Meridon (Wideacre Trilogy 3) Read online

  He paused, waiting for a response from me. ‘It’s not all dull,’ he said encouragingly. ‘She’ll teach you how to dance and how to play the piano and sing and paint. She’ll teach you how to ride side-saddle, and you can go hunting. She’ll chaperone you into country society and advise you about the people who you can visit and those you should not meet.’

  Still I said nothing. Mr Fortescue poured himself another glass of port. I knew he was uncomfortable with my silence. He could not judge for himself what it meant.

  ‘Sarah,’ he said gently. ‘If you mislike any of these plans you need only say. All I want to do is the best for you. I am your guardian until your marriage or until you are twenty-one but I know you are no ordinary young lady. You have special needs and special abilities. Please tell me what you would like, and I will try and provide it for you.’

  ‘I am not sure yet,’ I said. And I spoke the truth although certainty was gathering around me all the time. ‘I’ve been angry since I came here, but neither you nor that Will Tyacke pay me any mind at all.’

  James Fortescue smiled at me through the cigar smoke.

  ‘I don’t know enough about this life to be able to say what I want,’ I said. ‘It’s clear you don’t plan that I should run the estate like my mother did. I saw her apple orchard today and Will told me that she supervised the planting of it herself.’

  ‘No,’ Mr Fortescue said definitely. ‘I don’t want you working directly on the land. It would be contrary to your mother’s wishes and quite contrary to the way the estate is now run. For the past sixteen years, ever since your birth and your mama’s death, the estate has been developed by the people who work here, for themselves.

  ‘There is no place now for a squire of the old sort to run the land. The time when a Lacey squire was needed to keep the village together has long gone. It is run now as a joint venture by the labourers themselves and that is what your mother wished for it. She specifically told me that she did not want her daughter to be another Lacey squire. She wanted you to have the house and the gardens and the parkland – and you will see for yourself that is a handsome legacy – but she wanted the farming land, the Common land and the Downs to be owned legally and entirely by the village.’

  I nodded. That was what I had thought he would say.

  ‘So the life you think I should live is mostly idle?’ I asked. I was careful to keep my voice neutral so that he could not shape his answer to please me.

  ‘As you wish,’ he said agreeably. ‘My sister Marianne works long hours and gets much pleasure out of a charitable school she set up all on her own for the education of young orphans or children abandoned by their parents. Her husband is an alderman of London and she saw much poverty and hardship. She works longer hours than I do! Yet she is unpaid. She leads a most worthwhile life. There are many good causes you could work for here, Sarah.’

  I kept my lashes lowered over the gleam in my green eyes. I knew what his sister Marianne was like. When I was little we used to pick the pockets of her sort most successfully. One of us would sit on a lady’s silken lap and cry and say our da beat her, and one of us would take a sharp little knife and cut the strings which tied her purse to her belt and run off with the booty. We were caught only once and when we burst into floods of tears the lady made us promise never never to do it again or Baby Jesus would not be able to save us from hell. We promised readily and she gave us a shilling out of her recovered purse. A simpleton.

  ‘Or you could pursue interests of your own,’ Mr Fortescue went on. ‘If you found you had a talent for music or singing or painting you could work at that. Or if that horse of yours is anything to go by, you could find a good manager and have him set up a stud of horses.’

  I nodded. ‘And there are people who could teach me everything I need to know?’ I asked. ‘Music teachers and dance teachers and manners teachers? I could learn everything?’

  He smiled as if I was being engagingly eager. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Mrs Redwold could teach you everything you need to know. She could teach you to be a young country lady.’

  ‘How long?’ I asked.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said.

  ‘How long?’ I asked. ‘How long would it take for me to learn everything about being a young lady.’

  He smiled at that as if the question were funny. ‘I think one learns good manners all one’s life,’ he said. ‘But I should think you would be comfortable in good society within a year.’

  A year! I thought to myself. It had taken me less than that to learn to be a bareback rider with my own act. It had taken her two months to learn tricks on the trapeze. Either gentry skills were very difficult – or else they were full of nonsense and idiocy, like eating things while sitting so far away that you were certain to drop them.

