Jude

by Betty Burton

  With one movement, Jude stepped close to the little, brown wiry old woman and slapped her hard across the mouth. Rosie stood watching with tears waiting to fall over. Jude drew her close and held her, trying to reassure her, but all that Rosie could see was violence and anger on the faces of Jude and the old woman.

  “Ah, that’s it, that’s it, a bit more of the Nugent coming out!”

  “Don’t you ever say one word against Rosie, or anybody else of this family. Before that animal of a son of yours got a child into my sister when she hardly knew what was happening to her she was a happy, ordinary girl, and what is she now? Nothing but a ruined body. She’s so full of misery that she don’t know any more whether she’s coming or going.”

  “Like all the rest of your lot, then. Your mother in there, gone soft in the head; you’m as queer as they makes them. Wouldn’t have our Eddie, would you? High and mighty miss! And there’s her! Your own father’s by-blow living under the same roof, and none of you ashamed of his sin.”

  She was making fists and her face was distorted. She looked Rosie up and down, as though at filth.

  Violent emotions welled up in Jude, but she swallowed them down.

  “I hit you once and I’m sorry for that because you’re old, not because you don’t deserve it. But if you don’t clear off this minute I shall throw you out, and if you ever step foot on this land again I shall be waiting with a hay fork.”

  “Oh, a hay fork, is it? Not a cleaver?”

  The episode was becoming more and more of a nightmare. They were both screaming at one another, yet Jude had no idea what for.

  “Why have you come? Did you come all that way just to shout at me and frighten Rosie? Is it Hanna? For God’s sake, woman, what’s happened?”

  “Find out for yourself!”

  The whole episode was over in a minute.

  The old woman spat at Jude’s feet, got into the small cart that had been left at the yard gate and drove away, leaving Jude shaking with anger and bewilderment. For the first time in fourteen years Nance Hazelhurst had come to Croud Cantle. She stood staring into space, until she realised that she still had her arm around Rosie and held her tight by her trembling shoulders.

  Then Rosie again began making agitated signs, pulling Jude into the cottage. Bella was slumped in her chair before the hearth, staring into the flames as she often did these days. Jude went to pull her into a more comfortable position so that she would not stop the circulation of blood to her fingers, as she sometimes did when she withdrew into herself. Rosie shook her head at Jude, pointing her finger and jerking it towards the stairs; agitated and pulling at Jude’s sleeve.

  On Rosie’s bed, a figure lay curled close in upon herself, sleeping heavily.

  “Hanna!”

  Jude was confused and bewildered.

  “What, Rosie? What happened?”

  Rosie pointed, shook her head, and waved her hand before her face, disturbed and frustrated that she could not make herself understood.

  “It’s all right, Rosie. All right.”

  The small apothecary’s measure that was used for medicines was beside the bed. Rosie gave it to Jude to smell, pointing at Hanna. She had given her opium tincture and looked relieved and pleased when Jude said that she had done the right thing.

  I doubt that I shall ever be able to record the full story of what happened at Ham Ford that day. Hanna will never speak of it; Jaen is dead; and Dan Hazelhurst is in a penal colony thousands of miles from here. What I know of Hanna’s part in the tragedy did not come out at the trial.

  It was made clear to me that the barrister the Hazelhursts took on to save the murderer from the gallows would have mixed up such a pot of filth from the Nugent history – of my father and Charlotte, Jaen’s condition on marriage, Rosie living at Croud Cantle, and the influence upon Hanna of living in such a place – that the scandal would have been printed by the thousand and sold for a penny in every city in the country.

  So Hanna was saved the ordeal of having to tell the story of the death of her mother at the hand of her father. What I know of that part is what was told to me by John Toose, who was Hanna’s only confidant.

