The Favoured Child Read online

  I clattered my dish of tea on the tray and put out both hands to Richard in alarm. ‘Not for ever!’ I exclaimed. ‘Not for ever, Richard!’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘just for a couple of months. Your mama wants you to take the waters, and my papa wants you to see a doctor who is a friend of his, and your grandmama wants you affianced. They think a couple of months in Bath should do all that.’

  I looked at him carefully. He was smiling, but it was a tight mean smile. He was angry with me and trying not to show it.

  ‘And you,’ I asked breathlessly, ‘what did you say?’

  ‘I said nothing,’ he said. ‘There was little I needed to say. I have my own opinions as to what you were doing, and I shall keep them.’

  ‘I shan’t go,’ I said.

  ‘It’s quite decided,’ Richard said blithely. ‘You’ll go with your mama, and the two of you will stay at some dreary lodging-house. I should think it’s fearfully slow. You’re to leave as soon as they confirm the booking of the rooms and as soon as my papa has ordered horses for the journey. You’ll see this friend of his, a specialist. They trained together at Edinburgh, but since that time this doctor has specialized in particular complaints.’ His look at me was radiant. ‘Don’t you want to know what complaints those are?’ he asked.

  I hesitated. Some streak of self-preservation in my head warned me that I did not want to know what they were. But I felt as weary and defeated as if that dream had been a promise of my future. ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Insanity in young ladies,’ Richard said sweetly. ‘He specializes in young ladies who have gone off their heads. And he is the one you are to see in Bath. For they all think you are mad. They think you are off your clever little head.’

  My plate clattered to the floor as I reached out for his hand. ‘No, Richard,’ I choked. ‘I will not go. They are wrong, you know they are wrong.’

  He twisted away from my grasp. ‘That’s not all,’ he said. ‘Until you leave, you are not to go into Acre at all.’

  I gaped at him. ‘Am I in disgrace?’ I asked. ‘Are they angry with me for what happened in Acre?’

  ‘They say they are afraid for you,’ Richard said smugly. ‘It’s to be given out that you are unwell. But they all believe that you are going mad.’

  I put one hand on the wooden headboard of my bed, and the other hand to my cheek to steady myself. ‘This is nonsense,’ I said weakly. ‘I have always had dreams. This was just a dream like the others. It was a seeing. Everyone knows about seeings.’

  ‘Dirty old gypsies have seeings,’ Richard said cruelly. ‘Young ladies do not. Unless they are going mad. You have always tried to resemble my mama, Beatrice; they all say that in the end she went mad. Now they are saying it is a family madness. That you are going mad too.’

  The room swam around me. ‘No, Richard,’ I said steadily. ‘It is not like that. You know it is not like that.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Richard said swiftly. ‘I used to think I knew you, but ever since my papa came home, you have been trying to be his favourite. Ralph Megson arrived in the village and you have tried to make yourself first with him, and first with Acre. Just because you are friends with those stupid little peasants, you are queening it around the whole time trying to play the squire. I get sent to my lessons, but you roam around as you please. Then as soon as I have to leave for Oxford, you are down there all the time, making up to Megson and pretending to work the land as if you were my mama come again. Now you see what comes of it! Much good it has done you! You plotted to make it seem as if you are the favoured child and now no one believes you; they just think you are crazy.’

  ‘I am not!’ I said, suddenly angry, fighting through the soporific haze of the drug and through my sense of fatigue and defeat. I threw back the bedcovers and started to rise. ‘I have the sight,’ I said defiantly. ‘And it meant I was able to save the village from the falling spire and from the fire. I did not plan to do it. I did not plot. I was drawn down there and I could not help myself. It was Beatrice. It was a seeing.’

  He put hard hands on my shoulders and pinned me, seated, to the bed. ‘There are no such things,’ he hissed, his face black with fury. ‘There are no such things as seeings. Beatrice is dead, and what you just said proves that we are all right and you are mad. You are going mad, Julia, and we will have to put you in a madhouse; and you will never live in the new Wideacre Hall, and you will never be the favoured child in Acre.’

