Jaen

by Betty Burton

'No, I never said it did anything.'

  'That don't seem quite right to me,' said Annie. 'Not selling something people can get for nothing theirselves.'

  'They should come of their own free will, Annie. We should never compel anybody to jump into the sea, should we, Ted?'

  In the face of the combined amusement and enthusiasm of the other two corners of the triangular partnership, Annie capitulated, and they agreed that they would make no claims other than that Scantlebury's offered, in addition to Cleanliness and Decency, 'SEA-WATER IMMERSIONS'.

  Ted was a man capable of turning his hand to almost anything, from earthing the soil-pits to putting colour-wash on walls. His years at sea had taken him to many towns around the coast, and had widened his outlook, he was interested and interesting. He also knew a great many people and had numerous friends and acquaintances. So when Betrisse asked him about 'learning to speak', he not only thought it wouldn't do her no harm and might do her a bit of good, he knew the very person to show her how to twist her tongue round. 'And if you wants to, I shouldn't mind learning you to read.'

  Learning to read was a bit more than Betrisse had bargained for, but she saw the skill might have its uses and agreed to try it out, although she never really took to it.

  It was a 'Captain' Jetsam to whom Ted took her about the speaking. Ten years or so older than Ted, the 'captain' still had, like Ted, the eyes of a man who has spent a lifetime looking at a horizon; his cheeks were bright red with broken veins and he wore his hair tied and pig-tailed. A seaman. Until he spoke. Then one was at once nonplussed upon hearing the accents of a gentleman. It was believed that he had long ago gone over the side of his vessel, taking an Excise Officer with him. But in Emworthy, people were allowed to live with their secrets — particularly if Excise Officers were involved.

  The idea of replacing Betrisse's broad accent with something more ladylike — or gentlemanly as it had to be — pleased the old man, and he vowed he would have her fit for society inside a year.

  'I shan't be wanting that,' Betrisse told him. 'Only so as people will take notice when I say something.'

  14

  CHANGES Up

  Teg

  As upon that winter a decade ago, when Laurence had died, and Norry was born with 'water on the brain,' then Norry and Nicholas had died, and Ed had nearly lost a finger, and there were violent humours in their midst — so again in the present winter, the hag of misfortune chose Up Teg to settle upon.

  Luke, slithering down Keeper's Hill on a dark night and holding a bag of game, slipped upon rimey grass and hit his head on the flint-strewn bank of the River Hammet.

  Had it happened twenty yards further upstream or down where there were shallows, the outcome might have been different. As it was he was knocked unconscious at Deep Run. There, Th'ammet is wide and deep, like a dark deep pool. There trout may live untaken by an entire generation of men, and so grow to become legends. There the banks are steep. There, after eleven hours' floating face-down, Luke was found by Peter.

  'He never let go of they pheasants.' It was one thing that Peter was never to forget, Luke holding on to the meal that he had been out to get for his family. By the time the ground was thawed enough to dig Luke's place in the churchyard, the pheasants were well hung and provided meat at Luke's solemn feast.

  15

  Hanna with her kin watched Luke's remains lowered into the gravelly hole, unmoving and unmoved by the dispassionate words of the curate.

  'This is our Brother . . .'

  Since the last Hazelhurst had been brought to the churchyard, there was a noticeable change in the composition of the family.

  Had Betrisse been there, Luke would have had five daughters watching his burial. Kit was now almost fifteen, Rachael eleven and the twins, Deborah and Alice, eight.

  Equal in number, but younger in age, were Dan's sons, ranging from Dan'l who was the same age as the twins, to four-year-old Gregory. George, the baby, having recently found his feet, had been left in the care of a girl back at the farm.

  Richard contributed only Lucy, who at twelve was in many ways already a replica of Elizabeth, and six-year-old Margaret looking as fragile as Laurie had done. But that look was deceptive; Margaret had a robust constitution and worked hard.

  Looking at the way the hands had been dealt to himself and his brother, Richard wondered what game the Lord played that gave Dan such an advantage.

