‘I don’t believe you,’ he said. ‘But let’s see – Jet’s just see what progress we can make from here.’
To begin with, as my mother had said, although his stroking hands on my arms and shoulders were strange to me and his tongue, parting my lips, took me by surprise since I hadn’t realized a kiss was quite like that, it was not pleasant perhaps but not terrible. Something, I thought, to which I could grow accustomed, as every other married woman I knew had grown accustomed. Not really alarming at all, until I realized he had shrugged himself out of his dressing gown and was naked. And the shock of being clasped in that nude embrace released a flood of images in my mind – of my grandfather’s weathered, old man’s body in this very bed with Mrs Stevens, panting and grunting as Joel was beginning to do – images that flicked my already uneasy stomach to nausea.
‘Take off that nightgown,’ he muttered.
When I began to protest and ask him how he dared, he almost snarled, ‘Take it off. It makes you look like a child, or a damn nun waiting to be crucified. Take it off.’
‘Then put out the candles.’
‘Not I. I’m no peasant to make love in the dark.’
‘Good heavens – you mean to look at me?’
‘Aye. And if you want to spare yourself the sight of me you’d best close your eyes.’
And so, my eyes tight shut, I pulled my mother’s finely stitched cambric over my head and delivered myself up like a sacrifice, my head swimming again with the obscene posturing of my grandfather, revolted beyond any appreciation of Joel’s skill or the realization that, while not for one moment forgetting his own pleasure, he made a decent effort not to hurt me.
But he would have done better perhaps, that first time, had he been less skilful, had he simply taken me without expertise, merely with a little kindness, instead of giving way to his rich enjoyment of the female body, his determination that every one of his senses should be satisfied, that every part of him should be replete – not only hands, mouth, and loins but eyes and nostrils, and the mischievous curiosity that led his tongue to explore the whole surface of my skin, the curves and crevices at which I rarely looked myself.
And so the act I had believed would be so quickly over prolonged itself, rising in intensity as his teeth possessed themselves of the lobes of my ears, the point of my shoulders, and my breasts, not painfully but compellingly, so that I knew I was being devoured, that he was taking me slowly, inch by inch, inside himself, and that I would never be whole again. And because no one had ever spoken to me of pleasure, because I had learned that this whole process was designed to give men satisfaction and to make women pregnant – and my grandfather certainly required me to be pregnant – I grew more bewildered with every caress.
I had been ready for discomfort and embarrassment. Nothing had prepared me for Joel’s lingering enjoyment. In my total ignorance of sensuality, I became so desperate for a conclusion that the final pain of penetration was not unwelcome, since that much at least I understood, and even Joel’s body nailed shuddering to mine, his long, inexplicable groaning, were not so much a shock as a promise of release.
‘Don’t fret,’ he told me when it was over, turning away from me and breathing hard. ‘Women aren’t supposed to like it – ladies, that is, at any rate. And if a woman don’t care for it with her husband she’s not likely to look elsewhere when he goes off to Norfolk for the wool clip. So don’t fret, Verity.’
Yet even I, through the fear and ignorance that had been the breeding ground of my disgust, even I could tell that although his agile brain had accepted the shortcomings of our situation, his restless, experienced body had not been satisfied.
Chapter Seven
Those first months of marriage were awkward but polite, dominated completely by my grandfather, who, sitting on the hillside above us – baleful, all-powerful – had every intention of making Joel earn his keep.
He was in the mill yard every morning at five o’clock, watch in hand, eyes peeled for latecomers – as my father, but not always Edwin, had done – since time is money, and no one should be allowed to waste anything that belonged to a Barforth. He spent his days in the sheds, constantly answering my grandfather’s summonses to the Top House to explain himself, and his evenings, more often than not, in the countinghouse, checking through old accounts, poring over old ledgers, building up a meticulous picture of Samson Barforth’s commercial past and what he, Joel Barforth, could make of the future. And from the very first their ideas on that future were in conflict.
