Meridon (Wideacre Trilogy 3) (35 page)

‘That’s point five,’ he said. ‘We neither of us like being touched like that. I don’t mind my sisters, and I don’t mind you. But I cannot stand being pulled about by girls. I don’t like how they look at me. I don’t like how they stroke my sleeve or find ways of touching my shoulder or standing close to me. I just don’t like it. And I know I’ll never get married if I have to court someone and kiss them and pull them about.’

I nodded. I understood well enough. It was my own prickly independence but perhaps a little worse for a young man who would be expected to fondle and fumble and get his face slapped for his pains.

‘If we married we’d have to get an heir,’ he said bluntly. ‘But once we had a son we could live as friends. I thought you’d like that, Sarah.’

I drew my knees up to the ache in my chest and hugged myself for comfort.

‘I don’t know,’ I said softly.

Perry closed his eyes and turned his face up to the sunshine. ‘I thought it would be a way out for both of us,’ he said. ‘I know you’re afraid of going into Society, even with Mama there. This way, you’d be known as my affianced bride. You’d not have to go around so much. Men wouldn’t trouble you. My mama or my sisters could always be with you. And you could always have me there.’

I nodded. Deep inside myself I had been dreading the London Season, and cursing the obstinacy in myself which had insisted on moving in the best of circles when I was no more fined for it than any bareback dancer.

‘I’d like that,’ I conceded.

‘And you could run your own estate,’ Perry pointed out. ‘As you wanted, without having to wait all that time.’

I nodded. Five years was an unimaginable lifetime from my
sixteen-year-old viewpoint. I could not imagine waiting until I was twenty-one. And the shrewd business streak in me warned me that five years was a long time to leave Will Tyacke and James Fortescue in charge of my fortune.

‘And we’re neighbours,’ Perry said. ‘If you marry anyone else they’ll take you away to live in their house. They could live anywhere. You’d only be able to get back to see Wideacre when they let you.’

‘Oh no!’ I said suddenly. ‘I hadn’t thought of that!’

‘You’d have to,’ he said. ‘And your husband would put his manager in and he might do it even worse than it’s being done already.’

I put my hand out and turned his face towards me. He opened his eyes.

‘Kiss me,’ I said.

The kiss was as gentle and as cool as the brush of his mother’s fingertips on my cheek. His lips barely touched mine, and then he pulled back and looked at me.

‘I do like you,’ he said. ‘I do want us to be friends. Mama wants us to marry and I think she is right. But I do want us to be friends anyway.’

The loneliness and sadness I carried with me always suddenly swelled and choked me as he offered his friendship. The kiss had been as light and as cool as Dandy’s good-night pecks and I suddenly thought how long it had been since I had been touched by someone who liked me. I gave a little moan and buried my face in my hands and lay face down on the heather.

I did not cry. I had promised myself that day that I would never cry again. I just lay, stiff as a board and heard myself give three or four little moans as if my heart were breaking with loneliness.

Perry did nothing. He sat there like a beautiful flower, waiting for me to have done. When I ceased and lay still he put out a hand and rested it on the nape of my neck. His hand was as cool and as soft-skinned as a woman’s.

‘I’m unhappy, too,’ he said quietly. ‘That’s why I keep drinking. I’m not the son Mama wants. That was George. She’ll
never love me like she loved him. I thought that if you and I could marry we could both be less lonely. We could be friends.’

I turned around. My eyes were sore with unshed tears, as sore as if I had grit from the road blown into them. I rubbed them with the back of my gloved hand.

‘Yes,’ I said. I spoke from the depths of my loneliness and from my despair in knowing that I would never love anyone again. ‘Yes, it might work. I’ll think about it,’ I said.

Nothing could be worse than this arid waiting for the pain to pass. Perry and I were children who had been left behind. My sister had gone, his talented, brilliant brother George had gone. We two were left to inherit all the wealth and the land and the houses. We might be able to help each other feel more at home with them all. ‘Yes,’ I said.

‘All right then,’ Perry said. We got to our feet and he shook his jacket carefully and put it back on, pulling down the coat-tail and smoothing the sleeves down. ‘Mama will pay my gambling debts now,’ he said pleased. ‘Shall we tell her at dinner?’

‘Yes,’ I said. It seemed like years since someone had shared a decision with me and asked for my help. It was good to be part of an ‘us’ again, even if it were only poor silly Perry and me.

‘We can marry when the contracts have been drawn up,’ Perry said. ‘In London if you like, or here.’

‘I don’t mind,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter to me.’

Perry nodded, and cupped his hand to throw me up into the saddle.

‘Mama will be really pleased with me,’ he said and smiled up at me. He feared his mama at least as much as he loved her, probably more.

