by Betty Burton
“Nothing. I just had a feeling. The way she spoke – something – but I did not give her a chance to say anything.”
“It is about your father. And it is about me, and other people, and it is things I would not ever have said but for Mary Holly coming back to Cantle.”
“I don’t know much about him, do I? Only that bit in the church records. I know he was lost at sea and that’s how Croud Cantle comes to be yours.”
“There’s more to it than that.” She paused, wondering where to start. “The Estovers is related to the Nugents you know. Quite distant, but we always thought of them as family. Well, I was about twenty and was going to marry a Rathley lad, but that don’t matter. Anyway, an old uncle was dying and I was sent to come over here as a family duty and nurse him to his death.
“It wasn’t much different then than it is now, except for the close barn was more part of the house. I was here about a month before he died.” She paused, looking about her and clasping and unclasping her fingers. “Jude, I find this very hard. Anyway, I started and there’s no going back, no matter what you thinks after this.
“Tomas, the son, your father, was quite broke when the old man died. He begged me to stop on till he was on his feet again. I have to tell you, Jude, and I’ve never spoke of it before, that your father was about the most beautiful looking man that I have ever seen and had a way of asking things that nobody could deny. Well, to cut a long story short, I stayed on. Before long, Jaen was on the way. He was only eighteen – and I was a woman. I have to say that I was responsible for some part of it. At that time, if he’d a told me to jump off Beacon Hill I’d a done it. But I was the older one.”
Bella’s mouth tightened and she shut her eyes in an effort to control herself.
Jude would have given anything to spare Bella tearing into herself like this. Her mother’s whole being was concerned with her straight-backed dignity: never letting your emotions get the better of you, never making a show of yourself. She moved across, sat close to Bella on the ingle-nook bench and put an arm round her. It was years since they had touched. Jude was taken aback at how soft and warm her mother was. It was like feeling the bones of little birds through their feathers. Having made the move to touch, she gently hugged Bella, who seemed to collapse like a puppet when a string snaps.
Jude said in the gentle voice she used with Hanna when she was distressed: “You know you can tell me anything you like about yourself, mother. I will never, never think any less of you. I don’t know anybody else who comes close to comparing.”
Bella braced herself, her hand hovering. Then, affected by the strangeness of the white blanks of the windows, the silence outdoors and the soft female touch of Jude, she allowed the hand to pat Jude’s.
“He said we should be married and we was. No doubt you have found that out up the vestry. Two months later, Jaen was born. He was the kind of man who wanted – not just wanted – needed all of anybody’s attention to himself. He didn’t like seeing me with the baby near. If he came in and found me with Jaen at the breast, he would go straight out.
“Anyway, it was only about three weeks after I was Churched that he came and said he was going away. I think I knew he would. I’ll say this for him, he came straight out and said it to me. I think by that time I was glad. That seems a terrible thing to say, but he was such a youth I felt sorry he had been tied down like he was.
“He said he would sell off a bit of the land, which he did. You know that bit of land, corner of Raike bottom and Howgaite? That used to be Croud Cantle. He said I was a good farm-wife and I should have the farm. You see, Jude? He was quite decent then.”
“Where did he go?”
“I never really knew at the time. He said he would head for Bristol and would seek his fortune, which do seem like a boy’s adventure, don’t it?”
“But he must have come back or you wouldn’t have had me.”
“He came back. Oh, my eye. You should a seen him. He’d a been gone about five years. He’d a become a man. He’d grown even more handsome than before. He’d a been to some place – Jamaica or summit like that I think it was – and he came back with a pretty penny in his pocket. I never really fathomed out why he came back. Perhaps it was he wanted to see what Jaen looked like. It wasn’t for money, he had plenty. And I doubt it was for me.”
Bella paused, assembling her story before going on. Jude waited quietly, not wanting to break the spell of this history that she had never suspected.
“Be that as it may, by the time he went off again I had fallen for you. That was before I found out . . .” She paused momentarily before going on. “Jude, that money and his fine and beautiful clothes he turned up in was got from the trading of human beings. All right, they was blacks, but they was people nonetheless, and that was what he had done the years he had been gone.” Her voice was affected by an old anger. “That have always seemed to me to be the trade of the devil. It puts people as low as beasts to trade them like sheep and cattle . . . and Tomas Nugent, what had been the son of Croud Cantle, did trade of that sort.
“I told him as much. He called me some things I don’t like to recall, for I tell you he wasn’t nothing of the weak youth that I married. But generally he was a weak character, with no backbone, and whether he’s your father or no I have to say it. And off he went again.”
“What’s Mary Holly got to do with it?”
“This is the bit I don’t like saying, but you have to know so as Mary Holly can’t say nothing to you as you don’t know already. She thinks she had one up on you – and maybe she did – but when you knows the whole story there an’t nothing she can say that a give her satisfaction.
“When I first came to Croud Cantle to nurse the old man – your Grandfather – Mary Holly was working here as a milk-maid. She wasn’t more than fifteen, but she looked a deal older. She was always a real hard worker, so when your father went off I was glad to keep her on. I hadn’t hardly been here a year, and I had Jaen and I didn’t know how to run a place. I could do a lot of the work, but I didn’t know anything about buying and selling or anything like that, so I was glad of any help I could get.
