Meridon (Wideacre Trilogy 3) Read online

  I screwed up my face to think. ‘No,’ I said. ‘The Downs curve around the village and we came down that path so that we were north of the village. I reckon it’s that way…’ I gestured with my left hand.

  Will nodded. ‘You’ve a good sense of direction,’ he said. ‘But you would have that with the travelling you must have done.’

  He waited in case I should tell him something about my travelling but I said nothing and he trotted on ahead of me along the firebreak, across a marshy little stream, where Sea jinked and shied, and then in a long easy canter along a path and into a wood of tall beech trees and the occasional pine. Ahead of us was the river and I followed Will on the brown cob when he turned to the left and rode along its banks. The water was deep, dark brown in the curves and bends by the banks, but sparkling and bright in the shallows. We came out on to a cart track and then Will pulled his horse up and said, ‘There.’

  Ahead of us was a high and lovely fold of hills, capped by silver birches and the ungainly growing heads of baby ferns. Over to our left the hills ran down to the river, brown with last year’s bracken but lightened with the new growth. The old heather showed as dull pewter and old silver. Before us, in a huge sprawl of a field, were straight well-planted rows of apple trees, the leaves green with soft silvery undersides as the wind rolled through them.

  ‘Your ma planted this,’ Will said and his voice was filled with wonder. ‘Before you were born. Your ma Julia planted it, and my cousin Ted Tyacke was here when she did it. He said it took them all day to plant it and when they had finished they were so tired they could hardly walk home.’

  I nodded. For a moment I forgot my sadness and my anger as I looked at the great fertile sweep of the land and saw how the strong branches bobbed as the wind played through them.

  Will’s voice was warm. ‘Ted told me that none of them had ever planted apple trees before, it was a new idea. To set the estate back on its feet after the fire and everything going bad. He said that it was one of the first things Julia ever did on her own. She worked all day on her own down here and she counted out all the trees and got them set in straight rows.’

  I looked again at the orchard. I thought I could even tell that they had planted from left to right, the first two rows were a bit wobbly, as if they had been learning how to keep to the line. After that they were straighter. I thought of my mother, a young woman little older than me, trying to set the land right.

  ‘He said she was up and down each row twenty times,’ Will said, a laugh in the back of his voice. ‘And at the end of it, all the trees were in and she looked around and there was one left on the cart! They laughed until they cried and she swore that she would give the sapling to the village to keep so the children could have apples off it.’ He paused. ‘She planted it on the green,’ he said. ‘The tree is getting old now, but the apples are very sweet.’

  I felt a rush of tenderness for the mother I had never known, for the other Tyacke who had worked with her and laughed when she ended with one tree too many, for all the people she knew who worked with her to set this land on its feet again so that it could grow rich and fertile.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, and for that moment I was simply grateful that he had taken the time and the trouble to bring me down here, to show me the orchard, and to explain to me what the land had meant to my mother. How she had been when she had been a young girl with the rights and duties of a squire. How she had been when she had loved and owned the land.

  Will nodded and clicked to his horse so that we rode on beside the river, past the orchard. ‘She wanted to end the line of the Laceys,’ he said gently. ‘She told them that in the village one day. When her husband Squire Richard was bringing in day labourers and paying only the poor-rate wages. She said there should be no more squires.’

  I felt myself stiffen, and the cold hardness which had been around me all my life came back to me.

  ‘Then she should have drowned me in the river as she planned, and not given me away,’ I said. ‘She should have had the courage to do the thing properly, or not at all. She gave me away and I was lost for all those years. So now I do not understand the land, and the village is used to having no squire.’

  Will looked very attentively at the path ahead of us, at the stream moving so sweetly and easily across the land.

  ‘We could become accustomed,’ he said. ‘We will both have to change a little. We will become accustomed to having a Lacey in the Hall again. You will learn how to be Quality. Perhaps this is the best way. For she did not end the squires, but here you are, a squire who knows what it is to be poor. It is different for you, because you were not bred to it. You’ve seen both sides. You’ve not been trained in Quality ways, you’ve not learned to look away when you see beggars. Your heart is not hard in the way they learn.’

