Jaen

by Betty Burton

  Was it always this small and unkept? Was it always so quiet? or did she as a child carry her own noise with her, making dogs yap, chattering, banging things with a stick, trying to get people to notice her? Did you see that? Look, look how high I can jump. Did you see how far I make that'n go?

  Her boots crunch through the dried surface of deep mud and dung as she makes her way around the house. The house is bigger than she remembers. It is a good property. She has always thought of themselves as very poor, but the house is substantial. She compares it to houses in Emworthy, and for the first time realizes that to run this place, her grandfather must have been a good farmer.

  Sounds come from the dairy.

  The door is open and she looks in. As always on bright days like this, the light that enters the win-dowless building through the door flows into the dim interior, spreading like milk poured gently into a water-trough.

  A wide-hipped woman scrubbing vigorously and humming to herself.

  'Vinnie?'

  'Lor dumble us! You made I jump. I never heard nobody come.'

  Vinnie has turned away from the dimness and faces the tall, unknown silhouette of the woman against the bright sun. She peers.

  'Vinnie?'

  'Yes?' Cautiously. Drying her hands on her rough apron, Vinnie moves towards the door.

  Betrisse backs out into the sunlight.

  'Do you know me, Vinnie?'

  Vinnie's jaw slackens. Her arms go out instinctively to enfold. 'Oh my dear Lord yes.' Arms are quickly withdrawn again, hands burnt against the style and quality of the dress, and the big-house voice of the tall woman.

  Betrisse puts out both hands and Vinnie takes them and holds them to her plump neck.

  'Little Bet! You haven't changed a bit.' Then she laughs as she has always done, and wags her head as Betrisse remembers. 'Little Bet — why, just look at you. I'm such a fool.' Laughter and tears. Sensible Vinnie has never tried to hide her emotions.

  And so Betrisse came back.

  If Betrisse had ever imagined a homecoming, then it must have been different from the true event.

  She determined to say nothing about Winchester or of Dan immediately or perhaps not at all. And nothing of Annie except that she was well. The discovery of any hint as to where Annie and Betrisse had lived, was pre-empted by the use of the address of the Winchester solicitors on all documents and letters. Whatever the outcome of this visit, Annie must be protected.

  'Can we go to your place, Aunt Vin? Before I see anybody else.'

  'Tell me first — is Annie all right?'

  'She is very happy.'

  'Thank the dear Lord for one bit of good news.'

  They went quietly, on the blind side of the Up Teg house, and out of view of the workers in the potato fields.

  Vinnie poured thick, sweet blackberry cordial into fresh cold water and Betrisse drank appreciatively.

  'Bet girl, you become a real lady.'

  'And all honestly got — in case you were wondering. All got with these.' She pointed to her head and held up both fists.

  'I'm glad you did, though you could a easy got rich on what else God have give you. The best of Martha and Luke, both.' Her hand flew to her mouth.

  'I know about Luke. Face down at Deep Run. Is . . . Martha . . . ?'

  'She's pretty well. Been a widow for five years, and I can't deny it, she looks better than she did before. A course it helps now the girls is grown. Kit is just like Martha . . .'

  A slender, leggy girl of fourteen or so interrupted them, halting wide-eyed at the lady seated at the kitchen table.

  'And this is my Fancy.' Such pride and love in Vinnie's voice. Understandable, for Fancy was growing into a young woman with fine features and of such grace that it was difficult to believe that she was Vinnie's child — except that, as one could immediately tell, she had inherited Vinnie's greatest asset, her warm outgoing nature.

  'I'm glad you come home, everybody ought to be in their own place. Right from when I was little, Ma have told me about you. It was sad to wonder if you was hungry and that.'

  'You were just a little baby when I was last here.'

  'A course,' Vinnie said excitedly. 'You don't know I got a son as well. Jamie.'

  Betrisse began to realize how difficult it was going to be not to tell about Ed, and what she had discovered in Winchester. Vinnie was too open and honest to be served with such deception.

