Jaen

by Betty Burton

  At the end of the first day of the trial, Betrisse knew that she could not return to Emworthy until it was finished. When she came to wanting to tell Annie that she would not be returning at once, she wished that she had paid more attention to learning her letters. The message, a reason and reassurance, were summed up in a few words addressed to Ted and put on the Chichester coach: she liked Winchester and wished to look at it for a few days, but saying nothing of her true reason.

  Most of the first day of the trial was given over to the reading of the charge and the case against the Accused. Betrisse could not believe that the details of a story such as one might hear recited on the streets or sold in crudely illustrated broadsheets could be true — certainly not of someone who had tossed her in the air at harvest suppers.

  One of The Uncles, accused of the killing of one of her aunts.

  Next day she went early to the court to secure herself a seat. Jaen's sister was there before her, the man trying to give her moral support. She certainly did not appear to need physical help, for she stood head-up and straight-shouldered staring at whatever lay behind her brow.

  'You come then.'

  Betrisse was drawn back from her observation of Jaen's sister. It was the basket-woman.

  'That's one of them.' The basket-woman nodded at Jaen's sister.

  'Who?'

  'That fambly. The murderer's fambly.'

  The murderer's family. The full awareness of the fact came upon Betrisse.

  Betrisse Hazelhurst. Not Saint John. That was the make-believe. Just as Annie Saint John and Annie Scantlebury were make-believe names. Annie Hazelhurst. Betrisse Hazelhurst. Daniel Hazelhurst. The Hazelhursts of Up Teg Farm.

  The basket-woman is pleased to have someone to take an interest in, especially a stranger who has not been to an Assize before. 'Did you see him — the murderer? Didn't he look a ghost? No wonder, if he got that on his conscience. Fancy being shut up in the cells for nigh on six months knowing you done your wife in and waiting to stand trial.'

  Six months ago. Since Ed's last news from 'Clare.

  Nugent! The name she has been searching her memory for comes. Her grandmother often called Aunt Jaen, 'Bella Nugent's girl.'

  Judeth Nugent.

  As she watches her, the apparently rigid control, Betrisse senses again her terrible turbulence. Anger and grief are fermenting within Judeth Nugent like heat in a strawy midden-heap. One blow and the heap collapses in upon itself. She would like to go to her and say something. There is no comfort to be given to such a grieving woman. And it is ridiculous anyhow. What could be said? I'm Betrisse Hazelhurst. One of Them. A born Hazelhurst. A Hazelhurst still.

  But instinct tells Betrisse to hold back, not to become involved.

  The man with Judeth Nugent obviously loves her, yet is not wedded to her, she wears no ring. His love is very strong and he would take every bit of anguish from her, or is that Betrisse wishfully thinking, hoping it is true? There is a faint suggestion of Annie and Ted about the couple. Love out of wedlock? Certainly he loves her. But what of the woman? Her face is so set that there is hardly a crease or wrinkle to suggest any warm emotion. Betrisse is glad that Judeth Nugent has a lover.

  6

  CANTLE TO WINCHESTER

  Ever since the beginning of winter, when they had heard that the case was to come up at the Spring Quarter Sessions, none of them at Croud Cantle, Hanna, John Toose, Jude Nugent, could think much beyond the day when Jude would set out for Winchester.

  The silent Rosie has carefully watched lips as some explanation was tried. She nodded. She has understood that there is trouble and that Jude must leave for a while. She made an encircling motion with her arms and pointed to Hanna, and Bella Nugent, then the same motion indicating that she and John Toose would care for them.

  'It's all right, Miz Jude,' John said. 'I a see to everything. If I could go to Winchester in your stead, I should do it.'

  'Yes, Miz Jude,' he had said. 'I a see to Hanny, you knows you don't need to tell me that. Hanny a be all right with me. And Miz Rosie.'

  'Yes, Miz Jude, I knows you have to go, that you have to find out what they will say at the trial. It a be hard for you, listening to all that.'

  'But I don't know what all "that" is, John, do I?'

  'Hanny a tell you in time.'

  'I doubt it. She still thinks there was something that I could have done when they made her go back.'

