The Clouded Hills

by Brenda Jagger

  And although I knew she meant for me to run along until teatime, when she would bring them all brushed and starched for my inspection, I had it in me that day to remind her that they were, after all, my children and sent her away.

  I took Caroline on my knee, sitting in the nursery rocker as I used to do in the cosier days before Mrs Paget came and, holding her hot, tousled little head against my cheek, murmured wordlessly to her, letting her delay me, crumple my dress, disarrange me, so that I would set out too late for temptation or would not go at all. And when Nicholas, still furious about his cat, planted himself before me and said accusingly, ‘Why are you talking secrets to her?’ I pulled him against me and whispered nonsense into his ear, combing his dark curls with my fingers.

  The boys were both at school now, and although Blaize, sitting cross-legged and mischievous on the window seat, would have remained there all day in delicious idleness, Nicholas had always been aware of the passing of time, like any true Barforth, and was soon restlessly tossing his head beneath my hand, unwilling to, be late.

  ‘The carriage will be waiting,’ he said, conscious, it seemed, even in childhood of the cost of carriage horses and aware that it did them no good to stand fretting in the heat any longer than they had to.

  ‘Let it wait,’ Blaize answered him. ‘It’s our carriage.’

  And, to Blaize, it was our school too, since it had not taken him long to discover that the grammar school very largely owed its existence – and the headmaster, Mr Blamires, his career – to the donations it pleased Joel and Bradley Hobhouse and Matthew Oldroyd to give. And that being the case, he had no more fear of the redoubtable Mr Blamires than he had of my maid Marth-Ellen.

  I had taken them both, three months ago, to present them to Mr Blamires, with Blaize unashamedly holding my hand and Nicholas walking resolutely alone. As Joel’s wife, I had been treated with immense courtesy and had listened with equal courtesy to the man who had once given Joel the smattering of Greek and Latin he had never used again, and promised to do the same for his sons, who also would have small use for it. But young gentlemen must, at least once in their lives, translate a sentence or two of Virgil, a line of Plato, and so they now set off every morning, making the journey by carriage that Joel had made on foot, the immediate difference between them being that whereas neither had any aptitude for the classics, Nicholas cared more than he need have done, and Blaize cared not a scrap.

  ‘What’s the good of it?’ was Blaize’s opinion, tossing his books carelessly into a corner. But failure of any kind having a bitter taste to Nicholas, I opened his books myself, struggling one lesson ahead of him, finding sometimes that Blaize, leaning carelessly against my shoulder, would with a flash of brilliance he never troubled to: sustain, breathe life into those dead sounds, laugh with delighted surprise at his own cleverness, and stroll away.

  I would have kept them at home that morning after the dance. I would have been glad to notice a rash, to hear a cough; would have been glad of any excuse at all to tuck them up in bed and imprison myself in watching over them. But Nicholas was soon straining at my leash; even Blaize showed a perverse willingness to comb his hair, straighten his collar, race Nicholas for the best place in the carriage. And when they had driven off, and Caroline had curled up and fallen peacefully asleep – no longer needing me, either – I found the dogs waiting, puzzled and hopeful, on the driveway, and was most painfully aware that it was still but a quarter past eight o’clock.

  There was, as Crispin had said, a mist on the top pathway. It swallowed the dogs as they ran ahead of me; so that I was constantly obliged to call them back. And I was startled by each sudden appearance of their wet, dark gold shapes, by every shift of air and cloud that could but did not reveal Crispin Aycliffe coming towards me. He would not, of course, be there. I did not expect him; I had embarked on this long, uncomfortable expedition simply to prove the lightness of his intentions. Yet when I reached the ridge, panting a little from the roughness of the ground, and saw him leaning against the pile of rocks known as Old Sarah, the ill temper in his face, his mouth as tight-drawn, almost, as his father’s, startled me and made me angry, too.

  ‘Good morning,’ I threw at him through the grey cowl of rain-decked air. ‘Not that it’s good, and not that you seem overjoyed to see me.’

  ‘No,’ he said, getting up, his face still set and closed. ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t come – sure you wouldn’t come. It would have been far easier.’

  And, as he came towards me, the dogs, catching my temper, converted it to danger, so that the old bitch bristled, baring her teeth, and the young one, not designed for heroics, cowered behind me, stretching her neck, and began to howl.

