The Favoured Child (67 page)

‘Aye,’ he said, accepting the reproof without caring, ‘but widely believed, Miss Julia. They all say in the village that you have the Lacey knack of making the wheat grow. It’s a good crop, and you get the credit.’

I shrugged and turned my gaze back to the rippling sea of green. ‘As you will,’ I said easily. ‘Is Mrs Green well, and your sons?’

‘Aye,’ he said, satisfied. ‘We’re all well. All of Acre is well. I can scarce remember such a spring and a summer.’

I nodded in farewell and went back to the gig where my mama sat under her grey silk parasol.

‘Is it ready?’ she asked. ‘It still looks very green to me.’

‘Three or four days,’ I said. ‘I’ll just drive down to the common to look at the wheatfield, and then we’ll go home.’

‘Certainly,’ she said, and waved her gloved hand at Miller Green, while I clicked to the horse and we turned down the track that leads to the common field.

The field was like a miracle to me. I was Wideacre bred, but I had never seen a wheatfield growing on Wideacre. Yet here it was before me, and the land and the village restored in one season’s work by the combination of Uncle John’s money, Ralph’s authority, my name and the irresistible magic of the Wideacre soil, which I believed would grow orchids and palm trees if one planted them.

The crop was a foot, even eighteen inches high, the kernels of the wheat, green and sweet and small, encased tightly in the blade like tiny peas in a pod. The field was huge; I could still remember how it had been, with the heather and the bracken encroaching on the margins and straggly weeds and tall armies of purple loosestrife and rose-bay willow-herb growing alongside and starving the self-sown crop. Now the drudgery of the weeding had won us a wide sweep of field, properly fenced and clean at the rims and green as green, with all the shrubs and bracken pulled clear. Beside it was the orchard I had planted on that cold grey day, the trees standing tall, and little green berries of apples showing the crop we would have. The wheatfield was a world of waving smoothness, green speckled with flowers and the bright blaze of poppies and misty-blue cornflowers.

Oh, it’s so lovely,’ I exclaimed involuntarily. I handed the reins to Mama in a sort of dream and slid down from the gig and went through the gate to stand amid the wheat in the field in its promise of green. ‘It’s so lovely,’ I said to myself, and lifted my skirts clear of the growing shoots and skirted the field to see the crop from another angle.

In my head I could hear the sweet singing noise which sometimes came to me on Wideacre, or when I was missing it. And the feel of the earth under my shoes was like a guarantee of happiness. In the days since Clary’s death and my own confusion I had lost my joy in the land. I had lost my ears to hear the singing, and I had lost my delight in the smell and feel of the place. Now, like a waterfall tumbling full upon me, it was coming back to me. Careless of my gown, I knelt down in the earth and sniffed at the crop as if it were a bouquet of flowers. It had the
lightest aroma, like grass, but a little sweeter. Then I picked a stem and looked at the sound seeds which would grow and grow and ripen until we could cut it and thresh it, and grind it and bake bread with it, so that no one in Acre need ever go hungry again.

I put the seed in my mouth and nibbled at it like a ravenous harvest mouse. It was hard, not sweet yet. But when I bit on the stalk, I could taste the sap inside the stem, and I turned back to the gig with it in my mouth.

Oh, Julia,’ Mama sighed with a faint smile. ‘Do take that bit of grass out of your mouth. You look like an absolute natural.’

I whipped it out with a little jump. ‘I am sorry, Mama, I was in an utter daydream. The field is so wonderful.’

She smiled ruefully. ‘When Beatrice was a girl, she was just the same,’ she said. ‘She loved the land rather like you do, I think. And they used to say all sorts of things about her ability to make the land grow.’

I climbed back into the gig. ‘They say it about me too,’ I said, rather pleased. ‘I know it is nonsense, Mama, but it is a rather nice idea that the land grows well for the Laceys.’

She gave a little sigh. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I know you like that thought. I suppose I am not country born and bred, and so the passion for a field is never one that I feel. But your papa loved his land very well too.’

I gave one last lingering look at the common field and turned the gig for home. ‘It should be ready for harvesting by August,’ I said.

Oh, good,’ Mama said, ‘for Richard is hoping to come home in time to see it.’ She paused. ‘What has gone wrong between you and James, my darling?’ she asked tentatively. ‘I have been waiting and waiting for you to take me into your confidence. You have not had a letter from James for nearly three weeks, and yet he should have come home to England by now. I did not want to press you, especially with you seeming unwell, but you should tell me.’

