The Favoured Child Page 27

Uncle John – a town-bred man, and the son of a line of traders – did not think it odd. The sheep and the little herd of dairy cows became my responsibility from that day onwards. Someone had to do the work. Mama had her school, Uncle John had the health of the village and the business side of the estate, Ralph Megson supervised everything on the land, Richard took charge of the hall and I was out every day looking at the animals, and the fields, and the crops. I was busy, and weary…and very much a Lacey on her land.

  Richard did not deal with livestock.

  Richard did not deal with the land and the crops.

  Richard did not deal with the tenants, and the copy-holders, and the cottagers and the labourers and the intricate details of land ownership and land sharing on Wideacre.

  Richard’s great love, his great project, was his work on the hall. And Mama and I, and even Uncle John, had to accept that he knew more and more about the rebuilding of our home every day. Only Richard had the love – almost a passion – to pursue the right colour of stone through twenty quarries until he found one he thought fit.

  ‘It is darker than the usual sandstone,’ he explained to Uncle John and Ralph Megson and me in the library one morning when we had gathered to take a decision about planting soft-fruit crops. ‘It will blend with the old stone of the hall. The architect wanted it all new, and the builder too. But I am sure that I am doing the right thing in choosing this stone, even though it is so far to transport it. We will need half as much by using the old stone. And I like the idea of the hall being rebuilt from the ruins.’ Ralph Megson cocked an eyebrow at that, but kept his head bent low over the plans of the hall spread before us on the table. ‘I cannot spare many men,’ he said briefly. ‘They have not the skills. They could only do day labouring for you.’

  Richard nodded. ‘I have spoken to the architect and we think it best to bring in experienced building labourers,’ he said. ‘They can be housed in Midhurst and come out daily in a wagon. D’you think that will cause any unrest in Acre?’

  Ralph puffed out his cheeks and looked hard at John. ‘These men are on wages, I take it? No profit-sharing scheme for them?’

  Uncle John met Ralph’s ironic gaze steadily. ‘I do not need to argue the fall of the Bastille here,’ he said. ‘They are on fair rates. After all, we are bringing in a ploughing and sowing gang this autumn to sow the wheat. They will be on day wages too. I see no reason why Acre should object.’

  ‘As long as we make a profit which is better than day wages, no,’ Ralph said.

  ‘Well, that is my intention,’ Uncle John said. ‘Mr Megson, will you oblige me by looking at this map…’ and he covered up Richard’s plan of the hall with a map of the fields of Wideacre coloured in different shades to denote the different crops. Richard and I exchanged a rueful smile. No one cared for the hall as much as Richard. ‘My intention is to have a thoroughly balanced farming estate,’ Uncle John said. ‘Whatever weather the climate produces should suit one crop. I should like us to grow a wide variety.’

  ‘All fruit needs sunshine,’ Ralph observed, looking at the swaths of fields coloured green to show fruit crops.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Uncle John replied. ‘But it can tolerate rain, and they are developing strains of fruit which are more and more hardy. There is a great market out there in the growing towns. I want Wideacre fruit to go to Chichester, to Portsmouth, even to London.’

  Ralph nodded. ‘I think you see the future aright,’ he said briefly. ‘There will be more and more people in the cities and they will need to be fed. But if there is any chance of a war against France, the price of bread will go sky-high. Wheat is a good crop in wartime.’

  Uncle John nodded. ‘What of Acre?’ he said. ‘How would they feel about a large corn crop?’

  There was a silence in the sunny room. You could almost smell the smoke of old riots.

  Then Ralph smiled. ‘Why not?’ he said wryly. ‘No one in Acre was ever against a reasonable profit. No one in Acre was ever against the export of food. No bread riot ever took place except with hungry people seeing their food sent away.’

  ‘You make riots sound reasonable,’ Richard said. His voice was level, encouraging. ‘Have you had personal experience of such affrays?’

  ‘I’ve seen bread riots,’ Ralph said. The slight sideways smile he shot at me told me well enough that he had never been a neutral observer. ‘I’ve never seen one that was not, in its own way, orderly.’

  ‘An orderly riot?’ Uncle John queried. But John had been raised in Edinburgh and had lived the past fourteen years in India.

