The Clouded Hills

by Brenda Jagger

  Certainly, her situation, in the upheaval that had swept over us all, had not changed for the better. If Hannah had married my brother, Elinor’s position, alone with Joel and possibly Miss Boulton, would have been difficult but only temporary, for Hannah would have moved heaven and earth, and my brother Edwin with it, until a suitable match for her sister had been found. Edwin, with his liberal allowance, could have added something to Elinor’s portion; enough, at any rate, to make her interesting – not, perhaps, to a Hobhouse, but to some small tradesman who would know the value of the Barforth name. But my grandfather, deeply suspicious of Joel, put very little ready money his way, while Hannah had not only lost her taste for weddings but, whether she realized it or not, was in no hurry now to part with her sister and face life alone.

  Not that anyone had asked her to do so. At my wedding Elinor had experienced no difficulty in attracting the notice of the square-cut, bull-necked Hobhouse boy, nor in having her thigh surreptitiously stroked by the portly, pious Mr. Oldroyd, whose ailing wife had not yet obliged him by falling sick enough to die. But when that lady finally did succumb to one of her many maladies, her husband would remarry carefully, to his profit. And when it was time, for the Hobhouse boy to take a wife, it would be Emma-Jane, Rawnsley, the banker’s daughter, or plain Amelia Oldroyd of Fieldhead his mother invited to tea, not Elinor.

  ‘There has to be somebody,’ she told me. ‘Somebody will see me, somewhere, and realize he absolutely, can’t live – yes, yes, I’ve been reading novels again, which Hannah doesn’t approve, but it must happen like that now and again, surely, or how would they know to put it in, all the stories?’

  And so, since to be admired she had first to be seen, I went over to Low Cross two or three times a week in the good weather, although plumper and more breathless as time went by, and took her for a drive.

  The millhouse at Low Cross was one of the pokiest and dingiest I had ever seen: a dark, square box, not set apart like ours behind its high stone wall but tacked on to the mill itself, so that no more than the thickness of a single wall separated my cousins from the clatter of looms and the coarse conversations of their operatives. The ceiling was low and oppressive, the windows, in an effort to keep out dust and grime and the shouted obscenities of wagon drivers, tiny and always tight-shut, while the door opened directly onto the yard, exposing the Low Cross young ladies to stares and sniggers, which they had long learned to ignore. Not a house in which I would have cared to live; no fit place, indeed, for Hannah, should she ever find herself alone, and often enough, when Elinor, hearing the sound of my carriage, came tripping across those soiled cobbles as if they were a summer meadow, I felt certain that her prettiness and her determination would have their reward. And when I thought of Hannah, my heart sank.

  We went, of course, invariably to Cullingford, which was not, in that first year of my marriage, the grim city it later became, having still something of the country town about it: a market square with an old grey-white cross, and two old coaching inns at either side of it – the Old Swan, where one could take the coach for Manchester or Liverpool any morning of the week, and the thriving, bustling Wool Pack, where coaches were coming and going all day to Wakefield, York, Halifax, Bradford, and Leeds. There was the old Market Building on the Wool Pack side of the square, the upper floor of which could be hired for dances, concerts, or weddings, while the ground floor was devoted to the sale of vegetables and cheeses and the unsightliness of the meat and poultry trade. On the other side, the Old Swan side, the Piece Hall stood in all its ancient glory, its gates still opening promptly at eight o’clock every Thursday morning to admit those who had woollen goods for sale and those who wished to buy.

  From Market Square one could still see patches of green on the hills that encircled the town; one could still wander pleasantly up the steep, cobbled slope of Millergate to buy a bonnet or a fan, stroll to the top of Kirkgate, even steeper and stonier, to inspect the fine stone tracery of the parish church, or spend an exciting half hour at the bottom of Sheepgate, where crumbling old warehouses stood with their feet in the canal and one could find low, sinister-fronted shops where carved, ivory and intricately tooled leather were offered for sale. There were mean streets too, an unsavoury crisscrossing of alleyways behind the main thoroughfares where once-decent houses, now in decay, had been divided up to accommodate a faceless multitude. But they kept themselves aloof, it seemed, and although the streets were alive, on market days, with top-hatted commercial gentlemen come to do business at the Piece Hall or at the Old Swan, where additional piece rooms were provided, it was not difficult to remember that Cullingford had once been little more than a convenient place to cross the stream, a village lost in the isolation of bare, impenetrable moorland, where no stranger ever came.