  I said nothing and Mr Fortescue leaned forward and poured me another glass of ratafia.

  ‘It’s a lot to take in,’ he said gently. ‘And you must be tired, this is your first day up after your illness. Would you like to go to your bedroom now? Or sit in the parlour?’

  I nodded. I was learning some of the gentry rules already. He did not mean he thought I was tired, he meant he did not want to talk to me any more. I felt a bad taste in my mouth and I went to spit but caught myself in time. ‘I am tired,’ I said. ‘I think I shall go to my room. Good-night, Mr Fortescue.’

  He got to his feet as I went towards the door and he went past me and opened it for me. I hesitated, thinking he meant to go out too but then I realized he had opened it for me for politeness’ sake. He took my right hand and raised it to his lips and kissed it. Without thinking what I was doing I whipped it away and put it behind my back.

  ‘I beg your pardon!’ he said, surprised. ‘I just meant to say good-night.’

  I flushed scarlet with embarrassment. ‘I am sorry,’ I said gruffly. ‘I don’t like people touching me, I never have.’

  He nodded as if he understood; but I wagered he didn’t.

  ‘Good-night, Sarah,’ he said. ‘Please ring the bell if there is anything you want. Shall I ask Becky Miles to bring you up a cup of tea later?’

  ‘Yes please,’ I said. Having a cup of tea in bed would be comfortingly like eating dinner in my bunk, in the old days when it was too cold to eat out of doors, or when we were so tired we took our dinners into our bunks with us and dropped the tin plates down on the floor when we had done.

  I had never thought then that I would look back on those times with any of this lonely longing I had now.

  ‘And you may call me James if you wish,’ he said. ‘Uncle James, if you prefer.’

  ‘I have no family,’ I said dully. ‘I won’t pretend to an uncle I don’t have. I’ll call you James.’

  He made a little bow with a smile but he took care not to take my hand again.

  ‘James,’ I said as I turned to leave, ‘how often do you come down to the estate?’

  He looked surprised. ‘Once a quarter,’ he said. ‘I come down to meet with Will and I make up the books for the quarter.’

  I nodded. ‘How do you know he is not cheating you?’ I asked bluntly.

  He looked deeply shocked. ‘Sarah!’ he exclaimed, as if it were wrong to even think such a thing. But then he recollected himself and he gave me a rueful smile.

  ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘This evening you look so like a demure young lady it is hard to remember that you have been brought up in a quite different world. I know he is not cheating me because he brings me bills of sale for all his purchases for the estate and we agree what the main expenses are to be each quarter before he buys them. I know he is not cheating me because I see the wage bills of the estate. I know he is not cheating me because the village is on a profit-sharing system with the estate and he sees that we all get good profits and thus a good share. And finally, but most important to me, I know he is not cheating me because, although he is so young, he is an honest man. I trusted his cousin and I trust him.’

  I nodded. The trust based on bi
lls of sale and agreed expenditure I understood but ignored. I don’t believe I had ever seen a straight reckoning in all my life. Bills of sale meant nothing. Same for the wages bill. The trust based on Will Tyacke as an honest man was worth a good deal. It also told me something that I needed to know about how the estate was run.

  ‘Does the corn mill pay rent?’ I asked.

  James Fortescue’s look of surprise that I was thinking of such a thing turned into a smile. ‘Now Sarah,’ he remonstrated. ‘You need not puzzle your head with such detail. The corn mill has paid no rent since the setting up of the Acre corporation. The corn mill was obviously a separate business and is run in the same way as the blacksmith’s forge or the cartering business. They charge special rates, or no rates to Acre people and they make their profits with outside customers. They take a share in the profits of the village when they work as labourers, otherwise they are independent. When the village was getting back to work Will’s cousin Ted Tyacke and I decided that the mill should pay no rent so that it could work for free for Acre. Things have stayed that way.’