My face fell at once, and the easy magic of the land deserted
me. Mama saw the change. I searched my mind to find a lie I could offer her, to delay the announcement which I would have to make – that James and I would never marry.

‘I cannot say, Mama,’ I said softly. ‘It is private.’ I could feel the familiar easy tears coming and the choking feeling in my throat.

She nodded, her eyes on my face. ‘His mama wrote to me,’ she said. ‘She wrote that James had decided suddenly to go abroad again, and that he had told her that the betrothal would not be made. That the two of you had agreed that you would not suit. That it was a mutually agreed decision.’

I nodded. ‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Yet you are not happy,’ she suggested.

‘No, Mama,’ I said quietly.

She said nothing for a moment and I set the pony to walk forward. We climbed the little slope away from the common field and went slowly down the lane, the sunshine dappling the track ahead of us and the shadows sliding up and over her parasol.

She took a breath, and I saw her hands tighten on the handle of the parasol. ‘Julia,’ she said firmly, ‘I am your mama and it is my duty to know these things. You must tell me why you and James are no longer planning marriage.’

I touched the reins and the pony stopped. I knew I would have to betray James, just as my fear of the sight had made me betray Clary and Matthew and my cowardice had made me betray my duty to the whole of Acre. ‘I discovered that he was unchaste,’ I said softly. ‘He has been with a woman.’

Mama drew in her breath sharply. ‘I see,’ she said. She put out her hand and touched mine. ‘I think you are right,’ she said. ‘But the world we live in is a hard one, Julia. I believe most young men have a woman friend before they are married. As long as they are true to their wives after marriage, there are few people who think badly of them.’

I knew I would have to betray James’s private conversation with me and smirch his character. I could feel the tears gathering behind my eyes. ‘It was not one woman friend, Mama,’ I said,
and my voice was a thread as thin as the rope which hanged Judas. ‘He consorts with common women, he visits their houses. I could not be sure he would cease to do so.’

‘James Fortescue?’ Mama said in utter incredulity. And I loved her so dearly then, for disbelieving me, even though I had to convince her.

‘One of the Acre children,’ I said awkwardly. ‘You never heard about her. She was called Julie – named after me, I suppose. She had become a…a fallen woman. She called it street-trading.’ I took a little breath. ‘She recognized him, Mama. He did not deny it.’

My mama gasped. She was a lady who had lived a sheltered life, a childhood in the best part of Bath, a womanhood on the isolated estate of Wideacre. She had never been to a place like Fish Quay Lane. She had never seen a woman like Julie. And she would never have understood, as I did, that someone can be driven one way by their desires, and another way by their duty. For my mama, duty and desire took one path. For the rest of us true-bred Laceys, life was hopelessly contradictory.

‘I see,’ she said inadequately. ‘I am very sorry, my darling. But do remember that you are young, and there are many young men who you will meet, and one of them you will love. I shall not trouble you now to tell me more, my darling.’

I nodded. ‘I would rather not,’ I said.

She touched my hand again, and I clicked to the pony and we moved forward.

As soon as we were home, Mama sent me to lie down and rest, and she went herself to find John. He was in the library working, and Mama went in, leaving the door open behind her. With a heaviness in my heart I crept downstairs so that I could listen to their conversation. I was a liar, and now I had become an eavesdropper too.

John’s tone was reasonable. ‘I can’t agree with you, Celia,’ he said firmly. ‘This is an excuse of delicacy. All young men seek experience, and the general belief is that they are better husbands for it.’

This is not “experience”,’ my mama replied. Her voice was a little higher than usual. She was distressed. ‘I do not know exactly what you mean by that, John, nor do I wish to know. Julia tells me that Mr Fortescue has consorted with prostitutes, and that she cannot be certain that this would cease on marriage. That seems to me ample reason for breaking the friendship.’

‘Prostitutes?’ John’s voice was suddenly sharp. ‘Are you sure?’

‘I am merely telling you what Julia told me,’ Mama said with dignity. ‘I did not press her on it. Apparently one of the lost Acre children had become a prostitute – the one who refused to come home. She recognized him.’

