The Clouded Hills

by Brenda Jagger

  ‘Poor Mr Agbrigg,’ my mother said, looking up from her stitching. He is betraying his friends, you know, and is very much ashamed, although I am sure he has his reasons. He may have told himself it will prevent bloodshed and he may believe it – and, for his sake, we must hope your grandfather will remember him. Oh dear, I forgot the name of the man who delivered William Horsfall’s murderers to justice – do you remember, just now, your grandfather was telling us they had offered a two-thousand-pound reward? I remember the occasion, too, and it is quite certain that the man, whoever he was, did not receive his money. He died in extreme poverty, I believe, and had been made very miserable a long while before, since no one would speak a word either to him or to his family. They cut him off completely – exiled him – which, of course, he must have expected; he would, no doubt, have moved away, if he had received his money. But, as I said, he did not.

  ‘Joel dear, since one can never be certain what the day may bring, if you should care to change your coat, I feel sure Edwin will have something more suited to the occasion. In fact, I am sure of it, since my son is not very particular. If it eases your mind, dear, do take it off and let me find you another.’

  But Hannah, always suspicious of my mother, always resentful at any reference to her poverty, cried out, ‘Aunt Isabella, really – how can you suppose – how can you? – that Joel would consider his dress at such a time?’

  Sensing, perhaps, the angry tears burning behind her eyes, knowing how mortified she would be if they came to be shed, her brother turned from his contemplation of the hearth and gave my mother a smile that was superficially charming, totally false.

  ‘I really don’t know why I shouldn’t,’ he said calmly, very coldly. ‘Most kind of you, Aunt Isabella, but I believe I’ll decline. Somebody will have to go and fetch a magistrate, you see – I reckon Edwin’s grandfather will be out in a minute or two to tell us so – and if I’m to ride into Cullingford, or out of it, or up to Patterswick to bring the squire, then I’d feel – easier – in my own clothes, Edwin’s taste not being the same as mine.’

  ‘Just as you please, dear,’ my mother said, amusement hovering at the corners of her mouth.

  Although my grandfather was never a comfort to me, I was relieved – as I saw Hannah start to bristle – when the door burst open and the room filled up again with his towering, demanding presence.

  ‘That’s it, then,’ he snorted. ‘Just like last time. Three hundred, this fellow says, assembled on the green, with at least half of them ready to come here and take issue with me. Now then, lads, here’s what we’ll do. Son William may stay here to guard the women, and as for you boys, one of you can come with me to the mill yard to make sure those redcoats know how to earn their sixpence a day and the other can fetch a magistrate. Edwin, which is it to be?’

  ‘I’ll stay. It’s my place,’ Edwin said, and then he frowned suddenly, for there was glory to be had, too, in riding hard and alone across the troubled hillsides, in going out to meet danger unaided instead of waiting for it, tamely, behind a line of redcoats, at home. And his inability to be in two places at once caused him evident frustration.

  ‘Shall I stay?’ he asked himself out loud.

  My cousin Joel, still lounging by the fireplace, answered for him. ‘Oh, I expect so. You stay and review your troops, Edwin – much the best thing – and leave the rest to me.’

  ‘And what do you mean by that, exactly?’

  ‘Anything you like to make of it.’

  ‘Something low and dirty, I’ll be bound,’ Edwin snarled. Then, as Hannah made a sharp, horrified sound and half rose to her feet, he turned towards her – remembering, after all, that it was her betrothal day, that Joel was her brother – and said, not altogether apologetically, ‘Well, I’m sorry for that, Hannah, because the last thing I want to do is upset you, and I know life hasn’t been easy. But it’s not my fault I’ve had the advantages. There’s no cause for me to be ashamed because I’m rich and likely to get richer – never been ashamed of anything in my life. And if I was as poor as a church mouse I’d be damned before I’d go about envying other people. And if I was envious I’d make damned sure I didn’t show it.’

  ‘Envious?’ Joel said, his long, lounging body as taut now as Hannah’s, the white-lipped anger in him reaching out for Edwin, who was very ready to meet it. ‘Envious? Just tell me that again, cousin Edwin.’

  ‘Yes, gladly, cousin Joel. Can you look me in the eye and say you don’t wish those machines down there were yours?’