  At his trial at the Winchester Assize, Daniel Francis Hazelhurst pleaded guilty to a charge of Manslaughter. Man-slaughter! It was my sweet Jaen who was slaughtered. Womanslaughter. Wifeslaughter. It was only after suffering fourteen years of subjugation that she tried to claim some rights over her own body, but they were not hers to claim, the rights were the husband’s – conjugal rights – and when she tried to refuse him those rights, he took them. I sat in the public gallery throughout the entire proceedings, stiff and cold with grief watching him, hating him with such intensity that I had no feeling except where the misery and hatred lay.

  By chance, Will had come south and was in Southampton at the time, and came to Winchester each day with me: guiding me, giving me food, caring for me. But I came and went as though dead, and I could not even tell him that if it had not been for him I might have lost my reason. And, had he asked me then, I might have married him.

  Daniel Hazelhurst cried distractedly when he told how his wife had fought him like a fury, attacking him with a cleaver. He had been wounded badly in his back and had lost a lot of blood. He had been forced to protect himself and in doing so had pushed her a bit too hard, and she had fallen, hitting her head against an oak chest.

  Nobody asked the enormous man whether it was true that his wife was only five foot tall? Whether she had bad legs that would hardly support her? Whether her body was so ruined by constant child-bearing that she would not have had the strength to attack a dog?

  He was found guilty of Manslaughter and sentenced to be transported.

  For the first week after Hanna was brought back to Croud Cantle, three of the four of those living there were silent. Apart from Rosie’s normal silence, Bella had withdrawn into herself completely and Hanna never spoke one word.

  It was Bob Pointer who helped Jude piece together something of what happened that day.

  Nance Hazelhurst, in the horse-driven light cart, had come into the yard and started shouting.

  “I never knew what it was all about, Miss Jude. It never made no sense. She kep’ on about bringing back shit to its own midden. Then I saw the girl. I thought she’d a had a accident, her clothes was covered in blood. Miz Nugent come out and took one look at she and fell down in a dead faint. Miss Rosie come out and the old lady started shouting at her, but a course she didn’t understand what was going on. The old lady asks me where you was and I told her it was market day, so first off makes the girl get down and drives out a the yard.

  “Lord, Miss Jude, she went off like a twenty-year-old, whipping up the horse. Lord, I thought, she a have that cart over on all they ruts down Howgaite. She was gone for about an hour, then she come back. Be that time I’d a got Miz Nugent into her chair, and me and Miss Rosie got the girl upstairs. Miss Rosie wanted me to do something, but I couldn’t understand what it was. Anyway, all I could think of was to get some water because of all the blood, and that’s what I did. Be the time I got back, Miss Rosie had got the girl wrapped up in a blanket and she was nodding and pointing. What I think she meant was that the girl wasn’t hurt, it was just her clothes where the blood was.

  “After that, I stayed in the house till you come back, then I cleared off round the back where I was handy if you wanted me.”

  Whilst all the shouting was going on, Johnny-twoey had gone unobtrusively into the oathouses with the donkeys, where Bob Pointer was standing as though ready for action.

  “It’s summat to do with Miz Nugent’s grandchild. The old lady brought her back. Wait here with me and just see they’m all right. The old lady’s gone off her head, but it an’t nothing to do with us what’s going on. Just wait.”

  And Johnny-twoey had waited, still and silent, until the old lady went off. After she had gone, he went into the kitchen and there too waited still and silent for Jude to come.

  “Miss
Jude? Is it Hanny?” His face pale against the dark beard which made him look more than his twenty years.

  Jude laid a hand on his arm for a moment and nodded. “But she’s all right. She’s not hurt, but something’s happened that we don’t know about.”

  “Miss Jude? Can I see her? I won’t say nothing, just see her.”

  “She’s asleep, but come with me. Then you can see she’s all right.”

  Enigmatically as always, he looked down at Hanny. “She a be all right, Miss Jude.”

  When he spoke, Hanna moved and made a sound.

  “Miss Jude? Do you think she knows it’s me here?”

  1st January 1800

  An old saying, “Time heals”. I do not know that I agree, but it does at least allow scar tissue to grow over wounds. What the passage of time does do is remove the importance, the impact that an incident has on those who live through it.

