The Clouded Hills

by Brenda Jagger

  Polling day dawned cold but dry and clear, greeted by the ringing of church bells and the clamour of the singing, – parading crowds who, since they could not vote, intended at least to enjoy themselves. And when the Old Swan and the Bee Hive had both been pelted with stones and filth by a grubby, cheeky gang of boys whose only political conviction was to do as much damage as they could, and all the bunting, blue and orange alike, had been torn down and made away with, the candidates themselves became fair game.

  A bombardment of eggs greeted Mr Morgan Aycliffe at his first appearance of the day, considerably, injuring his elf-esteem, although the same lads, having raided some-days hen run, dashed immediately across town to throw the remainder at Crispin and Captain Chase; while the third candidate, the colourless Mr Thirlwell, was, for a long while, prevented from setting out at all by a gang of Simon Street toughs who had invaded his lawn.

  But the result was never in doubt, and anyone with the most rudimentary knowledge of arithmetic could have worked it out.

  Mr Aycliffe and Mr Thirwell between them would share the votes of the manufacturing interest – the mill-masters themselves, their managers, the tradesmen and better-class shopkeepers who served their needs; while only the Coreys and the Corey-Mannings and a few shopkeepers situated in the Simon Street area, who wished to avoid trouble, would vote gentry. Dr Overdate, who attended gentry and manufacturers alike, would, of course, be in something-of a dilemma, while the town’s innkeepers were, in some cases, unreliable, having made promises, with professional geniality, in both directions. But, on the whole, there were no surprises, other than Mr Boulton, Rosamund’s father, who, against his own best interests, voted for Captain Chase, in protest perhaps at the party of the manufacturers, one of whom had seduced his daughter, while one or two others, torn between their private convictions and pressures from Simon Street or Lawcroft or Blenheim Lane, found it wiser to fall ill or be called out of town and not vote at all.

  And, waiting at home as a woman should, far more concerned for my old dog – Edwin’s yellow crossbred bitch – who had died early that day, than for the House of Commons and all who sat therein, I was not surprised – not even very interested – to learn that Morgan Aycliffe had topped the poll, Mr Thirlwell following discreetly behind, and Captain Chase, for all Crispin’s efforts, barely visible in the distance.

  Joel sent me a message to join him at the Aycliffes’, with a case of champagne – and Hannah – and we dined there, very late, very lavishly, but with little real enjoyment, for I was still grieving for my dog, and Mr Aycliffe himself was plainly weary, suffering perhaps from a depression of the nerves that often comes when some great object has been achieved.

  ‘What a triumph,’ Hannah told him on arrival. ‘And so richly deserved.’

  And for Hannah Mr Aycliffe’s thin lips did sketch a smile. But to the rest of us he was merely polite, having invited us only because the circumstances required it; because victories must be celebrated with due pomp; because, after all, he was a ‘public man’ now and knew his responsibilities. Yet, for all his attentions and courtesies it was all done so joylessly, the performance of an arduous duty rather than a pleasure, that it would have been better had it not been done at all.

  ‘Mrs Barforth, I believe this pate is to your liking, do take a little more. But, as always, I was so deeply aware of the staggering value of his china that the scrape of my knife on the exquisite Wedgwood plate seemed sacrilegious and I felt his own watchfulness and the careful hovering of his housekeeper, Mrs Naylor, so unnerving, that I had no appetite.’

  ‘I think we may consider the day fairly won,’ he told us, leaning back in his carved oak chair, his thin dry fingers caressing the stem of his glass in a way I found unpleasant, perhaps because I knew how rarely these days he caressed his wife. ‘Yes, a triumph for good sense. A victory. And, for me, a new beginning.’

  ‘You will excuse us, I am sure,’ Elinor said abruptly, having no mind, it seemed, to sit placidly by while he gloated over a beginning in which she did not play a part. ‘You may take as long as you like over your port.’

  And while Hannah slipped upstairs to count the children and interrogate their nurse, I went with Elinor to her too elegant drawing room to take coffee, appalled, as I always was, by the fragility of the cup.

  ‘Is Faith quite recovered from the fever?’ I asked, merely to start a conversation, and she answered listlessly, as she had been doing all day, half listening, uncaring.