  I nodded. ‘I see,’ I said quietly, then I half concealed a pretended yawn. ‘Oh! I’m tired,’ I said. ‘I’ll go to bed.’

  ‘Sleep well,’ he said gently. ‘If you are interested in business you can have your first lesson on how to read the estate books in the morning. But you will need a night’s rest for that. Sleep well, Sarah.’

  I smiled at him, a smile I had learned long ago from her when she was trying to be charming, an endearing childlike sleepy smile. Then I went slowly towards the staircase.

  I had heard enough for one night. James Fortescue might be an astute man of business in Bristol and London – though I frankly doubted that – but in the country here he could have been cheated every day for sixteen years. He trusted entirely in one man who acted as clerk, manager and foreman. Will Tyacke decided what was to be spent and what was to be declared as profit. Will Tyacke decided what share individuals in the village could claim from the common fund. Will Tyacke decided on my share of the profits. And Will Tyacke was Acre born and bred and had no wish to see the Laceys taking a fortune from the village, or even claiming their own again.

  My fingers touched the carved newel-post at the foot of the stairs and I heard a cool voice in my head which said, ‘This is mine.’

  It was mine. The newel-post, the shadowy sweet-smelling hall, the land outside stretching up to the slopes of the Downs and the Downs themselves stretching up to the horizon. It was mine and I had not come all this way home to learn to be a pretty parlour Miss in that sickly pink room. I had come here to claim my rights and to keep my land, and to carve out an inheritance of my own whatever it cost me, whatever it cost others.

  I was not the milk-and-water pauper they thought me. I was a rogue’s stepdaughter and a gypsy’s foster child. We had been thieves and vagrants all our lives, for every day of our lives. My own horse I had won in a bet, the only money I had ever earned had been for trick riding and card sharping. I was not one of these soft Sussex people. I was not even like their paupers. I was no grateful village maid, I was a baby abandoned by its mother, raised by a gypsy, sold by a stepfather and wise in every gull and cheat that can be learned on the road. I would learn to read the estate books so that I would know how much this fancy profit-sharing scheme had cost, and who were the rogues who were cheating me. I would take my place in the Hall as a working squire, not as the idle milksop they hoped I would be. I had not come home to sit on a sofa and take tea. I had come through heartbreak and loneliness and despair for something more than that.

  I walked lightly up the stairs and sat for a while on the window-seat in my bedroom looking out over the sunlit garden, watching the pale clouds gather away to my right and turn palest pink as the sun sank towards them. ‘This is mine,’ I said to myself, as cold as if it were mid-winter. ‘This is mine.’

  21

  I woke at dawn, circus-hours, gypsy-hours: and I said into the grey pale light of the room, ‘Dandy? are you awake?’ and then I heard my voice groan as if I were mortally injured as I remembered that she would not answer me, that I would never hear her voice again.

  The pain in my heart was so intense that I doubled up, lying in bed as if I had the hunger-cramps. ‘Oh Dandy,’ I said.

  Saying her name made it worse, infinitely worse. I threw back the covers and got out of bed as if I were fleeing from my love for her, and from my loss. I had sworn I would not cry again as long as I lived, and the ache in my belly was too great for tears. My grief was like a sickly growth inside me. I believed that I could die of it.

  I went to the window; it would be a fine day today. Before me was the prospect of another day of gentle lessons from Mr Fortescue, and a sedate ride with Will. Both of them watching me, both of them seeking to control me so that I would not threaten this cosy little life they had made here in this warm green hollow of the hills. Both of them wanting me to be the squire my mama had promised I should be – the one to hand back the land to the people. I grimaced like the ugly little vagrant I was. They would be lucky, they would be damnably lucky if I did not turn this place upside down in a year. You do not send a baby out into the world with a dying foster mother and a drunken stepfather and expect her to come home a benefactoress to the poor. I had seen greedy rich people and wondered at them. But I never questioned hunger.

  Robert Gower was hungry for land and for wealth because he had felt the coldness of poverty. I was a friendless orphan with nothing left to me but my land. It was hardly likely I would give it away because the mother I had never known had once thought it a good idea.

