Jaen

by Betty Burton

  Why can't they let me bide?

  'Only seeing if these are aired.'

  The baby is dead.

  She spreads the cloths back over the brambles and goes off across the yard. It is unusually quiet, there is nobody except Vinnie about. But if they see her go, they will think that she is going down to pick caterpillars off the young greens.

  She hears her own voice say, 'I can talk to you, Annie,' and looks back at the house to see who is there, watching her. It is not the first time she has done it lately.

  'Talking to myself again,' she says aloud.

  She has been doing a lot of queer things just lately, though Mrs Nance has not taken much notice, except to get from Nell Gritt, who is part wise-woman, part cunning man, reputed witch and certain whore, a small bag of herbs and powder to make into a remedy.

  The baby must be dead, it is more than a day since there was any movement. Jaen gives a little hop to see if it will respond.

  Between the Up Teg house and Keeper's Cottage where France and Annie lived, was a small stand of coppice. The ground around the boles and the pyramids of seasoning poles, was cool and green with fine-leafed spurge, and thick clumps of violets. Some of the trees had been there for generations and had cushions of moss at their roots. The very look of the cool green makes Jaen want to sit there. So she sits, soothing her bare swollen feet and ankles.

  The baby's dead.

  Jaen tightens her lips and a smile is in her eyes.

  There won't be no reason to stop here if the baby's dead.

  She leans back against the young pliable growth of coppiced hazel bush. Her mind drifts back home. Real home. Croud Cantle at the foot of Tradden. She goes out of the cottage, out of the yard and then she is climbing.

  Climbing Tradden Raike.

  On the lower slope there are the dog-roses and brambles. Blackberries just showing fruit. Up past the low growing juniper bushes. Up further. She can smell the medicinal lemony scent of mayweed as she crushes it under her bare feet. Harebells. There is always a breeze on Tradden making the harebells and waggle-grass nod, setting free the silk of star thistles and ragwort. She watches the gossamer rise on the warm air of the valley.

  At the top of Tradden the Jaen that has drifted back home from Up Teg can see how the ring of chalk-hills enfolds Cantle. Safety. There is the Big House where Old 'Sir' Henry who owns the village lives. The cluster of cottages, church, rectory and, close at the foot of Tradden, their own holding and cottage, Croud Cantle, home.

  The homecoming Jaen on Tradden Raike is watching another Jaen as she runs along Raike Bottom and down Howgaite Path, her feet bare and small, her legs slim and her body flat except for neat, dry breasts. She runs into the yard, her red hair spilling from her mob-cap.

  Ju is there, with her wild, red uncapped hair.

  Their mother, yet more red hair, stumps and thumps about with heavy pails of milk or water. Everything is back to normal because the baby will be born dead, and they wouldn't want her at Up Teg any more.

  The Jaen in the coppice sees how simple it will be now that the baby is dead.

  When she reached Annie's cottage, she called, but there was no one there, so she went to look for her on the common where Annie ran her hogs and geese. Although Jaen had been to Annie's place once or twice before, she had never gone beyond. This common was covered with clumps of closely growing birches. Here and there were a few large oak trees with shrubby undergrowth making it impossible to see very far ahead. Splay-legged and leaning back for balance, Jaen wandered about hoping to come across Annie. After about ten minutes she had to rest.

  Once or twice she heard the crack of twigs and rustle of leaves and saw movement. There were a few hens roosting on low branches and a couple of red squirrels. She heard distant voices. She called, but there was no answer. She did not want to go back to Up Teg without seeing Annie, without talking to her. She had to talk to somebody about the baby.

  It was impossible to talk to Dan; he would only say, there she was going on about summit foolish again. Nor could she talk to Mrs Nance. Mrs Nance would give her a look. 'Saints! What you on about, Gel. You gets some blimmen funny ideas,' and give her a dose of raspberry-leaf, and Jaen would feel a fool like she always did. Vinnie would tell her everybody gets queer ideas when it's near their time. 'Cheer up, it won't be long now' — but Jaen did not need cheering up.