  'Aunt Vin. I can't tell you how I came to know, but I do know some of what has happened here since I went away.'

  She was saved from saying more by Fancy, obviously agitated and wanting to speak.

  'Ma. I been sent by Granmother. She wants you to come. It's Granfer.'

  'Lors.' She jumped up and tied a scarf about her head. 'I a have to go. He's on his last, Bet.'

  'Oh. I had no idea. The news of you all is more than a year old now.'

  Vinnie started to say something, hesitated. 'A lot have happened here. I can't tell you now. Miz Nance a need me. Fancy a stop here with you. Do they know down in the fields?'

  'Pa's up the main house. Jamie went to find Uncle Dick.'

  When Vinnie got to the house the old man was dead.

  Betrisse in the cottage, helping Fancy with her chores, an outsider at her grandfather's death. Fancy's Pa, Peter. Uncle Dick. Jamie. Strangers, with whom she shared ancestors and blood. Relations, whom she might have passed along the road and would not recognize. Family, whose house they had always thought of as their own, she now partly owned.

  Suddenly, the names that had been behind the dark barrier became people. She felt chilled at what she had done. These were flesh and blood people.

  And suddenly too, she acknowledged to herself why she had done it. Not to 'save' the house from other hands as she had said to Annie; not as a good investment in property as she had agreed with Ed. The true reason was to have the upper hand of one man who was on his deathbed, and another who was finished long ago at Deep Run.

  This sudden realization came almost as an instant thought, whilst Fancy was telling her how ill poor Granfer had been.

  'I wish he wouldn't die. He haven't hardly been out of his room since I was little. All he done all day was sit and try to breathe. He was just thin and quiet, and I used to sit and play finger-strings with him. And when Granmother sends me off out he always says, Only five minutes more Nance, like he was a little boy.' She wipes away the tears that have been trickling down. 'Hark at me, saying "was", like he was already gone.'

  Betrisse was silent as she made up the fire. A thin and quiet man who played finger-strings? Baxter Hazelhurst asking for five minutes more play like a child? Fancy's Granfer must be an entirely different grandfather from the old Grandfather Bax. Was the difference in Fancy's gentle nature and her own 'unwomanly' one? Nothing, except to see for herself the thin and quiet old man play finger-strings, would eradicate her own vision of the domineering man in the forefront of everything.

  Soon a heavy tread of boots approached the house and then into the cottage.

  'Hello, Gel. You come back at a bad time.' Matter-of-factly, as though she had only been away in the next village for a month.

  'Uncle Pete.'

  He gently claps a hand on her shoulder. 'We'm glad you come home.'

  Then he tenderly puts an arm about Fancy. Betrisse is surprised at the gesture. 'Have a good cry, Fan, and get it over. The old man is dead.'

  Fancy weeps silently into her father's soiled smock.

  'All them years of fighting for every breath, and now he's free from his lungs for ever. Nobody could a wished him to a gone on like he was, he never wished it his self.'

  Betrisse wants to cry. Not for Baxter. Not for Fancy, though she is hurt by the girl's grief. Not for Peter whose father is dead, but for young Betrisse Hazelhurst who was born with a great sense of justice, and without the facility to be submissive, and was whipped for her nature. She could shed tears too for the woman Betrisse Saint John who, at that moment, would have given all that she
had worked for to have had a father to put an arm about her, and say Have a good cry and get it over.

  She is alone. Annie has Ted Scantlebury, and young Leonard who is the core of her life.

  Have a good cry and get it over.

  Betrisse Saint John does not cry. They would wonder for whom she shed tears. It is not her grandfather who is dead.

  Fancy puts food out for Peter and as he eats he talks about taking down the coffin oak, and who he and Dick should invite to join them in the digging of the grave. Fancy comforts him, tells him Granfer a be in a place where he can get his breath. From time to time they glance and nod in Betrisse's direction, including her in their talk.

  For thirteen years Betrisse has held this world behind the dark barrier, the world of Up Teg, peopled with dark figures. She has broken through and they have said we'm glad you come home, Bet; they have laid dirt-grimed warm hands upon her, put arms around grieving daughters and said have a good cry.

