The Favoured Child (59 page)

I stepped back with a little gasp, but behind Richard were the Acre young people and they were all smiles. I looked among them for Clary’s dear face and I saw her beam at me and wink, inviting me to romp in a hollow with Richard and deny my loyalty to James and my training as an indoor child. I frowned at her, for she should know well enough by now that Richard would never touch me in that way. But she smiled on, unrepentant.

Matthew was near her, but walking at arm’s length, and when she came through the gate, he did not take the opportunity to kiss her as the following couples did.

‘What’s the matter with you two?’ I asked as she came to where I waited on a little bank of downland turf, watching the others come through the gate.

Clary gave a grimace. ‘We’re at daggers drawn,’ she said. ‘He’s a fool. Everything’s spoiled.’

‘Why, what’s happened?’ I asked.

‘It’s those silly rhymes he’s always been writing,’ she said impatiently. ‘I never paid them no mind. But he showed them to some publisher in Chichester and the damned man has printed them and is selling them and all.’

‘But, Clary, that’s wonderful…’ I started.

Clary rounded on me, her eyes flashing. ‘Wonderful it is not!’ she said, crudely mimicking my word. ‘The man took his poems and printed them all pretty in his little book. And d’you know what they’ve called it? They’ve called it
Cuckoos Calling: The Poems of a Sussex Simpleton.’

I gaped. ? what?’ I asked. I could not believe I had heard aright.

‘Yes,’ Clary said viciously. “? Sussex Simpleton”. And they’ve told him he has a fine untutored voice and that he is in touch with the beauty of nature because he is an idiot! So that’s why I am not as proud as Punch for him. Just when everyone was forgetting that the parish guardians ever called him simple in the first place!’ She ended on a little sob.

‘How did they ever think it?’ I demanded bewildered.

‘His gran told them,’ Clary said, dashing at her eyes with the hem of her gown. ‘The silly old fool told them his entire life-history when they came out to Acre in their fine carriage to tell him they liked his poems and ask if he had any more. She told them that he had been left behind when the parish roundsman took the other children because they thought he was simple. She told them that he stammered and that he could not speak right when he was a lad. So they are calling him the dumb nightingale. And the newspaper called him the idiot songster…’ She broke off and openly wept with her apron up to her face.

‘They can be stopped…’ I said. ‘We can stop them publishing the book. We can stop them talking about him like that in the newspaper. They won’t speak of him like that when we explain…’

‘He won’t!’ Clary said sharply. ‘I never thought he was a fool until the day I saw him smile at a newspaper which had called
him an inspired natural for all the world to see – and him glad about it. They’ve paid him twelve guineas already, and that’s just to buy him paper and pens. They’re going to pay him more. He is set to be a rich young man. And he thinks he’ll go to Chichester and then to London. He thinks he’ll be taken around to the great poets and writers and they will like him. And he’ll never come back to Acre at all!’

‘Clary!’ I said aghast.

‘I hate him!’ she said with sudden energy. ‘You’d have thought he’d never walked all night for me with one of the babbies. You’d have thought he’d forgotten what the real world is like. He thinks he’ll take me with him. He told the gentlemen that he’s betrothed to a girl from his village, and they asked him if I was presentable.’ Clary broke off. ‘Presentable!’ she said scathingly. But then her anger fell away from her as rapidly as water off a water-wheel. ‘Julia, I tell you true, I think he’s broke my heart,’ she ended.

I put my hands out to her and she moved to me and laid her head on my shoulder. ‘Oh, poor Clary,’ I said to her, as tenderly as her mother. ‘Don’t cry, Clary, darling, I’ve never seen you cry. It’ll come out right. Matthew could never love anyone but you. There could never be anyone for you but Matthew. This has just turned his head for a little while. But look – he’s up here on the downs with us today. He’s not that different. He’ll maybe stay a little while in London, but he’ll come home again. He’d always come home to you.’

Clary pulled away from me and rubbed her red eyes. ‘I’ll not have him!’ she declared. ‘I’ll not have a man who will let people call him an idiot and think himself clever. I’ve not told him so yet, but I will tell him that I won’t marry him; and I’ll tell him why and all. He’s shamed me. He’s shamed himself. I’ll tell him that and I’ll break our betrothal.’

