The Clouded Hills

by Brenda Jagger

  Yet where was Joel tonight? A mile away, perhaps, or two, but no closer to me than Morgan Aycliffe to Elinor. And was my life, as a woman, less empty than hers? Admittedly, Joel had not physically abandoned me. He was here, in my daily life, in my bed more often than not, and it did not wound me if, when he took me in his arms, she thought of the aristocratic Estella Chase or some other chance-met adventuress, since I invariably thought of Crispin. But, for all my good sense and my desire for peace, for all his talk of our shared interests, could it really suffice? And, knowing that it could not, I prayed suddenly, quite fervently, that I could be like Emma-Jane Hobhouse, engrossed with her own fertility and the tittle-tattle of everyday life, a woman at peace in this man-made world.

  Was I, in fact, the freak of nature, Emma-Jane the norm? And if she were the breed of woman society required, should I not try to resemble her, to cover my body and my mind in layers of her complaisant, contented fat so that I too could doze in the afternoons with my mouth open, and argue for weeks about what constituted a perfectly baked apple tart? Or should I admit that, in a world where

  Emma-Jane personified success, I was doomed to failure and, having come to terms with that, should I withdraw, I like my mother, and watch that unbalanced world pass by? Pondering these questions, I was not immediately aware of the tumult in the streets.

  Polling day now was six months past, but Cullingford, having enjoyed its first taste of political upheaval, was not unwilling for more, especially since the December electorate had not favoured the cause of the factory children. Crispin Aycliffe’s policies had been soundly defeated in – Cullingford; a Mr George Banks, a convinced Ten Hours man, had fared no better in Bradford. Richard Oastler, the Factory King himself, had been rejected by Huddersfield, while Mr Michael Sadler had failed to secure reelection at Leeds, leaving the Ten Hours Movement without a voice at Westminster. And that – or so Bradley Hobhouse and some others declared – was the end of that; or should have been, until battling Parson Bull of Bierley if made the journey to London and persuaded the intense; deeply religious Lord Ashley to take up the Ten Hours cause. Lord Ashley had never seen a factory child or been aware, at any conscious level, that such abuse existed, but the Reverend George Stringer Bull had found no difficulty in persuading him to reintroduce Sadler’s Bill to the House.

  ‘Damnable interference,’ Bradley Hobhouse had muttered. ‘And what does this Lord Ashley know about my weaving sheds? Do I go and tell him when to plant his corn, or whatever he does on his estates? Ten hours, indeed. It takes me ten hours to cover my overheads, and I need five more, at least, after that, to show a profit. And if I lose, they all lose.’

  But Joel merely shrugged and replied, ‘We’ll not lose. We’ve got honourable members and our own, now, haven’t we, at Westminster, and what did we elect them for but this? So let Morgan Aycliffe and the rest of them earn their keep or when they pass the begging bowl round again they’ll get nothing from me.’

  And so it was, for although the Ten Hours Bill was given a first reading, the newly elected industrial members knew what was expected of them and, drawing solidly together, had little difficulty in convincing the House that Sadler’s committee, however moving and horrendous, had been too one-sided to justify legislation. Evidence had been heard from mill hands and midwives, parsons and idealistic land agents, from victims and their sympathizers, but the manufacturers themselves had not been allowed to state their case. And once again it was thought better to delay, to gather more facts, to appoint a Royal Commission this time instead of a mere Select Committee like Sadler’s, which, instead of shipping cartloads of wrecked humanity to London, would come North, to interview masters and men in their native surroundings and see for itself.

  These commissioners, as it turned out, were gentlemen of the very highest integrity, but in that summer of 1833, to the mass of workpeople, who had learned to expect very little from gentlemen – honourable or no – they seemed no more than the tools of a government willing to play the masters’ game. And when Richard Oastler, still smarting from his defeat at Huddersfield, thundered out his warning it that the commissioners were coming to cheat the people, not aid them, the simmering brew of discontent came once more to the boil.

