Jude

by Betty Burton

  Smith, Bess and Andrew watched the riders until they were specks on the straight, old road.

  “I’ve come at last,” was Will’s greeting, his mind and body alive at the sight of her.

  “So I see. I am pleased.”

  There had been a fox in one of the chicken-coops overnight and Jude, wearing a thick head-shawl and with her skirt pinned up, with bloodied hands and a pail of heads and carcases, had an air of serenity. She might have been gathering spring flowers.

  “I’ve been all over the place this last month.”

  “Yes, I saw Fred. He said you were away.”

  “Do you want a hand? Did he take many?”

  “Only the four in this coop.”

  The formality in their conversation was not in their expressions. They looked and looked away constantly as though it was not safe to allow their eyes to rest upon one another. Jude could easily have made a move towards him, held out her hands to him as her instincts insisted. She looked down at them and said without affectation. “Well, that’s not nice. I’ve finished here.”

  They went up to the house, stopping to feed the remains of the chickens to the pig and to draw a pail of water. In the scullery, Jude picked at the knot of her head-shawl with her fingertips to keep the blood and filth from it.

  “Let me,” Will said, stepping close to her.

  “I can manage.”

  Almost imperceptibly, Will recoiled, like someone thinking that a glass window is space until the last second. In his reaction, Jude saw a flash of recognition of the situation – I can manage was Bella’s rebuff – and a revelation of understanding. The danger of being hurt, rejected, disillusioned that is attached to responding to another human being.

  She smiled. “Even so, you do it,” and she held her chin up. Holding the knot, he pulled her head towards him and they kissed; gently, briefly, a touch of lips – sensuality more intense than a longer, harder, more voluptuous contact.

  With that brief, gentle contact the damsel-fly emerged. Jude, the damsel-fly, whose casing had been cracking for a long time, but to which she had held on because she did not know how to live without it; but who now discovered that her hunger for contact with someone could not be satisfied through the prohibiting shell; who realised that in order to spread fragile wings and fly free it was necessary to expose the vulnerable self, to exchange the safety of the opaque, inhibiting armour for the dangerous freedom of contact. The emergence of the modest damsel-fly often goes unnoticed when there are large dragonflies about. It is necessary to be on the look-out for it.

  Bella saw the change, but Will did not.

  As she scrubbed her hands he stood watching her, silently. He followed her into the house-place. Bella and Hanna were working in the dairy.

  “It is getting on for dinner-time. Will you stay?”

  He stayed for an hour and ate bacon and bread with them. Dicken talkative, Johnny-twoey watchful, Hanna chattering about things that happened at the party that no one else had noticed or remembered, Bella amiable and Jude open, her senses picking up every particle of his presence that she was able to. Will, enlivening their dinner with news from other parts of Hampshire, unobtrusively held on to Jude’s gaze from time to time, from which she did not try to escape.

  After that first visit, Will came to the farm whenever he was in the vicinity. He also tried to arrange to be in Blackbrook on market days, although as it got on into December the journeys from Cantle to Blackbrook were unreliable. The days were getting so short that they needed good weather to be able to get there, sell their products and get home again before dark.

  Bella accepted his visits without comment. Ever since their first meeting when he had surprised them all with his outburst about Jude’s right to the Goodenstone library, Bella had always been pleased to see him. It was obvious that Jude was most to do with his more frequent visits, but Bella always welcomed him as a visitor to them all.

  “Well, look, Hanna, here’s Mr Vickery come to see us. That’s nice to see you, Mr Vickery. You’ll stop and have a bite?”

  He often came on Sunday afternoons, stopping only for an hour because of the short days and treacherous roads. On the Sunday before Christmas, Bella said that she did not feel up to going over to see Jaen and Dan this year, which they usually did if the weather was good enough. She said that if Will wanted to ride over and eat with them she would kill the big goose and cook it early in the day, so that they could eat at dinner-time and not in the evening as they usually did.

  Jude anticipated the visit with contentment. Whenever Will was there she felt calm and at ease. His voice, still with a hint of accent and an occasional turn of phrase from his childhood in Ireland, pleased her; his easy manner with Hanna and Bella pleased her; the good-natured intensity when he spoke of his beliefs and convictions pleased her.

  December 1788

  Last Sunday, Will Vickery was with us for two hours.

  He is very knowledgeable on government and such. I am very ignorant about it, but I do want to know more.

  He is very earnest on the subject of co-operation of ordinary people. His belief is that if people were somehow organised, then because of their great numbers, government would be in everybody’s hands and such things as poverty and ignorance would go. This is such a simple plan that it seems that there must be a flaw in it – but I cannot see one. I asked him how he would get Young Harry to share out his estates, and he said that they were not his estates and that people would take back their stolen lands by law.

  For fun I asked him how he would go on with our place, but he took it serious and said that as it could not be worked without Dicken and Johnny-twoey, they should have equal share with ourselves. And I had to admit to myself that there was some justice in what he said, for although Dicken is now very old, he was working here before mother came, and as for Johnny-twoey he now works like a man, and the herbs and plants we sell come entirely from the plantation he has made himself.

