by Betty Burton
“Constance worked marvels. She had that much patience with those two babies. She taught Rosie everything by pointing and saying things with her lips.”
“Is that how she seems to know what’s being said?”
“Only when you are facing her direct. She tells by the shape of your mouth.”
I thought that was amazing.
“It’s with Constance being on the stage. We uses our lips a lot more in acting than when we’re speaking ordinary, and Constance realised after a while that when she was raising her voice to Rosie, Rosie wasn’t hearing anything: she was just learning from the shape of Constance’s mouth. Constance used to say what a lot of satisfaction she got out of Rosie learning something. I dare say you can understand that from what you do here.”
I did. But to succeed with one of my children so that they compared with the success of Constance with Rosie, I should have to get them to a high standard of education.
“Constance’s own little Eileen died, so she had a lot of time to spend with Rosie. I used to go down as often as I could. It wasn’t easy with Harry – he never knew about her, of course. He was always so jealous of everybody. Anyway, a year or two ago, Constance got the offer of marriage from a man who was left with children, but he wouldn’t have Rosie. Constance wouldn’t ever have abandoned her. I should have had Rosie back anyway, sooner or later, but it came about at the same time as Mary dying and all that, so I went and got her back.”
Charlotte had been concentrating on combing a tassel of her shawl with her fingernails whilst she had been telling me all this. Then she stopped and looked at me earnestly.
“You like her, Judeth, don’t you?” The question was so forceful. “You don’t think she’s simple? Not simple-minded? You’d say she was normal, wouldn’t you, except for being deaf?”
“She seems something above normal.”
She was silent for a little while.
“It’s what’s always worried me. I won’t live for ever. It’s what will happen to her if she’s not all there.”
Several times she took a breath in, as though about to say something. At last: “Little Eileen – Constance’s girl. She didn’t have no brain at all. She couldn’t do anything hardly herself, not like Rosie. It was lucky in a way that she ate all the nightshades and lords-and-ladies’ berries that she did. You couldn’t have blamed Constance if she had seen her eating them . . . Anybody might do the same. I might have done the same if Rosie . . .”
“Rosie will be all right.”
“She will. I’m sure she will. It’s just that I sometimes wonder if I see her the same as everybody else does.”
“She’s beautiful and intelligent, she’s my sister and she can stay with me for ever if she wants.”
I had not intended saying that. It came spontaneously, sincerely: it was the truth.
We were both quiet for a little while, then Charlotte said, “It’s queer how things turn out, isn’t it?”
I thought about the twenty years of bitterness and resentment which had started that morning when Mary Holly had come to the back door to say that she thought the Master had run off with her sister, and my mother had retched at her feet. Then I thought of the scene I had left earlier: Rosie brushing my mother’s hair.
If Charlotte had experienced many people’s distaste on seeing her scar, she did not do so when she met Fred. He was understanding and practical and immediately offered a temporary solution to Charlotte’s predicament. She could go with Fred to Blackbrook and collect her belongings, then take over as temporary housekeeper to the Warren household.
“I hope you’re good at knocking the heads of boys together. Since their mother died, they are for ever squabbling.”
Charlotte responded to Fred well. “I never had much to do with boys, but I reckon I might learn. And if knocking their heads together don’t work, then I shall subdue them by making them listen to long bits of boring plays.”
“What about your daughter?”
“Let her stop on the farm,” I suggested, and went on to argue that it wasn’t fair to keep moving her from place to place; that she could keep in touch with Charlotte by going to Blackbrook on market days; that she was used to living in the country. But my pleas were mostly that Judeth Nugent could not bear the thought that the fresh air and light that Rosie had brought the day before into our lack-lustre, faint lives in the Croud Cantle cottage would go so soon.
They agreed that it seemed sense. Nobody knew how long it might be before Charlotte could get the papers on her London house sorted out, and until then it was a good idea not to make too many changes.
For about six months or so after Rosie came to Croud Cantle, Mother rallied in her speech. She and Rosie would sit together for hours, each patient with the other’s difficulty in communicating. Mother taught Rosie combing and spinning, and Rosie took over the job of caring for Mother and helping her with her food.
She had learned to handle bees from Constance Sylver, a skill that pleased everybody at Croud Cantle; for since Mother’s illness, none of us was very pleased to have that job. When it came to the honey taking, Rosie did not let the traveller take the entire contents of the hives – honey, combs, bees and all – as we usually did at the end of the season. She kept a few hives going over the winter on some of their own honey and some sugar, which she pounded, mixed with water and fed to them. This seemed to be a great extravagance, but in the end it proved not to be and, more importantly, it pleased Mother. She had never liked the bee-killing. She would always have it that “bees is different from other creatures, and next to human”.
Sometimes, when the two of them were sitting over quiet work, such as wool-combing, Mother would talk on and on in her slurred way. It did not seem to matter that Rosie heard nothing. Words had little to do with their relationship. Communication was physical: nods, touches, the guiding of hands and little pats of approval. The first time I heard her speak of my father to Rosie was whilst she was rambling on, watching her with the bees. I do not know whether she was talking to Rosie or to the bees, for she was talking low and confidential, as she always did when working round the hives.
