The Favoured Child Read online

  Our new carriage was waiting outside the old tithe barn which Mama had commandeered for a village school. As I turned the gig, I could hear the children’s excited voices and Mama’s orders clear above the noise. I could hardly believe my ears. In all my childhood I think she had raised her voice to me once. Now I heard her yell, ‘That is enough! John Smith, Sally Cooper, you twins! Stop fighting and sit down at once.’

  There was a sudden hush at that, and then a scrabbling noise as a dozen untamed children rushed for a place on the bench and seated themselves to look at her.

  ‘That’s better,’ my mama said calmly. ‘Now, who can tell me what this is? Hands up, don’t shout out!’

  I waited no longer. I had a very clear picture of what she was doing inside the old barn with her little class seated on the benches before her. She would teach them to wash and brush their hair. She would teach them how to sew, how to light a lamp without burning themselves, how to prepare a meal.

  ‘Children want to learn,’ Uncle John had said to her. ‘They must have toys to encourage them to read and write. They must be helped to question things all the time. Then they will teach themselves. All the philosophers agree…’

  ‘Philosophers indeed!’ Mama had interrupted. ‘This is a village school for village children. When your philosophers control the country, they may tell me what a working child should learn. Until then I shall teach them how to feed themselves and how to keep themselves clean, and get them ready for their work!’

  ‘Tory!’ said John, using his worst term of abuse.

  ‘Jacobin!’ Mama had retorted; and she was running her school in her own way.

  I turned the gig left down the track past the squatters’ cottages, towards the land which had once been all common land. A waste, it was now. Beatrice had cleared the common land of its wealth of trees and scrub and bracken, and with the sweet natural growth had gone the wild animals: the game birds, the hares, the rabbits and the deer. Once Beatrice was gone, the common had regained its own, and the only trace left of her was the odd head of wheat, spindly on the wind.

  Now I was another Lacey girl, coming to change the face of the land, and I whispered a brief promise to myself that this time the changes should last for longer than a season and should be for the best.

  Even as a derelict wheatfield, this great common field had been lovely. But I had ordered them to fence it and plough it, and in three days there were no smooth sweet slopes greening with bracken and hazy with heather buds, but a morass of mud in wriggly lines from the blades of the plough. I drove the gig up to the very foot of the field and looked up at it.

  I heard a singing in my head.

  ‘It is good,’ I said fervently. I think I spoke aloud.

  It was as if the earth itself were speaking to me, as if Wideacre could tell me that the land was good and that the plans were good, and that if the common was no longer breathtakingly lovely in this one single field, then it was none the less good earth in good heart, and it would grow a crop which would feed Acre.

  The wind blew down the gentle slopes towards me. Beatrice had literally moved mountains to make this field. She had infilled valleys and uprooted a great oak tree. The work had been done badly. I could see the line of the valleys and even the faintest trace of a footpath going across the field. And the hollow where the oak tree had once stood had been the scene of my long-ago fight with Clary.

  I smiled. It was not just Beatrice who had a history here. All the Lacey landowners had left their marks here, and I would leave mine. This field would be remembered by Acre as the one which Beatrice had clawed out of common land and wrested from the people. But they would also remember it as the field where Julia Lacey had planted apples. And next summer that gamble might pay.

  I backed the pony carefully and turned the gig, and trotted home through Acre. The carriage was gone from outside the tithe barn, so Mama was before me, and I guessed she would have taken Richard and John with her. I had only one errand to do before my dinner and I set the pony into a brisk trot past the gates to the Wideacre drive and along to Three Gate Meadow.

  Ralph was sitting on the bank under the hedge with the working men, but he raised his head when he heard the sound of the gig. The men were taking their dinner break and they stayed seated and kept on eating, contenting themselves with a courteous wave in my direction. I waved back, got down into the road and looped the reins over the gate.

  ‘Good day, Miss Lacey,’ Ralph said, coming to the gate and smiling at me across the top.