  That night, Betrisse lies awake in a tiny upper room that is both familiar and strange. It was where she had slept that time when she lived for a few weeks with Annie and France. Now, the two cottages, Keeper's and Coppice, are virtually one. She has learned that France too has gone. They do not know where, only that he left his flock one day and has not been seen since.

  Her mind is too active for sleep.

  She has been up to the main farm. Met her sisters, and what is left of the once great Hazelhurst family. Of the seven men of heighth and breadth, only Peter and Dick, and the sparse remains of their father, are left on the farm.

  She has been looked over by Nance Hazelhurst. Still a sharp and darting little woman as Betrisse has always remembered her, but now looking like some dun-coloured apple that, being forgotten in the warm corner of an airy attic, has become shrunken and mummified. And, one could believe, as hard and enduring. Betrisse felt nothing at seeing Nance Hazelhurst again — not even much interest.

  She has been reunited with her mother.

  Rolled in a patchwork blanket on the shelf-like bed, she has gone over that scene again and again, and felt each time the same mixture of emotions, has seen Martha's mixture of gladness and pain, forgiveness and anger, recriminations and tears of relief.

  'Why did you go with Annie, Bet? He never hurt you that much surely. I was off my head with worry for you.'

  There were no answers for Martha. No explanations that would do. After all these years, Betrisse thought, she's relieved that she knows where I am. I supposed that she must have forgotten me, but she never has. And of all of them, only her mother seemed not to notice that she had, as the old lady put it, got money wrote all over her.

  She has still not told them that she was in Winchester, nor has she given any explanation for her sudden return to Up Teg. They are quite in awe of her, so that it will take some time before anyone asks her blunt questions. In the late afternoon, a man on horseback had cantered into the yard; he had brought from Winchester the message of the verdict. The reaction had been puzzling. Only Nance made any comment: 'Thank the Lord his father went on before he knew.'

  She has taken to Uncle Pete in the way she took to Ed. Family. Uncle Pete, Vinnie, Fancy and the lively little Jamie. Hazelhursts all. She is under their roof now, wrapped in Vinnie's ill-made but colourful patchwork. They are a family as Betrisse likes a family to be, two parents, a daughter and a son. Dick and Elizabeth too, except that they have two daughters, but they are the unit that Betrisse idealises.

  On the walk from Keeper's Cottage to the main farm, Peter had said to Fancy, 'You go on, Fan, and tell your mother we'm on our way. I wants to say summit to Bet before she sees the others.'

  They were walking through the little coppice that hid the Up Teg house from view. Ducking his tallness, holding springy brambles aside for her, he slowed his pace. At last he said, 'We had a terrible happening here between Dan and his missis — do you remember your Auntie Jaen?'

  Betrisse nodded.

  'This a be a big shock to you . . . Dan's up for trial at Winchester.' He looked directly at her, accepted her impassive silence and went on, 'It's a long story, and nobody a ever know the truth of it. Jaen's dead, they say our Dan knocked her down. So he's up for Manslaughter, and his case a be coming up at the Spring Sessions about now.'

  She had been on the verge of telling him that the trial was over, but had not been able to bring herself to do so. It would have involved her more deeply in their affairs than she wished to be.

  She had asked, 'Did he do it? Did he kill Jaen?'

  Lying in the dark, listening to the distant sounds of beasts on other farms, she recalls his slight hesitation before he continued.

  'Do you remember Dan?'

  'Yes, very well.'

  'She was only a little thing. It wouldn't take much.'

  He had gone on to tell her the bare bones. A row, Jaen attacking him with a knife, her falling and hitting her head on the clothes chest.

  'She had got very strange over the years.'

  'Strange?'

  'Wandering off, talking to herself. There were times when she thought she was back at her old home. She got very queer, especially after they brought the girl back.'

  'Which girl?'

  'Do you remember their first child?'

