The Favoured Child (23 page)

It was early. They were working in the kitchen, but Mama’s morning chocolate had not yet been brought to her room. I slipped softly down the stairs and through the green baize door to the kitchen. I could hear Mrs Gough’s voice as she thumped dough for the breakfast rolls on the floured table.

‘I always said she was wilful,’ she said, her voice raised so that Stride, polishing cutlery and setting the trays, could hear her. ‘She was so close to her mama, I think she’s jealous now the master’s come home.’

I realized with a sudden start that they were talking about me.

‘But the lad is the bonniest one,’ she said, her voice warm. ‘It will be a fine thing when he is squire and the hall rebuilt and the good days come again.’

‘He’s no Lacey,’ Stride said briefly. ‘The hall is Miss Julia’s home.’

I reached a hand behind me and banged the door so they could hear it in the kitchen. I had not meant to listen and I did not want to hear more. I clattered down the passage and Mrs Gough gave me a brief ‘Good morning’ with no suspicion that I had heard.

‘I’d like to take Mama’s tray to her room,’ I said. Stride gave me a quick smile. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘She won’t be angry. She was not angry last night.’

Mrs Gough tutted under her breath and turned to the stove where the milk was warming. She dipped a finger into the pan and then poured it into the chocolate jug. Stride ran a quick glance over the tray and then nodded to me to take it. He came and held the door for me and watched my slow progress up the stairs, and my careful balancing of the tray in one hand as I knocked on Mama’s door.

She was awake sitting up in bed with her wrapper around her shoulders, looking out of the window at the fresh leaves on the trees which pressed so close and at the blue sky above them.

‘Julia!’ she said with pleasure. Then her face grew more reserved as she remembered that I was still in disgrace.

‘Good morning, Mama,’ I said, putting the tray by her bedside and bending over to kiss her. ‘I have come to say I am sorry.’

At once her arms were around me in a hug. ‘Oh, my darling!’ she said. ‘You know that it is all right.’

And that was all the apology she needed; that was all I had to say.

I sat at the bottom of her bed as she sipped her chocolate.

‘Is there anything troubling you?’ she asked. ‘Is there anything you want to tell me?’

The impulse to tell the truth was too strong for me, and the whole story of my seeing Dench, of my instinctive lie and of Richard’s anger – poured out. I knew Dench would be safely in hiding again, and I needed to explain myself to my mama.

Three things I did not tell her. Not a word about Mr Megson passed my lips. I let his laughing confession drop from my mind as if it had never been said. I was never going to think of it again if I could keep myself from thinking.

I did not tell her that Richard had accused me of trying to make myself beloved in Acre. That accusation seemed so dreadful that I could not bear to tell anyone. I did not want to remember it myself.

And I did not tell her that Richard had hurt me. She would never know of that from me.

But I was right to tell her about Dench. She nodded her
understanding and spoke only of the aspect which she knew would distress me most. ‘Is Richard very angry with you?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ I said. I said nothing more.

Mama sighed. ‘I know that will make you very sad, Julia,’ she said consolingly. ‘But I do think that your ups and downs with Richard are a result of living so very close together.’

I nodded. But I had nothing to say.

‘That will get better,’ she said certainly. ‘Now we have to set the land to rights, Richard will have an occupation, he will be more out on the land. There will be a very great deal for you and me to do as well. Then you will have your first season at Bath. We’ll go there in the autumn and be back home in time for Christmas!’ She paused and looked at me. ‘Don’t look so woebegone, little duckling! Richard’s crossness will blow over, he is never angry for long. And you must learn to mind less when he is in a temper with you.’

I smiled and did not disagree, for I had heard Richard’s footsteps on the stairs and I felt my heart lift at the thought that I could go to him and deal with him directly and fairly. And we should be friends again. I left Mama to dress and went confidently downstairs to find him.

He had his books out before him at the parlour table, and he glanced up without a smile as I slid in the door; he did not seem pleased at being interrupted. When I saw his frown, I knew I was not forgiven yet.