  ‘Good day, Mr Megson,’ I said. ‘Uncle John asked me to tell you that the apple trees are arriving this afternoon. I have checked the common-land field and it looks dry and fairly clear of stones. I think we can plant without further ploughing or drainage work.’

  Ralph frowned. ‘I’ve no workers free this afternoon,’ he said, ‘and tomorrow I have to go to Petersfield and buy some sheep for the new flock. There will be enough men to do the planting tomorrow, but I can’t be here. It’s new work to them; I’d not like to leave them without help. Not that I know much. I was going to do it from your uncle’s farming book!’

  ‘If it’s only a question of following a book, I can do it,’ I said. ‘I don’t know much about farming, but I can read!’

  Ralph smiled. ‘You do know about farming, though, don’t you, Julia?’ he said gently. ‘How else can you tell that the field is ready for planting?’

  ‘That’s true,’ I said, not wanting to discuss the point. ‘What time shall I come to work?’

  ‘They can be in the field at seven,’ Ralph said. ‘They’ll stop for their breakfast at ten. Then stop again for dinner at one. They’ll need a break at four, and they can go home at sunset. You’re not like to be finished before.’

  ‘I know it,’ I said with feeling. ‘It’s a huge field. I should think we should be prepared for two days of planting.’

  ‘Yes, Squire!’ said Ralph, and pulled his forelock to me.

  ‘Don’t call me that,’ I said steadily, ‘not even in jest. Richard will be the squire. We are joint heirs, but he is the boy.’

  ‘But you inherit jointly,’ Ralph said. ‘I should think you would insist on your rights.’

  I thought of my grandmama’s warning that a woman’s way is not to insist, and I shook my head in denial, but I said nothing.

  Ralph smiled. ‘Then you’re no Lacey at all!’ he said, his voice warm with amusement. ‘Any Lacey would ride roughshod over anyone in the world to keep a hold on the land they own, and to gain more. And Beatrice was the worst of all of them. She stopped at nothing to get control of the land. And there you are – a legitimate Lacey heir – talking of sharing your land as if the Fenny were not in your blood and the Wideacre earth not in your bones!’

  ‘I am not Beatrice!’ I said in sudden impatience. ‘I have been raised by my mama, and I take her advice. A woman’s part is to give – not to grab. Besides, if I am generous and fair with Richard, he will…’ I broke off before I said too much.

  ‘Sits the wind in that quarter?’ Ralph said softly, almost to himself. He walked stiffly along the gate, swung it open and came out to meet me in the lane.

  ‘Land and loving,’ he said, making it sound like a proverb, ‘that’s what the Laceys want. And Lacey women want it most of all. Beatrice chose the land. I think you are choosing love.’

  I scanned his dark face, his kind eyes with the pale lines streaked around them.

  ‘Is it worth it?’ he asked gently. ‘Is his love worth the sweetest land in the whole of England?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said with confidence. I had loved Richard from childhood. I had promised to love him for ever.

  Ralph nodded. ‘You’ve made your choice, then,’ he said gently. ‘For love. For love, and the indoor life, and being a young lady.’ He gave an abrupt laugh. ‘Beatrice ’ud take her hand to your backside if she were alive!’

  ‘I have to be a young lady!’ I protested. ‘I have no choice. I was born a young lady. That is m
y part in life. That is what I am.’

  ‘Nay,’ he said reassuringly. ‘You’re no bread-and-butter miss. You’ve been mewed up like a young hawk all your life and it’s made you weak and foolish, so you fancy yourself in love with that young puppy and make a virtue out of letting him bully you. Such a little fool that you cannot even see what you want. You should be out on the land making it grow. You’re Beatrice’s heir. Of course your life will be quiet and empty if you live it in a little parlour thinking of nothing but being a young lady and loving your cousin!’

  He smiled at me like a dark prophet telling some simple truth which I had always known but never before heard in words. Suddenly the Dower House seemed a strange forcing-house for turning a wild free little girl into a young lady who could be shouted at, abused, and who would pride herself that she could return love for pain. I scowled with concentration, trying to think what this view of myself meant.