My grandfather, in fact, did not require ideas from Joel. He wanted, quite simply, a caretaker for the next generation, someone to hand over the business intact to a new Edwin, as he had planned to give it to the old; he had no desire, now, for change. And, indeed, since the attack on our mill interest in power looms had declined generally in the Law Valley, not from intimidation but from what was seen as sound common sense.
‘I see no reason for it,’ Mr Hobhouse of Nethercoats had announced. ‘The most I ever pay a hand weaver these days is seven shillings and seven pence a week, and when I can get my job done as cheap as that, what do I gain with expensive new machines – paying these fancy engineering fellows to look after them when they break down, and having to reinforce my sheds to take the weight and the vibration – that’s all I’ll get – that and the risk of getting shot at one night on my way home. There’d have to be money in it, lads, a deal of money, afore I’d risk that.’
And although my grandfather could see the possibilities of power weaving as clearly as Joel – or as clearly as Mr Oldroyd of Fieldhead, whose spinning machines could produce more yarn than the handlooms could accommodate – he was determined now, it seemed, that everything at Lawcroft should remain as it was, a monument to Edwin Barforth’s memory rather than a steppingstone to Joel Barforth’s greater glory.
On his return from Leeds, after our wedding, he had immediately required Mr Aycliffe the builder to attend him at the Top House and, without Joel’s knowledge, had cancelled all arrangements for the construction of a new mill.
‘No use for a new mill when there’s nothing to put in it,’ he’d said to Joel, ‘for I’ve cancelled the new looms, while I was at it. I reckon you’ve got enough to be going on with, my lad. More than you ever dreamed you’d get your hands on, I’ll be bound. So let’s see how you tackle it – let’s see you keep it turning over, nice and steady – the way my son William used to do.’
But if my father had been content with the position of workhorse, scapegoat, Joel was not. As the near-bankrupt owner of Low Cross he had been obliged to struggle from one day to the next, delighted merely if he could meet his commitments; but now that he was acutely aware of the changes in the world outside the Law Valley, of so many new inventions and hitherto unheard-of opportunities, my grandfather’s tight curb rein choked him, drove him sometimes to the limits of endurance. But because my grandfather held the purse strings and had the power, at any time, to sell the mill or simply close it down, those limits could not be passed, and Joel, with a venomous fury lurking behind his eyes, was obliged to smile, to persuade – to beg, even – when it would have suited him far better to fly at my grandfather’s throat.
Our area was famous for the manufacture of calamancoes and shalloons, heavy worsted cloth that, with care, could last a lifetime.
‘A Barforth calamanco,’ my grandfather was fond of saying, ‘can last a woman all her married life and still have enough wear in it to serve her daughter when she’s gone.’
And when Joel remarked that although this may have been all very well in the old days, perhaps the younger generation of women would not wish to wear the same garment so long, my grandfather was not merely scornful but very much annoyed.
‘You’d cut the quality then, would you, lad,’ he snorted, ‘to make a quick penny? Aye, and that’s your father coming out in you, fast and flashy – turn anything off his looms, your father would, if he thought he could sell it. But I notice his customers never ca
me back twice.’
‘There’s no question of that, sir,’ Joel said, keeping his temper, although I felt the snap of it. It’s a question of supplying what’s needed, and in these days, when there’s more cash in hand for luxuries, when people get about more and new fashions are coming over all the time from France, it strikes me that women aren’t looking for something they can keep a generation. And where’s the sense in producing plain, hard-wearing cloth you can’t sell? Lightweights are going to pay better, sir, in the future; I’m convinced of it. Fancy lightweights – power-woven.
‘Aye,’ my grandfather snarled. ‘Fancy lightweights for fancy ladies. You’d know all about that, I reckon – millmaster – like your father before you.’
And I knew – Joel knew – that had Edwin put forward this idea it would have been hailed as a flash of brilliance: ‘Damn me, but the Boy knows what he’s about,’ instead of ‘Keep your fancy ideas to yourself, millmaster, or bear in mind what they did to your father.’