I put my hands out to her in a helpless gesture, half trying to hold her. I pitied Matthew and I feared for their happiness. But in the back of my mind was a voice as deep as a tolling bell which warned me to hold Clary, to keep her beside me, to keep her near me, as if some mortal danger threatened her.

But she would not stay. She tore away from my embrace and rubbed her eyes again. ‘I’m a fool to have come,’ she said bitterly. ‘I thought it would be like the old days when my ma and pa came up here when the land was good and they were courting. I thought we would make friends – him and me – up here when the sun came up. But he brought his silly little pen and his paper and he told me he would write a poem about it. And now I have lost my temper, and cried, and told you. I had thought to keep it all a secret. I’ll go home,’ she said briskly. ‘There’s nothing to keep me here.’

‘Clary, don’t go,’ I said urgently. I felt I should never see her again if I let her go. ‘Stay with me. Richard and I were just going to walk around and pick hawthorn. Stay with us, Clary, dearest. Don’t go.’

She slipped from my hands even though I was clinging to her. ‘Nay,’ she said sadly. ‘I’m away. I’ll see you this afternoon, at the dancing?’

‘Promise you’ll be there,’ I said urgently. The tolling noise inside my head was louder. I felt I needed Clary to swear she would be there, without fail.

‘Where else should I be?’ she said wearily. ‘I’m not likely to write a sonnet on my walk home. I’ll be there, Julia,’ she said as she gently unlaced my fingers from the corner of her shawl. ‘Do you have a pleasant time maying now; I’ll see you this afternoon, and I shall tell Matthew I will not stand for it, and break the betrothal as soon as they have brought the spring home.’

‘Clary…’ I said, making one more effort to keep her by me. ‘Don’t go, Clary. I have the sight. I am sure there is some danger.’

She smiled at me, an old wise smile, a smile as wise as a woman who has no foresight except the knowledge that all women are born to grieve. ‘Never mind,’ she said sadly. ‘I have had the worst pain these past few days I am ever likely to have. If he had killed me with his own hands, it would not have been worse than to see him taken away from me and from Acre for such a trumpery cause. But the worst of it is over now. I fought
against the men from Chichester, and they have won. All I have to do now is to tell him I will see him no more. That I love him no more. And then the worst will be over. Let me go now, Julia,’ she said sweetly. ‘There’s no trouble you, or your sight, can save me from. There is just me, and my anger, and Matthew’s folly. And the sorrow we make out of that is our own concern.’

She left me then. She turned away from me and made her way back through the kissing gate where Matthew had not kissed her, and down the track to Acre, to her little cottage, to think about the love she had known, and the promises she had made, and the future she had planned with the lad who no longer knew where his heart lay.

I stood as cold as a marble statue in the darkness, and then someone called to me in a friendly voice, ‘You must find a hawthorn bush and pick a branch, Miss Julia! We all gather at the head of the chalky streak when the sun comes up!’

It was Jimmy Dart, with his arm around Rosie. She was flushed from the walk but scarcely out of breath. I could not have recognized in her the pale girl who coughed over her work in the dirty cellar. She laid her head on Jimmy’s shoulder; the love between them was as strong and as warm as the night breeze blowing.

‘Are you robbing Ralph Megson of his apprentice?’ I accused her in mock severity. She and Jimmy exchanged a glance and laughed.

‘It’s from his being a linkboy,’ she explained. ‘He can’t stop himself crossing the road.’

I laughed too. Ralph’s cottage was on the other side of Acre lane from the little cottage where Rosie lived, and Jimmy crossing from one side of the lane to the other was a regular sight.

‘We’re betrothed,’ Rosie said shyly. ‘We’ll marry when we’re sixteen. Mr Megson has promised us a cottage of our own.’

I nodded, smiling. Ralph had mentioned it to me, and I had written the news to James. ‘No more glove-making,’ I said with satisfaction.

Rosie looked sly. ‘Just one last pair,’ she said. ‘I’ve started
them already, but I don’t know when they’ll be needed.’ She gleamed at me. ‘Your wedding-day gloves, Miss Julia! For the day you marry Mr Fortescue. I’m making you special Wideacre gloves, with a sheaf of wheat on them!’

Oh, Rosie!’ I said in delight. ‘Thank you! But you know the engagement has not been announced yet. Mr Fortescue and I are not betrothed.’

