Meridon (Wideacre Trilogy 3) (27 page)

Will brought his horse closer alongside Sea and put his calloused hand over mine as I held the reins. I flinched at the touch and Sea stepped to one side.

‘It will not be as you thought it,’ he said gently. ‘It could not be. Nothing ever is. And while you have been dreaming of us, things have been changing here, we have been working towards a dream of our own. We are trying to do something here which is both an example and a model to the rest of the country. And it is part of a long tradition. A forgotten tradition which people try to ignore. Ever since there have been landlords there have been ordinary men and women claiming the right to run the land in their own way, of earning their own bread, of living together as a community. It may seem strange to you now, Sarah, but I think we can be the family you don’t have.’

I shook my head. ‘I’ve got no family,’ I said coldly. ‘I dreamed of a landscape. I didn’t dream of you, or of James Fortescue. All the family I had are dead, and now you two tell me they weren’t even kin. And my real kin…well they’re dead too. I’ve got no one, and I need no one. It was the land I dreamed of; and it’s the land I want.’

Will shrugged his shoulders; and did not try to touch me again. He pulled his horse over to one side and let me admire the view on my own.

‘Would you like a gallop over the Downs and then round by the Common to your home?’ he asked, his voice carefully polite. ‘Or do you want to see more of the village?’

‘Common land and home,’ I said. I glanced at the sun. ‘What time do they eat dinner?’

‘At six,’ he said coldly. ‘But they’ll wait till you are home before they serve dinner.’

I looked aghast. ‘That would be awful,’ I exclaimed.

The black look was wiped off his face in a second. Will laughed aloud. ‘If you think so,’ he said chuckling. ‘I’ll get you home in plenty of time. Could your horse do with a gallop?’

‘Oh yes,’ I said. Sea had been fretting ever since his hooves had been on the soft turf.

‘This way then!’ said Will and his brown cob sprang forward, suprisingly quickly for a horse that size. Sea was after him in a moment, and we chased them along the level track which arrowed, straight as a die, along the top of the Downs. We drew level in a few minutes and I heard Will laugh as we forged past them, Sea put his ears forward at the thunder of the hooves and then slackened his speed so that the brown cob inched forward again. They raced side by side, changing the leads as if they were enjoying themselves until Will called ‘Hulloa! Woah!’ and we slowed them down and they dropped into a canter and then we pulled them up.

‘We’ll go down this little track,’ Will said, and led the way down a track which was sticky with white creamy mud. Sea blew out and followed the cob as it skidded and slipped. The ground levelled off at the bottom and the mud gave way to white sand.

‘This is the Common,’ Will said.

It was a different kind of landscape entirely, but as familiar to me and as beloved as the Downland and parkland of my home. It was wild countryside, there were no hedges or fields or any sign of farming. As I listened I could hear the faint tinkle of a cow-bell or goat-bell. The busy village of Acre and the well-tended fields, away to the south, seemed miles away.

The hills were covered in heather, the fresh growth showing as a pale mist around the dead white flowers and grey of the old plants. All around us young fronds of ferns were growing leggy and short, necks curled up towards the sky. Over to my right there was a little coppice of silver birches, their trunks pale as paper.

‘Some of this has been enclosed, it is wonderful growing soil,’
Will said. ‘But most of it has been left as it always has been. A bit of a wilderness.’

He turned his horse’s head and Sea fell in beside the cob. The path was very wide, pure white sand, with a covering of black soil at the edges.

‘We keep this open for a firebreak,’ Will said.

‘It catches fire?’ I asked, bemused.

‘Sometimes in a very hot summer, but also we burn off the old heather and bracken so that it stays fit for grazing,’ he explained. ‘Even in the old days, when the Laceys ruled the land as they wished, it was always a right for the people of Acre to graze their own beasts up here. Cows mostly, but some people keep goats or sheep. Quite a few pigs, too.’

I nodded.

‘We’ll just go and look at the orchard, and then cut across the Common for home,’ he said. ‘Have I lost you yet?’