  ‘You’d best make them behave,’ he said, smiling at last, and when it was done and they had gone running ahead to sniff the puddles and taste the morning, he told me, still quite roughly, ‘Hoping you wouldn’t come has nothing to do with wanting – you do see that, don’t you? I’ve been up here a long time, waiting, long before there was any hope of seeing you, because there seemed no point in being anywhere else. And I think I may have gone on sitting here all day if you hadn’t come, cursing you and being grateful at the same time. Can you understand that? I don’t even know you very well, Verity, yet I can’t see beyond you. You block my way to other things that are well within my reach. And I have to resolve it now, one way or another, since you are here and I don’t believe you would have come lightly.’

  ‘No, not lightly, although I don’t know just why came at all. And now I think I had better go away again.’

  ‘Better?’ he said. ‘Yes – much better, not that you will – not that I’d allow it. These things don’t happen so tidily.’

  And, catching my wrist, he spoke my name sharply and pulled me into his arms.

  ‘Don’t,’ I said, just as sharply, awkward now and bitter, because this was only what any other man would do, seizing his opportunities, and if this feeling – this hope – should curdle and turn sour it would leave me with nothing I cared to remember. And when he would not obey, the mist got into my mind, coiling itself around my precious, common sense, so that I heard myself cry out, ‘Stop it. Not this way. Don’t take me – that’s what Joel does. Can’t you let me give something, freely, for a change?’

  ‘Verity,’ he said, his voice shaking. ‘Oh my darling – absolutely – when?’ And the enormity of what we had both, said affected my nerves so strangely that I laughed, and, after startled moment, he laughed too.

  ‘Before you tell me when,’ he said, ruefully but easily, now, his arm almost companionably around my shoulders, ‘perhaps we should consider where, for we can give nothing to each other in this high wind. And I do not suppose you would come to my lodgings, would you?’

  ‘You know that I would not – not now, at any rate. Perhaps never. Crispin, what are we saying to each other? What are you asking me to do? And why am I even listening to it?’

  We had come back to the rocks again, instinctively seeking shelter from the wind and, as we leaned together against the stone, he took my hand, kissed it, and then slid both arms around me, holding me gently and lightly as my body knew it had always wanted to be held.

  ‘Verity – my Verity – I am as scared of this as you are. I have all my life wanted one deep, intense relationship, one total commitment – and it shouldn’t be with you, my darling – certainly it should not. Yet everything brings me back to you. And it is no easier for me, no simpler, than it is for you. No man in his right mind would choose to love a woman who is not free.’

  ‘If you love me.’

  ‘If? Yes, perhaps you are right to doubt it. And that is what we have to discover, surely – for if all I am to you is an adventure, and all I really feel for you is desire, then we shall soon know it. And don’t frown at me and wrinkle your nose when I mention desire, for I am not ashamed of it – no – and you should feel no shame, either. It is not the whole of love, but love wouldn’t be entire without it, Verity, and I
don’t mean to conceal my desire for you.’

  ‘Perhaps we should pray that that is all it is, then – just desire.’

  ‘I daresay. But don’t speak of it so contemptuously – just desire; don’t underestimate it. And don’t worry about it, either. Don’t be alarmed, for I am not asking you to I desire me – not until you want to, until you can. I won’t hurry you. I have harmed you enough by bringing you this far. Believe me, I know very well that I should have gone away months ago, without speaking to you; that even now I should leave you in peace – shouldn’t I?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I told him, combing his fine, flyaway hair back from his forehead with my fingers, my body utterly content with him, dangerously at ease. ‘Of course you should leave me in peace, just as I should refuse to see you again. We both know what we should do, there is no difficulty about that. And what puzzles me most is why I am no longer terrified.’

  ‘Are you not?’

  ‘No – at least, I think I would be if I could really believe it. It all seems so unreal that it doesn’t trouble me – not yet. Crispin, I don’t know what time it is. I simply feel it is time for me to go.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Will you kiss me goodbye?’

  ‘Oh no – much better not.’