  It was taken for granted that the grandchildren belonged to the husband, and were always attached to the father's name: (Luke's Kit, Richard's Lucy, Dan's Young Bax), except for Fancy and Jamie. Fancy and Jamie were Vinnie's.

  Vinnie's Fancy was now eight, and Vinnie's Jamie five.

  Hanna was attached to no one.

  'I am the Resurrection and the Life . . .'

  France had no one attached to him.

  It was a year since Ed left, and almost eight since Annie and Betrisse disappeared. They had gone as effectively as had Luke, and were only brought to mind by most of the family on such occasions — brought to mind, not tongue.

  The family which accompanied its eldest son to the churchyard was greatly changed from the one that had attended Vinnie on her wedding day. Now, there were half as many children again as there were adults.

  At the time of Luke's burial, Hanna had been back with Jaen and Dan for near on two years, yet she felt as isolated and as much an outsider as ever.

  At first after Jude had left her with Them, night after night she had gone over every word that had been tossed between Jude and Him: Jaen keeping on saying, 'Let her go back, Dan, let her go back,' over and over . . . Him saying, 'I says she stops here!' Gradually, over the months, the scene had frozen to a vision of Jude leading the empty donkey back home.

  If they called her a sullen little maid, they were short of the mark; it was not sulkiness that gave her that expression, it was hatred, the uncomplicated self-regarding hatred of childhood. She looked down at her father's feet and invoked them and him into Luke's cold pit.

  '. . . Earth unto Earth . . .'

  Her spell did not work for Dan, but within the month, the Hazelhursts were to be found standing at another graveside, and saw James Norris go underground to meet his Maker. As was the custom, every one of the family went to view its departing member laid out in their best embroidered smock. Luke's discoloured and saturated face did not disturb Hanna, but she thought that James looked less weasel-faced now he was dead.

  An infected tooth had caused his body to swell and increase in size. His death at twenty-six or — seven from the infection, increased too his importance. In life he had gone about his work almost unnoticed except by Vinnie.

  In death he was noticed. More Newton Clare people attended James's burial than had attended Luke's, and it was the presence of villagers paying their respects to the last of the 'Clare Norrises that forced upon The Boys the realization that James Norris was looked upon as a landowner. Which of course he was — owner of land that had come to be accepted as part of Up Teg.

  Nobody in the family actually spoke the thought, but over a mulled tankard at the Bear and Ragged Staff, it was pounced upon as an interesting fact that Norris Land must come to Vinnie and so would belong to Peter. And Peter had a son.

  Deborah whispered to Alice. Alice looked and saw their red-haired cousin had tears running down.

  'Look at she!'

  'Aunt Vinnie. Don't! I can't abear to see you cry. Don't, Aunt Vin. You'm kind and it ain't fair for your brother to die like that. Don't cry . . . please don't cry. I can't abear it.'

  Hanna's words form behind her sullen little maid mask, but she does not speak them. She slips her hand into the placket-pocket of her skirt and fingers the small brass object she keeps always close to her, always hidden from Them.

  'This our Brother . . .'

  Her only possession. Everything else belongs to Them, her skirt and boots, her stockings and shawl even though she had knitted them herself. The bell though, belongs to Hanna.

  B
efore Jude had gone home without her, Hanna distraught and crying had made her promise to tell John a message. 'He a know I wouldn't have gone away from him, but you got to tell him that I couldn't help it.'

  Tears for John flowed with those for Aunt Vinnie.

  Hanna had bought John a china bluebird from Black Fair, his only possession. He had brought her a bell as small as a thimble. Not long after Jude had left her with Them, he had come. He had come to see her, grinning.

  'I come on my own, Hanny, and I never got lost once.

  'I got summit for you, Hanny.'

  And when there is a new moon she holds the bell, knowing that at the same time John will take down the bluebird as they have secretly agreed.

  'If you thinks about it, Hanny, it ain't all that different to when you used to be in the house with Miz Jude and the Master, and I was in the outhouse — 'tis only that we'm a bit further away.'