‘This is a good deal more serious,’ John said. ‘I was thinking of perhaps an older married lady. I would be very anxious indeed if Julia’s betrothed used bagnios and suchlike.’

‘I fail to see the difference,’ Mama said impatiently. I heard her heels click on the polished floorboards. ‘It is still unchastity.’

John’s voice was warm, and I could tell he was smiling at her. ‘Morally, you are right, Celia,’ he said. ‘But speaking as a doctor.’ He paused. ‘There is a stew-pot of disease among the street women,’ he said. ‘Many of them are fatal, none of them curable. If James Fortescue has been with prostitutes, we should thank God that Julia learned of it in time.’

‘Oh,’ Mama said blankly.

‘You would not know,’ John said gently. ‘And I am content that neither you nor Julia will ever know how those women, and infected men, can suffer. But the diseases are easily caught and easily passed on. If James Fortescue habitually goes with such women, the engagement should certainly be ended.’

Mama was silent for a moment. ‘I shall take her away, then,’ she said, ‘for a few days. She shall come with me to Oxford when I visit Richard.’

Uncle John replied, but I had heard enough. I stole up the stairs in my stockinged feet and listened no more. I rang my bell and asked for water to be set on to boil for a bath. I felt utterly
dirty. I could not dine with my beloved mama and my dear Uncle John until I had scrubbed myself all over.

‘So I am to lose you two gadabouts again, am I?’ Uncle John said in an injured tone later at dinner. ‘I can see that I have made a rod for my own back and Julia will be all around the country, leaving me to manage her beastly estate.’

The cheerfulness was a little forced, but I appreciated that neither of them wished to tax me further. I tried to smile, but I was fighting back another attack of sickness, with a large portion of Wideacre trout cooked in cream and wine sauce before me. The flesh was as pink as rose petals, the sauce shiny and yellow as butter with rich Wideacre milk. I could hardly bear to sit at the table with the smell of it, and I knew I could not eat it.

‘We shan’t be long in Oxford,’ Mama said when I did not answer. ‘And I should think you would be glad to have the house to yourself for a while. You will be able to dine in the library with your maps all around you, and no one will scold you for smoking cigars and going to bed late.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Uncle John said with relish. ‘I shall have a feast of forbidden luxuries. And when you come home, you will have to launder the curtains and scrub the carpets, the place will be so well seasoned with tobacco.’

I could hardly hear the two of them, and I could scarcely see my unwanted plate before me. The table seemed to be rising and falling like an undulating wave.

‘Mama, please excuse me,’ I whispered. ‘I do not feel well.’ I rose to my feet and took myself somehow out of the room and went to the parlour, and I sank down on the hearthrug before the flower-filled grate and tipped my head back against the chair.

I had lied to Mama this dinner-time, and I was going to have to go on lying. I had told her there was nothing wrong with me, and that was not true. There was something wrong with me and anyone but a fool would have guessed it weeks before.

I was with child.

My cousin Richard had got me with child, and I was ruined indeed.

I needed no threats or promises now to bind me to him. I was absolutely ruined unless he married me, and I knew full well that I must go to him and tell him that we must be married at once.

It had taken me weeks to understand the cause of my nausea and dizziness, and even then I had clung to the foolish hope that I was sick because my monthly bleeding was late. When it did not come, and did not come, I started to know. And when everything on Wideacre seemed alive and fruitful, I knew I was fertile also.

Twice I had started to write to Richard, and two pages of hot-pressed notepaper had ended up in the fire. I knew that we were betrothed in his eyes, and since the day he left for Oxford, when he had held me in a hard hurting grip and told me that no gentleman would ever want me now, I had known that there was no love for me in the future. No love, no marriage and no children.

I had faced that sentence. Faced it and thought that I could tolerate it. But now I had to face something worse. I did not want to be Richard’s wife. I could not bear the thought of a clandestine marriage which would shame Mama, and shame me; or a marriage with her reluctant consent because she knew I was ruined. But I could see no other way. I had spent weeks trying to pretend that the morning in the summer-house had never happened. But it
had
happened; and the bravest thing I had ever had to do was to look my shame in the face and say, ‘I should be better off dead than shamed in this way’, and know that I would not die. Instead I would have to marry, and marry fast, or run the risk of showing a belly on me which would be obvious enough in the new slim gowns, and my mama would be within her rights to have me turned from her door and never to see me again.