  Right from the start she had not wanted the baby. Had unconsciously forbidden it to exist, at first when she had not needed cloths at the end of the month, and again when the dawn sickness started. Of course she had known well enough that those were the signs, but would not allow reality to escape through the membrane with which she surrounded the obvious facts.

  For days it had not been true. The facts had not been named, so the baby had not been created — not then. It had been created when Bella's ferreting eyes had seen the dawn sickness. As soon as the word 'baby' had escaped from where Jaen had repressed it, the baby was real.

  And now it had all but gone away again.

  Because she had lost her own first one, Jaen did not really like asking Annie if she knew what would happen, what must be done, but there was no one else.

  She came out from the shade of the bushes and saw France going into his cottage.

  'France.'

  He raised a hand and waited for her to come. His head was bare and where his frizzed jet-black hair stuck to the sweat of his brow, it formed minute curls. Like most men at this time of the year he had no time to spend trimming his beard so that it had become very full, emphasizing his long, square chin, emphasizing his full and sensuous mouth. Jaen had never realized what a fine and handsome man France was.

  The first time that Jaen had met France it had struck her how different he was from the rest of The Boys. He was a Hazelhurst all right on the outside — but his nature seemed to be not like theirs.

  'You looks hot, France.'

  'Nothing to what you do, you looks done in.'

  He told her to sit in the shade and went to fetch her some fresh water cold, which she drank quickly forgetting Mrs Nance's warnings about cramps and chills.

  'I wanted to see Annie.'

  'What did you come all the way across here for then? You might a known she'd be over at Teg today; we starts on the top field in the morning.'

  Jaen had forgotten. The top field was ripe, the harvesting started tomorrow.

  'You wouldn't a seen me except that I forgot a couple of blades I been sharpening up.' France peered at Jaen as he idly drew a honing-stone across the blade of a sickle. 'You looks a bit dicky to me, I'm surprised that our Dan let you out, or don't he know?'

  'That sounds like I am the dog that turns the spit. "Don't let her out, else she a be off again as soon as my back's turned."'

  France smiled, said nothing and continued stroking the blade with the long stone.

  Jaen leaned awkwardly back, eyes closed, resting against the cool flints of the cottage wall. Listening.

  'I always like that sound, when it's done gentle. It makes me think if you kept it up long enough, the sickle would make a little tune.'

  France tucked up one side of his mouth in a half-smile and shook his head. 'You'm a blimmen funny one and no mistake.'

  The way he said it made Jaen look directly at him. He was not scoffing like they did back at Up Teg, when she said something without thinking. If, back home, she were to say, 'Listen, the doves is talking about the hens behind their backs,' or something fanciful, her mother would behave as though she had not heard, but Ju would join in the fiction.

  At Up Teg, she soon learned not to say such things aloud.

  But France's voice sounded friendly. Jaen was taken unawares by the gentle merriment in his voice. She blurted out, 'I came to see Annie because the baby haven't moved since yesterday.'

  And suddenly she was crying. Silently. Staring up at the clear blue sky, tears in a steady stream welled up and ran to her ears.

  At first France looked awkward and embarrassed
, then he said gently, 'Come on, Gel, it'll be all right, you see if it an't. It's likely he's just gone a bit quiet before he's birthen.'

  Jaen pushed the tears away.

  'I'm sorry, France, I didn't know I was going to cry like that. It was the relief . . . telling somebody. I was going to tell Annie. I thought she'd know what to do.'

  'You best let me walk with you back home. It a be breakfast time before long.'

  Neither of them spoke as they walked. Slowly, at Jaen's ponderous pace. When they were in sight of the house Jaen said, 'You won't tell nobody, France?'

  'An't nothing to tell.'

  Jaen snatched a leaf from a sapling horse-chestnut and shredded it, carefully as though it was important to preserve its skeleton whole. They were going up the sloping clover ley that had been cut back in early summer and was now knee-high again. Vinnie was at the far side, tethering a goat. She waved and began to walk in their direction.

  Jaen spoke quietly and urgently.

  'I got to be honest, France. I don't want it to be like you said . . . just gone quiet before the baby's born. It's wicked and a sin, and especially with you and Annie not getting one of your own. And I don't wish it dead. But if it is . . . I got to be honest . . . I won't be sorry. And if you feel at all friendly to me, you will tell them it's best to let me go on back home.'