“She had a young sister, oh, about seven years younger, and she asked if I would take her on. I did, seeing how good Mary was, and she came as milk-maid and dairy help, like Mary. Well, you never saw two sisters as different. Charlotte was like a little china fairy. Her hair was straight as straight and as white as the driven snow – not old woman white but, you know, fair, like some babies. And she was light on her feet, like she was always going to skip or dance. She just stood out from everybody.
“I have to go on to the bitter end. After I found out about the trading in black people, he said whatever I thought about it didn’t make no difference to him and he was going back to it. He went off and he took young Charlotte Holly with him. Mary Holly went after them straight off. And that’s the last I ever heard of Mary Holly. And the other one.
“Only thing I could find out was that your father sailed out of Bristol on some ship called the Farmouth and it went down with all hands.”
She heaved a great sigh.
“What Mary Holly is doing up at the House . . . Your guess is as good as mine.
“Well there you are Jude, there’s a box of bones to shake about. Shall you put that down in your book of histories?”
“Would it matter?”
Bella had no ready answer, so she thought it over for quite a minute or so.
“I don’t suppose not. It happened didn’t it? Not writing it down don’t rub it out. Though what them people you say is going to read it in a hundred years is going to make of it . . .”
She stretched and went to the window.
“The mist have lifted. It’ll be hot tomorrow. The greenfly a be all over everything.”
As Bella had foretold, the next morning was as bright and clear in the Cantle valley as on the downs. It heralded a long run of summer weather and a season of long hard hours on Croud Cantle.
> Unspoken and unacknowledged, there was nevertheless an agreement between Jude and Bella not to talk about the intimacy of that evening. It seemed, though, to mark the beginning of Bella’s drop down into elderliness. She worked no less hard and she was as firm in her business, but she occasionally allowed Jude to do something for her without protesting: “Thank you very much, I an’t dead yet!”
Although it was a busy season on Croud Cantle, things at this time were slower for Fred Warren. Farmers and growers had long since bought their seed and the deals to be done with hops and cereal crops and next year’s seed had not begun. He rode around looking at the growing fields and had time to take things a bit slowly. So he rode over to Croud Cantle, simply for the pleasure of talking to Jude.
He saw her as he rode up the Howgaite Path, weeding the beets that would soon be ready to put down in spiced vinegar for the market. She was wearing a thin cotton dress with puffed sleeves, low, round neck and high waistline. Her hair was tied loosely back, her face was shaded by a wide straw hat and her feet were bare. The sun was shining through the thin cotton skirt revealing the faint shape of her figure below the high waist.
As Fred watched her working, he saw her for the first time as a woman, and a flicker of desire for the combination of intelligence and a soft body ran through him. He suppressed the thought. It had a suggestion of incest about it. Their earlier relationship of tutor and student had developed into a friendship that he valued and would not spoil. He still felt a bit at odds with himself when he reached the vegetable field.
“I haven’t got time to stop,” Jude said. “You’ll have to talk to me while I hoe this patch.”
“I’ll give you a hand.” As he took off his jacket, he took from it a book. “Here you are – a nice, easy story. No philosophy, nothing to bend your mind. A nice story by Mr Goldsmith.” He started hoeing the next row.
“I’ve been up to the House. Mrs Cutts said you had called there. I’m glad you did. What do you think, Judeth?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it. What does he want to get rid of books for? You wouldn’t get me giving any away.”
They worked silently for a while. Fred’s maverick thoughts had gone and their old state – tutor and pupil who had now become friends – returned. Presently he said: “Have you ever given thought to where it is all leading, Judeth?”
“What is leading?”
“Judeth, for somebody with a head on their shoulders there are times when I think you are just obtuse. When you asked me to teach you, I was pleased . . . this farm girl who was wild to learn. I had been thinking for years how things could be changed if people were to have some learning in them, and I thought that with you I was making a start.”
Jude went on steadily cutting through the weeds but did not answer.
“What are you going to do now? Are you going to keep on doing this? Being neither fish nor fowl? Are you going to waste your brains?”
“I’ve got my writing.”
“And that satisfies you? The hour or two you spend at night filling up a book with receipts and old stories? And the rest of your time with mud halfway up your legs and your face pressed against the side of a cow.”
“Fred. You do exaggerate. Some of the work here is boring, but then where’s work that isn’t?”
“All I wondered is, are you going to just keep on doing this?” Making his point by chopping at the weeds in the baked soil.
“Fred, don’t push me.”
For a moment he saw anxiety in her expression. He was as unprepared for it as he had been for the sudden sexual arousal, for his vision of his pupil as a woman. He changed the subject back again to the library at Park Manor, both agreeing that, though it was terrible having all those books shut away, it did seem a shame that Young Harry should want to be rid of them and demote the library.
When the sun reached midday, Jude went into the house to slice up some fat bacon and bread. Hanna had been scrambling about in the walnut trees, throwing down to Bella any that were ready for pickling. Dicken, now bent and full of rheumatics, was working in the far field, so Hanna was sent out with his food. Johnny-twoey, now a big, silent youth, took his dinner and went off to sit alone.