  There are many reasons why I am delighted to see Will ride into the yard. Some are written only in the journal of my memory and not in this record of day-to-day life. One reason why my heart leaps when I hear a horse coming along Howgaite, is that I know my brain will be stimulated with new ideas if it is Will Vickery who is riding.

  How do some women manage to live all their lives with the kind of man, even if they have good looks and are jolly companions, whose ideas are stiff and uninteresting. The only desirable man, to my mind, would be one who’s outward appearance is conventional. He should dress simply and have a gentle manner. This outward appearance would hide such advanced and rebellious ideals that would uproot order.

  Will came early on Christmas morning. Jude had killed the goose a few days earlier and it had been hanging in a shed safe from the fox until Bella was ready to pluck it.

  The day before Christmas Eve she sat with her knees spread, holding the bird with her wrists and pulling at the down and feathers. Something half-remembered from her childhood floated to the surface. Keeping a rhythm with her hand movements, she sang over and over, “Wha-at care I for my goose-feather bed, with the sheet turned down so bravely-O? What care I for my newly wedded lord? I’m off with la-la da-da-da hum hum-O”.

  They had rarely seen her like this. You could probably count on the fingers of one hand when she seemed to be enjoying life. There was one time, a really good honey year when she had sold above twenty heavy hives; Hanna’s coming, there had been a period then when she smiled; going out to join in the harvest-day sport; and Jude remembered her mother’s supressed amusement on the day of Old Sir Henry’s funeral, but it was short-lived. If only . . . if only.

  Hanna knew Bella’s moods well enough not to be seen watching, so laughing into her cupped hand, whispered to Jude to listen and come and see Grandmother playing the goose. Jude, standing behind Hanna, holding her giggling shoulders, looking in at her mother’s square back moving as though in some seated dance felt a catch of sadness. If only . . . if their mother had been
able to sing a line or two of a song, let her hand rest upon Jaen and herself when they were younger . . . If only she could have let herself be easy like this more often.

  Jude had only recently begun to realise how silent and cold their home was. What their life would have been without Hanna she just could not imagine. When she tried to, she saw two featureless statues, standing separately in the house or the dairy or far apart in the fields. She could never visualise Bella and herself as two moving women. She was beginning also to realise what effect Bella had on herself and Jaen and she was determined to watch herself and not go about with life hanging like a millstone about her neck.

  It was something Hanna said that made Jude realise why perhaps Bella was making such an effort with the Christmas dinner.

  “There won’t be so many people, Jude, but do you think Grandma’s party will be such fun as Mrs Warren’s?”

  “It isn’t how many people come that makes the fun, it’s . . .”

  “Being partyfied?”

  Jude laughed.

  “Like that,” Hanna said. “Laughing is being partyfied. Mr Vickery is always laughing, isn’t he? But still, four people is not many.”

  “Then we shall have to laugh twice as much and sound like eight.”

  Bella brought in the goose. They all worked together in the warm and steamy kitchen which smelt of fruit and spices, preparing little tarts and cakes. Hanna said, “Grandmother, I want us to ask John to our party.”

  “Who in the wide world is John?” asked Bella.

  “Well, if you don’t know who John is! He only lives here.”

  “Cheek, Miss!” chided Bella. “You mean Johnny-twoey? Come for Christmas dinner?”

  “Yes,” said Hanna. “He never goes anywhere.”

  “You can’t ask farm-hands to something like this.”

  “Why not? He always eats his dinner here other days. And harvest supper.”

  “This is a . . . It is a family do. There’s places and times for workers, but this is a family do.”

  “What about Mr Vickery, then?”

  Ah, well. Bella didn’t quite know what to say about Mr Vickery; it wouldn’t do to say anything too serious.

  “He’s a friend. More a equal than Johnny-twoey.”

  “John is my friend and he is just as equal here as I am. And he don’t like being called Johnny-twoey, and I wouldn’t if you was to call me Hanna-Hazelhurstey.”

  It was so seldom that there was occasion to even think of Hanna’s second name, let alone say it that – quite apart from her statement about the boy – Jude and Bella paused in their work. Hanna was a Hazelhurst and not theirs. She could be gone from them on a whim of her father at any time. The bright little redhead gone, leaving two isolated statues: a thought too chilling.

  “Well, lovey, it’s all right you saying you wants him to come, but he’s a funny lad who always has kept hisself to hisself.”

  “He would come. He would if you asked him, Jude.”

  Jude remembered the blue china bird and Hanna being absolutely sure that the boy would like it.

  “All right then,” Jude said, “if you think he would like it.”

  Bella did not contradict, but looked momentarily at Jude and then went on rubbing salt into the goose.

  “Oh, he would like it. I told him everything about the party at Mrs Warren’s and he said when he’s got his own place he will have a party every Saturday night.”

  “Well, now, so he’s to have a place of his own, too.” For a moment Jude detected a whiff of sarcasm, but it went. Bella quickly remembered that she was talking to the little redhead that could at any moment be taken away to Newton Clare.

  “How do you know so much about him? He never says two words when I’m about,” Bella said.