“Don’t take after him. Tomas was afraid, wasn’t he? Couldn’t stand the hives, nor his father. No good with bees, Nugents. Must never be afraid. The bees a know if you’m afraid. It’s why Nugents gets bad stings: bees go for them that’s afraid.”
She tapped Rosie and mimed a bee stinging her arm, then puffed out her cheeks and held her hands to the side to indicate a swelling body, then held her throat and made a choking sound. Rosie responded by holding her finger where a bee would crawl on to it.
“Not Nugent. Not nobody – only Rosie. Just Rosie. Not Nugent, not Tomas.”
After a while, though, Mother began to behave strangely again. Sometimes she seemed not to remember who we were, or confused names. For three days she had thought that Johnny-twoey was Will and insisted that he sit with her.
“It’s all right, Miss Jude,” he said, “it’s better if I humours her. It don’t matter who she thinks I am, so long as it makes her happy.”
As with the last two winters, the classroom was often quite full. Harry Goodenstone’s order to supply us with fuel and wheat was still not revoked, so the teaching of Cantle children went ahead; not so much by the carrot method I had told Fred that I would use, but by bribery with a dish of fermity and a blazing log. Several of the children could now read, and a few could write.
Of course Ben Hannable had long since withdrawn his support, so that we now had no help in keeping the school going. Except for Fred, who helped out again and again with paying the small rent, providing slates and, as a carrot for those who succeeded in their efforts to write, precious pencils and paper. There was now no question of the “professionalism” that Fred had at first insisted that I observe. I worked with the children because I had a passion to do so: I had no more fervent ambition than to sit in that little room and try to capture the imagination of succeeding generations of Cantle ch
ildren.
From time to time, Reverend Tripp tried to persuade, cajole or threaten me to take Church money and teach the children religion and their place in “God’s great scheme for us”.
At one time he had tried to persuade me that what I was doing was against God; that the “entire principles on which our nation is founded – those of agriculture and trade – will be undermined if cottagers’ children grow up to become literate idlers. They will never be content to follow the plough nor reap or thresh”, and that they would eventually “turn away from the drudgeries for which they were born”. Which, of course, made me even more determined that the Church should never get its hands upon my schoolroom.
Perhaps, had he been a younger man, Reverend Tripp might have tried harder to stop what I was doing, for it would not have been difficult. He need only to have announced from the pulpit that the children were in moral danger, or some such thing, and with it now being well known who Rosie was, he could easily have made some mud stick. But, as it was, he either forgot or ignored what went on in Annie Bassett’s back room.
The following August, almost a year to the day when Charlotte had gone to the Big House to get her papers, the Goodenstone’s Agent delivered a letter which had been sent to her from Bristol, just before the Eames-Coates vessel sailed for the East. The gist of it was that the property in Dublin Square, London, “erroneously referred to as in Trust for Mrs Charlotte Trowell”, was part of the estate of Sir Henry Goodenstone, as could be verified by various documents listed and attached.
By that time, Charlotte’s need to prove that the house belonged to her had gone.
In July of that year, almost five years to the day when Molly Warren had died, she and Fred had been married. Only Rosie, Fred’s children, his son-in-law and I had attended the service, and we had later joined in a family celebration at the house.
By that time, Mother was seldom able to move further than from the cottage to the orchard. There she sat, mumbling away at the hives, her jerky and trembling hands occasionally making motions, reaching out, as though the hives were people she was talking to. Once, her jerky hand knocked off a hackle, and she sat there, still as the churchyard cross until the swarm settled. She never got a sting. She grew heavy and was sometimes incontinent, so on the day of the wedding I left her in Maisie’s care and Rosie and I went to Blackbrook together.
In preparation, I got out my ‘Blackbrook’ dress again, but found that since it had last seen the light of day at Peg’s wedding, my hips had thickened a bit as a result of the hours I spent sitting down in Annie Bassett’s schoolroom. It fitted Rosie perfectly, and she went about showing everybody with unaffected delight. I had a very green skirt made, and a light bodice. The skirt gave me great pleasure, particularly when I sat down: it was like having a lapful of moss from the damp, north bank of Chard Lepe Pond.
Mother watched us closely when we had a try-out of our wedding-day clothes. It was one of her bad-speaking days, so it took me a lot of patience to understand that she wanted me to get out her pretty jacket. At first I thought that she was saying that she too wanted to dress up, but she indicated the jacket and me and Rosie.
“Try it on,” I mimed to Rosie.
Rosie was not so full-bosomed as Mother. She pointed to me, indicating that my figure was generous there. True, it fitted me perfectly.
I should give a lot to know what went on in my mother’s head sometimes. On her bad-speaking days, she acquiesced or approved of things by rocking her body back and forth – which she did, on and on, when she saw me in the jacket.
At such times, when Rosie and Mother and I were together, I had fleeting daydreams when Jaen and Hanna would be there, too, and my father would come upon us.
All the Nugent women living together – not all, for there was no doubt that Charlotte would have to be included. But I should have liked him to see. As Charlotte had said, it’s queer how things turn out.