  For months past, ever since it was known that the commissioners would be coming, the air had somehow slightened, and I had grown so conscious of eyes peering at me suddenly from beneath a shawl, shooting me quick glances from the shading angle of a cloth cap, watching, speculating, that for the first time I began to share Emma-Jane’s fears of intruders in the night, of shadows that became strangling hands, raping hands, and I dreamed again, often, of that gaping hole in my father’s chest and of pay brother’s dead face.

  The Hobhouse mill, I knew, was watched night and day by silent relays of Ten Hours men, determined that Bradley should make no attempt to clean up his sheds or install decent privies before the commissioners came; and Tarn Edge, where building was taking place, had been singled out, not openly like Nethercoats, since Joel was a harder; trickier man than Bradley, yet so thoroughly that I could no longer visit it without that nightmare sensation of eyes in my back, of someone pale and twisted with little to hope for and little to lose watching me just beyond the edge of my sight.

  And when the commissioners arrived they were met by bitter crowds who harassed and hustled them, and by Oastler’s partisans, the hard-faced Ten Hours men, who followed them from town to town on horseback, a grim escort they found impossible to shake away. There were, mass meetings and processions. In Bradford so many-threats were made against them that Mr John Wood had felt obliged to refuse them entry to his mill since he could not guarantee their safety. And, returning from Elinor’s that summer night, brooding on my personal demons, had forgotten that the enemy, as they were called, had reached Cullingford and that Joel, even now, was in consultation with them – over dinner, one supposed – at the Old Swan.

  Naturally, in this atmosphere of suspicion and hostility, it had been impossible to entertain them at home, to the chagrin of Mrs Stevens, who, like Joel, had great faith in the effects of well-seasoned sauces, well-chosen wines and cigars; and so, in his superbly cut evening clothes, a heavy gold ring on either hand, a pearl in his necktie, a gold – topped ebony cane, and a black silk hat, Joel had gone down to the Old Swan to assure the honourable gentlemen that, unlike Mr Wood, he was able to offer them his protection in Cullingford, no matter where they wished to go. And I cannot imagine they doubted him.

  But now, abruptly, I was aware not only of disturbance around me, to which I was no stranger, but of wood smoke pricking my eyelids, reminding me, in my reverie, of bonfires, Guy Fawkes and November, until, with a start, I woke up to an airless, over-warm July.

  ‘What is it, Thomas?’ I called out.

  Busy with the restless horses, who were no fonder of wood smoke than I, my coachman, who had served my grandfather and still thought of me as a chit of a girl to whom not much respect was due, merely grunted, as if I should have seen for myself. ‘Trouble. And there’ll be more unless I turn these brutes around.’

  But Blenheim Lane was not only very long but very narrow, the trees in full summer leaf joining hands in places overhead, and, having passed the Fleece, whose yard would have given us a turning space, there was nothing to do, in the growing crowd, but continue forward.

  I heard Thomas curse as the horses – which he had always thought too high-bred and fancy for a carriage, too much of Joel Barforth and not enough of Samson – became fractious at the scent of fire; and, as I leaned out again, he shouted, as my grandfather would have done, ‘Get in with you, lass. You don’t want them to recognize your-face tonight.’ And, whipping, cursing, furious at being saddled with the responsibility of his master’s wife when he didn’t much care for the master and it was my own fault anyway for gadding about at night instead of staying at home as a decent woman should, he set off again as best he could.

  ‘I had no hat, no cloak, just a knot of ribbon in my hai
r and a light summer shawl, a gauzy complement to a dress which seemed suddenly too bright, a clean fresh lemon that could not hide in a corner, which could identify me: That’s Joel Barforth’s wife. Stop the bitch.’ And because I knew it could happen – that they could drag me about the streets by the hair, abuse and defile me – because my father’s life had bled away through that hole in his chest and they had impaled my brother on a kitchen knife six inches long, I was afraid.

  Kirkgate and Millergate, as we lumbered down their steep, cobbled sides, were a mess of abandoned carriages and broken shop fronts, littered with stray dogs and cats and stray children gorging themselves on the scattered pickings of Mr Wilmot’s grocery, Miss Timmins’s bakery, the Fearnley sisters’ tea and coffee shop, places I knew and could barely recognize now in the tumultuous dark And, at the bottom of Millergate, where it joined Market Square, we were forced to halt.