  My grandfather and others like him – the Hobhouses and the Oldroyds, the Aycliffes – had brought prosperity to Cullingford: I was well aware of that. It was, without doubt, because of them that the coaches came and went, that the inns were flourishing and the name of Cullingford was known outside the Law Valley, and yet they did not altogether belong here, nor really anywhere else.

  The old divisions of society had been easy to understand. There had been the king and, under him, his dukes and earls and other noble lords; and, beneath them, a multitude of country squires – all drawn together by common interest and inclination into a ruling class, supported by the parsons, who, more often than not, were younger sons of the noble houses. In the countryside there had been the peasants, tied to the farmers, who, in their various way were tied to the squires; in the towns, small shopkeepers and tradesmen plying their crafts with an apprentice two, minding their own business; and, in the cities, a mob having no rights, much given to unlawful assemblies which, occasionally, had to be put down.

  But now this sudden machine age had produced a new breed of men: men without either pedigree or prestige, who had discovered other roads to wealth besides the possession of broad ancestral lands or the wielding of a sword, and who were fast becoming too rich and too clamorous for the gentry to ignore.

  Yet they still continued to ignore us. Some twenty years ago, I knew, an Act of Parliament had been obtained ‘for the lighting, paving, watching and improving the town of Cullingford,’ a measure which required the appointment of a Board of Commissioners, all to be leading citizens, men of substance and good character. Yet, although the increase in trade, brought about by the manufacturers, had made the Act necessary and most of them were men of substance and exemplary behaviour, not one place on the board was made available to them. The appointments had gone to Sir Giles Flood, lord of the manor of Cullingford, although few of us had ever seen him, to his son and his son-in-law, to his cousin Colonel Corey of Blenheim Lane, to Colonel Corey’s cousin, the lawyer Mr Corey-Manning, and to others who had property in the town but were not well known here.

  And it may not have been any great consolation to men like my grandfather that so far all the commissioners had achieved was the lighting of the better streets, the removal of a number of hog styes and muckheaps, and the employment of a few quite elderly watchmen who, patrolling the town with their lanterns and rattles – when the weather was not too inclement – added little to our security.

  The landed gentry, with their protective agricultural policies, their belief in the natural harmony of castle, altar, and throne, had no intention of allowing power to fall into the hands of a pack of greedy, upstart manufacturers who would allow cheap foreign corn into the country to feed their operatives and would foul the countryside with their chimney stacks and their chapels. And although one could sympathize with their determination to hang on to their privileges – just as one could sympathize with the workers who, by smashing the machines, were trying to hang on to theirs – one could not expect men like my grandfather, wedged uneasily between, to be content.

  Yet, on my afternoon drives with Elinor that spring, there were no outward signs of conflict, unless it was that I, not yet seventeen,
was too preoccupied with my approaching motherhood to notice it, and that Elinor had no time to spare for any miseries but her own.

  ‘I’ll be an old maid’ was the burden of her song that lilting April, as she sat beside; me in a cast-off dress she had transformed beyond recognition, my old tortoiseshell combs in her fine, fair hair. ‘Yes, I can see it coming. I’ll be an old maid and I won’t be good at it. Hannah, now, she won’t take it too badly, because she had Edwin and she can say her heart is in his grave – and, really, that sounds very fine. I wish I could say the same. But by the time your grandfather dies and Joel can afford to give me a portion, then I’ll be too old to care. Or Hannah won’t let me go.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ I told her, feeling her shiver and seeing, through her eyes, the image of Elinor Barforth, beautiful, enchanting, made for life and love, withering to waste. But she would not be consoled.