  But, face to face in the shelter of the rock, the mist torn apart now by shreds of sunlight, I put my hand carefully on his cheek and my mouth carefully, carefully, on his, as one would kiss a sleeping child, lingering to retain the odour and texture of him in my mind, to carry his lightness, the cool delicacy of him home with me to cherish, to sustain me, in case I should never see him again.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, very quietly, and as I called my dogs and walked away from him over the roughly springing grass, I was happy – blindly, rapturously happy as children are in the blissful days before they learn of consequences and folly, of guilt and retribution, when it is enough to hold a single, perfect hour in the hand and call it good. I was happy and alive, the blaze of my joy, the sheer richness of its transforming me into the Barforth I had never really, been, as powerful as my grandfather – as powerful as Joel – until the shadow of his house fell over me again and drew me in.

  ‘My dear, you are wet through,’ Mrs Stevens called from the gate. Do hurry, for it is about to rain again – and Mr Hobhouse has called to announce his new son, although, we knew it already, and Sir Giles Flood has sent roses, a mass of them, which I have put in the hall with the card well displayed. An excellent card, perfectly plain – a gentleman’s card, which ‘Mrs Hobhouse would be delighted to have on her mantelpiece – and Mrs Aycliffe too, I shouldn’t wonder. No, he has not sent flowers to either of them, for I enquired most particularly of his – coachman. Do hurry, dear, and take off those wet shoes, for there has been such a set-to upstairs. The governess came to ask me for a drop of brandy since Caroline has had toothache again, and Miss Hannah happened to be nearby – and Miss Hannah has strong views against giving spirits to children, as you know, and has never been shy of expressing them. And Mrs Paget is simply not a woman who can be spoken to in quite that way. You had best see her at once for I am sure she means to pack her bags, and Mrs Hobhouse would take her gladly, you know, now that she has six children to look after, and her Mary-Jane has got so old.’

  For a moment, her words flowed through my mind without meaning; they were addressed to another person, at some other level of understanding, and not to me.

  Mrs Paget, who had no intention of leaving, allowed me to persuade her to stay, largely, she implied, because she knew I could never manage my unruly children without her. Hannah, by no means pleased with me and my haphazard domestic arrangements – even though she herself had recommended Mrs Paget to me in the first place – took herself off on Assembly Rooms business, church business, her charity basket on her arm; and when I had admired my roses, and spent an hour consoling my daughter and separating my warring sons, when I had eaten my luncheon, I drove over to Emma-Jane’s to pay my compliments and deliver an embroidered shawl and lace cap for her child.

  I had not expected to be shown upstairs, but Emma-Jane, six times a mother now and with a peasant resilience she saw no reason to conceal, was not averse to company, and although her nurse, intent on dramatizing the occasion, whispered to me, ‘No more than a few moments, ma’am, if you please. I dare allow no more than that.’ I found Emma-Jane sitting up in bed surrounded by pillows and plum cake and all the clutter of a hearty teatime.

  ‘Well, and so I have done it again,’ she told me, her mouth full of fruit and spice and brown sugar. ‘Another boy – nothing but the best for my Bradley. And look at him, not a day old yet and strong as a little bull already. He’s the image of my brother, Ben, which won’t suit my mother-in-law, although if he was fair and blue-eyed and skinny she’d still insist he looks like Bradley. That was the first thing she said this morning, after he was born. Not “Is he well?” or “Are you well, Emma-Jane?” but “Oh, my word – he’s my little Bradley all over again.” Well, her little Bradley stands six feet tall and weighs upwards of sixteen stone, so I’m bound to think her cross-eyed. But do have a slice of cake, Verity, or a macaroon – yes, I know I’m not eating for two anymore, but what else is there for me to do, sitting here in bed for the next three weeks, for Nurse won’t let me set a foot to the floor until then. I can’t help it if I don’t feel frail when I ought to. I’ll be as fat as a pig when I do get up, but that doesn’t matter, does it, after you’re married. Nobody expects a mother of six children to have a shape, after all. But he’s a bonny baby, isn’t he? And, do you know, Verity, lying here with nothing to do but think about it, I really believe I’d like a girl next time.’

  Next time, I thought, looking into the cradle at the scowling little face and inhaling the milky, powdery odour of the newborn. And remembering my own miscarriage, only a month ago, I was possessed suddenly by a great, surge of panic, a total dread of being pregnant again, a refusal to accept – as Emma-Jane seemed happy to do that this was my sole purpose, that I had no choice.