  I am able, at last, to record the final piece of the history of your antecedent, Tomas Nugent.

  It should have been written long ago, but as it was so close to the terrible tragedy of Jaen, I have continually avoided doing so – it gives, perhaps, the impression of a history of violence, which would be a wrong impression. It is a history of moments of uncontrolled passion.

  Also, over the last few years, I have found it almost impossible to string words together. I abandoned writing the book I had begun, and entries in this Journal have been few. However, from here on I intend to bring our history up to date.

  Judeth Nugent

  At first, Hanna suffered fits of shaking and sweating, then gradually returned to health. She still held Jude at arm’s length, not forgiving her the day when she was left at Ham Ford and Jude returned to Croud Cantle without her.

  Like everyone else, Hanna responded to Rosie. Jude was displaced in her role of Aunt and Hanna slipped back into the routine of the work she had done when she was a child. The two of them worked together as Bella and Jaen had once worked, as Jaen and Jude, as Jude and Bella had.

  John Toose had everything at his fingertips. Given enough hours in the day, he could have done every job on the farm. Anyone who had known Bella in the days when she stumped about the place would recognise her in Hanna, but there was something less sharp about Hanna. She and John spent a lot of their time together, and it was he who drew the nightmares out of her by getting her to talk.

  The only person Jude had left for support now was Will. Although Fred was still a good friend, since he had become enmeshed in the Nugent family by marrying Rosie’s mother, Jude never felt able to talk to him about the family. At times of her lowest ebb, when she fully realised that Jaen was not still somewhere the other side of Tradden, she wrote to Will.

  Dear Will,

  I still find it really hard to accept. I ought to have known that grief, like all the other strong emotions, will leap out when least expected.

  I expect her to be on Tradden; I expect her by Chard Lepe pond, or where the Dunnock runs close by the farm; but I am unprepared for her in a phrase in the mouth of one of the children in the classroom, or reflected in a window in Blackbrook.

  What can I do about it? That is not a question – there is nothing to be done. When I stand outside myself I can see that I am becoming a silent and sombre woman. But I have Hanna and Rosie and mother, who keeps going – what a strong constitution: she survives everything.

  I sometimes catch a glimpse of us from outside. The four of us, making our lives together. Quite unexpectedly successful, in a strange way.

  Rosie, Hanna and John Toose now run the market stand, so that my contribution is now that of manager and labourer, mostly done in the early and late hours of the day, leaving me time for my schoolroom.

  I am in the schoolroom now, with just one child. A girl who is a second John Toose for learning. I often pay her father what the girl would earn gleaning just to keep her here, where she so obviously loves to be. She is another who absorbs knowledge like a parchedfield. As I write, she is answering a list of questions I have set for her. She smiles at the “prize” of using paper and pen. I almost hold my breath for her future.

  Your voice comes through in your letters. Always write to me,

  Judeth

  Hot, hot August. John and Bob Pointer are not at Croud Cantle, but have gone for a day’s harvesting on The Estate. Jude is in her schoolroom, and the village is deserted for the harvest fields.

  Jude hears the heavy tread of boots coming down Bellpitt Lane, the sound of a man’s voice and occasionally a woman answering in monosyllables. Quietly, so as not to disturb the engrossed, small girl, sucking her knuckle as she thinks, Jude stands so that she can see through the small side-window.

  A tall youth, a woman and a man are passing. They are strangers to Cantle – a common enough sight these days, when it sometimes seems that half the farm-workers in England are out on the roads looking for work. The woman and the boy walk together about half a pace behind the man. Idly, Jude watches them. It is the man who attracts her attention because he limps a little, as she does herself. He is quite old, probably about fifty, with a great mane of white hair and a full white beard. Above his eyebrow and running into his hairline is a deep furrow. It reminds her of the indentation in the top of a loaf when it is put down to prove.

  Had it been a day when Fred Warren was visiting the schoolroom, he would at once recognise ‘Jonah’ Smith, the innkeeper from Garlick on the old Roman Road, and his wife Bess, and Andrew, whom he had said was his son “as far as any man knew his own son”. But seeing the boy now, fully fifteen years old, anyone can see that this is father and son passing through Cantle.