  'When she gets honest with herself, she won't blame you. She knows there wasn't nothing you could a done.'

  'She tells you things, doesn't she, John? Things about what happened. Even before she came back here, when you used to go over and see her sometimes. Things she won't tell me.'

  Some things.

  He does know some things, some few things that Hanna has brought herself to tell him. She was telling him things years ago, when he had been allowed occasionally to walk over to see Hanna.

  'Take me back home with you, John.'

  'They'd only fetch you back, Hanny.'

  'I could a run away. We could run away together.'

  'What should we live on? Nobody'd give me and you work. Two young'ns like us'd soon be finded out. The only roads I know is Blackbrook and this'n. We'd get lost. Wait a bit, Hanny, till I learnt my way about a bit more. Just wait till I can come and get you.'

  Over the years that Hanna had lived at Ham Ford, they had had this conversation.

  'This is a horrible place to live, John, you don't know what it's like.'

  True, he did not, for there were things that she could not yet even tell John.

  He did not know that Hanna could not bear to see her father at those times when he pressed himself close to her mother, when she was carrying in logs, or skinning a hare; could not bear it when she heard him at night, breathing like a bull. He did not know that it was from choice that she went to sleep with the maids in the outhouses.

  With Judeth now gone, it meant that John, Rosie and Hanna had to work late. Once Bella Nugent had been helped into her alcove for the night, the three went into the dairy or storerooms. The lead skimming-trays and wooden dairy implements needed daily attention, the produce for market needed trimming and bunching, eggs collected and basketed.

  The responsibility for Croud Cantle and the care of its inhabitants and workers is in the calloused and willing hands of John Toose.

  It is dark now as Hanna and John walk back towards Croud Cantle, the small ramshackle cottage that is elevated beyond its station by being called 'the farmhouse'. No rushlight flickers in the dairy. Rosie must have finished. John carries heavy sacks of vegetables, and Hanna carries a lighter load in baskets.

  'It a soon be over, Hanny.'

  'What do you think it is like to be hanged?'

  'Hanny! You got to stop dwelling on it.'

  'It's the only way I shall get rid of it all.'

  'What do you mean, Hanny? You won't never get no peace keep talking about it. You'm only hurting yourself.'

  'No John, you'm wrong. Every time I tells you about something, that bit don't seem such a nightmare. It's like having a splinter in you. It hurts getting it out, but it feels better after.'

  What she cannot tell him, is that which she tells Rosie in her mind. The splinters that have gone deep, that fester and still seep poison.

  The store, lit only by an oil-wick, smells earthy from the root-crops that have been cleaned there. Abandoned cobwebs thick with the dust of years hang in torn shreds, pigeon and chicken droppings solidified in mid drip whiten wormy timbers. It is a place that John Toose has known since the first time he slept here as little Johnny-twoey the night he and Hanna both adopted Croud Cantle as their home, and were adopted by it.

  Within its dusty, brown, decaying walls, in the dusty dim yellow oil-light, John Toose would give anything to be able to go up to her from behind and put his arms about her as she works at the bench, to speak about them getting wed, to lie here gently with Hanny. But he knows that it will not happen yet. He has sensed
that to draw her to him and press her against him, however gently, will cause the skin to grow over splinters.

  That, and years of owning nothing but his inferior position as foundling and yard-boy, years of knowing his place in the scheme of even this lowly holding. For all that they weeded the same patch together, picked flints from the same field, clattered boards at the same crows, for all that she had given him a bluebird and he had given her a bell — Hanny is Master's granddaughter and he is still Master's hired labour.

  But he loves her, and she knows it, so he asks her in words that she cannot misconstrue.

  'Will it be all right if I kiss you, Hanny?'

  After several seconds, she smiles and offers him her cheek. He kisses her like a sister. She smiles.

  It is a long time since Hanna Hazelhurst has smiled.

  Later when Hanna and Rosie have finished the house chores, they sit for a short while before retiring for the night. They watch the slow ignition of a solid log that will smoulder until morning. Rosie rocks herself gently, just enough to make her head nod back and forth. She often does this when not occupied, it is as though she is saying, 'Yes. I understand. Yes. Yes. Yes.' Silently.