  ‘Well now, cousin Edwin, I might look you in the eye and say they’d do better if they were.’

  And as the two of them moved together, perfectly prepared to thrash each other in my mother’s parlour, my grandfather’s arm shot between them like a bar of iron.

  ‘You’d say that, would you, Joel Barforth?’ he said very quietly. ‘Well – for the moment I reckon I didn’t hear you. But if you’ve got yourself into an evil frame of mind, so much the better. You’ll get the chance to work it off, I shouldn’t wonder, before the day’s through. Now go and tell them to saddle you a horse. And you, Edwin lad, come with me.’

  The day had clouded over, easing itself now towards evening, and as my mother immersed herself once more in her sewing and Hannah continued to stare down at her tightly clasped hands, her loyalties badly torn, I settled myself on the window seat, my eyes drawn to the mill. The soldiers were still there, taking their ease, but otherwise the yard wore its everyday face: the comings and goings of carts piled high with bales that, from loose corners, shed scraps of wool like dandelion puffs on the night air; other carts heavy-laden with finished pieces, setting off on the rutted, bone-shaking road to Leeds or to the canal which, sluggishly, slowly, carried our goods to Liverpool and the sea.

  The sheds would soon be emptying, bringing the yard briefly alive with the busy sound of wooden clogs on stone, the patient outline of female heads covered in the fold of a shawl, the jauntiness of cloth caps set at an angle on wiry, north country curls, leaving behind the engineers and 100m tuners, who had an interest in defending the machines, and the soldiers. And who knew how many of our own operatives would go quietly home and how many would find their way to Cullingford Green, to join brothers and fathers and cousins, torch in hand. Could we really be sure that the soldiers, who must have friends – sweethearts even – among the weavers, would risk too much on our account? As the shadows lengthened and deepened, I felt obliged to ask myself if I was brave, and found no answer.

  My life, until today, had been as outwardly bland as the long coils of wool combed ready for spinning, perfectly smooth, cloud-textured, cream-textured, and if, inside me, I had encountered a few tangles, if now and again I resented my grandfather’s supreme authority, if I could not always believe my brother to be totally in the right, if I wanted my father to love me and my mother to love my father, none of that had been terrible. If I had sometimes felt out of tune with myself, sitting in my mother’s cool shadow, realizing I had not inherited her skill with a needle, at least the chair had been comfortable, the fireside warm. I had been safe. Yet now, through the spring twilight, a harsher world beckoned to me – a world where Jabez Gott’s wife, a girl not much past my own age, had died of pregnancy and starvation, where Jabez Gott’s brother had been massacred at the place called Peterloo near Manchester when soldiers like the ones now lounging in our yard had ridden with drawn swords into a peaceful crowd who had assembled merely to demand a small measure of parliamentary reform, and left more than a hundred men, women, and children bleeding on the ground.

  How would I feel tonight if Jabez Gott’s brother should die all over again, outside my window, leaving his blood on the cobbles of Lawcroft Fold? How should I feel?

  My grandfather, I knew, would be triumphant, considering it no more than every Jabez Gott deserved. My mother would make some cool, pointed remark and drift back to her embroidery. Hannah would say, ‘Well done, Edwin.’ Mrs Stevens would comfort us all with cakes and wi
ne. And I, being a good girl, would eat those cakes, speak when spoken to, give them the answers they expected to hear, not because I feared them but because to be different, in the house of Samson Barforth, was to be alone. But I could not rid myself of the impression of a pair of eyes, flickering somewhere behind my own: huge lack-lustre eyes in a hollow face which may have belonged to the wife of Jabez Gott or to a dozen girls I had seen tramping the hills, a child straddling their hips, going nowhere, wanted nowhere. And forcing myself into their wasted shapes, putting stones beneath my own bare feet and the tugging stranglehold of a child’s arms around my neck – a child myself, as they were, bearing other children – I shivered.

  ‘Are you afraid?’ my father said, appearing suddenly beside me.

  When I nodded he touched my arm briefly, timidly almost, since he had shown me little affection in the past and found it awkward now.