  '. . . Dust unto Dust . . .'

  'What's that gel crying like that for? She never hardly knew Jim Norris.'

  'It's what comes when you bring a girl up to nine thinking she's summit special.'

  16

  Jaen thought that Jude might come for a visit that Christmas.

  'Oh Child, I could do with cheering up after these last weeks. I hopes Ju is going to come and see us. You a be glad too.'

  Hanna nodded, which could mean anything. Jaen had made a great effort to make friends with her daughter, but Hanna would not give an inch in bridging the chasm that was between them.

  If you hadn't a give me away in the first place, I wouldn't a known no different. But you did. Then when I was used to Grandma and Jude, you made me come back.

  Sometimes Jaen would catch a glimpse of the girl working in some dark outhouse, and catch her breath. 'Lord Child, for half a minute I thought you was Ju.' Hanna would look up, hold Jaen's eyes for a second, and then return to her work.

  Dan seemed to look upon her as a useful pair of hands and appeared to expect more of her than the girls whose parents received wages for them. She worked in the dairy at Up Teg, in the fields and in the Ham Ford cottage. In matters of her labour Dan could not fault her.

  'You turned out to be a decent help there, Gel.'

  When she worked at the main farm Nance would dart into the dairy, or down to the pigs or wherever Hanna happened to be working, and watch her for a minute without being seen.

  'I can't make that one out, Husband.'

  'She works like you'd expect a girl to what had been living with Bella Estover.'

  'She's deep. Never hardly says a word.'

  'Pity there wan't more females like she then.'

  'Well, she don't get her closed mouth from the Hazelhursts, I'll tell you that for nothing!'

  These days Nance had the upper hand and made the most of it on every occasion. He could try and call after her the last word in an argument as much as he liked — it didn't do him no good.

  'Nor . . .' a cough from years' flailing and winnowing. 'yet . . .' a spit from flooding the meads in January fogs, 'from thy fambly . . . Wife.' Heaving lungs from a lifelong struggle to make the land give up food, and from fighting the elements which were for ever ready to destroy what had been grown or reared.

  'You wants to save that breath, you a need it one day.'

  None of them could make Hanna out.

  Jaen was concerned for her, blaming herself for the girl's obvious unhappiness. She looked half-starved, thin and dark marks under her eyes. Anybody would think they never gave her a decent meal; you couldn't go about telling everybody she was fed the same as the boys but she would never eat properly.

  On the few occasions when she had tried to talk to Dan about it, he became exasperated and spoke roughly.

  'Why not let her go back, Dan? She ain't happy.'

  'No more an't I. Your whole family behaves like they was summit special. She's a farmer's daughter and the sooner she gets that into her head, the better it a be.'

  'You can't deny she works hard, Dan.'

  'I never said she didn't. But she got fancy notions put into her by your mother.'

  Jaen knew what he meant; she had been vexed by it herself often enough. 'There ain't no harm in washing yourself.'

  He looked contemptuously at her. 'Every blimmin day? She's worse than you. That's your mother's hand and the sooner she gets into our ways, the better. In a few years' time she a be a farmer's wife, and there ain't likely to be many about as will put up with what I puts up with.'

  Once Jaen flared at him: 'You was willing enough for Mother to have her when she couldn't earn her bread.'

  He had raised his hand, but did not land the blow. Had he done so, it would have removed a speck of Jaen's guilt about the girl.

  The old intimacy with Vinnie had long faded to a relationship that was not much different from that shared with Martha and Elizabeth, except that because the Ham Ford and Coppice cottages were close they saw one another frequently but briefly.

  The only person Jaen can talk to is France.

  It is for him she goes looking the day after Jude's Christmas visit. Long before she needed an excuse to go out so that she could meet France, she had imposed upon herself the chore of going wooding for the hearth and the oven. It was a task which she could have given to one of the village girls who came in to help, or to one of her children, but it was the one and only reason she had for going out on her own. Her small freedom from the uproar and congestion of the cottage.

