Jaen

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Jaen Page 4

by Betty Burton


  Women who had lived there thousands of years before the place became Up Teg, would have understood what went on in the dairy that summer in 1780.

  Vinnie and Jaen talked by the hour of the most extraordinary of any human experience, the growing of one being inside another. They stood facing one another as Jaen listened to Vinnie's baby with her hands, then Vinnie felt the more pronounced movement in Jaen, then they each placed a hand on both bellies, comparing.

  'Yourn's a strong little toad and mine's only a taddy. Still, it means Peter have to see about getting us a wedding. Mrs Nance says she wants us wed and settled before I'm too far gone. But it means a bit of a shift, and I don't expect Master Bax will allow it just at the busy time of year. Yet if we waits till harvest time's over I shall be big as Barney's Barn.'

  Jaen said, 'I reckon you ought to be living in the house, instead of out here.'

  Vinnie laughed. 'Mrs Nance reckons 'tis better for the girls because she can hear every word through the wall, so it's like part of the house. Anyway, it suits me now the weather's hot. I don't know how you can abide being shut up in that end room of a night.'

  The way Jaen looked for a moment, Vinnie thought that Jaen didn't know how she could abide it neither.

  7

  There was something about the Yard Room. It was just a room, but it gradually got so that Jaen had to pluck up courage to go in at night. She thought of what Vinnie had said about sleeping out over the milking sheds and dairy.

  She remembered summer nights, hot nights back at home. All day the fire from the hearth would rise, heating the brick chimney that was on one wall of their little sleeping chamber, and the sun coming through the small dormer window would take every breath from the air.

  On nights like that she and Ju would push their bracken-filled pallets through the little trap and climb into the roof-space. There, on the rough plank floor, with the air coming in through the open brickwork and passing over their naked flesh, she and Ju would lie and whisper in the dark. It was probably not much cooler in the attic, but there was space all around them.

  In the Yard Room everything pressed in on Jaen. The steep slope of the roof on the window side and the rough box-like platform on which they slept almost filled the room. It was the Yard Room because its window was above a little side-yard where calves and other small animals were sometimes penned, so that there were always flies and dung-smells and noise. Back home, the animals were not so close to the house. Dan's rough, wool shirt smelled of dust and animals and his own sweat. His hair gave off the strawy smell of the wide field-hat he wore all day, and his great bulk seemed to be just too much for the small space. Yet it wasn't really small, there had been no room except for the kitchen at Croud Cantle as spacious as this.

  Like all of them, Dan rose before dawn and worked till there was no light left, and when he slept, he slept heavily.

  Until Jaen came to Up Teg, she had never taken but a minute to get to sleep — not like Ju who never seemed ready for sleep and would have talked all night — but these days, tired as she usually was, she was wakeful for hours, then slept fitfully, waiting for the next time when he would stretch his legs and pull her to him, expecting her to put her arms about his neck. But she could not always bring herself to do it. She was not stiff, did not reject him, she accepted that he had those rights which the Law and the Church said were his. His rights to Jaen Hazelhurst's body outruled her own and she never denied him.

  About this, they always seemed to be at odds: she did not know how to please him.

  During the first week or two he teased her, calling her his goat-girl as he had that first time, when he had been bowled over by her fierce response. That time Dan had wooed her with words that sounded like they had come from a part-song or a glee. He had told her he hadn't ever met a maid or woman like her; that she was like hot coals and frost; that she was an elf-maid who ought always to be loved in the fields and woods. Yet soon after the marriage, when she had gone late one evening into the fields to carry him a drink of cider, and had behaved playfully with him, he had stepped back from her.

  'That an't no way for a wife.'

  She had shrivelled at the crush of his rebuke, and the harshness in his voice. Not that Jaen was unused to having words flung at her; she had been brought up on them, but her mother's voice had never made her mouth go dry. Then later that night he used words to her that she had not expected men used to their wives. It was the language of men or the words that a group of women working together at weeding or gleaning will use to one another occasionally, shrieking raucous laughter.