  ‘What should I do, then?’ I asked.

  ‘Grow up,’ Ralph said, unsympathetically. ‘Work it out for yourself, Julia. You’ve got a brain not entirely addled by a ladylike education: use it. You’ve got a heart which can feel the land, a voice which can talk clearly to people and ears that can listen. So grow up.’

  I gave him a level look in reply to his bracing tone. But he was unrepentant. He gave me a mischievous grin and a gentle push towards the gig.

  ‘Run along, Miss Julia,’ he said. ‘I’m always vexed when I am hungry. Remember never to interrupt a working man at his dinner break. Go home – and don’t think too much! And don’t promise anything to anyone until you’ve had a chance to find out what you really want.’ He untied the reins for me and gave me his hand to help me into the gig.

  ‘I am sorry to have vexed you, Mr Megson,’ I said in my smallest voice, keeping my eyes down. ‘I did not mean to make you angry.’

  ‘Nay!’ he exclaimed, instantly concerned, but then he caught a glimpse of my smile and realized I was mocking him. ‘Go home, Julia Lacey, go home!’ he said crossly. ‘Go and tease someone who has the leisure and the wit for it. I am a simple man, and I am hungry.’

  I clicked to the pony, still laughing, and waved at him, and trotted off back home down the lane.

  But I was very far from laughter the next morning when Jenny brought me my morning chocolate at half past five with the news that it was raining in a light penetrating drizzle and looked set to stay bad all day.

  ‘Oh, no!’ I said, rolling over and burying my face in my pillows.

  ‘’Tis cold too,’ she said with the cheeriness of someone who is up and dressed to someone who will soon have to be.

  I sat up and looked out of the window. It was a miserable day, foggy and grey, with the raindrops dripping off the leaves of the trees of Wideacre Park.

  ‘Too wet to set the apple trees,’ I said.

  ‘Is it?’ she asked, looking out of the window.

  ‘No,’ I said crossly. ‘It’s perfectly all right. Jenny, do light me a fire. I cannot get up into winter weather without one.’

  She gave me a nod and went down to the kitchen for some kindling and little logs. I watched her lay the fire while I sipped my morning chocolate and only when the chill was off the room could I find the courage to jump out of bed and dress myself.

  I had yet another new driving dress, thanks to Mama, who had guessed that I would wear the first one thin in the first months of my outdoors work. She had ordered the Chichester dressmaker to make me two extra dresses to the same pattern and measurements; today I chose the thicker one of pale-grey wool with a matching hat. The grey took up the colour of my eyes and made them seem large and luminous in my pale face. It was cut well; a bit tight, in truth, for I had been eating like a hunter in training in the past few weeks. It made me seem tall and slim and elegant.

  Jenny looked up from sweeping the hearth. Oh, Miss Julia, you look lovely!’ she said. ‘That colour do suit you!’

  ‘It’s to be hoped anyone can see me at all!’ I said, glaring out of the window at the greyness outside. ‘I shall blend in with that beastly fog and they will drive the tree cart over me.’

  She laughed at my ill humour and went down to the kitchen. Stride was not yet up, nor Mrs Gough, but she had left me a saddle-bag packed with my breakfast. ‘We didn’t know if you’d eat your breakfast in the field or come home,’ Jenny said. ‘Beatrice always had her breakfast in the field, so Mrs Gough left that out for you if you wanted to stay.’ There was a momentary pause as both Jenny and I realized the casual comparison. But she went on, ‘And Mrs Gough said to ask you if you want your dinner sent down?’

  ‘If I’m not back by two, could you send something down for me?’ I asked. ‘But I dare say I’ll be back. It’s not the weather for a picnic’

  I nodded farewell to her and went out by the back door. The great cedar tree in the garden had its high head in the clouds; its dark trunk was streaked with wetness. There was a steady patter of rain on the leaves. I bent down and touched the ground. The grass was soaked, but it had not been raining for that long. The trees could go in. The ground would be wet and difficult to work, but I was not afraid that the roots would get waterlogged. I knew the trees would take. I knew it as well as I knew my own name, or the outline of the downs beyond the mist.