I screwed up my face to think. ‘No,’ I said. ‘The Downs curve around the village and we came down that path so that we were north of the village. I reckon it’s that way…’ I gestured with my left hand.

Will nodded. ‘You’ve a good sense of direction,’ he said. ‘But you would have that with the travelling you must have done.’

He waited in case I should tell him something about my travelling but I said nothing and he trotted on ahead of me along the firebreak, across a marshy little stream, where Sea jinked and shied, and then in a long easy canter along a path and into a wood of tall beech trees and the occasional pine. Ahead of us was the river and I followed Will on the brown cob when he turned to the left and rode along its banks. The water was deep, dark brown in the curves and bends by the banks, but sparkling and bright in the shallows. We came out on to a cart track and then Will pulled his horse up and said, ‘There.’

Ahead of us was a high and lovely fold of hills, capped by silver birches and the ungainly growing heads of baby ferns. Over to our left the hills ran down to the river, brown with last year’s bracken but lightened with the new growth. The old heather showed as dull pewter and old silver. Before us, in a huge sprawl
of a field, were straight well-planted rows of apple trees, the leaves green with soft silvery undersides as the wind rolled through them.

‘Your ma planted this,’ Will said and his voice was filled with wonder. ‘Before you were born. Your ma Julia planted it, and my cousin Ted Tyacke was here when she did it. He said it took them all day to plant it and when they had finished they were so tired they could hardly walk home.’

I nodded. For a moment I forgot my sadness and my anger as I looked at the great fertile sweep of the land and saw how the strong branches bobbed as the wind played through them.

Will’s voice was warm. ‘Ted told me that none of them had ever planted apple trees before, it was a new idea. To set the estate back on its feet after the fire and everything going bad. He said that it was one of the first things Julia ever did on her own. She worked all day on her own down here and she counted out all the trees and got them set in straight rows.’

I looked again at the orchard. I thought I could even tell that they had planted from left to right, the first two rows were a bit wobbly, as if they had been learning how to keep to the line. After that they were straighter. I thought of my mother, a young woman little older than me, trying to set the land right.

‘He said she was up and down each row twenty times,’ Will said, a laugh in the back of his voice. ‘And at the end of it, all the trees were in and she looked around and there was one left on the cart! They laughed until they cried and she swore that she would give the sapling to the village to keep so the children could have apples off it.’ He paused. ‘She planted it on the green,’ he said. ‘The tree is getting old now, but the apples are very sweet.’

I felt a rush of tenderness for the mother I had never known, for the other Tyacke who had worked with her and laughed when she ended with one tree too many, for all the people she knew who worked with her to set this land on its feet again so that it could grow rich and fertile.

‘Thank you,’ I said, and for that moment I was simply grateful that he had taken the time and the trouble to bring me down
here, to show me the orchard, and to explain to me what the land had meant to my mother. How she had been when she had been a young girl with the rights and duties of a squire. How she had been when she had loved and owned the land.

Will nodded and clicked to his horse so that we rode on beside the river, past the orchard. ‘She wanted to end the line of the Laceys,’ he said gently. ‘She told them that in the village one day. When her husband Squire Richard was bringing in day labourers and paying only the poor-rate wages. She said there should be no more squires.’

I felt myself stiffen, and the cold hardness which had been around me all my life came back to me.

‘Then she should have drowned me in the river as she planned, and not given me away,’ I said. ‘She should have had the courage to do the thing properly, or not at all. She gave me away and I was lost for all those years. So now I do not understand the land, and the village is used to having no squire.’

Will looked very attentively at the path ahead of us, at the stream moving so sweetly and easily across the land.

‘We could become accustomed,’ he said. ‘We will both have to change a little. We will become accustomed to having a Lacey in the Hall again. You will learn how to be Quality. Perhaps this is the best way. For she did not end the squires, but here you are, a squire who knows what it is to be poor. It is different for you, because you were not bred to it. You’ve seen both sides. You’ve not been trained in Quality ways, you’ve not learned to look away when you see beggars. Your heart is not hard in the way they learn.’