  Before France could reply, Jaen made a quiet, surprised exclamation, as her waters drenched the hayfield.

  11

  'I never seen nothing so quick and easy for a first one.' Nance Hazelhurst repeated her amazed comment to Annie and Elizabeth and the other women as they came into the farmhouse. It was not yet dinner-time and it was all over — 'Like shelling peas.'

  Earlier, a message had been sent to Bella Nugent at Croud Cantle to say that Jaen had started birthen. Nance had sent the same message down to Dan in the far field, expecting that it would be evening before anything would happen, but within a couple of hours, Kath went with a second message to say that a girl had been born.

  'Is it all there?' he asked and, on hearing that it was a small but healthy girl, he said, 'I a come up at dinner-time.'

  Old Baxter paused in his work long enough to comment that it was a pity they hadn't got theirselves a woman as was better at bringing forth a few sons for a change.

  Elizabeth, Annie and Vinnie had been to see Jaen and the baby, and were now rushing around catching up with the dinner.

  'Put something aside for Mistress Nugent, she's like as not to come racing over here. I doubt she thinks I knows as much about mid-wifing as she-after all she had two and I only had seven.'

  'She a be a bit late then,' Annie said.

  'Who would have thought it though,' said Vinnie with admiration. 'I haven't never heard anybody be so quick — let alone a first one.'

  'Raspberry-leaf tea!' said Nance. 'You a be sorry you tries to get out of taking it, my girl, when your time comes.'

  Elizabeth said, 'I should a thought they had enough to do at her mother's place without coming traipsing all this way.'

  'Her mother don't like anything going on without her knowing,' said Vinnie.

  'She didn't know what went on last winter, with Dan,' said Elizabeth.

  'No different from what went on with you and me and Vinnie. It's a normal thing,' said Annie sharply.

  She and Elizabeth were always crossing one another. Elizabeth said that it was because Annie, being the oldest of the wives, thought she was more important. Whilst Annie thought that Elizabeth was always trying to make her look small because she was twenty-eight years old, and she and France had not got any children.

  'It's normal when you known each other, but she hadn't never met Dan before. She was a complete stranger coming into the family.'

  Nance came in. 'And now she an't! So you can shut up making trouble, Elizabeth. She's as much a Hazelhurst now as the rest of us.'

  'Your Dan was so cocksure he was going to have a son,' Elizabeth said, not much put out by her mother-in-law.

  'Ah, I suppose if he has got a failing, then it is to be a bit sure of hisself.' This was about as near as Nance got to criticizing any of The Boys aloud; their heighth and breadth and labour compensated for a few faults. The contribution of work she took for granted, as she did her own.

  They came in from the fields for their dinner. Dan went up to the Yard Room.

  'You all right?' he asked Jaen.

  'Yes.'

  'Didn't take you long.'

  'No. She seems to have been in a bit of a hurry.'

  He smiled at her. 'I reckon it was you, wanting to be here lying-in instead of out there harvesting tomorrow.'

  She never knew how to take him. Sometimes when she thought that he was being playful, he was being serious. And he never seemed to understand her. If she had said to him what she had said to France, about the hone-stone on the sickle-blade making a tune, Dan would probably have listened but then, thinking that she was making sport of him, said, 'There's times when you talks like a two-year-old.'

  So, in spite of the smile indicating he was being light-hearted with her, Jaen turned the comment away and said, 'An't you going to look at her?'

  Gingerly turning back the wrap, she showed Dan the creature they had made in their moment of passion on a cold November evening.

  Disappointed at the smallness of his daughter, whose hair was the distinctive red of her mother's family, Dan Hazelhurst grinned at his wife and said, 'We shall have to try again then, see if we can't get a boy next time.'

  After he had gone, Jaen steeled herself to look again at the child.

  Whenever she had thought about it over the past months, whenever she had imagined herself with the baby, picking it up, carrying it, Jaen had imagined it to be as it had been with Ju as a baby. It was a false picture that she created for herself, because the baby Ju she remembered best was a plump, curly-haired responsive eighteen-month-old child.