  'That's not a very pretty way to ask, Dan,' she had said. 'I liked it better to be called something more loving.'

  'It's the most loving words I know.'

  He had laughed and teased her into whispering those words of love to him, yet when she had teased him with the same words a few weeks later, he had been surly, telling her it didn't become her to act the Jezebel with a child in her. She had felt guilty and foolish.

  Jaen began to hate the Yard Room, with Peter and Edwin and Jim out of view but not out of hearing, and the yard-boys and hired labour in the central roof-space just above.

  'You'm like a blimmen pile of fleeces, Gel,' Dan said.

  'Shh, Dan, don't shout so.'

  'It's a natural thing, nothing they an't heard before.'

  When it was over, she could curl into his back without fear of making him desireful and sleep and dream — of Dan lying with dead sheep in his bed.

  Many times she tried to remember how it happened, what it was like when she had drawn him to her last November. If she could recall a word or a touch, then she thought she might be able to replay the emotion and be glad that she was a wife. But it was gone.

  All that she could remember was that she had been standing there. He had come up and put his hands on her face. Then as he started to kiss her, her breath had quickened and she had felt the spasms that sometimes accompanied her half-waking dreams. She had not even noticed the weight of him upon her. It had happened twice more before she went back to Cantle. She had never suspected that this was the secret, the sin, the forbidden fruit. She had eaten a surfeit of that fruit and could take no more.

  She wondered if the answer was, that women's bodies contained only a certain amount of heat, enough to give in to the men from time to time, like the rest of female creation. That didn't seem improbable. She wondered if she had used hers all up in that one great explosion.

  When Dan was contemptuous she tried to explain herself.

  It's probably because of the baby.

  After the baby comes, I shall become a proper wife.

  It's bound to take all a woman's strength — carrying.

  These all seemed to be good explanations for her unresponsiveness toward Dan.

  Dan did not think much of her reasoning.

  'Vinnie Norris don't seem to have no trouble that way. Just the opposite. You can't move a sheaf of hay lately without finding her and our Pete. I should a thought you'd a been pleased to have some fun while it can't do you no harm.'

  Jaen felt guilty that, not only could she not have some fun, but she could not give him the fun that Vinnie was giving Peter.

  'It a be all right, Dan. Remember, after the wedding, when we was coming over here in the wagon? You said we should be all right when we gets going on our own. So we shall. It's early days. Soon as I get settled down I shall get back to normal.'

  Normal. What was normal? Was it normal to be like a setty hen, seeing off all the attentions of the rooster? Was it normal not to know what it was to want a man till you were nearly eighteen, then want one uncontrollably, then go dead again?

  But really, Dan bewildered her. She would have given anything to fit in with them all, like Vinnie Norris.

  Evidently Dan was not very put out by sleeping with a pile of fleeces. He did his work on the farm and often that summer, when there was a good moon, he went with two or three of the other Boys to work on the roof of the lit
tle cottage at Ham Ford, and then up to the Bear and Ragged Staff for several pots of dark-brown ale to wash away the day.

  Unlike much of Hampshire, where rich landowners had enclosed much of the arable land, downlands and the commons, many of the villages in the Newton Clare area were still 'open'. There were still a number of small farms, and commons where a family might run a few hogs or graze a housecow as their forebears had done for as long as memory went. But the new ideas were becoming more prevalent and landowners were following the trend towards engrossing several smaller holdings into a large farm. It had happened in Cantle, where almost everything had been enclosed by the Goodenstone family several generations back and where it was now impossible for any man to set up on his own with a strip of land and a few animals.

  On the north side of the River Hammet ford there was a rented cottage which adjoined both the Norris land and Up Teg, close to the commons for the pigs and geese. Once The Boys had finished the roof, Dan and Jaen could start up on their own.