He kept his eyes straight ahead so that he was not looking at my clothes, hand-me-downs, of a cheaper quality than his own. There was a hole in one of the boots. ‘You know what it is like for poor people,’ he said discreetly. ‘You would not make their lives hard for them if you could choose.’

I thought about that as I rode. And I knew it was not so. Nothing in my life had taught me tenderness or charity. Nothing had taught me to share, to think of others. I had only ever shared with one person. I had only ever had a thought for one
person. Will’s belief that my knowing the underside of a cruel and greedy world would make me gentle could not have been more wrong.

We rode without speaking, listening to the river which flowed clattering on stones and whirlpooling around twigs beside us. In the distance I could hear the regular slap slap and creak of a mill wheel. Then we rounded a little bend and I saw it on the opposite side of the river, a handsome plain square building in the familiar yellow stone.

‘That’s the new mill,’ Will said with satisfaction. ‘The Green family run it as their own business. They grind Wideacre corn for free but they also take in corn from the other farmers and charge them a fee for grinding.’

‘Who owns it?’ I asked.

Will looked surprised. ‘I suppose you do,’ he said. ‘Your mother got it running again, but it was built by the Laceys. The Green family came as tenants, long ago. But they’ve paid no rent since the corporation was established.’

I nodded. I looked at the trim little building and at the bright white and purple violets in the windowboxes. I looked at the pretty curtains in the windows, and the mill wheel turning around. On the roof there were white doves cooing. I thought of the times I had gone hungry, and she had been hungry too. I thought of the times we had been cold, and how very often Da had beaten me. I thought of her sitting on gentlemen’s laps for a penny, and me being thrown from horse after horse for ha’pence. And I thought that all the time, for all of that time, these people had been living here in comfort and plenty, beside this quiet river.

Will set his horse to a trot and then we went alongside the strawberry field I had seen in the morning. The lad had nearly finished the harrowing and he waved to us as we rode by. There was a little track between two fields and it brought us out on the driveway towards the Hall.

‘You’ve never been poor have you?’ I said shrewdly. ‘You’ve always worked, wherever you said it was – Goodwood – and here. But you’ve never gone short.’

The horses walked shoulder to shoulder up the drive. The birds still sang in the treetops but I could not hear them. The sweet singing noise had gone from my head, too. ‘You’d never have such hopes of me if you had been poor, hard poor. You would know then that the only lesson anyone learns from poverty is to take as much as you can now, for fear that there will be nothing for you later. And don’t share with anyone, for certainly they’ll never share with you.’

Will kept his eyes on the lane before his cob. He never turned his head.

‘In all my life I only ever shared with one person,’ I said, my voice very low. ‘I only ever gave anything to one person. And now she is gone. I shall never share nor give to anyone else.’

I thought for a moment. ‘And except for her,’ I said consideringly, ‘no one ever gave me a damned thing. Every penny I saw I worked for. Every crust I ate I earned. I don’t think I’m the squire you hoped for, Will Tyacke. I don’t think I’m capable of gentry charity. I’ve been poor myself, and I hate being poor, and I don’t care for poor dirty people. If I’m rich now, I’ll stay that way. I don’t ever want to be poor again.’

Mr Fortescue was waiting for us in the stable yard. He asked Will to stay for dinner but Will said he had to go. He waited while I slid down from the saddle and then nodded to Mr Fortescue and to me.

‘I’ll come back this evening,’ he said. ‘When I finish work at dark.’

Then he gave me a friendly smile which also seemed somehow forgiving. Then he rode away.

‘I had better wash,’ I said. I put a hand to my cheek and felt the grime from the dust of the road.

‘Becky Miles has put some clothes in your room,’ Mr Fortescue offered, his voice carefully neutral. ‘They belonged to your mother, but she thinks they would fit you if you cared to try them.’

I could tell he was trying hard to pass no comment on my eccentricity of boys’ clothes. I looked down at the shabby breeches and jacket and I laughed.