  'Yes. She went to live with the grandmother, didn't she? I remember they had a little boy too.' She flushed a little at having made reference to the child that had been the start of her running away. But he did not seem aware of it.

  'Ah, you wouldn't know a course — they had six boys.'

  'Six! And the girl?'

  'Ah. Like little steps when you sees'm rowed up.'

  They were through the little coppice now and within sight of the house. He indicated that they should stop.

  'We don't never talk about it now. There was more to it than that.' He looked at the ground and kicked at a clod of earth. 'I don't know, no more do I want to know, but our France have got a lot to answer for.'

  'France?'

  'Ah.'

  She recalls again the anger that there had been in his voice when he said, 'I only tell you this because you are fambly — he was always hanging round her.'

  'France?' She had found it almost impossible to take this new information into the story that she had heard in court. France? whose ownership of Annie had run like a flaw through the weave of their lives and years in Emworthy Bay.

  'France and Aunt Jaen?'

  'Yes. Nobody said nothing till it was over — the accident. Then it came out that all on us had wondered about him always going to their cottage, but nobody said nothing. It seemed a vile thing to think of in your own fambly. You'm old enough to know what I mean.'

  There had been a moment's silence that seemed longer.

  'Do you really mean that France and Jaen . . . ?'

  He had interrupted her. 'Nobody know the answer to that one. Excepting our France — and he have cleared off and good riddance or there might a been more violence done here. For if it was true what they was up to, then it was the next worst sin to murder. I think my mother knows more'n she lets on. She was down there just a minute after it happened. The little gel was there in the cottage, with Jaen lying dead and Dan pouring blood from his back. Mother brought him into our place for Vinnie to see to and the little gel was took back to her Cantle grandmother.'

  France's implication in it had been dumbfounding.

  'That's the bare bones of it. But nothing like that an't clear cut.'

  She sees the first hint that day is on its way over Keeper's Hill. The soft breathing of children is all around her. Fancy and Jamie and two of the six little boys whose mother is dead. Martha has taken in two and Elizabeth the other two. Dan and Jaen's six sons — the next generation of Hazelhurst men. As it is now, it is a family of women. Nance, Martha, Kit, Rachael, Deb and Alice, Elizabeth, Lucy and Margaret, Vinnie and Fancy.

  More usually it is the women who succumb; there are so many more things that may go awry during their childbearin
g years. Betrisse wonders how the Hazelhurst women have all survived — all except Jaen. In their working lives — in the fields and byres, men and women have equality when it comes to lost fingers, scythed legs, infected gums and festering and poisoned wounds, equality of chance of developing lungs that die before the rest of the body, of chaff from flailing or winnowing. But in the child-bearing years, the scales are weighted against women.

  Yet here they all are, eleven women called Hazelhurst — thirteen counting Annie and herself.

  Of all the seven men who had been here when she left, only Peter and Richard remain as heads of families. She wonders if that is why the old Master of Up Teg had become an old man begging for a few moments more of playing finger-strings with Fancy.

  13

  CROUND CANTLE FARM

  That same night, another Hazelhurst young woman watches the sky lighten into dawn. Hanna, whom Betrisse forgot was a Hazelhurst woman.

  She has scarcely moved all night. Now that she knows that the trial is finished, she releases the hold that she took upon her mind to force it to contain the thoughts that have threshed about trying to escape. On many nights they have done so and she has cried out. It is then that Rosie, not hearing, fails her. It is always Jude who has been by her side, almost before the cry has faded.

  This night she has gone over every detail from the day when she first discovered that her mother's mind was straying, to the day when the other grandmother had bundled her out of the kitchen and taken her on that terrifying ride cross country. The old lady had stood up in the little cart and whipped at the pony till it was all alather and foaming at the bit. Crashing, jolting. Wheels rattling. A frantic ride away from the place they had forced her to live all that time. Where Jaen's head, crashing down upon the corner of the chest, had sounded like the snapping of a bough.

  She knows now that it is that cracking sound, that and the smell of the pork she had been chopping with the cleaver, which she will never be rid of — never, even if she lives to be a hundred.