  ‘There’s no need. They’ll not seek to harm you. They’re not savages, just men who see their world coming to an end and who very likely know there’s not much they can do about it. Nothing except make a stand, that is – a protest – and when that’s all a man has left, who can blame him? Jabez Gott may believe he can set the world to rights by burning Lawcroft Fold, but the men behind him – or most of them – know it can’t be as easy as that. They know we’d build again – for somebody will always build, somebody must build – and if they follow Jabez Gott at all it’s only to make their voices heard – as men should be heard – because they’re too proud to go under without a cry. They know it’s over. Before the factories cornered the markets, Verity, there wasn’t a cottager of my acquaintance who made less than thirty shillings a week, and now some of them are living on as little as four shillings – or not I living, exactly, but keeping body and soul together, taking the outwork it pleases us to give them for as much as we’re pleased to pay. They had meat, Verity, when I was a lad, and white bread, and the occasional bottle of rum, but now it’s oatmeal and potatoes, and when there’s none of that they’ll stew nettle broth, aye, and tell you it’s tasty and wholesome if you happen to enquire. Poor devils, it’s their tragedy to be caught in the wrong place at the wrong time; to have been born when their traditional way of life is ending, when events are moving too fast to do anything but sweep them away. Your brother and your cousin Joel tell me there won’t be a handloom in the Law Valley five years from now. Well, they’re young men, and hasty, and I’d say longer, a fair bit longer, but it has to come just the same. They’ll hang on, for they’re a tough breed and stubborn, and not all the millmasters will turn against them. Old Ben Hobhouse, over at Nethercoats, don’t care for power looms, but old Ben won’t live forever, and his son is likely to be as hasty as mine when the time comes for him to take over. No, they’ll be squeezed out – starved out – and even the most pigheaded among them is going to end up using his handloom for firewood one of these bad winters.’

  ‘But if we expand, Father, like Edwin said, they can work for us, can’t they – in the mill?’

  ‘Can they?’ he said, staring past me to the mill and the bare hillside beyond it. ‘I’m not so sure. When your brother builds the new factory he’s dreaming of, he’ll put a high stone wall around it and a big iron gate, and if you’d been a free, stubborn man all your life, you may not care to hear the elang of those factory gates shutting behind you every morning. If you were a countryman, of course, you’d find it easier, because you’d be accustomed to pulling your forelock to the parson and the squire. But a lad born in those cottages grows up to be his own master, and he’d find it hard having to doff his cap every time he met your grandfather, or Edwin – or me – crossing the mill yard. In fact, he’d find it so hard that I doubt he’d do it at all. He’d more likely turn sour and disobedient and hard to handle. No, they’ll keep on doing outwork as long as we’ll allow it, but I don’t think they’ll work for us in the mill – not this generation. And I’m not sure we’d take them.’

  ‘But what then, Father? What else can they do?’

  ‘I don’t know, and it troubles me. I think a whole generation may just pass away. Some of them will die, a few will move on, but most of them will strive and struggle for pennies – they’ll eat nettles when they have to, and grow old and bitter, I shouldn’t wonder, until their children are old enough to be earning. Because the new generation will come to us. And even then, I don’t know – I don’t know. This afternoon, at the mill, your cousin Joel got his hands on the new looms, and he wondered if a man’s strength would be needed for their operation. It seemed to him that a woman would suffice, and women, you know, don’t swing Luddite hammers, and they’ll accept what’s offered them in the way of wages far more readily than a man, especially when they’ve got children to be fed. So we may prefer to fill our sheds with women. And have you considered the Irish? They’ve been pouring into Cullingford by the cartload these last few years, since the potato crop started to fail – big, strapping wenches who could make two of most of ours. And everybody knows the Irish will work for less.’

  ‘Are the weavers right, then, Father?’ I asked timidly, badly wanting to know, and he made an angry movement, a regretful movement.

  ‘No, of course they are not. One cannot – one should not – stand in the way of progress. In that, at least, I am in agreement with my father and my son. The weavers have no more right to forbid us our machines than we are entitled to deprive them of their means of existence. We should lean towards each other – realize we are of the same species, not alien beings snarling at each other like packs of rival hounds. We are laying up bitterness, Verity, for the future – a cesspit of bitterness – Jabez Gott and your grandfather both – for at the extremity of their views they are both equally wrong.’