  ‘Yes, I believe so.’

  ‘And you? You seem worn out.’

  ‘Yes, so I am. Quite worn out.’

  ‘From what?’

  ‘Oh – from doing – doing nothing, I suppose. And don’t you know that it is the hardest thing of all – doing nothing, all day, all night – passing the time. I find it a weary business, at any rate.

  And then, after a short but heavy silence, an uncomfortable thing, she said, I am not to go with him to London, you know. It is quite definite.’

  ‘Oh – I’m sorry, Elinor.’

  ‘Yes. I daresay. Mrs Naylor is to look after me and the glass and the china. Nurse is to look after the children. Mr Adair is to look after the business and see to the household bills – to tell me how much I may spend and what I may spend it on.’

  And, before I could think of anything which might console her, she hissed suddenly, quite viciously I am to have no money, Verity; no allowance. ‘I am to apply to Mrs Naylor for pin money, who will then apply to Mr Adair, since it is not proper for me to approach him direct. I am to sit here all day and listen to the clock ticking my life away. I am fit for nothing else, you see – not even for breeding. He is leaving me, Verity, don’t you see that? Oh, very politely and correctly, as he does everything, and in such a way that no one else will even notice. And, of, course, I shall have everything he thinks I require – and I shall certainly have the children, since he can’t wish to bother with them himself. But I am to be abandoned, Verity, just the same – cast off. Fat Emma-Jane can keep her husband, and mousy little Lucy Oldroyd, and you – but not me. And I was the pretty one, wasn’t I? The prettiest of you all? Isn’t that so, Verity – can you deny it?’

  ‘No – you were the pretty one, Elinor. You still are.’

  ‘I hate him – hate him. Do you know that?’ she whispered, shuddering with the violence of her emotion, and, jumping to her feet, she picked up a tiny porcelain shepherdess, not unlike herself, and dashed it wildly against the fender. And then, as the delicately painted face and the frilly, lace-edged porcelain body disintegrated, I saw my vivacious, impossible, lovable cousin Elinor crumble with it.

  ‘Oh dear God,’ she said. ‘Dear God – dear God –’ And watching her trembling with fright, cowering away from the consequences of her action – knowing she would not be pardoned – I remembered her as she had been on the nighty seven years ago, when she first came here to dine, dancing and swishing her skirts around this same room, not caring a fig for Mr Aycliffe and his porcelain, while Hannah and I had trembled. And I was saddened beyond belief.

  ‘I heard their feet crossing the hall – her husband’s and mine – and, swiftly gathering up the pieces, I went hurrying – to meet them.’

  ‘Oh, Mr Aycliffe, I do not know how you will ever forgive me, for I have done a dreadful thing—’

  ‘Surely not, Mrs Barforth.’

  ‘Oh, I do fear so.’

  And I held out to him the evidence of Elinor’s crime.

  ‘It is not usual for me to be so clumsy, but I caught it with my skirt as I was passing. Oh dear, naturally I will replace it—’

  ‘Such generosity,’ he said, his voice empty of all expression, ‘is quite beyond you, ma’am. It cannot be replaced. Please think no more about it.’

  And although that was all he said, I knew that I had been accused of a heinous offence, judged and condemned, and that if he lived to be a hundred he would never find it in his heart to forgive me.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

 
; There was no doubt that Joel was getting richer, a fact which could not hope to find favour with everyone, and when his purchase of Tarn Edge became common, knowledge and speculation arose regarding his plans for, the splendid ten-acre slope of Tarn Rise, Emma-Jane Hobhouse chose to settle the matter by calling to enquire.

  ‘I hear you’re building a new house, Verity?’

  ‘Yes – so it seems.’

  ‘And what about this one? Is it to be sold?’

  ‘I really couldn’t tell you.’

  ‘No? Well, it reached my ears that Joel was thinking of making it over to Hannah as a wedding gift, which I can only put down to foolish gossip since everybody knows a house of this size to be quite beyond Mr Ashley’s means. No, no, I said, when I heard it, if Hannah Barforth chooses to marry a parson, then it follows that she wants to live in a parsonage – doesn’t it stand to reason?’