  The baby that Nance had placed beside her was not that nice little Ju. This one had swollen slit eyes, no eyebrows and only a little cap of red hair. It was as skinny as a paunched rabbit.

  There was nothing about this child that Jaen could take to.

  Vinnie came heavily up the stairs carrying a bowl of fermity and a drink. When Jaen saw what was in the beaker, she made a grimace.

  'I thought I should a been finished with raspberry-leaf tea.'

  'Miz Nance says it will pull you together again. I know how you can't abide the taste, so I put a couple of good dollops of honey in it. I'd drink it for you Jaen, so she won't know, except that you have got to have plenty to drink for the babe.'

  Jaen smiled. 'That's true sisterhood, Vin, seeing as you don't like it any more than me — and I expect you've had a pint or two already today.' She drank off the tepid liquor.

  'She let me brew my own today — so I took a licorice powder instead.' Vinnie hunched her shoulders and laughed silently like a girl at having got one over on Nance.

  'It gives me the runs, but I can't ever resist licorice.' Ever since she had come into the room, Vinnie had kept her eyes on the baby tucked in beside Jaen. Nance had said the baby should not be picked up much till its back was set strong, but it was in Vinnie's nature to want to pick up every kitten and piglet and tell it that it was a poor little soul.

  'An't she the most beautiful little creature. Can I hold her? Look at her hair. An't you lucky, Jaen, she an't got,' Vinnie lowered her voice, 'nothing of they,' she pointed down. 'Except maybe a little bit about the mouth. But that don't matter if she gets the sort of Hazelhurst mouth like Peter and France. Their mouths is all right. Not that I mean Dan's an't . . . but you know.'

  Easily and naturally she held the tightly-bound baby in the crook of her arm.

  'Oh Jaen, just look.'

  The baby was doing nothing except turn its face naturally into Vinnie's breast.

  'That's what I'm waiting for. Don't you think that's the most nicest thing in the world. Did she suckle strong?' Vinnie put the knuckle of her little fi
nger to the baby's lips. 'Look, look Jaen, she's hungry. Here, let me put her to you.'

  'In a minute, Vin, in a minute.'

  Vinnie thought she heard something in Jaen's voice like she was tetchy or something.

  'They do say it hurt a bit when you start, but not bad.'

  Jaen drank milk and ate the stewed wheat and cream, whilst Vinnie sat by the dormer window on a low nursing stool, rocking and making a low humming.

  'Where are they all?'

  'The Boys and the labour, and Annie, have gone back to the sheds getting things ready to start cutting — you have to feel sorry for Annie times like these. France and she would give anything,' she kissed the baby loudly, 'anything to have one like you. Miz Nance is out looking for the eggs. Martha has gone back to let out the geese. She do seem sharp these days, but it is always hard for the mother when a little'n like Laurie gets taken. It's bound to happen . . . my mother used to say God picks and chooses only the best.' She stopped short and drew in a breath.

  'Oh Jaen. I didn't mean . . . That's just like me. I never was able to think before I said something. Don't you worry. This one's as strong as a little ox . . .' She stopped again and said dejectedly, 'I am a blimmin stunpoll, Jaen. I'm that sorry. I sometimes wonder how people put up with me.'

  She laid a hand on the bedcover and Jaen covered it with her own.

  'If it hadn't been for you these last months, Vinnie, I don't know what I should have done. You're such a happy thing, such a bright light. And I missed Ju that much.'

  Vinnie thought that Jaen wasn't just saying that, but she really meant it. Though why she should, Vinnie would never understand, when she herself was such a great lump, and Jaen was so clever.

  Sometimes when they were working together at the tedious dairy jobs, jobs like scalding and scrubbing, Vinnie would get Jaen adding and working things out. Vinnie never doubted that Jaen's answers were right, you could tell that they must be by the way she looked when she was working the numbers out. Jaen would half-close her eyes and look as though she could see inside her skull . . . 'sixteen and a half pounds at fourpence ha'penny . . . six and tuppence farthing . . . ninepence-three-farthings change out of seven shilling.'