by Betty Burton
“He a come.”
She was pining for her Little Lovey, and I thought that a few days in her company would make her feel better.
Jaen would not have minded.
“No,” was Dan’s reply. “What she want to go all over there for when she got us and her own brothers here.”
“Mother’s not very bright. She’s getting on, and it’d do her good to have Hanna for a few days.”
“If she an’t well, then it’s up to you to nurse her. If you wasn’t playing games pretending you’m summit you an’t, you’d have enough time to see to your mother without wanting my girl.”
I was so surprised at his purposely misinterpreting me that I did not answer.
“She got enough fancy ideas, without her getting no more from stopping with you. You done enough damage to her already.”
I just could not stand his implied criticisms of both Hanna and ourselves. “Damage! Fancy ideas? You’ve said things like that before today. What fancy ideas has Hanna got? She works like a little horse. D’you call it fancy ideas when she’s up to her armpits in soap and soda, or up to her knees in muck? When she was at our place she didn’t have fancy ideas. She learnt to do nearly every job on the farm, and there isn’t any fancy jobs at Croud Cantle.”
“You was learning her to read. I caught her time and again with bits o’ chalk, writing letters on things. I an’t having none of that nonsense, filing her head. She’s going to grow up to be a proper woman, decent wife and mother. What kind of a woman is it who spends her time reading? Not no farmer’s wife. Not no woman in this house!”
The hostility in his voice brought to mind that same resentment that had been in Ben Hannable’s when he had told Fred, “Missie here wouldn’t have me.”
Of all the tongue-holding I had done over the last year, this was the one time when I should never have let myself go. But I did let go. I told Dan Hazelhurst that he was a beast for the number of children he had fathered upon my sister; that he was a brute and a slave-driver for the way he forced his own daughter to work like a skivvy; that he was a body without a brain and – what infuriated him most – that he was a poor farmer, who had no better sense than to put everything he had into one crop, and that if it was not for what would happen to Jaen and the children, I hoped that he would lose every foot of land and every penny he owned.
Whilst I was pouring out my tirade, I was pinning on my shawl ready to leave. I started to bend to kiss Jaen but he pushed me away. “I don’t want to see you nowhere here never again.”
The one person I needed to placate. The one time I should have bitten my tongue through rather than say what I thought. I felt cold and sick to my stomach. Fortunately none of the children were in the house, but I left Jaen looking wild-eyed as a rabbit at the moment before it flees from a terrier.
I had reached the Cantle side of Tradden before I realised that I had come so far, and I calmed down . . . I caught her time and again writing with bits of chalk . . . The significance of his words came suddenly back to me. Hanna had not given up at the first opportunity.
A sudden cold storm blew up and was over in ten minutes, making the clear part of the sky appear unusually bright with the Christmas star above the rim of the downs. I have never been one for omens and the like, but I have to admit that when a fragment of rainbow was visible for a few minutes close to the Christmas star, I hoped that it might be saying something favourable, for things had not gone well of late. My aims and ambitions did not falter, but it did seem as though for every two steps I took forward I had to take one back.
From Tradden I could see Park Manor, where the only lights that showed were dim and high up in the servants’ quarters. Smoke rose from the trees so that it was possible to pin-point where every cottage was, even though hidden from view. For every trail of smoke there was a hearth; about every hearth were the people of Cantle.
Most of them large families, living close in the warmth and smell of one another. Women of my age with milky babies and children greasy with bacon fat; their men, sinewy and hard, with faces the colour of red clay and bodies white as rendered pig fat; some who would as soon hit out at wives and children as at plough horses, yet working themselves into the ground to keep their family alive. Close by would be their parents, puzzled that the Bible should give them the expectation of three score years and ten, when they know that after two score years and five you are doing better than many of your neighbours. Some would be old people, perhaps with a son living at home; pleased at their good luck that something is still coming into the house. Around those hearths were rickets, consumption, painful, swollen joints, lungs irritated by chaff from the threshing, thin blood, and legs like Jaen’s.
At that moment I wanted Will Vickery more than at any other time. I needed, just then – just for the time when I was looking down upon the place that I loved passionately, yet knew that I was apart from – I needed to be part of something, belong to someone.
I wished that my father had not gone away.
Maisie Carterage came to meet me as soon as I went in at the gate.
“Your mother, Miss Jude. She’ve been took very queer.”
Between the two of us we got her upstairs, into a nightgown and into bed. One side of her face appeared to have collapsed. Her eye dragged down, showing the inner rim; her cheek sagged and her mouth sagged unable to control the flow of saliva.
“She’ve had a convulsion, I reckon, Miss Jude.”
All through those first days of Bella’s illness, Maisie was as loving a nurse as though she was caring for her own mother, constantly seeing that the patient was warm and dry, feeding her milk sops like a baby.
Slowly Bella improved until, by the end of February, Maisie and I were able to get her back downstairs and make a permanent bed for her in the house-place. Rob partitioned off the eating end and put a door in and built another chimney up the outside wall, making a separate kitchen and eating room. I didn’t know why we had not made the alteration before, as it made the house much more comfortable.