‘It’s all right, Mr Fortescue,’ I said. ‘I know I cannot dress like a stable lad for the rest of my life. I was wanting to ask you about clothes. I also need to ask you about all sorts of other things which I will have to learn.’

Mr Fortescue brightened. ‘I only hope I can help you,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk over dinner.’

I nodded and went indoors and up to my room.

For the thousandth time that day I had a pang of pain and anger that she could not be with me, when I saw what was laid out on the bed.

It was the finest riding habit of plum velvet, edged with silky violet ribbon in a great double border. There was a matching tricorne hat to go with it, and dark leather boots with silky
tassels and even cream-coloured stockings with plum clocks on the side.

I thought of how she would have flown at them and how ravishing she would have looked in them and I had to lean back against the panels of the door and take a deep breath to ease the sudden pain which thudded, as hard as a blow into my belly, at the thought that she would never see them. That in all her beauty-seeking life she had never known anything better than rags and trumpery.

So there was little delight for me in the thick smooth feel of the cloth, nor the fineness of the linen shirt and stock that went underneath. But when I had slipped on the skirt and gone to the mirror in the smart little boots I could smile with some pleasure at my reflection.

It was a half-mirror so I could not see the hem of the gown nor the boots without dragging over a chair and standing high on it to admire them. Then I slowly got down and saw how my linen shirt looked white against the neat purple waistband of the skirt, and how I looked somehow taller and older and quite strange and unlike myself. I stared at my face. The hazy green eyes looked back, the lines of my cheek, of my throat above the tumble of lace as clear as a drawn line.

My hair was still hopeless. I made a few half-hearted passes at it with the silver-backed brush but the soft bristles slid over the curls and the tangles and hardly straightened them at all. It remained an obstinate tumble of copper curls half-way down my back, and only the memory of the ragged mess of a bob stopped me from ringing for Becky Miles to bring me some scissors and hacking it all off again.

I turned from the glass and went down to dinner, feeling already stronger and more confident in boots which clicked on the floorboards of the hall and did not clump.

Mr Fortescue was waiting for me in the dining room and when he saw me his jaw dropped and he gaped like a country child at mummers.

‘Good God!’ he said.

Becky Miles who was setting a soup tureen on the table swung around and nearly dropped it in her surprise.

‘Miss Sarah!’ she said. ‘You look beautiful!’

I felt myself flush as vain and as silly as a market-day slut.

‘Thank you,’ I said steadily and took my seat at the head of the table.

Mr Fortescue sat at my right-hand side and Becky Miles loaded the rest of the expanse of mahogany with as many dishes as she could, to conceal the fact that there were just the two of us, camped out at one end of the table.

‘Did you enjoy your ride?’ Mr Fortescue asked politely as he started to eat his soup.

I watched him. He did not bend over his bowl and spoon directly from bowl to mouth with as little distance as possible. Nor had he crumbled his bread up into hearty bits to float in the soup as I had already done. I flushed again, this time with annoyance. He had kept his bread on his plate and every now and then broke off a little piece and buttered it. I tried to sit straighter but it seemed to put me a long way off from the table. I was sure my hand would shake as I was lifting the soup to my lips and then I would drop soup on my new dress. I remembered the small cloth and spread it on my lap. It all seemed designed to make it harder to eat. But if this was the way it had to be done I thought I could pick it up in time.

‘Yes, it was a nice ride,’ I agreed inattentively. When Mr Fortescue finished his soup he did not wipe around his bowl with a piece of bread. He left the bowl dirty, he left nigh on a whole spoonful spread around the bottom. I followed his example though I watched the wasted soup longingly as Becky Miles took the bowl away.

She set a great silver salver with a rib of beef on it before Mr Fortescue and he started carving into wafer-thin slices which he laid in a fan on a plate for me and Becky Miles walked around the table and placed it before me. The smell of the roast beef, dark on the outside and pinky in the middle, made me lean forward and sniff, water rushing into my mouth. Becky Miles brought me roast potatoes, crunchy and brown, new potatoes
glazed with butter, tiny young carrots and new peas and half a dozen things which looked like green miniature bulrushes.