  ‘Yes,’ Ralph said simply, ‘it’s generally the women anyway, so it is not as if it was fighting men or trouble-makers. I saw one in Portsmouth, where they surrounded a bread shop where the baker was selling light-weight loaves for the full price. They took the door off the front of the shop and sat on the baker while someone called for a Justice of the Peace. He looked at the weights the baker had been using. They were underweight, for he had shaved them off. The magistrate reweighed every loaf in the shop and sold them to the women at the proper price. Then they got off the baker’s fat belly and left him. He was unhurt, and his shop was not damaged, except that the door was off the frame, and he had cash in his cash-box.’

  Uncle John was puzzled, but Richard and I were smiling. ‘The Justice of the Peace agreed with the rioters?’ John asked incredulously.

  Ralph shrugged and smiled. ‘He believed in the old ways too. No one likes a cheating tradesman, no one likes bread-hoarders. And the women were pleasant respectable women, but, oh, my, they were angry! I’d have given them half the shop if they had so much as looked at me!’

  ‘They did look at you, though, didn’t they, Mr Megson?’ I asked slyly. ‘What were you doing there?’

  ‘I was doing nothing,’ Ralph Megson said innocently. ‘I was just standing there, holding the door…and the chisel…and the hammer.’

  Uncle John, Richard and I laughed out loud, and Ralph chuckled too.

  ‘Those days are over,’ Ralph Megson said, sounding regretful. ‘The days when the poor people could insist on a fair price in the local market. It took me some time to see it, but I know it now. That’s why I’ve no objection to Wideacre sowing corn and selling it at a profit. The only way the poor of England are going to be fed is if there is enough food in all the markets, and food being moved around the country. The poor can no longer depend on their local produce, and they cannot control the movement of grain.’

  Uncle John nodded. ‘With our profit-sharing scheme, we should sell surplus corn in London,’ he said. ‘Everyone would do better with the profits from a London sale than with cheap-priced corn in the Midhurst market.’

  Ralph nodded. ‘You’d always need to keep enough back to feed Acre,’ he said, ‘but you could grow that on half a dozen fields, and Wideacre has the capacity for scores of fields.’

  ‘It’s not just Acre that should be fed,’ I said. ‘When our corn goes into Midhurst, it is bought by the poor from all around the area. The sensible thing would be to agree with other landowners that we should all supply the local market at a reasonable price, and then make what profits were possible with the surplus.’

  ‘A selling ring to benefit the poor!’ Ralph said with a chuckle in the back of his voice. ‘Miss Julia, you should be on the barricades. I have heard of selling rings to obtain the best price, but you are talking of one to make a fair price! A ring of producers to benefit the consumers! It would be a great novelty.’

  ‘And it might even work,’ Uncle John said thoughtfully. ‘You were not here, Mr Megson, when Julia’s papa, the squire, started his agricultural experiments and Beatrice ran the estate. During the good years Wideacre held sway in the whole county. Wideacre was much respected then and its example followed. If we could show that the estate was feeding the poor neighbours and all the workers and making a good commercial profit, there are many who would follow suit.’

  ‘And Wideacre showed that the other way, of chasing profit,
did not work at all,’ I said.

  Ralph smiled at my enthusiasm. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘You are in the right, Miss Julia.’

  ‘I agree!’ Richard said surprisingly. The two men turned to look at him, but he was smiling at me. ‘The prosperity of Acre does not depend solely on profits,’ he said. ‘The prosperity of any estate depends on its good relationship with neighbours. Let us sow large acres of corn and sell it at a fair price locally, and make what profits we can with the surplus. That’s fair.’

  ‘Done!’ said Uncle John as if we had shaken on a deal. ‘But I am still having a couple of fields for raspberries and strawberries.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Ralph dourly. ‘I know you are. And you may worry about how we will harvest them when they ripen at haymaking time.’

  ‘I shall harvest them!’ Richard said grandly. ‘For I will do anything rather than farm sheep!’