  But Hannah, as my mother had foreseen, was in, no hurry to marry at all and replied to Joel’s, cutting enquiries as to time and place, and her exact plans for Mr Ashley’s hundred pounds a year, with a simple ‘When I’m ready brother.’

  Mr Brand had gone out of her life now in a considerable huff, but Mr Morgan Aycliffe, following his departure for London, communicated with her far more frequently than with his wife, and to compensate her for the loss, of Ramsden Street she now had the Agbriggs, parents and children, whose affairs required a great deal of attention.

  Ann Agbrigg had not recovered her health. She was simply there, a presence in a chair by the window, giving no trouble, eating what was set before her, managing, with some help from her daughter, to keep herself clean and tidy, but no more than that, a shadow who could neither appreciate her husband’s success nor understand the sorrow she caused him.

  ‘Poor man,’ Hannah said, fairly often, clearly puzzled by his attitude. It is quite, pathetic to see them together. People think of Mr Agbrigg as such a hard man and yet, before his wife, he reminds me of nothing so much as a hopeful dog with a bone. And when he lays it at her feet and she doesn’t even notice I do believe he hides in a corner and cries his eyes out. Poor little woman, I see no possibility of a change, but they are so glad of my visits that I can hardly fail them, and left to themselves they have no idea how to carry on. They are doing their parlour in a lighter shade – did I tell you? My suggestion, of course, since they think of nothing for themselves, and I always did find those dark browns and greens altogether depressing and often wondered what my mother was about to select them in the first place. And Maria is to go to Mrs Turnbull for lessons. Mr Agbrigg had placed her with a most unsuitable woman, some person advertising herself as a teacher of deportment and needle work and French and who had no samples of her own work to show me when I called, and failed to pronounce one word of a foreign language in my hearing. You see how gullible he is? Mr Agbrigg had taken her for a lady and dared not question her word. Well, I questioned it, and now Maria is with Mrs Turnbull, an old acquaintance of mine, who keeps an excellent establishment. Not a brilliant child, of course, Maria; a little mouse, which is what one would expect. The boy, Jonas, however, is really very quick and doing very well at the grammar school. I had a word with Mr Blamires, his headmaster, the other day, and he is really quite impressed with young Jonas – which is rather more than he could say for Blaize, who seems to have divided his time there so far between sulking and fighting.’

  ‘He has only been there a little while, Hannah.’

  ‘Yes, and I imagine Mr Blamires is well aware of it, although in view of Joel’s position in the town, and his generosity, he would not say so. I am very fond of Blaize, as you must know, but he can be very high-handed at times, and I almost wonder if you have been too tenderhearted, and my brother too busy, to check him as you should. And Nicholas, I believe, is just the same. I wondered, too, Verity, now that the boys are at school should you not give some thought to Caroline? Mrs Paget is all very well when it comes to washing and dressing and doing up her ringlets, but in matters of education – and discipline – I find her a trifle lax. Caroline should now be embarking on some regular course of study, and my friend Mrs Turnbull could help you there. She is constantly receiving applications from suitably skilled ladies, many of whom are willing to enter private employment, and Elinor has taken on a Miss May berry, with whom we are all well satisfied. Do think it over, Verity. Caroline may have a great position waiting for her in the future, and you would not forgive yourself if you failed to prepare her for it. Have a look at Miss Mayberry when you are next at Elinor’s and hear what Elinor has to say for her.’

  But Elinor, when applied to, had little interest in governesses or anything else.

  ‘Miss Mayberry? Oh, she’s well enough. She lives upstairs with the children and brings them down, now and then, at teatime to wish me a good afternoon in French. And when I decide to take them for a drive she comes, too, because Mrs Naylor wouldn’t trust me alone, I suppose – and occasionally she lets Prudence in here just before dinner and makes the poor child pick out a tune on the piano. It’s supposed to be a treat, although I don’t quite know who is being treated since it turns the child chalk-white and makes her sick afterwards, and I confess I don’t enjoy it. But, naturally, they know best – Miss Mayberry and Nurse and Hannah—’

  ‘If you think it makes Prudence ill, why don’t you forbid it?’