“Well, Fred?” said Bella, eating her bread whilst perched on the edge of a stool, as though she had not a minute to spare.
“Well Mrs Nugent?”
“Didn’t see you at Blackbrook yesterday. Been roisting about on that new horse I reckon. What do Mrs Warren think of you these days, now you become a gentleman business-man?”
“It suits her very well. In this new house in Blackbrook she’s got a room especially for entertaining ladies to tea; she has lace and flounces and gives little card parties. The children have got food inside them and boots on their feet. It is all she ever wanted. I reckon Molly’s as happy as anybody can be.”
“I heard all about this here house from Hanna. Well, it’s nice seeing somebody going up in the world, for there’s many going down in these parts.”
“Not only in these parts. All over the South. This last four or five years, since I left my desk and took over from Mr White, there have been more and more men tramping the roads. Not just men, neither. I’ve seen plenty of whole families who haven’t got a roof to their heads, humping the few things they have with them, sleeping on the roadsides. Most of them look starven, but they all think when they get to some cotton or iron town gold coin will shower upon them.”
“More fool they,” said Bella.
“What else can they do?” said Jude sharply. “What else can people do? People like the Dunstans, when they get put off the farm and out of their cottage?”
“That family wasn’t never much for hard work.”
“It hasn’t got to do with what they were like. He got thrown out of his job and they got nowhere to go. There’s work in the coal towns so he’s got to go there. There’s precious few labourers wanted in these parts is there?”
Bella shrugged. It was all perfectly clear to her. If people buckled down and got on with things, everything would work out. If you found yourself on the roads, then it must be your own fault.
Hanna came back and started on her own food.
Her affections for her aunt and grandmother fluctuated between the two. Sometimes she would follow Jude everywhere; at others she was always under Bella’s feet. Physically she looked like both women but her nature was more like Bella’s than Jude’s.
She was a solid, plodding child who got on with her work: scaring birds from the crops along with other children; feeding animals; collecting eggs and helping with the baking and preserving. They often took her to market, except when the weather was particularly bad. She still saw Jaen and Dan. Up Teg had been roughly divided into separate parts, worked by The Boys. The visits were all one way: Dan could never spare time to take his family to Cantle.
Today Hanna favoured Jude and sat close beside her.
“What am I going to do with her, Mr Warren? I try to teach her her letters and she won’t learn.”
“Won’t learn her letters?” Fred pulled a silly face that made Hanna smile in the tight-lipped manner of Bella.
“I don’t like it. It is too hard to remember.”
“I expect I started her too soon. After all, I was nearly thirteen when I learned.”
“Perhaps Aunt Judeth is right, you will like it when you are older. It is a shame not to at least learn your letters.”
“Why?”
The question exploded from Hanna as though it had been fermenting under a tight cork.
Fred and Jude looked at one another. Why?
“So that you can learn to read books,” said Jude. “There’s everything in the world in books. If you can’t read, then it’s worse than birds singing and not having any ears.”
Hanna did not think bird song any particular loss. Jude had forgotten how hateful birds were to her when she was small. Then she had spent days wandering about fields clapping pieces of board to scare them off.
“I don’t want to read books.”
“Well, what do you want?” Jude asked.
“I want a house like Mrs Warren. And green chairs. And a white dress with red flowers and red ribbons and little pink shoes. And a big glass over the fire. And chairs with little thin legs.” She went on to give an inventory of the front room at the Warren’s and Molly Warren’s dress.
“Well then, Miss,” said Jude. “You will need to find yourself a husband like Mr Warren to buy them for you, because you won’t get chairs like Mrs Warren’s standing the market.”
Summer 1788
I sometimes wonder what my life would be like if I had never learned to read and write. I cannot remember what it was like when I could not. As I see it, to teach all people to have this skill would not be difficult to arrange.
Something Fred Warren said has been going round in my head.
If little children were given no more than half an hour each day, the accumulation of learning in a year should be enough to let everyone have the elements of reading and writing by the time they were adult.
There could be people like myself who could teach village children just the way Gilly was taught. Some schools have been set up, but what is needed is fir it to be properly organised.
I can see no objection to it. If every squire in every village gave the cost of the keep of one hunter, and the church let the vestry or some such be used, then in one generation every person could learn to read.
The more I think of it, the more possible my scheme appears to be.
There will be children like Hanna who dislike the work of learning something they think is useless. This means that perhaps it could only be done by imposing it on them. Yet that does not seem to be the way. It ought to be done as it was with me and Fred – joy of it on both sides.
However, that is but a detail which can be overcome.
Judeth Nugent
Before Fred Warren left Croud Cantle, he and Jude arranged to go to Park Manor together to look at Young Harry’s library. So, on next Blackbrook market day, Fred walked back with them. He led his horse with Hanna in the saddle. She was sulky when Fred and Jude went up to the House without her, but could always be cheered up by a treat of food, and Bella said she thought she had seen ripe raspberries under the nets.