  8

  HAYMAKING

  By the end of June the clover leys whose first shoots had fattened the ewes and lambs in spring were, as The Master of Up Teg decreed, 'about ready for downing'. The red clover bloom was full out and the weather was steady and warm with light drying winds. On many small farms such as Up Teg it was necessary to hire daily labour at hay-making, but Master Baxter and Mrs Nance had produced six strong backs and pairs of arms and five of them had brought good working women into the family.

  It was the first time since they had journeyed over to Cantle to see Dan wed that they had all been together. Martha and Luke and their four children walked across to the main farm with the childless Francis and Annie. France was shouldering the twins, whilst Annie took charge of her favourite, Betrisse, who at six was the oldest of the grandchildren. Martha's youngest, born at the turn of the year, was slung in her mother's shawl.

  When they arrived at Up Teg, the men went out into the out-houses to see to the rip-hooks and sickles and the women went into the kitchen to join Nance, Vinnie and Jaen who had already prepared the bread, fat bacon and beer to take out for the breakfasts. Automatically Nance looked Annie up and down for any signs, as she always did to the wives.

  'You all right then?'

  Annie's mouth tightened. 'I'm all right.'

  'Ah well . . .'

  They all knew what she was meaning. Annie felt sure that the servants were looking her over, so were Dan's wife and the girl Peter was going to wed. Annie had been going through this for three years now. It was bad enough losing the baby when it was only a few months along, without them for ever watching, and making her feel so bad not getting another. Every month for getting on three years she had held her breath as you might say to see if it was all right.

  Sometimes Annie was sure that it was them for ever waiting for her to fall for a child that kept her so tight, kept her so that France had even clouted her for being such a sour bitch.

  She knew she wasn't sour — at least she wouldn't be.

  It wasn't as if there were no children to follow on. Luke and Martha had produced four in the last six years, Dick and Elizabeth had two, and now the other two on the way.

  Annie would have given her right arm to walk about the kitchen like Jaen and Vinnie, or to sit drinking unskimmed milk and eating fat bacon as she suckled a babe like Martha and Elizabeth. As it was she made do with little Betrisse whenever she had the chance. And there was something about Betrisse, something bright that made you pleased to listen to her, wish that she was your own. The one that Annie miscarried wouldn't have been as old as Betrisse, but in Annie's imagination the lost child always had Betrisse's face, personality, brightness.

  With the arrival of Elizabeth there were eight women in the kitchen. Nance moved about in her jerky way, giving orders, firmly placing children who were in the way on benches, seeing that the joints of pickled pork were put out for the big meal and that Kath was doing enough turnips and greens and Myrtle getting the bread-oven hot for the bread that Jaen was setting to prove. Annie couldn't stand it any longer.

  'Let you and me be off down with some breakfast for your grandfather then.' Annie gave young Betrisse some loaves to carry and she herself took a large can of skim.

  'Shall I come back for something else?'

  'We a manage,' her mother-in-law said. 'Give Master Bax his first; we shan't be long here now.'

  Annie was glad to be out of that kitchen, it was like being in a hen-coop with all of them fussing and clucking away. She knew that as soon as she was out of the door they would all be on about her. As she walked down the slope from the house, she wished that she could have gone on and on down with little Betrisse, down on to the Rathley road, and kept going till they got to Emworthy Bay.

  Go to Emworthy, and show Betrisse the glitterish sea. Show her the place where anybody could live and be happy, where the air smelled different, not green and dungy, not anything like here.

  Once, as a small child, she had been taken the thirty or so miles to Emworthy to attend something or other — she could never remember what, probably her great-grandfather's burial — and it didn't matter, what mattered was that somebody had taken her to stand for a couple of minutes at the water's edge and told her, 'That there's the sea. Have a good look, it a be a long time 'fore you gets another chance. It goes on for a hundred mile or more,' and the young Annie had taken in every detail.

  'Shall I tell you about when I was little and I went to see the oyster fishers?'

  'Oh yes. I likes that tale. Tell us about the glitterish sea like . . .'