  He kept his eyes straight ahead so that he was not looking at my clothes, hand-me-downs, of a cheaper quality than his own. There was a hole in one of the boots. ‘You know what it is like for poor people,’ he said discreetly. ‘You would not make their lives hard for them if you could choose.’

  I thought about that as I rode. And I knew it was not so. Nothing in my life had taught me tenderness or charity. Nothing had taught me to share, to think of others. I had only ever shared with one person. I had only ever had a thought for one person. Will’s belief that my knowing the underside of a cruel and greedy world would make me gentle could not have been more wrong.

  We rode without speaking, listening to the river which flowed clattering on stones and whirlpooling around twigs beside us. In the distance I could hear the regular slap slap and creak of a mill wheel. Then we rounded a little bend and I saw it on the opposite side of the river, a handsome plain square building in the familiar yellow stone.

  ‘That’s the new mill,’ Will said with satisfaction. ‘The Green family run it as their own business. They grind Wideacre corn for free but they also take in corn from the other farmers and charge them a fee for grinding.’

  ‘Who owns it?’ I asked.

  Will looked surprised. ‘I suppose you do,’ he said. ‘Your mother got it running again, but it was built by the Laceys. The Green family came as tenants, long ago. But they’ve paid no rent since the corporation was established.’

  I nodded. I looked at the trim little building and at the bright white and purple violets in the windowboxes. I looked at the pretty curtains in the windows, and the mill wheel turning around. On the roof there were white doves cooing. I thought of the times I had gone hungry, and she had been hungry too. I thought of the times we had been cold, and how very often Da had beaten me. I thought of her sitting on gentlemen’s laps for a penny, and me being thrown from horse after horse for ha’pence. And I thought that all the time, for all of that time, these people had been living here in comfort and plenty, beside this quiet river.

  Will set his horse to a trot and then we went alongside the strawberry field I had seen in the morning. The lad had nearly finished the harrowing and he waved to us as we rode by. There was a little track between two fields and it brought us out on the driveway towards the Hall.

  ‘You’ve never been poor have you?’ I said shrewdly. ‘You’ve always worked, wherever you said it was – Goodwood – and here. But you’ve never gone short.’

  The horses walked shoulder to shoulder up the drive. The birds still sang in the treetops but I could not hear them. The sweet singing noise had gone from my head, too. ‘You’d never have such hopes of me if you had been poor, hard poor. You would know then that the only lesson anyone learns from poverty is to take as much as you can now, for fear that there will be nothing for you later. And don’t share with anyone, for certainly they’ll never share with you.’

  Will kept his eyes on the lane before his cob. He never turned his head.

  ‘In all my life I only ever shared with one person,’ I said, my voice very low. ‘I only ever gave anything to one person. And now she is gone. I shall never share nor give to anyone else.’
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  I thought for a moment. ‘And except for her,’ I said consideringly, ‘no one ever gave me a damned thing. Every penny I saw I worked for. Every crust I ate I earned. I don’t think I’m the squire you hoped for, Will Tyacke. I don’t think I’m capable of gentry charity. I’ve been poor myself, and I hate being poor, and I don’t care for poor dirty people. If I’m rich now, I’ll stay that way. I don’t ever want to be poor again.’

  20

  Mr Fortescue was waiting for us in the stable yard. He asked Will to stay for dinner but Will said he had to go. He waited while I slid down from the saddle and then nodded to Mr Fortescue and to me.

  ‘I’ll come back this evening,’ he said. ‘When I finish work at dark.’

  Then he gave me a friendly smile which also seemed somehow forgiving. Then he rode away.

  ‘I had better wash,’ I said. I put a hand to my cheek and felt the grime from the dust of the road.

  ‘Becky Miles has put some clothes in your room,’ Mr Fortescue offered, his voice carefully neutral. ‘They belonged to your mother, but she thinks they would fit you if you cared to try them.’

  I could tell he was trying hard to pass no comment on my eccentricity of boys’ clothes. I looked down at the shabby breeches and jacket and I laughed.