Each day, Maisie would wash and dry the red tiles, talking to the stricken woman all the while, even though Bella could do little better than produce a long, nasal “aahh” by way of answer. Whilst she was in bed, she had stopped her secret picking and hiding, but when she was in her chair again she started flicking out her good hand and plucking at anything near.
I hated seeing her like that. But however bad it felt to look on, it could not compare to Bella’s distress at having to rely on somebody else to be kept alive. Bella Estover, Bella Nugent, independent for almost all of her life, slumped, dumb and drooling.
I would have given anything to see her stumping about the yard, yoked to the clanging pails.
It is hard to see how the school stumbled on during that time. But yes, it was mostly with the support of Fred Warren, who rode over several times a week to work there, and Rob Netherfield, who was always willing to put in hours at Croud Cantle if he was needed. Early as it always was when I awoke, there were mornings when Rob was about the place first.
“Thought I’d just have a look at the well-rope,” or, “I remembered that there tile had come off the barn.” Many of the jobs that I had always done Rob took over, but he would never take a penny more than the rate for the job: although as far as money was concerned we were not so poor as we used to be, for as Blackbrook grew in size, so the customers for Croud Cantle produce grew in number.
At Christmas Fred had announced the engagement of Peg to James Carter. James had gone into his father’s business and seemed to be settled enough early in life to set up in a house his father bought for him. The wedding was to be in Blackbrook Abbey on Easter Saturday.
“I want your Mother to come, Judeth. Now, it will be all right,” he said, as I was about to say that it was not possible. “I shall send a wagon over early in the day and you can bring Mrs Carterage. That will leave you free to enjoy yourself at the breakfast.”
And so it was arranged. Although Fred had t
o see to many of the arrangements that his wife would have been so pleased to do, he still made sure that my mother was attended to and comfortable.
She had regained a little of her speech, and Johnny and Maisie as well as I could understand her. When I had told her about the wedding, she had pulled her brows together, signalling a question, and said, “Will? Will?”
“No. He won’t come. It’d take him too long.”
She shook her head and said, “Will.”
I found Mother’s pretty jacket, steamed and aired it, and took out my green dress, which had not seen the light of day for more than three years, and set off early in the day in the back of one of White’s light, covered wagons.
There was a large crowd outside the abbey and as Maisie and I helped Mother make her shuffling way inside someone said, loud enough for us to hear, “Oh my eye – that’s never Bella Nugent!”
Only Maisie and I knew how much effort went into the straightening of Mother’s back and the slow, deliberate attempt at a normal walk.
It was the prettiest that Peg had ever been or would ever be again. She was happy to be exchanging the overseeing of her father’s kitchen and dining-room for the overseeing of her husband’s. At the placing of the ring, I looked idly at my own hand. As I did so, I suddenly had a feeling that Will was there, that he had come. I turned slightly to where I could see the porch of the west door and saw that he stood there. I wanted to immediately get up and go to him. He raised a hand and nodded.
“Mother. Will,” I whispered.
Mother pulled her shoulders round so that she could see, then she nodded and grimaced her smile. As at all weddings, people were dabbing their eyes, but the tears that trickled down my mother’s face were not for the bridal white Peg but for her favourite.
On the following day, Easter Sunday, Will must have started out soon after sun-up from Fred’s home where he was staying, for he was at Croud Cantle very early. I was expecting him and had bacon and bread ready when he came into the kitchen. Yesterday, briefly, we had held hands in greeting, but now he exuberantly hugged me to him and stood rocking, with his face buried beside my ear. Then we stood apart, holding hands and looking at one another, each of us smiling and shaking our heads.
“You’ve made some changes.” He indicated the alterations to the rooms.
“Mother stays in there.”
“Will?” Mother’s distorted call.
He went into the other room and sat embracing her.
“Ma. Ah, all that chatter yesterday, never a chance did we have to talk. Now just what have you been and done to yourself.” He held her dropped cheek and smoothed her useless hand. I could see them through the little round window in the kitchen door. Where was there another man in the world like him? My passionate radical who had given up a good, safe living to work for nothing except what might be collected at meetings; to go and try to set up schemes for better working conditions for people who, in the end, probably wouldn’t thank you for it; a man fired with a dream of a better, fairer world; a man who did not dismiss Bella Nugent because she had lost half a body, but treated her like the woman she had always been – the woman she still was, apart from the stricken muscles and nerves.
Is my stuffy schoolroom and those handful of half-starved children a fair exchange for living, eating, talking and sleeping for a lifetime with him? Again the doubt, the temptation. If a woman could only be free to love, just to love, without having to fear the consequences of her own passion. A fair exchange . . . ?
Nothing is ever fair.
He stayed until the sun began to drop down behind Beacon Hill. Before he left, we went to look at the classroom. Will listened intently to everything I told him: about the difficulty of teaching children when they came irregularly; about trying to look after Mother and manage the farm, as well as my work with the children.