  “Well, I talk to him and he talks to me. We tell each other everything. When he has saved enough money, he is going to get a plot and grow pot-herbs and plants and trees and then sell them.”

  “And where’s he going to get all this here money then?”

  “I expect from you, isn’t he? He says he reckons you are putting it by for him – the wages. He says you would have to take some out for his keep, and he probably didn’t earn much when he was little, but he says,” she had to stop to draw breath, “he says he works as hard as Dicken even if he is not quite a man, but he does his job proper.”

  Jude kept quiet, waiting to hear what her mother had to say. She herself was taken aback by the unexpected shrewdness of the boy. All of that had been going on in his head as he came and went. “Yes, Miss Jude. All right, Miss Jude. Where do the Master want the hurdles put?” Blushing and apparently inarticulate. True, they had never paid him. He had gone from a seven-year-old throw-out from the Toose family to a youth taller than Jude and Bella without really being anybody. Dicken also worked for them, he also took orders; but he argued, talked, garrulously sometimes; approved or not as the mood took him of anything and everything to do with Croud Cantle. He also came and went about the place, but Dicken came from home and went back there each day. John Toose had a room in an outhouse.

  “Hmm.” Bella beetled her brows and sucked her bottom lip. “Hmm. I dare say he is owed a bit o’ back pay.”

  “He won’t want it yet,” said Hanna very seriously. “He says it will be four or five year till he can set up a place on his own.”

  “Has he thought where he would live? He would have to get a place with a cottage,” said Jude.

  Hanna carefully placed pieces of chopped fig and blobs of honey on to the squares of paste she had carefully cut out. John had never talked about where his venture as a plantsman might be placed.

  “If he had some land close by,” the answer to the problem came clear, “he could live here just the same. I know! He could have that . . . you know by the spring, the little strip along Raike Bottom, near the pond.”

  On Christmas morning Bella, Jude and Hanna went to a special, early service. There was heavy frost and boots crunched, whether on frozen mire or grass. Although it was still dark and they had to take a lantern to light their way down Howgaite, the church was full.

  The box pews of the more prosperous amongst the Cantle God-fearing – the miller and a tenant-farmer or two – were occupied. There was even somebody in the Goodenstone pew. But gentry – when not addressing the Almighty in their own chapels – prayed enclosed on four sides by high, carved panelling, and came late and left early; privately, secretly almost. None of the common villagers, on full view in the open aisle at their devotions, were given any opportunity to know whether or not it was Young Harry.

  Perhaps the reason that the church was so full at this early hour was because the early Christmas service was the only one when the Reverend Archbold Tripp did not spend fifty or sixty minutes passing on a lecture that God was unable to give the Cantle flock, except by means of being interpreted by Mr Tripp himself. Well it an’t no good keeping a dog and barking yourself, would likely have been the villagers’ view, had the question arisen. The question never had. Hampshire in general was not keen on questions about established order, and Cantle was insulated by its beautiful, high mounds of chalk from infiltration or from even the mildest of dissenting thought.

  To the surprise of Bella and Jude, Hanna said that Johnny-twoey would come to the party. When Will arrived, the boy was seated in the place he usually occupied when he came to eat in the kitchen. Hanna was bending over his shoulder entertaining him with the pages of Little Lady Geraldine, reading slowly and underlining the words with a forefinger.

  Molly Warren would not have recognised the Christmas dinner as a party, but in terms of Croud Cantle it was a great celebration. When Will said that he hadn’t had a goose like that since he last tasted his mother’s cooking, and for sure he reckoned that the fig-puddin’ was better than her’s because Mrs Vickery was no hand at all at making suet puddings light enough and never pretended that she was, Bella looked enormously pleased. She explained how it was with suet; you had to chop to just th
e right fineness and it was something she had learned in her childhood and it was something you never forgot.

  Although, nowadays, Johnny-twoey often took his dinner in the kitchen along with the rest of them, the fact of being told by Hanna that it was a party overwhelmed him. Most of the time he concentrated on his plate and spoke only when offered more food. Bella and Jude looked at him with a new curiosity since Hanna’s revelations about his ambitions, but still found it difficult to believe that he was ever involved in such a complicated conversation as Hanna had suggested.

  Jude could not remember a time – except at harvest suppers in the days of Rob and Bob and occasionally Gilly, when she and Jaen were little – when the table had been so laden with food. To drink there was some of Bella’s Love-apple wine; clear pink and dry, made five years previously from a good summer crop and just potent enough to loosen the tongues of the three adults and dispel formality.

  The meal was over soon after midday. Will paid his compliments all over again after patting his belly and saying he would have to go for a run before he could eat another morsel.

  “It’s decent enough out. You could go and pick a branch or two of holly. It’d be nice to see some in the house again,” Bella said.

  Jude began clearing the table. “Hanna and the boy a give a hand to do that. Put on your boots and show Mr Vickery . . .”

  “Ah-ha,” said Will, “you said you’d call me by me name.”

  “Go and show – Will – where that good holly bush is, down by the Manor gates.” She nudged a smile at Will. “’Tis Estate holly by rights, but we’ll have a bit of our own back.”