Yet Joel, quietly, with the assistance of Ira Agbrigg, the weaver who had brought us news of the riot, began experimenting with lightweight worsteds at his own mill, Low Cross, a matter which, when it came to my grandfather’s attention, provoked the most serious argument they had yet had.
In the first place the employment of Ira Agbrigg did not please him.
‘Damn the Judas,’ he had said, having spotted him in the crowd at Edwin’s funeral. ‘Give the fellow a guinea and send him on his way.’
And the fact that Joel had not obeyed but had made use of him – and illicit use at that – would have been enough to raise a storm.
But Low Cross itself was really the heart of the matter, for my grandfather could tolerate no division of loyalties and grudged every second of Joel’s time that was not spent at Laweroft Fold.
‘You’ll get rid of it,’ my grandfather ordered. ‘Get rid of it. I told you before you were married that I’d carry no deadwood. Sell it if you can, knock it down if you can’t, and I’ll have no more tales about buyers who don’t come up to scratch. I’ve never seen any of those buyers of yours – don’t believe in these buyers. Well, you can save yourself the trouble of inventing another, for I’ll find a buyer myself.’
‘I must ask you not to do that, sir.’
‘What!’ my grandfather yelled, stung by the quiet insolence of Joel’s manner. ‘Ask me? Tell me, more like, and I’ll take no orders from you. I’ll have that muckheap sold up, lock, stock, and barrel, this time next month, if it’s the last thing—’
‘Hardly without my consent, sir.’
And seeing the veins swell on my grandfather’s forehead, seeing his purple mottled colour, I cringed, looked away, and held my breath.
‘So that’s it,’ he whispered. ‘Your consent. And what have you to say to anything? You’ll consent whenever it suits me, you young scoundrel, and be glad to do it – and if you don’t it’s not only Low Cross I’ll put under the hammer.’
But even the ultimate – the everyday threat – could not deter Joel on this occasion.
‘Low Cross is my sisters’ home, sir. And the sale of it, as it is now, will hardly provide them with another.’
‘Aye, your sisters – and what do you care about your sisters? It’s your looms and your damned fancy worsteds you’re thinking of, my lad; sneaking there and wasting time with that Judas – time that belongs to me, time bought and paid for, like I bought and paid for you—’
‘Very likely, sir – but, nevertheless, my sisters do live in the millhouse.’
‘Then get them married,’ my grandfather snarled, altogether beside himself, knowing, I suppose, that he could not really deprive Edwin’s intended bride of a home and he had no intention of offering her any alternative. ‘Get them established – get rid of them – tell them to look lively and take themselves off to the marriage market. And when they’ve gone, Low Cross goes with them.’
And so Low Cross was given its reprieve, and Ira Agbrigg with it, my grandfather having forgotten him, it seemed, in his rage against Joel, but there were to be no power looms, no fancy lightweight worsteds, no changes.
‘Your time belongs to me, lad,’ my grandfather reminded him grimly, frequently, and even on Sundays, when the mills were quiet, he watched Joel carefully, chuckling, I think, when he saw him go down to the empty sheds rearranging them in his mind, taking possession, making complex calculations to suit the day when his time would be his own again.
I existed between them, hardly noticeable in the glare of their mutual hostility, sole mistress now – since my mother’s departure for Squire Dalby’s hamlet of Patterswick – of Lawcroft millhouse, the place where I had been born, expected, suddenly, to answer Marth-Ellen’s questions about the pickling and the preserving, the contents of larders and closets, expected to know what my cousin Joel might wish to find on his plate at dinnertime.
To begin with, there were often dramas, for, unlike my father and brother, who required food simply to be hot and plentiful, Joel had a complicated appetite, a carry-over from his wild days; when he had tasted – in Manchester, I suppose – the new style of cooking from France, brought over by the refugees from Napoleon’s wars. And although Hannah had certainly never provided such delicacies – believing that the sense of taste, along with all the other senses, was better suppressed than encouraged – his new responsibilities had increased his expectations, and he openly found Marth-Ellen’s plain roast meats and batter puddings dull.