  I put up my hands to hold his wrists and silence him. But nothing would stop him.

  ‘You are going mad, and they will send you to Bath, and your mama will take you to see a doctor, and he will know at once that all these dreams and these seeings and these singings in your head are because you are mad, and getting madder every day.’

  I screamed.

  I took my hands from holding him and punched him hard, punched at his body and screamed at him.

  At once he thrust me face down into the pillow and held me there, half stifled, with all his force while I writhed and struggled and tried to push myself up. When I lay limp, he relaxed his grip and turned my face around towards him.

  ‘Better be quiet,’ he said, and his whisper was infinitely sweet. ‘If they hear you screaming, or think that you are getting violent, it would make it so much worse.’ He smiled at me, untroubled, his face alight with joy. ‘You look mad,’ he said sweetly. ‘And you were screaming just then, quite out of control. You were violent with me, you attacked me, and now you are crying. Anyone who saw you would be certain that you have to be put in a madhouse. Better stay quiet, Julia.’ He stroked my hair from my hot forehead in a terrifying parody of care. ‘There, there,’ he said.

  I shuddered under his touch.

  He lifted my bare feet from the floor and tucked them under the bed covers again and smoothed the sheet under my chin. ‘Lie still,’ he whispered softly, his mouth very close to my ear. ‘Lie still. Your grandmama is still downstairs, and you would not want her to hear you screaming, would you? Little pet of the family.’

  I lay frozen. I did not even move when he kissed me softly on the cheek, gently, as if he loved me. Then he turned his back on me and trod light-footed to the door and shut it behind him.

  I lay where he had left me, staring blankly at the ceiling, my cheeks wet with cooling tears, with the start of a secret panic building inside me.

  It was like a nightmare, the next few days. Every sweet smile of my mama’s, every time Uncle John looked at me and asked how I was feeling was a confirmation of what Richard had said: they thought I was going mad. I knew my face was strained and my eyes wary. I tried so hard to act normally, to seem like an ordinary girl, but every day my behaviour grew odder and odder.

  The weather tormented me, for the wind and the rain had blown away into half a dozen cold sharp days with a frost in the morning and a bright red sun in the afternoon. Misty in her stable ate oats and grew restless, and yet they would not let me ride. I hardly dared glance out of the window for fear that Mama should see some wildness in my face which would appear abnormal. I was afraid even to sit on a stool at her feet and gaze into the log fire in case Uncle John should say gently, ‘What are you thinking, Julia?’

  His eyes were on me all the time and when I looked idly into the flames, he watched my rapt face. I was under observation.

  Misty was restless in the loose box of the Dower House, for Ralph had brought her back the very next day, loaded with little presents from the children of Acre. They had made me chains of little paper flowers, they had made me a bouquet of twigs with tiny buds as a promise of spring and they had collected farthings and walked to Midhurst to buy me a box of sweetmeats. But Ralph had not been allowed to see me. They had told him, they had told all the callers from Acre, that I was resting and would be leaving for Bath within the week.

  My place on the land was taken by Richard.

  Every day he ordered Prince out of the stables and rode to Acre to consult with Ralph on what should be done that d
ay. And Ralph – easygoing, imperturbable – accepted the change as our wishes, as my wishes. He knew that Richard had no eye for the cows and did not like to work with the sheep, but January is a slack time of the year and there was little to do on the land. The urgent work was to shore up the west wall of the church to make the roof waterproof and then to rebuild the five wrecked cottages as soon as possible.

  Richard knew the builders, knew them better than anyone. Richard had done the round of the local quarries and knew exactly the cost of stone at each one and when they could deliver. Richard could draw a plan himself or adapt one from out of his own library of building books. Richard was the one they needed in Acre in that month, with little farming work to do, but with an urgent need for someone to plan and supervise the repair of the church and the rebuilding of the cottages.