  ‘Oh, my dear,’ she said, making a languid, rueful gesture. ‘Do you know, one evening I quite made up my mind to do just that – I almost did it. But then – well – the fuss and the ill temper and Hannah being sent for next morning to tell me I’m failing in my duty – and convincing me, as she usually does. And then having to apologize to Miss Mayberry and having her running around me for a week or two asking my permission for every little thing, because I’m sure she doesn’t want to lose her place. No, no, in the end it seemed best just to look away and think about something else, and then applaud prettily and say, “Well done, Prudence. Well done, Miss Mayberry.” Much better – and, of course, there is one consolation, because Mrs Naylor cannot bear to see the children in the drawing room – she hovers, my dear, in absolute agony, even now when there’s nothing much left for them to break. What she’d really like it is to put the whole room under dust covers, but since my husband did leave the furniture I assume he meant me to sit on it – and sometimes I think I actually prefer the room this way.’

  Although I had been deeply shocked at first to see the drawing room denuded of its treasures, Mr Aycliffe having taken his favourite pieces to London with him and placed the rest in the safe custody of the attic, I had to admit that I was more comfortable now, more inclined to linger. The polished, inlaid tables carried nothing more awe-inspiring these days than dried flowers under glass, a china milkmaid and ploughman, an apple women, rosy, rustic children and an assortment of dogs and lambs and bright yellow-chicks, the purchases of Morgan Aycliffe’s earlier years, long since outgrown but which Elinor, discovering them packed away in an old tea chest, had arranged to suit her own uncritical eye. And, on her good days, when Emma-Jane Hobhouse came to tea and compared her own, rapidly expanding waist with Elinor’s girlish nineteen inches, or Daniel Adair, her husband’s manager, remembering her husband’s age and how attractive she would be as a widow, almost turned himself inside out to impress her, then Elinor was at ease in her drawing room mistress, at last, of her surroundings.

  But not all her days were good and far too many afternoons I would find her prostrate on her couch, not knowing what ailed her except that she was weary – wear – Weary to death and without care as to when it came.

  ‘The trouble is,’ Hannah said, ‘that she will not stir herself. She could be busy now with, her husband’s affairs. Someone must go about the constituency and assess its mood so that he may be informed as to what people saying and thinking. And since Elinor cannot, or will not then I feel obliged to undertake the task myself. Oh yes if know it is not my place and may give rise to gossip, but if Mr Aycliffe should ever lose his seat f
or lack of information which Elinor could have supplied, it would not go well with her. And while I do not wish to see her in distress; do feel that a man in public life should be able to rely on the support of his close relations, and that Mr Aycliffe has been most unfortunate in that respect.’

  Unfortunate indeed, but Elinor, surviving every one of Hannah’s lectures, continued to fluctuate between a lethargy so stifling that she could barely trouble to raise her hand and periods of intense activity when she would have; herself driven furiously around town, inviting everyone she met to tea, and spending her husband’s money as fast his manager, Mr Adair, would allow.

  ‘I do not need another evening gown,’ she would say to Rosamund Boulton, ‘but since I am here, I may as well have a look – and yes, you may make me up that sky-blue satin, and the black one, Rosamund dear, while you are about it, for it will make a perfect foil to my husband’s first wife’s pearls. No, no, there is no need to take my measurements. My waist is still nineteen inches, which Emma-Jane considers scandalous at my age, for I am almost twenty-five and should rightly look like an old crow by now. Well one day I shall turn thirty, I suppose – like you, Rosamund – but in the meantime have you nothing to age me? For when I go to London, someone may mistake me for my husband’s daughter, and we cannot risk that. But never mind, for we can always send my sister Hannah in my place.’

  But such outbursts were often followed by a sick melancholy that I could not dismiss, like Hannah, as mere childishness.

  ‘Leave her to wallow,’ Hannah advised, ‘which is what I mean to do, for if I stay I shall box her ears.’

  But solitary brooding, in my view, was not the medicine she required, and one summer night she kept me talking I very late in Blenheim Lane, holding my hand and chatting, not of her present sorrows, but of our shared childhood, so that travelling home in the warm dark I was heavy and sentimental with a past that had always contained Joel.