Jimmy laughed aloud at that. ‘Not formally engaged!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why the first time I ever met you, he wouldn’t have a light because he wanted to walk you home from the Pump Room in the dark!’

‘Come on,’ Richard interrupted suddenly. ‘Come on, Julia!’ His arm slid round my waist and his face was so close to me that I could feel the warmth of his breath on my hair. ‘Come on, my springtime lady, and let us search for your hawthorn bush,’ he said softly, drawing me away from the others. We walked slowly to the right along the hilltop, seeking the darker shadow of a hawthorn bush.

Richard was wearing his driving cape and as we walked arm in arm, he swung the side of it around me in a gesture which both warmed and claimed me for his own. I felt light-headed and sure-footed, walking on my land in the darkness.

We startled a ewe and her lamb, and they jumped up before us with a complaining bleat and scurried off into the darkness. The patch of grass where they had been lying was warmed and smelled of fleece. Richard tossed his cape down and I sat on a corner, then he wrapped the rest around me.

I was tense, remembering the last time we were on the downs together when he had kissed me without invitation and touched me against my will. But he held true to his word, and his arm around my shoulders was friendly, brotherly, nothing more.

We sat in silence for a time while the morning skies grew pearly; all around us the grass seemed at first grey, then it slowly grew green as the colour seeped into it with the morning warmth.

‘I love you, little Julia,’ Richard said softly, his voice tender. ‘I
wish you would forget your city friends and come back to me, come back to me and to Wideacre.’

I looked at his hazy smiling eyes and saw my old love, the love of my childhood and girlhood.

‘It’s too late,’ I said, half regretfully. ‘You will understand when you fall in love, Richard. You will understand then.’

His smile in the brightening light was rueful. ‘I think I will never love anyone but you,’ he said sweetly. Then he said no more.

The sky was growing brighter now, and the first tentative notes of birdsong were growing louder, with more birds waking and singing too. All about us couples were rising up and out of the hollows, brushing off their clothes and smiling at each other, sly-eyed with stolen pleasures.

Everyone was making their way towards the head of the downs where the hills looked down into Acre. There was an outcrop of chalk there which could be seen from anywhere on Wideacre, like a white stripe up the forehead of the downs. They called it Chalky Streak, and when Richard and I were little children and had lost our sense of direction, we could always find our way home by putting Chalky Streak directly before us and walking towards it. Now the young people from Acre and Richard and I stood at the top of it and waited for the sun to rise.

We faced the east, and the rising sun turned our faces rosy with its pink light. They sang the song again. I had learned the chanting little tune now and I could sing it with them. I was happy there, in the sunlight, with Richard holding my hand and the young people of Acre around me. But my heart was heavy, thinking of Clary, and when I looked around for Matthew, I saw that he was gone too. I shuddered. Some shadow touched me.

We finished our song with a little ripple of half-embarrassed laughter, and then turned towards the gate to walk back down the footpath to Acre. They had brought Misty for me, and Richard cupped his hands for me and tossed me up into the saddle. She was a carnival horse, with a wreath of hawthorn around her neck. They gave me a flower crown and a peeled wand to carry
in my right hand and told me to lead them down the track to Acre. Misty tossed her head – disliking the flowers around her neck – and I had my usual trouble with riding side-saddle in a walking dress. I pulled my skirt down as well as I could. Ted Tyacke gave me a cheeky wink at seeing my ankles, but I could not play the Bath miss at dawn on the top of the downs.

They sang as we came down the track, and together we brought the spring home to Acre and the springtime jokes with us. In the old tradition the young people went around the village with their branches and played little tricks on the villagers. A spinster who loved a boy who did not care for her knew her secret was a public joke when she opened the door and found a stripped wand of willow on the step. A husband who was ruled by his wife was left a branch and a hen’s feather to take in to her when he prepared the breakfast that morning. A father whose discipline of his son seemed too stern to the crowd had an ash twig pinned to his door, and a wife who smiled too easily at the young men of Acre had the dubious compliment of a hawthorn branch with red ribbons left at her gate.

On Clary’s doorstep they put one half of a flowering branch of hawthorn, and the matching half was pinned to Matthew’s door. The most popular couple in Acre was blessed with the crowd’s goodwill. Only I felt uneasy and saw them as funeral flowers, not good-luck charms at all. Only I knew that this very day the betrothal which had started in the bad days of Acre would be ended just when things were coming right.