  Andrew Smith, the youth, has grown to be beautiful – a strange description for a boy. Women will say, though, as they did of his father, that beautiful is the right word.

  After nearly thirty years, Tomas Nugent is returning to his birthplace, to Croud Cantle – his birthright.

  At Croud Cantle, Rosie and Hanna are at work in the bottom fields. Bella is sitting in Johnny-twoey’s herb garden. She is watching her bees, busy at the feverfew and marigolds; a constant stream of industry coming and going.

  Bella likes it with her bees. Since her convulsion it is too much effort to make anybody understand, but the bees . . . you don’t have to talk out loud to them.

  “I always been good to you, an’t I? Always told you everything what was going on.

  “Do you remember when Hanna came? That was a night! There wan’t many of you here then. Only one old queen I tucked up in the skep with a bit of a comb I left her. Even though it was snowing, I come and told her, ‘We got Jaen’s baby staying with us.’

  “And I told you about Will Vickery. He was the best pair of feet ever came through the yard gate. If I’d a had a son to follow on here, I should a wanted one like him. I thought I should a had him at one time, but there, nothing ever seems to go the way it ought to.

  “Nothing haven’t never gone on here without I told you, right from the first day I come. I told you – I’m Bella Estover come to nurse your Master into his grave. I’ve only come to do good to this house.

  “And you always let me come close.

  “I only ever had four stings in my whole life, and that wasn’t from any of you. That was them Rectory bees, attacking bees: they feeds off pollen from the yew-tree with its roots in graveyard bones. I never liked the Rectory bees. They always been vicious: not like you, who flies in the pink apple-blossoms and the spicy sage up here in the clean parts where there an’t no dust motes.

  “Jaen was stung once: that frightened me. She was only a baby, but she swelled up till her cheeks was level with her nose. I thought she was going to die. I’d a seen that once before in him. In Tomas. I an’t hardly let that name pass my lips in twenty-five years. She must have got that from him. You remember him? Tomas, what was your Master – still is your Master by rights, I suppose, for nothing of this can be mine. I wasn’t never sensitive to your stings. Jaen must a got it from him.

  “He w
as like that for bee-stings, do you remember? Lord how you went for him when I sent him to tell you his father was dead. I never seen nothing like it. For a couple of days I thought we should a had two corpses to a buried, father and son.

  “He wouldn’t never come near you no more. If he seen one a you he’d as soon as have a fit as not. Somebody else in their family was killed like that, so I’ve heard. An uncle of his . . . his name was Tomas as well. One bee stung him and he was gone like he had been give deadly poison.

  “He never handed that on to Rosie, thank the Lord. You and she gets on all right. I’m glad. Jude nor Hanna never seemed to get the knack of taking your honey right. I don’t think they ever trusted you. Rosie trusts you.”

  The bees hum Bella to an August afternoon light sleep again, where sorting out the past from the present does not matter: it’s all one and the same there.

  The droning has stopped. There is the sound of boots crunching; limping boots, like Jude’s, only heavier. Bella rouses, opens her eyes, yet is still asleep. Tomas walks up. Tomas, white-haired and with a great white beard. He has a terrible dent in his beautiful forehead.

  “Hello, Bella,” he says. “Did I wake you up?”

  Bella hears him. It is Tomas’s voice. “Hello Bella.” She listens for the bees to start up again, but they are still silent.

  “I thought you’d a been dead by now,” says Tomas. He turns to Andrew. “Do you reckon she can hear?”

  The youth says nothing. He watches his father and the shaking, mumbling old woman.

  “Listen bees.”

  They will not hum.

  “Here’s some news. Your master is here and he have brought us a son at last. You see him, bees, a boy. An’t he beautiful? Spit and image of your old Master.”

  They do not dance.

  Bella lifts off the hackle so that they can hear her.

  Tomas runs, flailing his arms at the buzzing.