by Betty Burton
Ah. But the Green Man is always urgent. He has a function to fulfil. Now, now — before age neuters him. Now, now — before there is a battle. Now, now before he must leave and hunt. Now, now — there may be other males, and he must be the one. Now, now, now.
When Dan had seen her with the child asleep at her breast, when he had felt the softness of her and had seen her flinch from the tenderness as he pulled her bodice about her; when he had seen how small she was dancing, giving him her neat dry hands to make an arch for the dancers, he knew that if he was gentle with her, he might again find the girl he lay with at Pewsey's Farm last year.
He lies beside her, resting on one elbow, caressing her; he sees the gleam of her eyes but does not know that she is looking past him. He sees all that he wants to see in her look and quietness.
A thousand years before this, the Green Man coupled with the earth so that the Corn Queen would give life to another spring. Now, now.
Still looking up through the branches, Jaen feels the Corn Queen leave her and return to the barn. Hot tears in a steady stream flow silently into her hair.
If only he had been gentle, not so urgent . . .
He had intended to be gentle. Intended to give her pleasure.
He is heavy upon her sore breast.
The glacier flows back.
14
Betrisse, playing the game inside her head where she was Annie's child, held her imaginary mother's hand and watched her real Ma dancing with one of Granfer's hired men. Ma and him holding one another by elbows, shining wet faces, Ma's cap almost off, both of them their hair sticking damp. Betrisse knew that her mother's hands would feel warm and slippery to the man when she made him hold her by the waist, holding her hands over his as she twirled down the line of dancing people. Ma, unaware that she had faults in the eyes of the firstborn of this new generation of Hazelhursts.
Back in the winter, Betrisse had heard something that had bored into her subconscious. She had been sitting reluctantly in church, cold, wearied by flat words, cross at the unfairness of things and prepared to take it out on the toes of her boots all the way home; but on reaching the church door after the service, she saw flakes of snow falling, huge flakes like soft goose-feathers, the unexpectedness of which had thrilled her.
'Oh Mu-Mawh . . . look! It snows greatly. Oh PuPawh do see!' The clear voice of a girl of about six, about her own age, had rung out parallelling Betrisse's own 'Lors Ma, 'tiddn half snowing.'
'Snows-greatly', child of the gentry, had been shushed by a nanny and bundled into a carriage, leaving Betrisse the gift of her tortured vowels to try out secretly.
Annie became Mu-Mawh. With her straight back, erect head and a way of looking down the line of her nose; with her dry hands and the irritation she almost always had in her voice for everyone except her niece, Annie passed for gentry in Betrisse's imaginary world.
She had no Pu-Pawh as yet, the only one half-way suitable was Vinnie's brother. Quiet-spoken and not always showing off hisself like Pa and the uncles, Jim Norris would have done, if he'd been a bit older — and a bit taller too. Pu-Pawh would wear a high wig, but even in a wig as great and heavily piled up as Snows-greatly's Pu-Pawh's, he would not really do. Connecting the phrase 'lost at sea', that she had picked up somewhere, with Annie's description of Emworthy Bay, Betrisse had decided that 'Pu-Pawh was lost at Emworthy'. As he was only lost, there was always the possibility that he might one day be found.
Of course, Annie wasn't always Mu-Mawh, but when she was needed, Betrisse could always call her forth, expanding and embellishing, weaving new experiences and observations into her secret life.
(Mu-mawh?) 'Can't people have a feast like this unless they gets married?'
'A course you can. You been to Harvests and May Days enough.'
'Oh I knows that,' (Mu-Mawh) 'I been to a lot of them, and Christmasses.'
Annie smiled, the child had for a moment sounded like her father — Luke's contempt at anyone stating the obvious: 'Oh, I know that!' She'd give them a run for their money when she grew up.
'I don't mean that kind of feast, I mean one like this, one that's just your own like this one's only for Vinnie?'
'And Pete.'
