Jude

by Betty Burton

  Bess Smith and Andrew stand stiff with fear.

  The bees do not notice them – only Tomas, whose flailing arms are a threat.

  1st January 1801

  Logically, there is no reason to choose this day to assemble facts and dates, but the first day of a new century does have an appropriateness that appeals to me.

  TOMAS BERTRAM CHESTER NUGENT, b 1744; d 1795

  Also known as Jonah Smith of Garlick, Hampshire. Buried in Cantle graveyard after an attack by bees.

  ISABELL NUCENT née ESTOVER, b 1742; of Croud Cantle, Hampshire.

  JAEN HAZELHURST née NUCENT, b 1762; d 1795.

  Elder daughter of Tomas and Bella, m 1780.

  Of Ham Ford, Newton Clare, Hampshire.

  Buried in Cantle graveyard after a fall.

  Mother to Hanna.

  Also mother to Daniel, Baxter, Francis, Richard, Gregory, George. All surname hazelhurst, believed to be in the care of Up Teg Farm, Newton Clare, Hampshire.

  JUDETH NUGENT, b 1768

  Younger daughter of Tomas and Bella.

  ROSALINDA HOLLY

  Only child of Tomas Nugent and Charlotte Holly.

  HANNA TOOSE née Hazelhurst, b 1780

  m JOHN TOOSE (b 1775)

  ANDREW SMITH, b 1780

  Only child of Tomas Nugent and Elizabeth Smith of Garlick, Hampshire. Recently of Croud Cantle, Hampshire.

  In my first Journal I recorded the first of many facts I have discovered in the Parish Register. Anyone who looks back to that date in 1781 may wonder at the implications of that simple entry which reads: nugent, Tomas Chester Bertram, b 1744. Father, George Chester Nugent, A Farmer; Mother, Alice Mary.

  Today, as will be seen from the above entries, Hanna married John Amos Toose in Saint Peter’s Church, Cantle, Hampshire. Witnessed only by Rosie, Andrew and myself

  As I watched the ceremony, I saw that in those two serious and hard-working young people lies the only hope that Croud Cantle will not go the way of all else in the Cantle Valley – into the maw of the Goodenstones.

  John Toose is an able and good horticulturalist with modern ideas. Hanna Toose, his wife, is as capable and efficient a market trader on Blackbrook market as ever Bella was, and much better than myself

  You who read this in the next century will know whether my hope is fulfilled.

  J.N.

  Jude tied her wedding bonnet to a juniper and hitched up her new skirt, freeing her to move, to climb Tradden, and be on her own after the quiet wedding and the breakfast. She unpinned the knot at the back of her head and her pale red hair streamed out in the wind. She breathed deeply. The air was dry and sharp and satisfying. Coarse, whitish grasses and empty heather bells, scoured by the winter weather, whisked and rustled.

  Cantle, and the church she had come from just now, were far below. In the clear air and pale January sun of the new century, the village looked deceptively solid in the valley. Only the church, the rectory and the Big House were built with sufficiently decent materials to be still standing at the turn of another century, unless the Estate and the Church did something about the more humble, damp and crumbling property which they owned.

  Jude wondered what the place would look like then. But the pattern of cottages spread along Bellpitt Lane as far as the ford; the silver line of the Dunnock and the tracks of Howgaite, Raike Bottom and Church Farm Lane were so familiar a part of the scene that Jude could not eradicate them and imagine something else in their place.

  For the first time, Jude had noticed the steepness of the last part of Tradden. The knee joint of the leg that had been damaged played her up these days and she was sometimes aware of her thiry-two years, but today she felt more youthful than she had for ages.

  Perhaps the worst part of her life was over. Certainly, whatever happened from now on could not be worse than the past.

  Bella would die, but that would mean only the death of her body. At nearly sixty she had outlived most of her contemporaries. Well-fed and cared for, and always free of the fevers or consumption that carried off the majority of her kind by the time they were fifty, she appeared to be indestructible. She lived in a world of her own. Was it living? Possibly her mind was as blank as her face. She was no longer difficult: getting up, moving, eating, drinking, doing as she was told; and for the rest of the time, sitting gazing into the hearth when the weather was cold, or into the orchard grass when the sun shone.

  Something might happen to Rosie. That would be hard. That would get through the scars. Not quite as hard as losing Jaen, though.

  Hanna? Yes, it would hurt to lose Hanna again. She had been lost to Jude before: lost and found again, lost and found. In a way Jude had lost her again this morning, but this time more happily. And not entirely lost, for they would be living in the two new rooms that had been built on to the farmhouse.