‘Do you like asparagus, Sarah?’ Mr Fortescue said, pointing at them.

‘I don’t know,’ I said honestly. ‘I’ve never had them before.’

‘Try one or two then,’ he recommended. ‘We grow them on the Home Farm here under glass. Will Tyacke has it in mind to put some more glass houses up and grow more of it.’

I nodded and Becky Miles put two of the green slivers on my plate.

She held out a great sauce boat of deep red shiny gravy and poured it thickly over the meat.

I was so hungry I could have grabbed my knife and cut up the bigger bits at once and shovelled the rest into my mouth with the spoon. But I forced myself to wait and watch Mr Fortescue.

He took an age, while I sat there and my nostrils flared at the scent of the food and I ached to begin. First he was served with all the vegetables, then Becky Miles brought wine for him and water and wine for me. I would rather have had small beer, but I did not feel able to say so. Then finally, after he had made a little pile of salt at the edge of his plate he picked up his knife and his fork, at once, in both hands and cut and prodded, and managed to talk at the same time without showing what he was chewing.

It was beyond me. I ate as daintily as I could but when I was trying to cut the meat some gravy slopped over the side of my plate and stained the tablecloth. And the asparagus dripped butter into my lap so the napkin was soiled. If I had not been so starving hungry I should have lost my appetite at the discomfort of sitting opposite such a neat feeder as Mr Fortescue. But I had been hungry once, and he had not, and I was sure that the difference between us went deeper than manners. He could see food as something he could leave or take, as he pleased, with the knowledge that there were other meals if he wished for them. I ate as if I might never see food again, and I thought I should never learn to treat meal times lightly.

After the meat there was apple pie and a creamy kind of dish which Becky Miles served in a glass. After that came some
cheeses and biscuits and port for Mr Fortescue and a glass of sweet yellowy ratafia for me. I thought of Robert Gower offering David a glass of port after dinner, that time. It seemed like another lifetime. It seemed as if they were years away from me.

‘Now Sarah,’ Mr Fortescue said gently as Becky Miles cleared away everything but a bowl of fruit on the table and the two decanters. ‘If this were a proper household you would withdraw to the parlour and leave me to my port and my cigar. But since it is just the two of us will you sit with me?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

He seemed to be waiting. He gave me a little smile. ‘And may I smoke?’ he asked. ‘I know it is a disgusting habit, but…’

I looked at him in utter incredulity. ‘Why d’you ask me?’ I demanded.

‘Because you’re a lady,’ he said. ‘A gentleman cannot smoke in a lady’s presence without her specific permission.’

I was still blank. ‘Whyever not?’ I asked. ‘What’s it to do with her?’

Mr Fortescue could not seem to explain. ‘I suppose it is about showing respect,’ he offered.

We looked at each other in mutual incomprehension.

‘I’m never going to understand this,’ I said miserably. ‘I’ll need to have someone to teach me.’

Mr Fortescue brought out a little silver pair of scissors and snipped at the end of his cigar, then he lit it, and blew out thoughtfully, watching the smoke curling off the glowing ember.

‘I’ve had some thoughts on that,’ he offered. ‘There’s something I can suggest. What you are going to need is the education of a country lady.’ He stopped and smiled. ‘Nothing very sophisticated! Your mother was brought up here with only the teaching of her mother. She never saw a city bigger than Chichester until she went to Bath. She never went to London at all.’

He glanced at me. I kept my face still.

‘I spoke with my sister Marianne, as soon as I heard you had come home. Marianne was a special friend of your mother’s and she suggested to me that as soon as you are settled here you will need a companion. Fortunately she knows someone who might
do. It is a lady who used to be a governess. She’s a friendly lady, the widow of a naval officer and the daughter of a country squire herself so she would understand the life you are going to lead. She’d be prepared to come here and to teach you the things you need to know. To read, and to write. How to run a house and how to engage servants. What your duties are in the house and what church and charitable works you should do.’

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.’