the conclusion that there was something in her that drove her to choose the hardest path. It was as though she was punishing herself for something. Jude had intuition enough to suspect that if she was not careful she would become like her.
She put the image of Bella firmly from her mind and threw herself into the pleasure of preparing for a party. She began by saying that she would start on the making of a special punch that she had heard of and recorded in her journal for posterity. Freddie said they should call it Posterity Punch, then they all joined in, topping one another with witticisms, childish and hilarious.
Fred came home. With the help of the boys, he moved furniture from place to place, until they had made a space for games and dancing, room to lay up the supper and somewhere for people to have a game of cribbage or hand of cards.
He had been really pleased to see Judeth open up this week, and little Hanna jumping about as an eight-year-old ought to. There had been times during the week when he found his eyes fixed upon the curve of Judeth’s cheek or the rise and fall of her breast, but as soon as he caught himself he pulled his mind away, aware that it could only spoil the fineness of their relationship as well as the intimacy that had grown up between Molly and the girl. Fred was glad of that. There had been a time in their flirtatious youth when Fred had called her Jolly Molly – it summed her up, even in her matronly thirties. She was what a solitary, intelligent girl like Judeth needed to bring her out of herself.
He was glad, too, that she and Will appeared to be interested in one another. Somebody like Will was exactly what Judeth needed to allow her to develop, to encourage her to reach out. Perhaps she would be able to make something of the writing. More and more women’s names were appearing on book spines. It was true that none of them, as far as he knew, was a farm-girl whose only education was gained from the junior in a grain-merchant partnership, and from whatever books came into her hands, but that did not mean that they had any more ability than a girl like Judeth.
All of Fred’s idealism – the liberty, equality, fraternity call that was in him – was, in a way, invested in Jude. Quite apart from the fact that she was a woman, she had everything else set against her chances of succeeding: her station in life, her isolation, her lack of contact with like minds and the hard labour she was committed to. In a way she was his hope for the future.
Once or twice in recent years it had occurred to him to wonder what would happen to the little farm in a few years’ time. Mrs Nugent was not the woman she had been when he first arrived in Blackbrook, and she and the elder girl had stood on the market. It was difficult to tell with a woman who drove herself as she did, but she must be quite elderly now – well past forty. He had a picture of her: the hair that was always escaping from her cap had a lot of white in it; her cheeks were sunken from loss of many teeth; her uprightness was more stiff than held erect. Probably her expectations were that Judeth would marry an estate worker or some farming son, as the elder daughter had done. Then she would hand over the place to them whilst still holding the reins. What would happen if Will came into the picture? Fred did not see him in any kind of role such as farmer or horticulturist and market trader.
When they had done as much as possible on the Thursday, they all settled in the kitchen, ate a made-do supper, talked about favourite jigs and dances the fiddler must play, and wrote lists of what they must remember to do the next day. It was to be a big entertainment with at least twenty invited friends and neighbours. From Jude’s seemingly endless money she had bought something for the party for each of them. Only trumpery from the fair stalls, it is true, but delightful to each recipient as they opened the packages containing black neck ribbons and waist-fobs for Fred and the boys, painted handkerchiefs with the words “Plough Fair” amidst the flowers and birds for Mrs Warren and Peg, and a beribboned and embroidered apron and a pair of red silky slippers for Hanna.
Jude enjoyed every moment of the new experience of pleasure in choosing, buying and giving. “If only” . . . the two words that so often prefaced thoughts of her mother. If only Mother could have allowed herself that experience instead of awkwardly thrusting the coins upon Jude, saying, “Don’t thank me, thank them that’ll pay fourpence ha’penny a pound for combs this year.”
Their money was hard earned, no one would deny that. It was thumped with chilblained hands fro
m churns; boiled from pans of scalding syrup; expressed from cows in ankle-deep mire; dug from frozen ground; gathered a few ha’pence at a time on Blackbrook Market. It was a representation of their collective labour and a means of keeping body and soul together, but it was also a means of rising above that. People needed to be frivolous sometimes. Keeping body and soul together meant more than sustenance.
Until now, Jude had not thought about money. But with the new experiences, and getting away from Croud Cantle, she realised its potential for freedom.
The preparations went on all Friday morning. When everything was ready the women went round the house with satisfaction.
By Croud Cantle standards the house was large and luxurious. There were separate rooms for sitting, receiving visitors and for earing, as well as the kitchen and scullery in the basement. The furnishing of it reflected the happy childhood of Molly Tarrant, who had been brought up in the back of the grocery shop where every bit of floor-space, every wall and every shelf was filled. Some of the younger members of her stratum of Blackbrook society had started going in for alcoves displaying nothing except a single vase in the new Wedgwood; left elegant space between elegant chairs in order to show off neat chequered carpets, and talked of “style”.
“Why, it looks as though they had the bum-bailiffs in. They might as well live on Salisbury Plain if they don’t want no more comfort than that!” was her comment upon them. Jude would have agreed with those sentiments. She enjoyed being surrounded by floral patterns, braid trimmings, velvety textures and little ornaments and knick-knacks on mantelpieces and every other flat surface. Apart from the space that Fred had cleared for anybody who wanted to jig to the fiddler, the whole of the ground floor was crammed. The room that was known as Mrs Warren’s little room held the arrangements for cribbage players. On the other side of the passage the supper was laid up.