'Peter's only here — it an't his feast. Vinnie got give bits of lace and everything, and she walked in front and it's her feast, only her'n. Can't you get your own feast without getting wed?'
'Ah. Now that's a question and a half!'
That was an 'Annie' answer, and Betrisse felt irritated but turned it into an obscure gentryism so as not to let that other world retreat.
(Mu-Mawh?) 'What means a question and a half?'
'It means summit we should all like and can't have. Like fresh meat without the slaughtering, like bread without the toil of growing the corn, like butter without the churning. We should all like the feast part.'
'I'm going to get one.'
'I'm glad to hear it.'
'I shall.'
'I believe you. What you going to call your feast?'
She had not thought about this.
'Couldn't I call it St Betrisse Eve?'
'You have to do something before you gets to be a saint.'
No other name worthy of a feast-day came immediately to Betrisse.
'It don't matter. I shall find out what it's called when I'm a lady.' She looked seriously at Annie. She trusted Annie with her most delicate and precious possessions — her dreams. Only Annie could be trusted not to dash and destroy them. Her Granfer, her Pa and the Uncles would toss them from one to another until they were limp and tawdry. Granmother would not even think them to be worth a moment of attention and Ma would seem a bit afraid and slap them down like flies. Vinnie would pretend that she was taking Betrisse serious. Jaen was still too new in the family for anything yet.
Only Annie was interested enough in Betrisse's dreams and fantasies to treat them with any delicacy. She had a long memory stretching back to when she too had thoughts that were all fragility and swirling colour, like membranes of soap held between the circle of a thumb and finger. It is possible to hand over a soap-bubble, if the recipient wants to take it.
Annie returned the serious look when Betrisse said, 'I mean really, when I'm a lady.'
'Then you could call it Lady Betrisse Day.'
'I could couldn't I?' She looked at the pictures just behind her eyes. 'And I could have the feast at Emworthy and everybody could have oysters straight up out of the sea.'
It was closer to dawn than midnight when Vinnie's wedding feast finished.
Jaen, in the Yard Room, listens to the ale-heavy breathing of her husband and the milk-satiated breath of The Child, and is overwhelmed with guilt and anguish that she wants neither of them. She wants the sound of Ju's light, twitchy sleep. She wants to be herself.
Annie, her head low and knees raised as Nance has said that she should, listens to France sleeping and wonders why it is that some women fall so easy, often when they don't want to. She longs, aches, pines to become pregnant. There are times when she feels exhausted because she is so obsessed by it. For ages, she has imagined that she would have a child that was a replica of Betrisse, but now she is willing to think of any kind of a baby; she could always try to mould it into another Betrisse.
Betrisse watches her own pictures as she dresses her family in high wigs, hats and gowns like gentry; she makes them talk quiet like gentry; she makes them take notice of her.
She will have a box pew. To herself.
She will take little sweet cakes to eat there.
She will learn to talk like the Snows-greatly girl. She cannot yet see how she will do it, but there must be a way as there was when she did the deal over the stones to get her father to buy the yellow-buttercup cloth for her new shift.
What a waste Laurie was.
Vinnie had said, when she was told, God called the best ones to heaven first. He might just as well have not sent Laurie down to earth at all if He wanted him that much, and He had plenty of others, He
didn't have to have Laurie too.
She still cries sometimes. Silently, because They said she had to stop making such a fuss, if she was good she would go to heaven and Laurie would be there. And she ought to be looking after Kit better than she did. But Kit was not Laurie. Her mother said it had been a blessing in disguise having Kit and Laurie together. Betrisse often sits in the far recess of the inglenook listening, not understanding. What if she doesn't die until she is very old — will Laurie know who she is?
15
AUTUMN
Nance said all along that Vinnie would not go her full time because she was so big.