  But here, it seemed, he had said too much and, giving me a puzzled look, wondering why on earth he was unburdening himself to his daughter, he patted me once again, rather clumsily, on the arm and went away.

  My grandfather spent a long time in the mill yard, pacing up and down in front of the soldiers, telling-their officer how to handle his men in exactly the same fashion as he often told the parson how to manage his church, the banker his bank; and even if his presence caused the men to straighten their shoulders and button their tunics, they were still an unkempt, ill-favoured assembly and numbered no more than a dozen.

  ‘One hesitates to expect too much of them,’ my mother said, nodding pleasantly to the officer, who had caught her eye through the window. ‘Perhaps one should consider why they enlist in the first place – meagre pay and meagre rations, and a public flogging every time they misbehave. I doubt if anyone really picks them up when they fall in battle – not all of them, at any rate.’

  And, watching the blend of scorn and embarrassment on Hannah’s face, I wondered how they would contrive to live together, how I would contrive to live between them, and the arrival of Joel and the magistrate was welcome.

  He was Squire Dalby of Patterswick, a man of aristocratic temper and broad acres, a believer in the perfect authority – so far as his tenants were concerned – of the Established English Church, an ardent supporter of the Corn Laws, which had brought hunger to the cities, a subscriber to the view that since God had fixed every man at birth in the place He wished to see him, it was no less than sinful to try to change it. Although he stood for law and order and would have been as ready to hang a child for stealing a shilling as a grown man for slitting his neighbour’s throat, he had no liking for upstart manufacturers who, now that they had made their dirty money, were demanding extravagant privileges like seats on the Bench and voices in the House of Commons, which belonged – by law and by Divine Right – only to landed gentlemen.

  ‘Having a spot of bother, are we, Barforth, dear fellow?’ he asked my grandfather, making small distinction, it seemed, between Samson Barforth, who owned the machines, and Jabez Gott, who was out to break them. Yet he accepted a glass of wine and a slice of the seedcake Mrs Stevens had hastily sent down from the Top House – ass
uming my mother’s larder to be bare – while the sight, of my mother herself, in her light green gauze, her shawl sliding gracefully around her shoulders, appeared to afford, him immense pleasure.

  ‘Have we met, madam – surely?’ he murmured, quizzing glass at the ready, taking no more trouble to conceal his appreciation than if she had been a milkmaid. Even when my father and my grandfather intervened, for different reasons, he continued to talk to them and look at her.

  ‘Will you not come into the kitchen a moment, Aunt Isabella?’ Hannah asked, altogether shocked by the squire’s free and easy manner.

  ‘Why, dear?’ my mother replied, her grey velvet eyes quizzical and amused. ‘What have I to do there?’

  And Hannah had no choice but to leave her alone.

  ‘One would expect her to leave the room for her husband’s sake,’ I heard her mutter to Joel, but my cousin, who had scoured the hillsides on his way to fetch the magistrate, had weightier things on his mind than a little middle-aged flirtation and, striding forward, hastily gave his opinion that the yeomanry should have been called out, and a few stout special constables, to make a show.

  ‘Have we not done enough then, lad, in your opinion?’ my grandfather enquired with deceptive mildness. ‘You’d do more, would you, if it all belonged to you?’

  Hostility would have flared again between Joel and my brother had not Squire Dalby, with a mighty yawn, indicated his total lack of interest in the squabbles, the values, or the opinions of the lower classes.

  ‘Sheep – that’s what the trouble is,’ he announced somewhat surprisingly. ‘Sheep. They don’t really want to break your machines, Barforth. Never would have thought of it if some damned Jacobin hadn’t come and put it into their heads. Train them in France, you know, these professional revolutionaries – Roman Catholics and atheists every one of them, and damn me if I know which is the worst. France, that’s where they go, these malcontents, and when they’ve got themselves enough liberty and equality, back here they come to spread the word. Not your machines they’re after at all – don’t care a fig for your machines. It’s the rule of law they’re out to smash – King and Constitution, that’s what they’re after – and it won’t do, Barforth. Every man was born to his allotted place – I know mine and I expect you know yours – and there’s no getting away from it; Find the ringleaders, that’s all you have to do. Find the damned Jacobins and send the sheep home.’