  Richard set them to work to rethatch and reroof the Smiths’ and the Coopers’ homes, and he was out in the lane of Acre every day, watching them replace the rafters and lay the thatch. In the afternoon when the light started to fail, he would take them down to the Bush and treat them to great mugs of ale at his own expense.

  He did not forget the women or children either. When Little ‘Un was ill, Richard called out the carriage to take him up to the Dower House to see Uncle John and brought him home again, wrapped up warm around the throat and dosed with laudanum against the pain. He always had a handful of ribbons in his pocket for the pretty girls of Acre. He acted like a beloved young squire and showed no preference. Clary was still the leader of the young people of the village, and he always saved the broadest, reddest ribbon for her. Only Ted Tyacke stood out against Richard’s charm. Only Ted refused to drink with him, failed to pull a forelock to him. ‘He’s surly,’ Richard said at dinner, his smile newly confident, ‘but he doesn’t matter. I can manage the village without the blessing of Ted Tyacke.’

  It was as if I had died on that night of the church spire falling. Died, and my place taken by Richard. Died and been forgotten.

  Mama and Uncle John ordered Stride to deny me at the front door to visitors. In the kitchen they told village callers that I was unwell and resting. If you wanted a decision on the land, you went to Ralph Megson. If you wanted a decision on buildings, or a favour, you went to Richard. It was as if I were not there, as if I had already gone to Bath and would never return.

  Mama knew that I was unhappy, but she did not ask me for an explanation, and I was as wary of opening my heart to her as a suspected criminal. The worst thing for me was how they watched me, but also I could not rid myself of that bleak memory of the dream. It was as if I had looked into an enchanted mirror and seen my face, haggard with suffering, lined with age, as if I had been cursed with a glimpse of the future which held no restored Acre, no rebuilt hall, just loneliness and pain and fear, and an unwanted baby which had to be murdered.

  If I could have rested, if they could have let me alone, I might have recovered my spirits, I might have looked less strange. But they watched me all the time, with anxious loving eyes. And neither my mama nor Uncle John could conceal their impatience to get me away, off the land, away from my home, exiled. I watched the post-bag and I knew that Uncle John had written to his friend the doctor. The reply came on the same day as the confirmation that the rooms booked by Mama were available.

  ‘We can leave tomorrow,’ Mama said to Uncle John over the coffee-pot at breakfast-time.

  ‘And Dr Phillips will see you at your convenience,’ he said.

  Both of them were studiously avoiding looking at me. I kept my eyes on my plate. I was afraid to say anything. The room was full of fearful silences.

  ‘I’ll be off.’ Richard said brightly. We all looked up at him as he pushed back his chair and went towards the door, pausing only to kiss Mama on the top of her lace cap as he went past her. ‘The Smiths and the Coopers should be able to move back in today, and I can start work in earnest on the other three cottages,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You do agree, don’t you, sir, that I need not go back to university until I have seen this work through, and the cottages up again?’

  Uncle John nodded approvingly at Richard. ‘Yes, indeed,’ he said. ‘No one else could have drawn up the plans and ordered the goods so quickly. Acre is in your debt. No one could take over now.’

  Richard smiled sweetly. ‘I’m glad to help!’ he said. ‘But I don’t think we should let Julia home from Bath until she promises not to pull down any more of Acre. I agree there are times when I could quite cheerfully raze it to the ground, but not in the middle of a thunderstorm in the middle of January!’

  The three of them laughed, but only Richard seemed to relish the joke. I could feel my face stiffen in a blank, insincere smile. I knew I looked odd, smiling like that with my eyes filling with tears. Richard was the only one who did not seem to notice. He blew a kiss to me and swung to the door, then he checked with an eye on me. ‘May we have dinner late tonight?’ he asked. ‘I won’t be finished before nightfall.’

  Mama smiled at his enthusiasm. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘If you are so busy, we can dine later if that suits you, Richard.’