'I was just the same with Luke and France, and so was Martha with Kit and Laurie.' With her privileged position as midwife and law in her own house, Nance had set herself up for the confinement with a herbal remedy of her own creating — a flask of rum, brandy and honey mixture as a suspension for a pinch of marigold and mint. Her testing and tastings had made her flushed and expansive and slowed down her usually jerky movements.
'There's twins all over the Hazelhursts, and I back it's what's come to her through our Pete. There's twins there.'
But Nance Hazelhurst was wrong.
Vinnie went her full time and, though what Vinnie had did indeed come to her through Pete, it was not twins. Annie helped Nance birthen a feet-first baby.
Vinnie had taken to the stripped-bare bed in the early hours of a gloomy October dawn. She laughed and chattered to Peter, telling him to get on out of it and let her get on with getting him his little'n.
'Don't expect to see'n at dinner-break, but I reckon you shall be a father at supper.'
She listened to the comforting sound of cattle squelching the mire, their lowing and the clumping of wood and leather as the dairy workers began their day. Rain fell through the grey murk making it such a benighted dawn that one could scarcely tell when the new day had come. But Vinnie was a Jack-o'-lantern, seeming to give off her own light.
Annie came as the extra pair of hands always needed when a woman was in labour and men wanted food on the table, but after a while she saw that the men could better manage without her than could Vinnie. Jaen and Kath did the cooking and baking. Jaen was silent and withdrawn, speaking only when she was spoken to.
For the first part of her labour, Vinnie was her usual self, excited at having another great event so soon after the last. But as the hours and hours passed she lapsed into silence that was broken only by exhausted grunts as she tried to send her child out, and the repeated comment that she knew 'summit was wrong'. It was true, the baby would not come.
The natural light outside the lamplit room seemed hardly to change all day. The rain stopped and the mist thickened to grey fog which deadened all sound except that which came from the kitchen below. By supper-time, Peter still was not a father. Neither was he by dawn of the following day.
Myrtle, who was a good girl to have about on such occasions, stayed up with Annie the whole night so that Nance could snatch moments of rest as they waited for the long labour to progress. When Nance said that there wasn't nothing she could do except wait because it was a britches baby, Myrtle patted and comforted Vinnie, telling her that she'd a come out feet first herself, and there wasn't nothing wrong with her as anybody could see.
When the child had at last slipped its feet into the position where its head should have been, Nance purged and greased and massaged then finally mixed a concoction that caused Vinnie to have several long and powerful contractions one after the other.
At last two small feet were born, followed by knees, then the bouncy little male organs, that looked as though put on as an afterthought and were too large for such small legs.
'Bless us, Vin, we'm getting a boy!' Nance said, and Myrtle called down the news to those assembled for their dinner-break. Peter started to clatter up the stairs, but Nance told him to bide his time a bit . . . which was as well, for it took the women a long time to adjust to the whole child when it eventually made its tortuous entry.
Nance crossed herself and said at once to Vinnie, 'Take an hold of yourself, Vinnie . . . it's got water on the brain, girl.'
Annie, white with fatigue and tension at getting the child to be born at all, turned on her mother-in-law in an explosive whisper.
'God take you, Mistress, but you'm not only a hard-hearted old woman, you'm a fool too. Couldn't you a just waited till she got her breath back?'
'Always best to face up to things right away.'
'Not after thirty hours in labour.'
'I knows what I'm talking about. It don't help avoiding what must be faced.'
'Then you might at least have given her some of the remedy you been stewing yourself in for hours. She's in need of it more than you,' Annie said fiercely, quietly.
'I don't want no lip from you, girl.'
Because of Vinnie, Annie held back further words of her anger, except, 'Don't you "girl" me!'
'Let me see him.' Vinnie, gaunt and deflated so that even her normally pink, plump arms appeared fleshed with coarse, saggy, grey dough, propped herself up on the rustling straw bedding.
'Give him here, Annie; if you puts him to the breast now, I shall easy give up the afterbirth. It's summit he can do for me after taking so long to get here.' She was smiling.