  Rosie, I never took much notice of him at first. France.

  He was one of The Brothers, they all used to come and go in one another's kitchen if they wanted anything. (Do you know what 'brother' means, Rosie? How can you know? How did you first learn that?)

  France was a shepherd. He had his own place, but most of it was used by Vinnie and them. He sometimes used to run his flock on the hill behind . . . behind the place where I lived then. It might a been going on for a long time, and I hadn't a noticed, but once I did notice, there was no mistaking.

  He would take his flock to a certain place and stand there just looking down, and she would go out into the yard and look back up. It wasn't something that anyone would pay any attention to, France just looking down and her looking up at where the sheep was.

  You would probably a noticed, Rosie. You knows how people speak to one another without words.

  Once I noticed what they were doing, I realized that he used to come into the kitchen, excusing himself for a drink of ginger, or a pat of goose-grease for the chaps on his hands, when he could just as easy gone into his own place and asked Vinnie.

  He would say, There's quite a decent branch got blowed down, Jaen. I a break it up if you wants to come and fetch some, or The sloes is ready, if you bring a basket I a help you pick a few . . . or blackberries, or dabchick's eggs, it didn't matter what, it was their way of giving messages to each other. (Like when you and me are in the dairy, Rosie, and you holds up a scoop and a press, meaning that you'm asking me to choose if I want to do the cream skimming or press the curds.)

  Sometimes she would say, I can't do with any just now, I got quite a stock in already, France, and he would just nod and go away, which meant that she could not get out. Other times she would look straight at him, and she'd say, Oh, that's nice France, I a have to see if I got time to come and get some later.

  I understood their secret messages. There didn't seem to be nothing wrong. It wasn't nothing to do with me what any of them did . . .

  Oh but it was to do with me, wasn't it, Rosie?

  I saw it all happening. But I didn't care what they did. Not at first.

  I saw that when she went to collect the things that France had told her of, she always tied on her red kerchief. Whatever it was she went out to collect, whatever the direction, she always went on the path through the Common, yet she always came back with the thing that she had gone for, which I knew meant that he had got them ready for her and they had spent the time together.

  I saw other things.

  When I was getting snapwood one day, I saw . . . my . . . my father go to Nell Gritt's.

  You won't ever know what women like Nell is for, will you, Rosie? Nobody is ever going to tell you to watch their lips whilst they tell you what they are for? Do you even know what happens with men and women? When you was little and you saw beasts hot and rutting, did you think that humans got like that too? I never thought of it, I thought people would be different. It an't surprising, when you think of how we lived here when I was little, just Grandmother Bella and Jude and me.

  Rosie is making an infusion of chamomile which she always insists that Hanna drink before she goes to sleep. Deaf Rosie treads on a piece of dry twig but only feels the vibrations that the sound makes in her.

  Hanna hears the sound with her ears — it sounds like a bough snapping.

  7

  WINCHESTER

  The formalities, the risings, the recesses, the coming and going of the Jury, the bringing in and out of the prisoner, prolong the case. Whilst following what is going on on one level of consciousness, Betrisse's mind is afire with speculation about the rest of the family. Suddenly, Her Family.

  What were they all doing when it happened? This event that is being presented for this gawping crowd to savour. Where were her sisters? Who was it had come to tell her mother the day Jaen died? Where were the rest of The Uncles? Suddenly she is flooded with the awareness of more than twelve years of absence. The rest of the Uncles, of the six that now leaves only Richard, France and Peter.

  Why, of all their family, is there no one here? Only Jaen's sister. No one, as far as she can tell, on Dan's side. There's not a man here to be tall enough to be one of The Uncles.

  After the midday recess on the second day, there was protest and uproar when those who had waited outside to regain their seats found many of them already filled by a party of ladies and gentlemen with whom there was no arguing, for they had paid to be slipped in by another entrance. Betrisse was one of the many who was turned away.