  ‘It’s all right, Mr Fortescue,’ I said. ‘I know I cannot dress like a stable lad for the rest of my life. I was wanting to ask you about clothes. I also need to ask you about all sorts of other things which I will have to learn.’

  Mr Fortescue brightened. ‘I only hope I can help you,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk over dinner.’

  I nodded and went indoors and up to my room.

  For the thousandth time that day I had a pang of pain and anger that she could not be with me, when I saw what was laid out on the bed.

  It was the finest riding habit of plum velvet, edged with silky violet ribbon in a great double border. There was a matching tricorne hat to go with it, and dark leather boots with silky tassels and even cream-coloured stockings with plum clocks on the side.

  I thought of how she would have flown at them and how ravishing she would have looked in them and I had to lean back against the panels of the door and take a deep breath to ease the sudden pain which thudded, as hard as a blow into my belly, at the thought that she would never see them. That in all her beauty-seeking life she had never known anything better than rags and trumpery.

  So there was little delight for me in the thick smooth feel of the cloth, nor the fineness of the linen shirt and stock that went underneath. But when I had slipped on the skirt and gone to the mirror in the smart little boots I could smile with some pleasure at my reflection.

  It was a half-mirror so I could not see the hem of the gown nor the boots without dragging over a chair and standing high on it to admire them. Then I slowly got down and saw how my linen shirt looked white against the neat purple waistband of the skirt, and how I looked somehow taller and older and quite strange and unlike myself. I stared at my face. The hazy green eyes looked back, the lines of my cheek, of my throat above the tumble of lace as clear as a drawn line.

  My hair was still hopeless. I made a few half-hearted passes at it with the silver-backed brush but the soft bristles slid over the curls and the tangles and hardly straightened them at all. It remained an obstinate tumble of copper curls half-way down my back, and only the memory of the ragged mess of a bob stopped me from ringing for Becky Miles to bring me some scissors and hacking it all off again.

  I turned from the glass and went down to dinner, feeling already stronger and more confident in boots which clicked on the floorboards of the hall and did not clump.

  Mr Fortescue was waiting for me in the dining room and when he saw me his jaw dropped and he gaped like a country child at mummers.

  ‘Good God!’ he said.

  Becky Miles who was setting a soup tureen on the table swung around and nearly dropped it in her surprise.

  ‘Miss Sarah!’ she said. ‘You look beautiful!’

  I felt myself flush as vain and as silly as a market-day slut.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said steadily and took my seat at the head of the table.

  Mr Fortescue sat at my right-hand side and Becky Miles loaded the rest of the expanse of mahogany with as many dishes as she could, to conceal the fact that there were just the two of us, camped out at one end of the table.

  ‘Did you enjoy your ride?’ Mr Fortescue asked politely as he started to eat his soup.

  I watched him. He did not bend over his bowl and spoon directly from bowl to mouth with as little distance as possible. Nor had he crumbled his bread up into hearty bits to float in the soup as I had already done. I flushed again, this time with annoyance. He had kept his bread on his plate and every now and then broke off a little piece and buttered it. I tried to sit straighter but it seemed to put me a long way off from the table. I was sure my hand would shake as I was lifting the soup to my lips and then I would drop soup on my new dress. I remembered the small cloth and spread it on my lap. It all seemed designed to make it harder to eat. But if this was the way it had to be done I thought I could pick it up in time.

  ‘Yes, it was a nice ride,’ I agreed inattentively. When Mr Fortescue finished his soup he did not wipe around his bowl with a piece of bread. He left the bowl dirty, he left nigh on a whole spoonful spread around the bottom. I followed his example though I watched the wasted soup longingly as Becky Miles took the bowl away.

  She set a great silver salver with a rib of beef on it before Mr Fortescue and he started carving into wafer-thin slices which he laid in a fan on a plate for me and Becky Miles walked around the table and placed it before me. The smell of the roast beef, dark on the outside and pinky in the middle, made me lean forward and sniff, water rushing into my mouth. Becky Miles brought me roast potatoes, crunchy and brown, new potatoes glazed with butter, tiny young carrots and new peas and half a dozen things which looked like green miniature bulrushes.