  They had built a bonfire in the Old Swan yard, a huge smoking pile beneath the windows of the supper room where the commissioners, and Joel, had gone to dine. As a great tongue of flame leaped suddenly into the air, I heard them shouting Joel’s name and saw him appear at the window, open it, and, with the cool arrogance that, made him so detested and so feared, lean against the window frame with the nonchalance of a spectator at a show.

  I saw the firelight pick out the gold buttons on his waistcoat, the flash of those white teeth against his face as he made some remark to the men in the besieged room with him; I saw faces looming out of the crowd, leering, grinning, hating, unreasoning, beyond any appeals I could make to them, functioning now not as men and women who could know pity and good sense – although they would know it again tomorrow when it could be too late for us all – but as part of a crowd that could kill and maim with no more responsibility than a raindrop must feel for the devastation of a storm. In the morning it would not be their fault. In the morning someone else would have thrown the stone, wielded the knife, tossed that burning piece of wood through the Swan door. In the morning some of them would not even remember what it had all been about in the first place, while others, remembering would be sorry or ashamed; and others still, feeling thats not enough had been achieved, would be ready to starts again. But now, with the calm that extreme fear sometimes brings, I recognized that I was trapped and that, since I could not rely on Thomas and could not reach Joel, I would have to save myself. And as the crowd parted to let a solid wedge of Ten Hours men come through, I clasped my hands and held my breath, like a child who, by closing his eyes, hopes he will not be seen.

  I did not at first recognize what they were carrying on their shoulders, there in the tossing, uncertain torchlight, and when I did the shock alone carried me to the far edge of panic. And although I told myself that the thing they were holding aloft was not Joel – for he was still there at the window – it was so sickeningly real, the cut of the coat, the elaborate shirt frill, the width and height of him, that part of my mind refused to believe it was just a doll. And as they paraded their effigy once, then twice around the inn yard – giving Joel time to recognize himself, should he need it – and then heaved it savagely into the fire, my mind, for one brief, harrowing moment, caught the odour of flesh burning, the agony of a man screaming soundlessly through the flame. And, drenched as I was by that torrent of hate, it seemed to make no difference that Joel’s living face was still at the window, looking down.

  I tried to look away and could not; I tried to close my eyes and could not do that either, and so, like everyone else, I watched the doll burn, saw the legs disintegrate, the chest open to disgorge heaven knew what garbage as the expensive coat shredded away and the shirt frill, the face, the tall silk hat were devoured, one by one. And because the hate was there, because they truly desired him to suffer this torment, it was real again and terrible. And when it was over, when the doll lay in ashes and symbolic murder had been done, all eyes were raised to that long upper window, where Joel was still leaning, glass in hand, against the sill.

  ‘Bloody thieving Barforth bastard,’ they shrieked at him. And, looking down, smiling – that white flash of perfect teeth against his amber skin – he raised his glass to them in cool salutation, drank, bowed, and went inside.

  And most strangely, in the great howling and screaming that went up around me, the brandishing of torches and shaking of fists, I found that I was smiling too.

  But there still remained the matter of my own safety, and in that sea of faces swamping the square, spilling out into the adjoining streets as water does in confined spaces, I could see no help, no hope at all. I doubted if any of these men would offer violence, in the normal way of things, to another man’s woman – although they would all, indulge occasionally in a rough and tumble with their own – but this was not a night for normality, for remembering how ashamed one would feel afterwards, and when the fire began to burn low and Joel, after all, had not burned with it, I would be a natural target for their frustrations. No one, I thought, had recognized the carriage as yet, so intent were they on the Old Swan and the men inside it – and indeed, there were many vehicles in the square, cut off as I was from escape – but eventually, quite soon, although some would drift away back to their homes or to the ale-houses, the bitter ones, the hurt ones, the one perhaps who had nowhere else to go, would stay and seeing the carriages as a symbol of life’s injustice, would I vent their hate against them. And I had no mind to sit in a fragile box on wheels while they pelted me with stones and filth and the maddened horses, plunging out of control, jolted me to destruction.