  ‘No,’ she insisted, her chin unusually resolute, her cloudy blue-green eyes swimming with her easy tears. ‘I’ll turn; sour – if I let it happen to me, and there are times when I think I’d do anything to get away. Yes, Verity – think of it – sitting with Hannah in that dark hole, day after day, pretending not to do the ironing – hating it – getting plain, getting old – while Emma-Jane Rawnsley squeezes herself into a wedding dress, for she’s as fat as a sow, and Lucy Hobhouse calls in her carriage to bring me a piece of her bride cake. No, I won’t have it, Verity. I’ll do something – get away somehow – I’ll fall in love with somebody unsuitable and run off with him, and even if they bring me back in disgrace, or he abandons me and I have to crawl back, at least I’ll have had something – I’ll be a fallen woman, and that’s better than being an old maid. And if I can’t do that, then I’ll marry beneath me, even if it means living in a cottage and doing the washing and not having a nursemaid. Even that – why not? – it’s what Rosamund Boulton means to do. Oh well, I daresay. I shouldn’t talk of her to you, and I daresay you won’t be interested to know, but she’s always thought well of herself, and when Joel cried off she thought there’d be plenty of others. And so there were, Master Matthew Oldroyd among them, but when it came to marriage her dowry’s not much better than mine and it wouldn’t do. So now she’s angling for a farmer out in Wensleydale, just an acre or two and a cow and no society. Dreadful – but before I’ll sit at Low Cross waiting to die with Hannah, I’ll do the same. You don’t understand, Verity. You’ve got Joel. You may not like him – in fact, I don’t always like him very much myself – but he’s a husband.’

  But by the time I took her back to Low Cross that day, her tears had dried, her china-doll face was composed again, and her manner was that of a carefree young lady entering her baronial hall. It was only as I waved her goodbye that I began to wonder why, for the last hour, I had felt so unwell.

  The sun was warm, certainly, for an April day, the road stony and the carriage badly sprung, but I was not one for vapours and it came as a surprise to me when, walking from the stables to the house – for we had no carriage drive – earth and sky rushed suddenly together, crushing me between them to a momentary blackness. And when the day returned, I was again surprised that the face peering anxiously into mine was not one I knew but one which I had seen before – thin, yellow-pale, and so sickeningly reminiscent of Jabez Gott that I almost fainted again.

  ‘Who are you?’ I gasped, but he did not feel his identity to be of much concern.

  ‘Agbrigg, ma’am,’ he said without explanation. ‘See, there’s your Marth-Ellen coming running. Here, lass, help your missus into the house and I’ll go fetch the master.’

  ‘No,’ I said desperately, assuming he meant my grandfather, the last person in the world I wanted by me now. ‘You’ll do no such thing.’

  But he was off, hurrying stoop-shouldered towards the mill, and I was relieved when, some time later, Joel appeared.

  ‘What ails you?’

  ‘What should ail me? I’m starting the baby, I suppose.’

  ‘Is it time?’

  ‘It could be. I’m not sure. Who was that man, the one who came to fetch you? He called you the master.’

  ‘Yes,’ Joel said, smiling. ‘He would. That’s Ira Agbrigg – a good lad. Your grandfather calls him Judas.’

  ‘And he calls you the master?’

  ‘So he does. A forward-thinking lad, Ira Agbrigg. Believes in the machine age, like I do, and he knows your grandfather don’t much like him. But he’s not after affection. He wants to rise in the world, and he’ll cling to my coattails so long as I’m going in the right direction – upwards. Verity, are you in pain?’

  ‘No,’ I said fiercely, refusing to be in pain, realizing now, when it was too late, that I did not want a baby after all, that I was too young, that I would not know what to do with a baby, that I was afraid of dying. ‘No, no, I’m not in pain. And if I am, then it’s not what you think, not what I said. I’ve eaten something, that’s all.’

  ‘I reckon I’ll send for the doctor, to be on the safe side, and your mother.’

  ‘If you want to give them the trouble of coming all this way for nothing, then you can suit yourself.’

  And as he turned to go and issue the necessary commands, I shrieked his name. ‘Joel!’

  ‘Yes. I’m here.’

  And he reached me, it seemed, in one stride, just as the pain which had been tiger-prowling somewhere at the small of my back struck out again in a knife thrust that almost forced me to my knees.