  We all laughed at that, and Richard’s terror in that shadowy barn was hidden from everyone and half forgotten by me. It was generally known instead that young Master Richard could not be bothered with the stock. The stock was to be handled by Mr Megson or Miss Julia, and for this autumn Ralph would hire plough-boys and sowing gangs with their own gear and horses to plant Wideacre with wheat again.

  11

  No one expected Wideacre to show a profit that first season, but we had cut a good crop of hay – ‘Half flowers,’ Ralph said crossly – and that meant we could feed the sheep and the cows more cheaply through the winter. None of the fruit yielded that first year, of course, but we got the raspberry canes planted in straight smooth rows in the lower fields alongside the drive to Wideacre Hall. We planted the strawberries in a new field alongside the Fenny where we thought they would catch the sun and be sheltered from the wind which blows off the downs. My apple trees had taken and were growing straight and tall. They were spaced right too, which I thought something of a small miracle, so I took Ted Tyacke’s ironic congratulations at face value – and as no more than my due.

  Richard was much away in the autumn, preparing for his entry to the University of Oxford after Christmas. Uncle John took him up to Oxford and left him there, coming back by London to advise the MacAndrew Company about the likely changes in India which would come from the French wars, so Mama and I had a few weeks alone together on the land, working like skivvies all day and meeting only at dinner.

  Mama’s schoolchildren had progressed from their practical training and were starting to learn their letters; the parlour was littered every evening with brightly coloured paints and card which Mama used to cut out letter shapes.

  I was working: in Acre, ordering repairs to cottages too long neglected; on the downs overseeing the planting of hedges and the building of fences to control the sheep; on the common, watching the coppices for the cutting and letting them collect firewood; and, mostly, in the fields. Wherever I was, crossing my fingers behind my back for luck as I made a decision, Ralph Megson was there too.

  I could not have said what he was to me. Sometimes he was like a father, sometimes he was like a lover, sometimes he was like a teacher. All the time he was a friend. And as the days went past, and the November days got shorter and colder and more and more miserable for outdoors work, we became less like pupil and teacher and more like partners.

  He met me on the bridge over the Fenny one day at the start of December. I had stopped Misty to watch the river swirling under the stone arches, and Ralph had strolled up the lane from Acre.

  ‘You look warm,’ he said.

  I nodded. I had a new riding habit, as purple as a plum, made from thick wool. I had it buttoned tight around my neck, for the day was damp and there was the smell of slushy snow on the air.

  ‘Sheep all right?’ Ralph asked. He knew I had been up to check them that morning.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But I think Giles Shepherd is getting too old. He is ill again and his son Jimmy is too small to take over. Besides, Mama wants him in school.’

  Ralph nodded. ‘I know,’ he said briefly. ‘There’s no one else who knows about sheep in the village. We’ll have to think about maybes hiring a shepherd for a season or two after Christmas. He could work with a couple of the village lads and teach them how it’s done.’

  ‘Mama would know which boys,’ I said. ‘But Jimmy does love the sheep. He’d be an obvious choice. His best friend is Simon. Perhaps they could work on the sheep together.’

  Ralph nodded then clutched at my arm. ‘Look!’ he said. ‘Grilse! Coming upstream!’

  I bent over and stared at the water. Very slowly, as if very weary, a female salmon was swimming heavily in the water. She had made the long journey up river from the sea, leaping over the dams for mill ponds, beating her way up against the current. She was heavy with eggs, and all the little salmon which hatched from the eggs would leave the Fenny, returning when they were grown.

  ‘I love salmon,’ Ralph said emphatically. ‘Miss Julia, you must excuse me for the day. I shall follow her, and when she has spawned I shall net her. And you will forgive me.’

  ‘I will indeed,’ I said, smiling at the absorbed face. ‘And you may send a couple of salmon steaks up to the Dower House and Mrs Gough will cook them for your dinner if you will dine with us.’

  ‘Aye,’ Ralph said absently. ‘Honoured.’ And he put two fingers in his mouth and let out a piercing whistle.

  At once two of the little boys of Acre came running to him, and Ralph told them to watch the salmon and follow her wherever she went without molesting her, while he fetched his horse. Without another word to me he went as fast as his rolling stride could carry him, back to his cottage for his horse and his net.