  ‘You’d best get down, missus,’ old Thomas grunted appearing suddenly, his head close to mine. And when I could do no more than stare at him, appalled by the very idea I had had in mind, he said, quite furiously, ‘Come on, lass. They don’t know your face so well, but they know mine and they’ll remember in a minute or two whose horses I drive. And if you’re sitting behind me they’ll so work out who you are and I can’t be responsible for what they’ll do to you. These aren’t mules, you know, theses fancy high-steppers and if they lose their heads there’s more than you to get hurt.’

  And when I went on staring, he picked up the carriage rug and threw it at me.

  ‘Put this round you, lass, and get down – get down. Get into the Swan if you can, and if you can’t then get to the back of the crowd and make for the top of Millergate. And, if you don’t see me there, knock on a door – there’s decent houses at the top end of Miller gate – and get somebody to take you in, or take you home, or send a message. And look sharp about it.’

  No one, for a very long time, had told me to ‘look sharp,’ certainly not a coachman whose sole concern should have been my safety. But, realizing he did not mean to abandon Joel’s mettlesome horses here, where they could trample a dozen other women underfoot – women far closer to him in background and temperament than I – I nodded, swallowed hard, wrapped the rug awkwardly around me, and got down.

  Millergate, I thought, Millergate, and, shockingly, having lived here all my life, I had no idea where Millergate was, so little notion of which way to turn that I simply moved blindly away from the carriage, thinking that anywhere, surely, was better than here. No one spoke to me or tried to stop me, no one deliberately blocked my way – for, after all, without my carriage and my fringed parasol, my deep-brimmed satin bonnet, who was I anyway? But I had never been in a crowd before, had never experienced the accidental jostlings and pushings of strangers, had – never inhaled the stale breath and sweat of people who were unknown to me, and I found it terrifying.

  Millergate, I thought again. Please, Millergate, for indeed there were houses there with little gardens and decent front doors, a maid to give me tea and a man to take a message home. But Millergate swam away from me, came back a moment, and then was not Millergate at all but some narrower place, unlit, malodorous. And when turned back there were too many people behind me, too many eyes, so that, keeping my head down, I blundered again and was truly lost.

  Yet to be lost here, i
n my native town, was ridiculous and, pressing close to the wall, I paused a moment, forcing myself to reflect. These could only be the alleyways that cut between Millergate and Kirkgate, glimpsed a thousand times as I drove by, and if they were foul and damp, dens – of vice and dens of disease, at least they were short. I had only to keep on walking in the same direction and eventually a paved, gaslit thoroughfare – Millergate or Kirkgate, I no longer cared which – would open out before me. I had only to keep on walking – no more; I must, in fact, keep on walking, and, hurrying forward, my useless satin slippers paddling through murky water, I felt my-identity shred away from me and knew real terror. I was just a woman alone in the streets at night, fair game for any man, and the fear of being recognized as Joel Barforth’s wife no longer seemed important. I was appalled now, merely by my own helplessness, by being a woman who could be forced into a corner, abused by unwashed hands and coarse mouths, held down by the scruff of the neck as-dogs hold bitches. And with the spectre of so much degradation reaching out to touch me through the hot dark, I rushed off sightlessly again, my breath catching-painfully in my chest, meeting nothing but blank walls, a pathetic mouse – scurrying through tunnels that engulfed me, until at last a hand caught my wrist and an unknown voice said, ‘Mrs Barforth.’

  ‘No. No I’m not. Let me go.’

  ‘Wherever to, God love you, for you haven’t an idea in your head as to your direction. I saw you get down from your carriage and you’ve been going round in circles ever since.’

  Oddly enough, the fact that the stranger was a woman did nothing to console me.

  ‘Just let me go, that’s all, whoever you are – out of my way I don’t know you.’

  ‘No. But I know you, sweetheart,’ she said, tightening her grip on my wrist. ‘You’re high-and-mighty Barforth’s wife, all right, not a doubt about it. Lost your carriage, did you? No, no, don’t try to take a swing at me, Miss Verity, because you’re not up to it. I’d have you down in the muck before you knew what had hit you.’