I went quietly to the table to stand by his elbow. But I said nothing. I waited for him to speak. I was hoping, against all probability, that he would give me one of his sweet rueful smiles, or even speak civilly to me so that I would know that even if I was not forgiven, the heat of his anger had cooled.

‘You can stand there all day, Julia,’ he said softly. ‘And you will not get a word from me.’

His tone was like a slap in my face.

‘You are wrong when you think I want Wideacre all to myself,’ I said, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘I don’t mind which one
of us has it. And I have always hoped that we would share it, because we would be married and live here together.’

Despite myself, at the mention of our marriage plans, my voice quavered, and I could feel the tears starting to come to my eyes. ‘Whether you want to marry me or not, I know that you would be squire,’ I said.

He looked at me sternly.

‘I know you are Beatrice’s son,’ I said, my voice low. ‘I know you have her gifts. I know you are the favoured child.’

‘I do have,’ he said swiftly. ‘I do have her gifts. I am the true heir and all Acre can see it.’

‘Yes,’ I said. I waited, but he said nothing more.’I’m sorry about Dench,’ I offered. ‘I know I did wrong not to tell your papa who it was. But I did not do it to try to be first in Acre, you know, Richard.’

‘Very well,’ he said magisterially. ‘I believe you, Julia.’ He managed to make it sound by the tone of his voice that I was not believable, and that he did not believe me. But he was generously overlooking a fault. I bowed my head. ‘I am working,’ he said. ‘My papa and I are agreed that I should use the time before breakfast for quiet study.’

I nodded, looking at his books. He was parsing a passage from Dr Johnson. I could tell, reading Richard’s large script at an angle, that he had made a mistake. But I did not think he would welcome my help. ‘I will go out for a walk,’ I said.

He made no reply, so I went in silence from the room up to my bedroom and dressed in a plain gown and threw a shawl over my head and around my shoulders as a concession to the cool morning and to convention. Then I went out of the front door and stood on the doorstep in a daze.

I did not know where to go. I did not know what I wanted. The brief exchange with Richard had left me feeling that the struggle to be a proper wife, to be a properly behaved lady, might cost me more than I was able to pay. I seemed to have to bite my tongue against angry words over and over again. For the first time in my life I thought of my mama’s solitude with no
pity. However much she mourned my papa, she could sit in peace with her feet up on her own fender in the evening. She could order the meals she preferred, she could suit herself in her plans for her life. She did not have to watch her words, and apologize for her mistakes, and guard her thoughts, and consider every word and every action in the light of a man’s prejudices. I shook my head. I supposed I was being very foolish. I supposed this was the wildness in me which Mama had tried to train away. Now I was paying the price for not being an indoors girl. Now I had to learn from Richard what was expected of a young lady, of a young bride. And Richard was an impatient master.

But then I took in a great gulp of the morning air and felt my spirits, as mercurial as a morning lark, lift at the very sight of the head of the downs, and the streaky sky above them. The smell of the morning air, warm with the promise of summer, and the sight of the leaves, so fresh and green and washed after the rain, set my heart singing and my pulse beating. I could almost hear Wideacre growing around me – a sweet humming noise – as gentle as a standing harp vibrating with a draught of air on the strings.

I did not know where to go for my walk. I wanted to be prompt for breakfast to earn a smile from Mama, and to seek my return to Uncle John’s favour. So I wanted a walk which would give me time to rid my feet of the fidgets, and to give me some time on the heart of the land to feel the wind blowing my resentment away and to hear the water running.

In my head was the low sweet humming which told me that Wideacre magic was all around me, and the dream of Beatrice was very close. I drifted down the garden path to the drive, drifted as if there were some magic thread pulling me in the direction I should walk. The garden gate did not squeak when I opened it as it usually did; a bramble caught at my dress but it did not tear. I walked like a ghost and the air did not stir at my passing.

I could hear the clear humming in my head that I heard when the dream was there, and I knew my eyes were hazy and fey.
There was a ghost walking on Wideacre, and she and I were one this wind-blown morning. She and I were walking on the sweet land with the cool wind blowing. And my footsteps were as light as a goddess’s.