  Later that day three plump salmon steaks were carried to the back door by Little ‘Un, who presented Mr Megson’s compliments in a bashful whisper. That night for dinner we had salmon pie with a pale brown crust of pastry on top and a creamy white sauce inside.

  ‘Will we have a Christmas party this year?’ Mr Megson asked Mama. ‘I could set one in train in the village. You’d be cramped here.’

  ‘I’d like us to do something here at the Dower House,’ she said. ‘You organize a party in the village for Christmas; but we will have at least the children here later, perhaps at Twelfth Night. I must write and ask Dr MacAndrew what he would wish.’

  ‘Does he know when he is coming home?’ Ralph Megson asked, passing Mama a bowl of crystallized fruits.

  ‘Not yet,’ she replied. ‘The business of the MacAndrew Company is complex, and no one knows as much about India as John. Do you need him here?’

  ‘Not at all,’ he said, smiling at me. ‘He left behind a very competent deputy.’

  Mama smiled. ‘I believe so,’ she said. ‘I cannot get a word of sense out of her unless it concerns something which grows on Wideacre or eats a Wideacre crop. I don’t believe she has opened a book or played a tune in months.’

  I nodded my head. It was true.

  ‘She’s a Lacey,’ Ralph said softly. ‘She takes after her papa.’

  ‘After Harry?’ My mother’s eyes were suddenly sharp on Ralph’s face. ‘Do you think she resembles Harry?’

  Ralph Megson nodded. I think only I would have known he was lying, and I knew why. He was trying to protect Mama and me from the whispers of the village which were growing into a chorus – the whispers which said that I was not just as like to Beatrice as two peas in a pod, but that I was Beatrice, that Beatrice the golden girl had come back to them to make the village good and the land grow again.

  ‘They talk in the village of her being a Lacey girl like Beatrice,’ he said, ‘but to my mind it is her father she resembles the most. And they tell me that when he inherited, at much the same age as Miss Julia, he was Wideacre-mad for many seasons.’

  The tension around Mama’s brown eyes softened as if Ralph had given her a draught of poppies. ‘Indeed, yes,’ she said. ‘Harry was out on the land almost every day the summer before we were married. D’you know, Mr Megson, I had almost forgot! Everyone re
members Beatrice running the estate, but for a couple of years it was all Harry.’

  Stride brought in the port, and Mama and I rose to leave Mr Megson with the decanter, but he stayed us with a gesture.

  ‘Please don’t leave me in solitary state,’ he said. ‘I am a working man, Lady Lacey, and I never drink port. May we have a glass of ratafia together – before I have to go home?’

  So Ralph Megson, a labouring man, sat in our dining-room and laughed with me, and smiled at my mama, and went home under a clear sky with a cold wintry moon to light his way.

  He took with him a secret, the open secret which everyone knew, which they whispered in Acre: every day I grew more and more like Beatrice, the last Lacey girl on the land. Every day I resembled her more closely, every day they heard her clear voice giving orders, they heard her laughter when someone joked with me. Out of respect to Mama and to me, no one spoke of it directly. But the whole village knew – in their credulous benighted imaginations – that Beatrice had come back to them.

  That I was her.

  I could not learn to laugh at it.

  Often and often I heard the singing in my ears which meant that Beatrice was coming to me, and I would give an order, or answer a question, and have that strange dreamy sensation of having been in that field, waited by that gate before. And then the old man or old woman to whom I was talking would nod and smile at me and say softly, ‘Welcome, child, welcome,’ and I knew that they had been there with Beatrice, and that I had just spoken her words.

  It made me shiver; even in the brightest wintry sunshine it would make me shiver when they looked at me and spoke to me thus. But I would shake my head, like a puppy coming out of a river, and say, ‘No! No! It is me! Julia Lacey! Don’t think of anyone else.’

  And they would smile at me with their eyes bright with knowledge, with no sense at all that what they thought they saw, what they thought they knew, was quite impossible.

  Christmas was quiet by old Wideacre standards, but Uncle John was home from London, and Richard home from Oxford, and that made Mama happy, and me happy. So Ralph held a Christmas party in the village and Mama planned a Twelfth Night party for her schoolchildren in the stable yard of the Dower House.