And I should have liked him to see that after all the havoc he had wreaked by his self-centred nature, we could do very well without him. Very well.
By the time Charlotte became Mrs Fred Warren, Rosie had settled down in Croud Cantle as though she had never lived elsewhere. After the wedding, Charlotte and Fred had her to stop for a week in Blackbrook, so that she might get used to her new home.
I had taken her with me from time to time when I had gone to do the market. Then she had moved about Fred’s house, smiling; smoothing Molly Warren’s plush, brocade and silky furnishings; looking into mirrored-glass and getting a lot of enjoyment at seeing her own reflection clearly for the first time. After two days of staying in Blackbrook, she indicated to her mother that she wanted to return to the farm.
Charlotte was disappointed.
“Give her time,” Fred said, “she can come whenever she wants. Judeth will still bring her.”
“I don’t want to make her do anything she don’t want in that way, Judeth,” Charlotte said. “She was twenty years with Constance, then all of a sudden she had to come with me, then with you. It must be hard for her.”
So Rosie came back to Croud Cantle, where she slipped back into her place: comforting, soothing and tending to my mother, who got about the yard by holding on to walls and fences, but was sometimes feeble-minded and unpredictable.
I was pleased when she came back. The place without her seemed quiet and lonely. I had grown to love her: not as I loved Jaen, because Rosie and I had no childhood secrets; nor as I loved Hanna, who I had helped to bring up; but I loved Rosie for the way she filled the house with her enjoyment of life. Sometimes we walked over the hills together, silently, sharing the chalky skeleton of Old Marl, the dips and mounds of Tradden. We would sit staring out over the valley. When I first noticed that she, too, smoothed and scratched her fingers into the rough grass of Tradden, as though petting a donkey, I felt sure that she understood the hills. I wished there was a way of telling her that as a lark flies it fills the sky with clear, joyous song; whilst a butterfly flitters silently. Rosie could no more understand silence than she could that we were sisters. The understanding between us grew from our regard for one another.
At about this same time Maisie, too, married again. She married Rob Netherfield, and moved into the cottage that adjoined that of Rob’s parents. There she became a second mother to Rob’s children, as well as to the old couple. When it came to reforming society, Maisie was as placid as Rob was hot-blooded. It was a good match and I was pleased, except that we would lose Maisie.
Part Three
MATRIARCH
January 1796
In this Journal, I have recorded as faithfully as I am able as much of the history of the Estover-Nugent family as I know to be true. It is the history of a family that is as old as any that can boast noble arms and blue blood; the history of a common family that few historians will consider of interest to posterity. I often look at my first entry written at Easter 1782, fourteen years ago, wherein I wrote, “Went to Jaens. Jaen will have a new baby it will come November. Hana will stop with muther and me.” Being unsure which was correct I wrote “I” as well, for even then I did not want to be looked down upon for being illiterate.
No other person has read this history, for it is intended to be read by future generations of my family. Indeed, if it were to be read by anyone alive now, then I should be reluctant to record so freely. I have started other writings and I have written part of a book based upon some of the events of the Estover-Nugents. Whether it will ever be completed, only the future knows – perhaps in time I shall be able to look dispassionately on our lives. This Journal, however, I will keep in all circumstances.
Whenever I have had stressful events to record, I am always given to write a preamble such as this. One could say that I am working myself up to committing to paper things so painful that to write them is to relive them. Even now, almost twelve months since the first of the events occurred, I am disturbed by the distress I felt then, and it is only now that a year has passed that I record th
em.
In the July before last, the year being 1794, after her mother had married Fred Warren, Rosie came back to Croud Cantle, and has lived here ever since. They had hoped that Rosie would live with them and the Warren boys. I continued teaching the village children whenever they came, and put in as much time as I could at the farm and the market. On a Thursday in 1795, John Toose and I returned from Blackbrook to find Mrs Hazelhurst there. It was the start of the most terrible episode in the life of this family.
Nance Hazelhurst did not wait until John had gone away before she began angrily shouting at Jude.
“Until I seen it for myself, I wouldn’t a believed it. I rue the day our poor Dan got mixed up with you lot. It was me who said he ought to marry her. I shall never forgive myself. He should a left her where she belonged, on this midden, along with the rest of her rotten tribe. She deserved everything she got.” The woman was beside herself with rage.
Jude immediately thought that there was some trouble with Jaen.
“What’s happened? Has she miscarried another child?”
“Miscarry? A pity she hadn’t a miscarried the first cause of it all, then none of it wouldn’t never have happened.”
“Mrs Hazelhurst. Keep your voice down, and tell me why you’re here and what’s happened.”
At that moment Rosie came from the house, wide-eyed and puzzled, looking from Jude to Nance Hazelhurst and back over her shoulder, pointing her finger and moving it in the way that indicated something was urgent. She tried to say something with her voice but, as always, only animal sounds came out.
Nance Hazelhurst looked at Rosie with disgust.
“My God! It’s true what I heard what was going on here, but I wouldn’t a believed it if I hadn’t a seen it with my own eyes. When I think that our family is linked to the likes of it!”