  ‘He’s beautiful,’ I said, knowing I had not said enough, but the cooing and gurgling Emma-Jane thought proper, to the occasion – and which she herself had lavished most generously on my own children – was beyond me that day, and it was a blessed relief when Nurse came, full of her own importance, to shoo me away.

  Mrs Stevens had accompanied me, having some business to transact with Emma-Jane’s housekeeper, and while I waited for her in my open carriage, watching the slant of the August sun on the dark, square house, the dark-leaved, shrubbery around it, thick hedges and bushes relieved only sparsely by a dull purple, an uncertain yellow, Bradley himself – who should have been at the mill – came to join me.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, answering my congratulations, ‘six boys – six workers and not a dowry to find. You’d best watch-out, the rest of you, for the town will be alive with, Hobhouses ere long, and if they’re like me and have six apiece, then it’s a dynasty I’m founding.’

  But his smug, entirely natural satisfaction in his own, virility went no deeper than a layer or two of skin, a roll or, two of the fat which his massive frame could still carry with dignity; and as Mrs Stevens came hurrying across the carriage drive – making a great show of not wishing to keep me waiting, although, truth to tell, it did not worry her at all – he leaned towards me and said hurriedly, much too casually, ‘I hear Joel has made an offer for Sam Carter’s mill at Tarn Edge.’

  ‘Oh – I don’t know, Bradley. He may have done.’

  ‘Yes, and a mighty big offer at that, since Sam Carter never gave anything away.’

  ‘I imagine so.’

  ‘And I expect Joel will throw all the handloom? out and put power in – not that I blame him for that, although it means more men out of work and I can’t take them. I doubt if Matthew Oldroyd can take them, either. I hear tell Joel wants the Carter place for some new lustre cloth – something to suit the fine ladies who have too much money to spend – and that sounds like Joel, eh? Wo
n’t say a word about it himself, but they’re saying plenty at the Piece Hall and the Old Swan – they even say he’s to start building again.’

  ‘I really don’t know, Bradley.’

  ‘My word, I should say not – and if you did you wouldn’t tell me, of course you wouldn’t. He once blacked my eye, Joel, when we were youngsters, you know. I knocked his coat off a peg when we were at the grammar school, fooling about, as lads do, and kicked it around the floor a bit, never thinking it was the only one he had. And he damn near killed me. Your brother Edwin tried to separate us, and damn me if he didn’t go for Edwin as well – took the pair of us on and smashed us both into the ground – not because he was bigger than us, or tougher – it couldn’t have been that – so I reckon it was because he was angrier. It wasn’t a lark to him, like it was to us; he didn’t care how much we hurt him so long as he could hurt us back – and, by God, he hurt us. Headmaster gave him a fair flogging afterwards – reckon he couldn’t sit down for a month – but nobody ever touched his coat again, I can tell you. And now I reckon he’ll have more coats than any man in the Law Valley, although he’s short on sons, Verity – and that won’t do, my lass. A man in his position, with all those mills to run, needs sons, so you’d best put your mind to it girl.’

  And planting a kiss on my cheek, managing, as he always did, to disarrange my bonnet, he helped Mrs Stevens up beside me and stood on the carriage drive – a man who had never really been angry, never been hungry – waving, smiling, until we were far away.

  I was not inclined to return home, and so we drove, inevitably, to town, down Blenheim Lane, past Colonel Corey’s handsome, mellow home, and the Fleece Inn across the way, where he still sat as a magistrate, for lack of more dignified accommodation, to the dread of poachers and debtors and fathers of bastard children for many miles around. There was no need to hurry past the Aycliffe house, since Elinor would still be in bed, but I was glad to see her curtains drawn just the same. I was relieved when the good houses petered out, giving place to the bad, which, in turn, brought us to Kirkgate and Millergate, a smart new shop with Rosamund Boulton’s exhausted face in the window, the Piece Hall and the Old Swan, enjoying its last spurt of glory now as a coaching inn, since the railway was coming every year a little nearer, Morgan Aycliffe having already chosen a site and set about evicting the inhabitants to make room for a station and, eventually, a station hotel.