  Jem was in the stables and the pony was in the gig.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. I had been unwilling to get up, but Jem was even worse. He had his greatcoat on, and I caught a glimpse of very dirty flannels underneath. He was not even dressed.

  ‘If Uncle John saw you like that, he’d turn you off,’ I observed.

  Jem nodded. ‘I overslept,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d rather have your pony harnessed on time by me like this than brought to you by me in livery half an hour from now.’

  ‘I’d rather have it on time and you in your livery,’ I said.

  He gave me his hand up to the gig and I gave him a smile. That was one of my first experiments in giving a reprimand, and I was not sure if I had done it right. ‘I hope you are not offended, Jem?’ I asked.

  His dirty face creased into a smile. ‘You’re in the right,’ he said grudgingly. ‘Don’t get above yourself; you’ll do.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, and that little bit of extra confidence carried me through the day, even when the tree cart overturned and we had to lift the saplings out of the mud of the lane without breaking their springy branches; even when they put a row of trees too close to another, leaving no room for the pickers and weeders to get through, and we had to dig them out and do it all again; even when they vanished away to Acre early for their dinner break and were late back.

  ‘It won’t do!’ I said crossly to Ted Tyacke. ‘I took an hour for my dinner, and I had to go all the way back to the Dower House. If this is a partnership between the Laceys and Acre, then I should not be overseer and timekeeper here. You should be here on time because you want to be.’

  And Ted, the friend of my girlhood, nodded and put out a dirty hand to help me down from the gig. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I think we all find it hard to believe we are all working for the same end.’

  After that exchange – in the muddy field with the pile of saplings behind us and half the field planted in unpromising spindly rows – the work went faster. They were learning their skills, even as I was; and when I had precisely worked out how many trees to a row, how many rows to the field, and then ended up with one extra sapling, they laughed so hard at my puzzled face that Ted had tear-stains down his grimy cheeks.

  ‘Oh, take the stupid thing!’ I said in impatience. ‘I’ve worked it out wrong, and now there’s no room for it! Plant it on the village green and the children can have the apples off it. Perhaps it will keep them out of this orchard!’

  ‘N-N-Nothing will keep them out of this orchard!’ Matthew Merry told me, his brown eyes twinkling. ‘They’re b-b-brigands. Don’t you remember how we were?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and look at us now!’

  Clary came ov
er to stand with us at the gate and we looked back at the field. Ralph had been wrong. I had been wrong. We had planted it in the day and, although it was dusk and time to trudge wearily home, we had done what we had promised ourselves. Indeed, we had done better.

  ‘I’m tired,’ she said.

  I looked at her with quick sympathy. Her mother had just given birth to another baby and Clary had been walking with it all night, keeping it quiet so that her mother could sleep.

  ‘I’ll drive you,’ I said; and she and Matthew and Ted walked with me to the gig.

  ‘We’ll follow,’ Ted said. ‘We’d overbalance the gig and the pony couldn’t manage the weight. We’ll see you tomorrow Julia.’

  I nodded and smiled, too tired myself for extra words. But Matthew touched Clary’s hand as she gripped the side of the gig and hauled herself wearily up.

  ‘I’ll come around tonight,’ he said, ‘about nine o’clock. I’ll walk the baby tonight when she wakes.’

  Clary nodded and leaned forward to pat his cheek with her hand. Then I slapped the reins on the pony’s rump and he set off up the muddy track for Acre. The rain had stopped, but the clouds were still low and it was very dark and quiet under the trees.

  ‘Matthew helps you with the baby?’ I queried.

  ‘Aye,’ she said shortly. ‘He’d do the cooking as well if I let him. But he gets enough teasing about nursemaiding for my family without that as well.’

  ‘That’s kind of him,’ I said. ‘But he always loved you.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We’re betrothed now, you know, Julia. Properly. And we’ve spoken to Ralph Megson about a cottage. He says we can have that empty one on the green.’