  ‘Part business, part pleasure!’ he said provocatively, watching me to see how I took it. ‘Getting Acre to work is costing me a fortune in ribbons!’

  I kept my eyes down and said nothing while John and Mama bantered with Richard about flirting with the village girls. I knew he had said that to distress me, and it did distress me. They had taken him to their hearts very thoroughly in Acre. Then he said goodbye again and we heard his boots clatter across the wooden floor and then the front door slam.

  There was an awkward silence.

  ‘Can you be ready to leave tomorrow, Julia?’ Mama asked me gently. ‘There is no need to pack very many dresses. I want to buy you some new costumes in Bath.’

  I nodded. There was nothing I could say but yes. I took myself out of the room before they wondered aloud at the contrast between my bright healthy cousin and myself.

  He was in the ascendant. He was the support of Mama and even of Uncle John, who relied upon him to carry messages to and from Acre. He was employed by Ralph Megson to do some of the tasks I had done. He was indispensable in the rebuilding of the cottages, and he was increasingly popular in the village. In those cold sharp days he was like a ploughing team testing a new harness. He kept trying a little more, he kept stretching his strength.

  There was more and more he could do on the land. John’s gentle old hunter was glad of a little ambling exercise, and Richard gained praise from Uncle John for not despising him. In truth, Richard had never looked so happy with a horse as he was on that easy-tempered animal who looked showy and was bred well, but was so near retirement as to be as safe and as comfortable as an armchair.

  I had become nothing to Richard. He had the land, he had Acre, he had some village flirtation.

  I had become nothing to Acre. I had worked for them and saved them. And now they were ready to rebuild and turn their faces to the future. They would forget me in weeks.

  I had become – not nothing, no, I did not imagine that – but I had become a source of worry and unease to my mama and to Uncle John. I was not a favoured child. I was a very troublesome one.

  I went into the parlour with my cheeks burning and my eyes bright, and when Uncle John and Mama came in, I caught a glance between the two of them brimful of worry and concern. They thought I was moody, or volatile, or hysterical. Indeed, I felt that I was all three.

  I went as close to my mama as I could go, as though her mere presence could keep me safe from the appearance of madness, and from the feelings of madness itself, the panic that I was losing everything and my dread of being that barefoot woman of my dream. I pulled up a footstool and sat at her feet and helped her unpick the hems of gowns which we were taking to Bath to be remodelled. I unstitched like a careful sempstress, detaching the antique lace which would be used to trim new gowns. I took it to the kitchen and washed it and rinsed it with meticulous care, and then patted it with a
soft linen cloth and spread it out to dry.

  Richard was out at work all day and did not come home until dinner-time. They had ordered dinner to be late to suit his convenience. I was beyond impatience or jealousy or anger. Richard was the squire. He would do as he pleased.

  He came home late, as he had said he would, and threw down his cape over the banister and ran up to his room to dress. I could smell the frosty air in the folds of the wool and it called me, as clear as a voice calling my name. I threw on a shawl and went out of the front door and around to the back garden where I could see the dark shadow of the downs, black against a blue-black sky.

  The grass was crunchy with the frost, and the sky was an arch of darkness with sharp stars. A shadow went across the sky and I heard an owl call a long clear hunting note. The great cedar tree stood like a splay-fingered giant against the starlit sky. A figure moved out from the shadow and came near to me.

  It was Clary Dench. ‘Julia?’ she said. ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Oh, Clary!’ I said. ‘I am so pleased to see you!. How did you know I needed you so badly?’

  ‘I was to see Richard,’ she said, ‘after work, in the woods. But I was late and he was gone. I thought it would be a message from you for me. So I came on up here.’

  ‘You were meeting Richard?’ I asked incredulously. ‘Meeting Richard after dark in the woods?’

  Clary gave an unladylike whoop of laughter. ‘Don’t be a fool, Julia,’ she begged me. ‘What d’you think I am? Some daft village slut chasing after the boy squire? He asked me to meet him and I thought it was a message from you. Why else?’