  ‘By God,’ he said, much alarmed, as strong men often are by these female processes. ‘Sit down. Here, let me help you to the rocking chair, and then wait, just wait, while I get somebody on the road to fetch the doctor.’

  But, clinging to him, tugging him back towards me, half laughing because I could see he feared I would give birth then and there and that for once in his life he would be helpless, and half crying because there was now no doubt that I would give birth sooner or later and was still unwilling, I said quickly, my tongue breaking loose from all restraint, ‘No, no, there’s no hurry. It goes on for hours – days. It goes on forever. Listen, do listen for once, my grandfather made me have this baby, and if it kills me don’t let it go to the Top House. Promise me. If I die take the baby to my mother, keep it away from him.’

  ‘You’ll not die,’ he said, the pugnacious set of his jaw warning me he would be furious – with me, with death itself – if I did. But having made up my mind to it, I was not easily dissuaded.

  ‘How do you know? Unless you think you’re God, like he does! Promise me.’

  ‘All right. You’ll not die because you’re a Barforth and you’ve got too much to live for, but I promise. Trust me.’

  ‘I don’t know that I do.’

  And putting his hand under my chin, not pinching it now in that smug, cousinly way of his but holding it steady, holding me steady, so that I could look at him, he answered, Now just you listen to me, Verity Barforth. He may be your grandfather and he may think he owns you – and that he owns me, too – but he’s an old man and I reckon we can let him keep his delusions. You’re my wife, Verity, and no one – understand me, no one – harms my wife, nor my child, nor anything else that belongs to me. Not so long as I’m alive, they don’t, and I’m good for a long while yet. Now, do you trust me?’

  And in this one case, if in no other, I did.

  ‘So it’s a bargain then,’ he said, holding me now very close with a firmness that reassured, a gentleness that surprised and calmed me. ‘Now will you let me fetch the doctor?’

  But, my hands wildly twisting together around his neck, I could riot let him go, and picking me up, he carried me into the hallway and up the stairs, calling out instructions as he went; and he lay me down, once again with that gentle firmness, on my bed.

  ‘Joel, don’t leave me. Don’t leave the house, especially when my grandfather comes. Don’t let him send you to the mill.’

  ‘He’ll send me nowhere, and if you don’t want him here he won’t come, I’ll see to it.’
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  And smiling at my shocked expression – for how could anyone, even Joel, refuse entry to my grandfather – he slid an arm beneath my shoulders, supporting me against his chest, and my labouring body took comfort in his lean, hard strength, my panic subsided. But when, after a brief respite, the pain struck again and I sank my face, gasping, into his shoulder, his arm tightened and his own face, when I could open my eyes to see, had turned pale. And when I said weakly, ‘Oh, Joel, I fear I am crumpling your jacket,’ both his arms came around me and he replied, ‘You may tear it to pieces if you will, if it eases you.’

  ‘I think I shall not do that.’

  ‘No, but, Verity, sweetheart, I didn’t know you felt like this about your grandfather. I thought you were …’

  ‘What? On his side, against you?’

  ‘Aye, that’s one way of putting it. It’s not so? You’ve no love for him, have you?’

  ‘Heavens, I’ve never thought of loving or not loving. I’m just afraid of him, that’s all.’

  ‘There’s no need for it. Verity, look at me. I can take care of you. And I don’t promise what I can’t perform. Only a fool does that and I’m nobody’s fool.’

  And taking me once more in his arms – his compassion astonishing me as greatly as his sensuality had done on our wedding night – he held me, rocked me, stroked my hair to give me comfort, and stroked the small of my back to ease my pain, guarding me from my fears and from my grandfather, until the doctor came.

  Chapter Eight

  My son was born the following day, arriving, when he finally made up his mind to it, without too much fuss, and, lying back among my pillows, luxuriating in my body’s release from bondage, I thought, I shall have peace now, and was, very soon, disappointed.

  ‘I imagine you will call him Edwin,’ Hannah said, stiff-lipped, her colour very high. ‘It would seem most appropriate – and I feel sure everyone expects it.’