  It was early, perhaps about five of the clock. They kept Quality hours in this household, not even the servants rose till six. I went to the chest for my clothes and put on my old breeches and my shirt and swept my tangled red hair under Robert’s dirty old cap. I took my boots in my hand, and in my stockinged feet I crept out of my room and down the stairs and across the floor to the front door. I had expected there to be a heavy bolt and chains but as on the day I arrived, the door handle yielded to my touch. They did not lock their doors on Wideacre. I shrugged; that was their business, not mine. But I thought of the rugs and the paintings on the walls and the silver on the sideboard and thought they should be grateful that some friends of Da had never got to hear of it.

  Out on the terrace I paused and pulled on my boots. The air was as sweet as white wine, clear and clean as water. The sky was brightening fast, the sun was coming up. It was going to be a hot day. If I had been travelling today we would have started now, or even earlier, and gone as far as we could before noon. Then we would have found a shady atchin-tan to camp and hobbled the horses and cooked some food. Then she and I would have idled off into the woods, looking for a river to swim or paddle, looking for game or for fruit or for a pond to fish. Always restless, always idle, we would not get home until the sun started to cool and then we would cook and eat again, and maybe – if we had a fair to go to, or a meeting ahead of us – we would travel on again in the long cooling afternoon and evening until the sun had quite gone and the darkness was getting thicker.

  But there was no travelling for me today. I had found the place I had been seeking all my life. I was at my home. My travelling days, when the road had been a grey ribbon unfolding before me, and there was always another fair ahead, another new horse to train, were ended before my girlhood was over. I had arrived at a place I could call my own, a place which would be mine in a way those two raggle-headed little girls had never owned anything. Odd, that morning, that it should have given me so little joy.

  I went around the house towards the stables. The tack room was unlocked too and Sea’s saddle and bridle were cleaned and hung up. I reached up and pulled down the saddle and held it before me, over my arm, and slung the bridle over my shoulder. I put my hand down to keep the bit still so that it did not chink and wake anyone. I could not have borne to speak civilly to anyone that morning.

  That was odd,
too. I don’t think ever in my life before had I pined to be alone, and I had always slept four to a caravan, and sometimes five. But when you live close you learn to leave each other alone. In this great house with all these rooms we seemed to live in each other’s pockets. Dining together, talking and talking and talking, and everyone always wanting to know if there was anything I wanted. If there was anything I wanted to have, if there was anything I wanted to do.

  I walked through the rose garden, the buds of roses splitting pink as the petals warmed in the early sunshine, and I opened the gate at the end of the garden. Sea’s head jerked up as he noticed me, and he trotted towards me, his ears forward. He dipped his proud lovely head for the reins as I passed them over his neck and stood rock-still as I adjusted his bridle and then put his saddle on. For old time’s sake I could have vaulted on him, but the heaviness in my heart seemed to have got down to my boots, and I took him to the mounting block near the steps of the terrace as if I were an old woman; tired, and longing for my death.

  Sea was as bright as the morning sky, his ears swivelling in all directions, his nostrils flared, snuffing in the scents of the morning as the sun burned off the dew. He had forgotten how to walk, his slowest pace was a bouncy stride as near to a trot as he thought I would allow. I held him to it while we were on the noisy stones in front of the house, but once we were on the tamped-down mud of the drive itself I let him break into a trot, and then into a fast edgy canter.

  At the end of the drive I checked him. I did not want to go into Acre. Working people rise early whatever their jobs, and I knew that farming people would wake with the light just as I did. I did not want them to see me, I was weary of being on show. And I was sick of being told things. Taught and cajoled and persuaded as if I were an infant in dame school. If one more person told me how well Wideacre was being run – as if I should be pleased that they were throwing my inheritance away every hour of the day – I should tell them what I truly thought of their sharing scheme nonsense. And I had pledged myself to hold my tongue until I really knew what this new world, this Quality world, was like.