“But I shan’t give it up, Will. I want to do this. I think it is important and I’m sure it is what I’m best suited to do. I get such satisfaction every time a child looks at a bundle of letters and recognises it as a word.”
“You’re right to do it, Judeth.”
“I thought you might be going to ask me again . . . to go with you.”
“I believe I’ve accepted that you never will, and if I can’t have that, then I would rather you were doing this than anything else. ‘Ignorance is the ally of our oppressors.’ ”
“Who said that?”
“Will Vickery.”
“Oh, Will,” I laughed, “you’re beginning to sound like a ha’penny tract.”
“When did I not?”
We sat in the little classroom and he told me something about his work: about what the new towns and cities were like, about the enormous buildings that were going up to house the dozens of machines and thousands of workers.
“We must start things going down here. I thought if I spoke to your Rob Netherfield . . .”
“Is what you do illegal?”
“No.”
“Then why should people like Rob be afraid to be seen at meetings?”
“Because people like Rob have no say in their own lives, and those who do have long and corrupt arms that can reach out and punish. People like Rob are going to have to be strong enough not to mind being seen.”
“And risk losing the bread from their mouths.”
“Yes.”
“And their children’s?”
“If necessary,” Will said.
Rob came with us on a walk up Bellpitt Lane, where both men talked animatedly about reform, enfranchisement and unity. And I remember Ben Hannable’s face as he said, “I’ll have you in Austrailee so fast your feet won’t touch the ground.”
The following day Will had to go back North again. He left Mother with promises that he would come back soon.
Gradually, Mother’s speech became a bit easier to understand, and she began to find ways of dragging herself about using her one good leg and arm. She did not get so many words wrong lately, and now that she could articulate her needs she became more demanding and fretful, often unnecessarily calling me back, or looking reproachful when I came to say that I was going down to Annie Bassett’s.
“I don’t like . . . on my own,” or, “It . . . long day you’m gone. Long time.”
“Maisie looks after you all right, don’t she? She keeps looking in? She’s got her other work to do, but I could tell her to come in more often. You’ve got the bell if you need her.”
“Maisie – not – daughter. Not Maisie – duty.”
When she was like this I had to make myself walk away. She was trying and difficult: the work could not stop because her convulsion had left her with one side of her body not working properly. Once I returned home to find her face bruised and grazed.
“Oh, Miss Jude,” Maisie said, anxious and twisting the ends of her bodice-ties. “Missis tried to get down to the fields by her own, and she went and fell against that old flinty wall. She might a done herself a real mischief.”
When I told Mother that it was not fair to Maisie if she went off like that, she said, “Stay here,” and I guessed that it was her intention to make me feel guilty and neglectful. There were two more similar incidents and on each occasion, although she had only minor injuries, both Maisie and I were worried.
“What if she’d a been by the well, Miss Jude?”
I did not need to be told. There were a dozen places on the farm where my mother could do herself serious injury. The Dunnock ran close beside Croud Cantle, steeply banked in some places. It was even possible for her to get as far as Chard Lepe Pond, a few dragging steps at a time, if she were determined enough. I was sure that she was pushing me to give up the schoolroom, so when my mother got her third lot of cuts and bruises, I knew that we must fight a battle of wills – and I must win.
“I shall not give it up, Mother.”
She clamped together the one side of her mouth that she could control. In spite of her altered face, I easily recognised her old belligerent expres
sion.
“You ought to realise that if Will couldn’t persuade me to give up my schoolroom, then you throwing yourself about isn’t likely to. So you might as well save yourself the sore places, because you shan’t make me give up the children.”
There were times when Mother got very frustrated that her speech let her down. It seemed that the more she needed her words, the less able she was to control them.
She pointed to herself. “Children? Duty . . . Mother.”
I knew exactly what my mother was implying. “You think more of them children who an’t nothing to you than you think of your own mother.”
“No, Mother. I’m not choosing them instead of you. I’m choosing to do the work I think I ought to be doing; the work I want to do. I’ll look after you when I’m here. I’ll always see you have Maisie or somebody else about when I’m not, but you won’t make me give up my work.”
I spoke forcefully, strongly. I had won the battle of wills.
The dreams continued to distress me. Although I still went on facing them, I often felt strange and tired the following day, particularly after a night had been filled with the dream about the world cracking.
This dream developed and changed so that even the people in it appeared covered with marks like those of an empty egg-shell when it has been crushed in the hand. The sky, too, took on these markings. Eventually nothing that appeared in the dream could be trusted not to break up if touched or pressed or walked upon. Nothing could be relied upon not to break up in that nightmare world. Only the hovering, two-headed silver fish remained intact: sometimes menacing, sometimes sinister, it always caused me to awake sweating, trembling and bewildered that the most substantial creation of my dream world should appear two-faced and treacherous. Often Hanna was in this dream. I would be running away from Ham Farm with her .when she would break up in my hands, leaving me looking down upon a small heap of what appeared to he crumbs from a crusty loaf, but were really recognisable pieces of Hanna.