  She spent the rest of the day walking through areas of Winchester some of which she might not have ventured into had she not been preoccupied. Narrow streets and lanes where very old houses jetted out, so that their upper floors almost met across dark and filthy alleyways, in which stumbled and wrangled pale and filthy children, and where her good shawl and boots were eyed speculatively and were only protected by her tallness, her long-stride tallness, and her imperious manner.

  At one and the same time, she wanted to be in the Court, to be with Ted and Annie, and . . . to go to Up Teg. To go back there, to see what had happened. There was no one there now who could lay a hand on her. Luke has gone. She belonged to herself now. That night, when she removed from around her neck the seal with the Caesar's head, she dropped it into the travelling bag. It no longer had any significance.

  The next morning Betrisse went early to wait outside the Court.

  When she arrived, Judeth Nugent and the man were already waiting in the shadow of the doorway.

  The basket-woman too is there, and on seeing Betrisse attaches herself to her, then nudges and nods at the couple in the doorway. Betrisse feels shamed that the woman associates her with the sensation-seekers.

  The time drags for the basket-woman; she moves nearer to the couple. 'They say 'tis your sister he murdered.' Judeth Nugent makes a slight movement, then looks at her feet, not humbly but to regain her control.

  The man with Judeth Nugent stands, hands on hips, and looks down at the basket-woman and says aggressively, almost a whisper, 'Would y'care to take yourself somewhere else? As far off as y'd a mind to go.'

  The basket-woman looks for a sharp retort, but finds none under the man's gaze, so she returns to Betrisse and shrugs her shoulders. Her voice hisses complicity. 'Evidence today to say she was mad. Defence!'

  Betrisse realizes that the woman means her Aunt Jaen. Mad? Her silence does not stop the gossip-monger. 'You wasn't here yesterday, was you? He says she attacked him with a cleaver.'

  She realizes that Betrisse missed the excitement.

  'A course, you never saw his wound, did you?' She proceeds to tell of the deep wound that the wife inflicted in her madness. 'He won't meet Lord Sycamore. That wound is what makes it Manslaughter. They a find him Guilty a Manslau
ghter. Transportation he a get. Well, she must a bin mad to do that to him.' This last sentence with her voice lifted so as to give a prod to the man who had asked her to take herself off.

  The basket-woman, her tune changed from that of Dan being a man who clouted his wife and would get away with it, old hand at the Quarter Sessions, was right.

  That day a witness was brought to testify to strange behaviour that she had seen. The Defence barrister delicately brought to the notice of the Judge the condition of the witness, which being so near her time, he could scarcely have missed. But he, being a good judge, would have none of it. All other witnesses had given evidence standing, so, not to be seen to show favours to one side that could not be shown to the other, Nella Martha Gritt of Cuckoo Bushes Common, Newton Clare, Hampshire, must stand also.

  So, Nell Gritt, several years after she had thought child-bearing impossible, stands presenting unspoken evidence of a child within days of its birth. A child that might just as easily be that of one Clare man as another (except Poor Tad's), including Hazelhursts, including the man in the dock.

  Mistress Gritt of Newton Clare gives evidence of often having seen the deceased wife of the Accused.

  'Yes, Mistress Hazelhurst often wandered abroad in all weathers.'

  'Yes, Sir, talking to herself and climbing bleak hillsides fit only for sheep.'

  'Yes, Your Honour, I knew the Accused very well . . . as a good neighbour of the same village.'

  'Yes, Sir, I knowed the whole family to be good respected people.'

  'No, Your Honour, I wadden aware of anything amiss between Master Hazelhurst and his wife, that would account for her to go for him like that. Only that she was a queer sort of person.'

  'Yes, Sir, no, Sir — only that she was given to walking abroad alone on the downs. Yes, Sir, and talking to herself, Sir.'

  She says nothing that is not true. Without consulting any of them, Nance Hazelhurst had sold everything she could lay hands on to engage a lawyer, and none of them had demurred. So when she went to impress Nell as a witness, she made no bones about it, pointing out to Nell her precarious situation as a known whore, living on common land, with one child in the womb and Poor Tad, the bull-gored other child that she has cared for half her life.