  ‘Do you like asparagus, Sarah?’ Mr Fortescue said, pointing at them.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said honestly. ‘I’ve never had them before.’

  ‘Try one or two then,’ he recommended. ‘We grow them on the Home Farm here under glass. Will Tyacke has it in mind to put some more glass houses up and grow more of it.’

  I nodded and Becky Miles put two of the green slivers on my plate.

  She held out a great sauce boat of deep red shiny gravy and poured it thickly over the meat.

  I was so hungry I could have grabbed my knife and cut up the bigger bits at once and shovelled the rest into my mouth with the spoon. But I forced myself to wait and watch Mr Fortescue.

  He took an age, while I sat there and my nostrils flared at the scent of the food and I ached to begin. First he was served with all the vegetables, then Becky Miles brought wine for him and water and wine for me. I would rather have had small beer, but I did not feel able to say so. Then finally, after he had made a little pile of salt at the edge of his plate he picked up his knife and his fork, at once, in both hands and cut and prodded, and managed to talk at the same time without showing what he was chewing.

  It was beyond me. I ate as daintily as I could but when I was trying to cut the meat some gravy slopped over the side of my plate and stained the tablecloth. And the asparagus dripped butter into my lap so the napkin was soiled. If I had not been so starving hungry I should have lost my appetite at the discomfort of sitting opposite such a neat feeder as Mr Fortescue. But I had been hungry once, and he had not, and I was sure that the difference between us went deeper than manners. He could see food as something he could leave or take, as he pleased, with the knowledge that there were other meals if he wished for them. I ate as if I might never see food again, and I thought I should never learn to treat meal times lightly.

  After the meat there was apple pie and a creamy kind of dish which Becky Miles served in a glass. After that came some cheeses and biscuits and port for Mr Fortescue and a glass of sweet yellowy ra
tafia for me. I thought of Robert Gower offering David a glass of port after dinner, that time. It seemed like another lifetime. It seemed as if they were years away from me.

  ‘Now Sarah,’ Mr Fortescue said gently as Becky Miles cleared away everything but a bowl of fruit on the table and the two decanters. ‘If this were a proper household you would withdraw to the parlour and leave me to my port and my cigar. But since it is just the two of us will you sit with me?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  He seemed to be waiting. He gave me a little smile. ‘And may I smoke?’ he asked. ‘I know it is a disgusting habit, but…’

  I looked at him in utter incredulity. ‘Why d’you ask me?’ I demanded.

  ‘Because you’re a lady,’ he said. ‘A gentleman cannot smoke in a lady’s presence without her specific permission.’

  I was still blank. ‘Whyever not?’ I asked. ‘What’s it to do with her?’

  Mr Fortescue could not seem to explain. ‘I suppose it is about showing respect,’ he offered.

  We looked at each other in mutual incomprehension.

  ‘I’m never going to understand this,’ I said miserably. ‘I’ll need to have someone to teach me.’

  Mr Fortescue brought out a little silver pair of scissors and snipped at the end of his cigar, then he lit it, and blew out thoughtfully, watching the smoke curling off the glowing ember.

  ‘I’ve had some thoughts on that,’ he offered. ‘There’s something I can suggest. What you are going to need is the education of a country lady.’ He stopped and smiled. ‘Nothing very sophisticated! Your mother was brought up here with only the teaching of her mother. She never saw a city bigger than Chichester until she went to Bath. She never went to London at all.’

  He glanced at me. I kept my face still.

  ‘I spoke with my sister Marianne, as soon as I heard you had come home. Marianne was a special friend of your mother’s and she suggested to me that as soon as you are settled here you will need a companion. Fortunately she knows someone who might do. It is a lady who used to be a governess. She’s a friendly lady, the widow of a naval officer and the daughter of a country squire herself so she would understand the life you are going to lead. She’d be prepared to come here and to teach you the things you need to know. To read, and to write. How to run a house and how to engage servants. What your duties are in the house and what church and charitable works you should do.’