I turned right up the drive and walked up towards the ruin of the hall. The sunlight was dappled on my face from the overhanging trees of the drive, and the hawthorn hedge on my right was coming into flower and smelling sweet. A few bees bumbled among the flowers, and their noise and the noise in my head were as loud as a hundred voices singing low. In my mind there was nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing but this gentle whisper of sound which seemed to be drawing me onwards. It was the only clear sweet thing on a day when there were too many people and too many things I had to do. There was only one clear voice in the babble of the world and that was the voice of Wideacre which had called me from the house and was calling me to the hall.

There was a great chestnut tree at the bend of the drive, and a squirrel had nipped a spray of the fresh finger-shaped leaves and dropped it down. I bent and picked it up and waved it before my face like a fan. The air it wafted to my face smelled sweet with flowers blooming, and a hint of rain at the back of the wind warned me that the storm of the night had not gone but simply turned around, and we would have more rain before the end of the morning.

The stones of the Wideacre drive crunched beneath my boots and I remembered how in the dream there was the sound of the hundreds of feet on the drive when they walked barefoot up to the hall, lit by torches, lit by lightning, with Ralph Megson riding high at their head.

I was half in the dream, half out of it. The air was so sweet it was like the cool rooms in the dream when the woman prowls around the empty hall. I glanced up at the clearing sky, half expecting to feel raindrops on my upturned face as Beatrice had done when she went out into the storm to meet him.

It was not raining yet. Today was a different day. It was not the dream. It was just me, walking aimlessly up to the hall before I settled down to a morning’s work for my mama, or looked at the plans of the hall with Uncle John. Why I should be walking up here risking a wetting I did not really know. Why I should feel I was being pulled, I did not know. Why I should have this singing humming noise in my head and this ache which felt almost like heartache under my ribs, I did not know.

So, knowing nothing, I walked on. I walked like a sleep-walker, tranced and unknowing, walked up the drive and turned to my left into the rose garden where the weeds grew as high as the rose trees and all you could see of the roses was the fresh crimson-leaved growth and the first tiny buds with little splits of colour: scarlet, and white and cream and pink, half hidden among the green of self-seeded ash trees and elder bushes and tall pink campion. I paused and broke off one of the wands of campion and looked at the flowers, as sweetly shaped as shells, each one a perfect structure. Then I raised my eyes from the bloom and walked up the steps to the broken-down white wooden summer-house.

He was there.

At my step on the path he came to the doorway and stood there waiting for me. I raised my eyes to his dark face and smiled in such welcome and such joy to see him. The ache beneath my ribs eased at once at the sight of him. The singing in my head was cut off in silence as if someone had laid a gentle hand on the strings of the lonely harp. The sun came out, suddenly strong, and smiled in my eyes with rays of gold which made the garden suddenly too bright and hazy. I went lightly up the treacherous steps, as lightly as a ghost, a dancing ghost. He opened his arms to me and held me close to him and I lifted my face for his kiss.

His mouth was very hard on mine and I leaned back, away from the weight of him, but my hands came up behind his head and held him to me. The plume of campion fell from my fingers, to the floor, unnoticed, and I leaned back until I was against the door-frame and Ralph was pressed against me and I could feel the length of his warm body, as sweet and as firm as a young lad’s.
He scooped me up into his arms, lifted me as if we were familiar lovers and then he laid me down gently on the floor of the summer-house as if it were a bed for a princess. He lay beside me and I pulled his face down to me so I could kiss his mouth, and his closed smooth eyelids, and his warm smooth forehead, and the little crest of dark hair at the hairline. I rubbed his cropped head with my palms in wordless ecstasy of pleasure at the strangeness of him, and at my love for him, and at the madness of this day.

Then I felt him unbuttoning my gown at the back with clumsy hurrying fingers, and I raised my shoulders off the dirty floor to make the task easier for him and watched his face grow grave with concentration as he meticulously undid each tiny button, and then took two great handfuls of material at the hem and stripped it off me, pulled it over my head. I raised my hips to free it from under me, and then lifted my arms so that it would slide over my head, and lay, naked except for my linen shift, on the floor of the summer-house beside him.