  'It was like the night sky had turned the colour of the harebells and had a been threshed so that the stars had fell out like corn, then it changed and it was like the waves was winnowing and the stars was the chaff. What it really was . . .'

  'It was the sun shining on the sea-water and making it all glitterish.'

  As she joined in, Betrisse squinted her eyes inwardly. Aunt Annie had told her the same story plenty of times and she had made her own picture of that place, where there was water that you could never see the other side of, and there was cockle-women and oyster-sellers with great baskets, and boats bringing in baskets with lobsters. Aunt Annie had never said what cockle-women looked like, or what lobsters were, nor boats, but Betrisse knew what she knew. She heard the sound of words like 'glitterish' and ' air that went to the top of your head', and 'baskets with lobsters'. And she knew Emworthy, it was the place that made Aunt Annie smile, it was their place. Aunt Annie said 'We don't tell none of They about it, Bet.'

  And Betrisse would never tell. She had few enough secrets that They hadn't ferreted out.

  And it was there that Annie would have taken Betrisse, away from the eyes that were always searching for signs, from France wishing for a son, and him secretly always blaming her for losing the first one no sooner they were married. From the never-ending stream of girls parading their swaying bellies, flaunting leaking breasts, taunting swaddled babes.

  In the first field, the Hazelhurst men and two hired youths were bent into the same shape as the sickles they rhythmically swathed through the grass and red clover. Already the first cuttings were fading in the sun.

  Old Baxter drank from the can and tore the top off a loaf. Annie took up a fork and began lifting and turning the hay.

  'Still an't managed it then, France?' Dan said with a nod towards Annie.

  'I don't know what it's such a great interest to you for, Dan Hazelhurst,' Annie said sharply, 'and I should a thought there was enough o' you lot without any more for a bit.'

  Peter paused in the rhythm of cutting. 'You'm a poxy devil, our Dan, you can't never say nothing except it's to say summit,' he said.

  'What you getting so sharp about. It an't but a joke.'

  'An't nobody never told you your jokes an't funny.'

  'You should a been a 'ooman, Pete — you'm too soft.'

  'An't no danger of that with you, our Dan.'

  Soon, the other wome
n came into the field, and The Boys downed tools and came to take their short breakfast. The morning soon passed: as the sun climbed up, the air grew steadily drier. The men took down the growth of hay and the women followed. There was some coming and going of the women between fields and house, Nance to keep an eye on the servants and the food, and Jaen and Vinnie to feed some of the animals.

  'It a be a good take from the two fields,' was Old Baxter's estimate. 'I reckon we shall have hay to sell off a these two.' Each of The Boys had a different idea of what use that money might be put to.

  At mid-day the women brought out bread and a round of cheese. A cask of small beer was taken from the cool of a north ditch and for half an hour the quiet of resting labour descended upon the field.

  Annie took her bread and cheese and climbed the woody slope that bordered one side of the field. Betrisse had flopped down to sleep and Annie had no desire to see the unlacing of bodices or the half-closed eyes of Martha and Elizabeth as they suckled their infants. She had not noticed Dan's wife go up there, but when Annie reached the crest Jaen was already there, sitting leaning back against a tree staring out away from the hayfield.

  'Can't you stand it neither?' she said to Jaen.

  The girl smiled and shook her head in a way that could have been yes or no — or yes and no. Annie could not make this one out. Of all The Boys, Dan was the . . . What was he? The most 'Hazelhurst' of the lot. Of all of them he had the most of everything that people recognized as being Hazelhurst. True he wasn't the biggest, but he was the loudest, the one who showed himself off the most, the one who most prided himself on saying right out what he thought 'offend or please', and often he did not please.

  'Couldn't blame you if you couldn't stand them.' Annie sat down, staring out in the same direction as her sister-in-law. 'They takes some swallowing when they'm all together.'

  The girl smiled again. 'It an't that. I wanted to look how far I could see. That's Beacon Hill.'

 

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