  From where she stood, facing west across the valley, Jude could see how the shape of Croud Cantle had changed since she was a girl. There was a second chimney and now the new part. It used to be L-shaped, but it now seemed to sprawl.

  Hanna and Johnny were going to be all right. Conventional, serious, no unwilling and hasty marriage as Jaen’s had been. Nothing about them to hide. Not now. Not since Nance Hazelhurst had died. Now the only people who knew the truth about what happened on the day Jaen was killed were John, Hanna and her transported father.

  Over the years, Jude had learned some of it – from John, not Hanna – Hanna had never got back on the old footing with Jude. All Jude knew about that morning was that Hanna had heard Jaen crying and pleading with Dan to leave her alone. Hanna, who had been in the scullery, hacking off pigs’ feet, trying not to listen to her parents quarrelling, apparently heard a blow and a cry. She had run and hacked at her father’s back to make him stop.

  In the clear air, the line of stone that spoilt the curve of Winchester Hill stood out clearly. It was ages since Jude had been up there, except to pass by on the way to market.

  She followed the outline of the enclosing hills with her eyes. From the stones, down the steep slope where the Dunnock cut between Winchester and Old Marl; up again along the ridge and around to the west to Tradden; along the curve to her right, east to where the Dunnock ran south out of the valley; up, up to the top of Beacon and round to where, later, the sun would drop down, touching the little windows of Croud Cantle which lay directly facing. Down to the centre of the valley and the cluster of cottages.

  Annie Bassett was in the graveyard and her house was now occupied by one of John Toose’s many brothers. The school had finished on the day when Bella had withdrawn completely: the day Tomas died from the attack by the bees that followed him as he ran.

  Bella was Jude’s duty. A senile mother was a responsibility that no daughter could avoid. Perhaps there might come a day . . . Probably not, for there were still other responsibilities: Rosie, Bess Smith, who had stayed on doing such chores as she had done throughout her life. The responsibility of making the farm pay to keep them all. But now that Hanna and Johnny were there to help run the place, perhaps . . . Perhaps with Andrew and Rosie and Bess, Jude could again make a bit of a go of the school.

  Perhaps . . . When Bella was gone – not till then. Bella was nobody’s responsiblity but Jude’s.

  It would mean a new lot of children. One or two of the girls from Jude’s first class were already married. Occasionally a young person would come to her on the market, “Remember me, Miss Jude? You learned me to read.”

  That had been the dream, the ambition, which made it worthwhile. Would it all be too much to fight for again? It was something you did when you were young, before you had all the stuffing knocked out of you.

  But you couldn’t give up on children like Tillie Martin – it had been Tillie Martin who had been in the schoolroom on that hot, hot August day. Tillie Martin was ten now, and could read and write as well as Jude herself. Five years come next August since that day. It was queer that: she had watched him walk back into the village he had left twenty
years before; left Mother, Jaen, herself.

  Watched her father come home. It was queer when you came to think of it.

  A white-haired stranger who had a limp like her own and a dent in his skull. He had seemed so insignificant. Even with his dead face, all disfigured from the bee poison, he seemed insignificant.

  What would it all have been like if she’d married Will? Will. The last letter she had received had been written from him in Leeds gaol. Will, a thorn in the side of authority. He had held a meeting outside a factory and been bound over to keep the peace in the sum of five pounds. Then he had held another meeting, and when it came to forfeit the five pounds he could not pay; neither could the rest of his associates. Jude sent five pounds for “The Funds”. In every letter he wrote, “I am still waiting for you to change your mind, Judeth.”

  Round the bend of the raike, something moving drew Jude’s attention back from the enclosed valley. Rosie. Jude smiled to herself. Rosie.

  You had to be up here looking down to really see them as other people did – that lot up a Croud Cantle, was what the villagers called them. Bella, Bess, Jude, Rosie, Hanna and John and Andrew. She smiled again: that would have been a bag of bones for Dicken to have rattled in the Dragon and Fount.

  Rosie pointed to the juniper bush. She had tied her bonnet beside Jude’s. Green ribbons flicked and fluttered with yellow ribbons. Rosie always seemed to find something to be glad about. Smiling and waving she climbed up to where Jude was. Rosie, at thirty-two, was as youthful as her pink and white mother had been. She came close to Jude, held her arm and pointed in her urgent way at Croud Cantle.

  A wagon was drawing in at the yard gate. It was impossible to see from here, but the sisters knew it to be beribboned and wreathed for the bridal couple.

  Jude nodded at Rosie – Rosie smiled at Jude.