There were dramas, too, about the polishing of his boots and the laundering of his linen, for Marth-Ellen had a heavy hand with a goffering iron, and his shirt frills were rarely to his liking.
‘Hannah did them for him when he was at home,’ Elinor confided. ‘For mercy’s sake, don’t let her know I told you, for it was always a great secret, but our poor old Bertha could never do anything right for him, and we couldn’t afford anyone else, so Hannah did all the goffering and the dainty work. Poor Hannah, standing for hours in the kitchen, all hot and flushed and her hair coming down – no wonder she was ashamed of it. So come on, then, Verity, I know you’re a married lady now and I’m just a silly chit from the schoolroom, but you are going to tell me things, aren’t you? I’m absolutely relying on you, for Hannah won’t say a word – although now I come to think of it she may not be too sure about it, either So do tell, Verity – there’s really no one else. And – while we’re on the subject – whatever happened to Rosamund Boulton?’
I had, of course, nothing to say on the subject of Miss Boulton, since no one – least of all Joel – had thought fit to inform me of her reaction to his marriage. If she had loved him, then no doubt she had cried; if not, then by now she was probably already in careful pursuit of another lover in either case, there was nothing I could reasonably do about it.
But Joel’s domestic grievances were another matter, and although I was still awkward and uncertain in his nightly embraces, I found no difficulty in slipping into Marth-Ellen’s kitchen to whip him up a syllabub liberally laced with brandy, according to Mrs Stevens’s famous recipe, nor hardship in taking a leaf from Hannah’s book and using my own agile wrist and patient disposition to manipulate the goffering iron. And gradually I began to discover not only how to cope but even, sometimes, to get my way.
I was surrounded by natures far more aggressive and urgent than mine, gigantic tempers which flared and fumed and threatened, against which my own protests could not be heard. And so, when my grandfather bellowed, ‘Get rid of that damn dog of Edwin’s, it ain’t healthy and it’s got fleas,’ or when Hannah, grimacing over a slice of Marth-Ellen’s gingerbread, informed me, ‘Do you not think, Verity, that this house is getting too much for a woman of Marth-Ellen’s age? In your place I would send her to Patterswick, to your mother, and hire myself a pair of clean young girls,’ I made no attempt to defend either my dog or my maid.
‘Why, yes,’ I said smiling, allowing no opportunity for argument. ‘Yes, I’ll do that – presently.’ And I did nothing.<
br />
I found, too, that such things as badly polished boots could easily be remedied – that housekeeping, in fact, was not the mystery Mrs Stevens chose to make it – and since I became almost immediately and most obligingly pregnant, no one, so far as I knew, had any cause to complain.
I did not ask myself if I wanted a child, since that had been the sole purpose of my marriage, nor did I expect any great show of delight from Joel, who wanted Lawcroft for himself and not for a son who, in this early life at least, would be monopolized – and spoiled – by my grandfather. But the Top House greeted the news with predictable joy, Mrs Stevens floating down the hill at once to make my grandfather’s requirements known. I must sit with my feet on a stool, must take large, nourishing meals to build his great-grandson’s bone and fibre, must walk no farther than the garden gate. And here, once again, I scored a small triumph.
‘Do you know, Mrs Stevens, I think you had best go back and tell him that it would not be wise to coop me up like that for the next six months or so. Tell him I am the type to go into a decline unless I have my day’s supply of fresh air, and what would happen to his great-grandson then? Tell him you can read all the signs, and he will believe you.’
‘Why, Mrs Barforth,’ she said, ‘how sly—’
But my grandfather had been out of sorts lately, and, always anxious for her own future when his began to seem uncertain, she did my bidding, ensuring that I was allowed to take my carriage exercise with my cousin Elinor, the only other person I knew with time to spare.
Elinor, of course, was waiting, too; she had been waiting six out of her sixteen years for the man who would become her husband, and although her early dreams of some young landed gentleman had been modified to close consideration of the Hobhouses and the Oldroyds, she was determined, at all costs, nor to be left on the shelf.
The Clouded Hills Page 11