'No!' said Nance. 'It an't going to live, Vinnie, no more would you want it to, so you best . . .'
'Let me see my babe.'
For all her weak and exhausted state, for the first time in her life Vinnie commanded.
'He's mine, and you nor nobody else can tell me what to do with him. He's mine and Peter's. But most — he's mine!' Vinnie gave Annie the impression that she might almost have rehearsed her words, or at least thought about a situation when she might have to stand up to Mrs Nance, so unhalting and fiercely did she say them.
Annie had wrapped the baby in a woollen cloth so that its hugely swollen head was well covered, but immediately on taking the child from Annie, Vinnie unwrapped him and held his face to her breast. He did not respond but she continued to hold him there, supporting the poor misshapen head and seemingly not finding anything amiss as she inspected every part of him.
'Look at them gert big hands — just like mine, he a be able to help with the milking as soon as he can walk. Look at his hairy little back — he gets that from Pete.' She gently laid her hand over his plump and obvious organs and said in her usual laughing way, 'And they'm so sweet — no mistaken about they, is there. I shall call him Peter Norris . . . you'm Peter Norris Hazelhurst, but I shall call you Norry, like my own Dad . . . that's your grandfather but he's gone to heaven now.'
She looked directly, defiantly at Nance and her voice became strained with the effort of trying to sound natural.
'Master Bax won't have no objections. He a no doubt want to wait for a better one to carry on his name.'
Annie recognized Vinnie's mounting hysteria, under control.
'Let me have him, Vin. I'll swaddle him proper.'
Nance looked from one to the other. She was losing control of the situation.
'Leave him be and put him in the rush-crib till we finished cleaning her up, then I . . .' she was interrupted by a loud, held shout of 'No-o-o!' as Vinnie's last contraction, which came unaided by any sucking by the child, released not just the placenta but Vinnie's streaming, silent tears.
Whilst Nance performs the ritual, secret burying of the afterbirth, Annie holds Vinnie about the shoulders and rocks with small movements in the way of all women comforting one another, and cries too, but her tears are unseen — they stream dry and bitter into the dry and bitter pool within her, of tears already shed.
She cannot understand why, after all that she has seen in just this one family alone, in just a short three years or so — Martha's sadness over young Laurie's short life and swift death, Jaen's obvious misery with obviously unwanted little Hanna, to say nothing of her own miscarriage and what she has seen happen to Vinnie as well as what she can see here and now . . . why does she stil
l ache to conceive?
Why?
It seems such a great muddle.
Why? What is supposed to be the meaning in a babe like this one?
I could run the world better than that.
And unfair.
Unfair that France and Peter, and all the rest of them, have a natural powerful urge to make a child which gives them such high old pleasure, whilst her own natural, passionate urge and Vinnie's and a lot of women's results in hard labour, pain and often misery, yet still the urge to conceive is overwhelming.
Nobody you can take your grievance to though, not a case for the magistrate or the squire. Annie smiles faintly but is not aware that she does.
She will do anything. She will take France twice a day and sleep on her back with her knees raised; she will drink the concoctions of old wives and cunning men; she will take powders containing dried urine from pregnant mares and wear lockets and charms. She will go on visiting Nell Gritt who would have been burnt at the stake before the enlightened times of the eighteenth century.
Would she do violence because of her need?
There are times when she feels extreme enough.
Do men, when their needs and desires are unfulfilled, foment and pine and long and agonize?
Perhaps that is why some men take a woman by force, men you would never think it of? Her father had . . . Annie had never known who the girl was, but even though it had happened twenty-odd years ago, the terrible face of him and the terrified face of the girl entered the four-year-old Annie's memory and had been embedded there.
France had been like that — once or twice. No, more times than that . . . during the year after she miscarried. Then, his desire for a child was very strong . . . his anger and lust and unhappiness — though a married man cannot be said to violate his wife, he would say he had the right to take her however unwilling. Would she do that to him?