  Whenever she goes to meet France, she ties over her cap a bright-red kerchief which she tucks into her pocket as soon as she sees him. He knows the times that she is likely to go looking for snapwood and furze and watches her cottage from his vantage point on Brack or Keeper's for the spot of red moving towards Cuckoo Bushes. They meet in the most dense part of the common where amidst thick rhododendrons they are well concealed.

  There are times when she meets France only because she feels that she ought. No great enthusiasm. Simply, France a be waiting, and she goes, so as not to disappoint him.

  At other times when she sees him, a small figure on the downs walking with his sheep, she feels a leap of joy that he exists, that he is gentle, that it does not matter to him her legs get swollen and she has half a dozen tedious, niggling ailments, that she is the mother of a houseful of children. He will run his thumb across her lips and say, 'You'm a witch, Sister Jaen.'

  Brother France and Sister Jaen.

  The spice of sin is at the core of their attraction to one another. In church, where the Up Teg family sometimes attends together, France will come in after they are seated so that he will have to push past Jaen to reach his seat, touching her as though unavoidably. If he catches her eye, she knows what his message is.

  Under the eye of the vicar and the Almighty, they sin in thought. Brother lusts for his Sister, Sister tempts herself, remembering.

  Then we both be sinners, France.

  Today, as soon as she sees him she bursts into tears.

  'Leave him, Jaen.' He has said it a score of times. 'Let us go off together.'

  She has sometimes wondered how serious he is. He surely knows that she will never go with him. It is a fantasy they share. Jaen's many fears and guilts are a burden enough already. She knows that she is too afraid to add to them. And . . . a devil you know . . . Eleven years she has known Dan.

  'No, France . . .'

  'Brother,' he insists.

  She shakes her head, preoccupied. 'He sent Ju away and says she must stop away from us, and never come no more. Oh France, I should die without seeing Ju sometimes.'

  He guides her to a place where they have sometimes sat and she continues.

  'Ju does so get his back up.'

  'It'll blow over.'

  'No. He meant it. If only she wouldn't goad him so. She don't realize what it does to a man to be more knowing than he is. He thinks Mother brought us up to think we'm better than folks, but it's just that she made us always stand on our own two feet, like she did herself.'
>
  France has heard it before, her defence against the charge of trying to poke her nose into what is no concern of a woman. He has a certain sympathy for Dan; Annie was not above giving her opinion when it was not wanted.

  'She said terrible things to him. About us having so many children. And that he worked the girl too hard. Once she started, it was as though she couldn't hold back.'

  'I can imagine. She never struck me as being tender and nice like you.'

  'You hardly seen her.'

  'I've seen her. Many's the time I've watched her when she's been to see you, she unties her hair and strides out like a man.'

  'Ju?'

  She is silent for a minute.

  'I shan't be able to abear it, not seeing her. But it's The Girl that worries me.' She starts. 'What was that?'

  They listen.

  'Only rabbits.'

  'I must go. I still got the wood to get.'

  'A minute more. I got some bundled up ready so that you can pick it up on your way home.'

  France, the gentle brother of her fantasy, who gives her kisses and says that she bewitches him.

  'I don't know what I should do without you.'

  'You won't have to do without me. Now your Jude can't come to see you, you will have some love to spare.'

  'I can't give you Ju's.'

  He remembers the arrogant shoulders, the flying red hair, the strong steps.

  Jaen begins her walk back.

  'I'll come to the bottom of the track with you.'

  'No, there might be people.'

  'I'm your brother, an't I? Why shouldn't brother and sister be walking on the common together?'

  On some banks in open places the frost has not gone from the grass and their footsteps sound crisp on the morning air. The scent of moss and decaying leaves drag Jaen back fifteen years, and into the spinney close to Chard Lepe Pond.

  If only time had stopped there, whilst she and Ju were still all in all to one another. Stopped, when the only worry was forgetting they still had the scalding to do, and guilt was no more serious than stolen preserves or a naked swim.