‘She’ll be pleased with both of us,’ I said, and I felt glad to be part of a family, even a cold-blooded Quality family like the Haverings. I smiled for a moment, thinking of her and her hopes of a Quality marriage, of netting some flash young squire. Who’d have thought in those days that plain dirty little Meridon would be saying ‘yes’ to marriage with a lord! My smile turned into a little rueful grimace, and then I clicked to Sea to follow Perry’s horse back down the slope. And who’d have thought that
I’d say yes to a marriage not for need, nor for desire, nor in any hope. But because need and desire and hope were gone and I was instead looking for power and wealth and control over my land.

Love I did not think of at all.

We told Lady Clara that night at dinner. I think if she had shown the least gleam of satisfaction I would have been on my guard. As it was she looked at me steadily across the table and said:

‘You are very young, Sarah, this is a big step. Do you think you had not better wait until you see what London society has to offer you?’

I hesitated. ‘I thought this was your wish, Lady Clara?’ I said.

The door behind me opened and the butler came to clear the table. Lady Clara made one of her graceful gestures and he bowed at once and withdrew. I knew I would never in a million years learn how to do that.

‘Certainly it is my wish that the estates be run together, and I can think of no two more suitable young people,’ she said. ‘Your upbringing has been unusual, Sarah, but Perry is the only young man of Quality that I know who is entirely free from any snobbery. He is informal to a fault, and you two are clearly very fond of each other.’ She paused and smiled slightly at Perry who was sitting on her right, between us. ‘And you two are well suited in temperament,’ she said delicately.

Perry looked glumly down at his plate and I nearly snorted with suppressed laughter at the thought of Lady Clara recommending him to me because he was cold and I was unwomanly.

‘But I do not know what Mr Fortescue will say,’ she said. ‘It will mean that you can take the running of the estate away from him at once.’

‘There is nothing he can say,’ I said brusquely. ‘The matter will be out of his hands. He cannot control my choice of husband, and in any case, no one could object to me marrying Perry who is a lord, and a neighbour, and a cousin.’

‘Voice,’ said Lady Clara.

‘Sorry,’ I said.

She raised her eyebrow at me.

‘I mean, I beg your pardon,’ I amended.

She smiled.

Perry kept his head down and poured himself another glass of port.

‘If you are so determined then there is nothing I can say,’ Lady Clara said with a fair show of helplessness. ‘The engagement can be announced at once. Then Perry can be with you at all the balls and parties of the Season and when the Season is over we can come back here and perhaps have a wedding next spring at Chichester cathedral.’

I nodded and Perry said nothing.

‘You should write to Mr Fortescue at once to tell him of your decision,’ Lady Clara said. ‘And inform him that I will be notifying my solicitors to draw up a marriage contract. They will contact his solicitors for sight of the deeds of Wideacre, of course.’

‘Wideacre will still be mine,’ I said. ‘It is entailed upon the oldest child, whether male or female.’

Lady Clara smiled. ‘Of course, Sarah,’ she said. ‘It will be entailed upon your first-born. Havering is entailed upon the first-born son. There should be enough meat in that to keep the lawyers occupied all summer and autumn.’

‘But Wideacre will still be mine,’ I repeated.

Lady Clara paused. ‘Married women cannot own property, Sarah,’ she said gently. ‘You know that. Wideacre will become Peregrine’s when you marry. Any husband of yours would own Wideacre.’

I frowned. ‘Even though it is me that inherited it?’ I asked.

‘Even though it is I who…’ Lady Clara amended.

‘There’s nothing I can do about that?’ I queried.

‘It is the law of the land,’ she said dryly. ‘Wealthier women than you have had to hand over bigger fortunes. But you could consult your lawyer or Mr Fortescue if you wish. You’ll still be better off with the estate properly run under Peregrine’s name, than held for you by Mr Fortescue and his band of Jacobins.’

I nodded. ‘I know that,’ I said certainly.

‘Anyway, Sarah can run it herself,’ Peregrine said. He had taken another glass of port and his cheeks were pink. He smiled at me very sweetly. ‘No reason why not,’ he said. ‘She’s been riding all around learning about the fields. If she doesn’t want a bailiff she could run it herself.’

Lady Clara nodded and picked up her fan. ‘Certainly,’ she said. ‘That is for the two of you to decide. How nice to have another wedding in the family!’

Peregrine rose steadily enough and took his mother’s arm as she went towards the door. He opened it and held it wide for her and me to pass through. As I went by he gave me a grin as brotherly and warm as an urchin who has scraped out of an adventure.

‘Pretty fair,’ he said under his breath, and went back to the table.

I went to bed early that night, and drew back my heavy curtains from the window. After years of sleeping in a wagon I should have rejoiced in the space and the comfort of having a whole room to myself, of being able to see the moon through clear clean glass. But I was a silly, ungrateful drab. After all my pining for the gentry life I was low that night and missed the wagon and the noise of other people snoring, breathing, dreaming all around me. I missed the warm dirty smell of the place. I missed the sight of Da’s rumpled head and Zima’s dirty locks. I missed the little snorting breaths of the baby. I made sure I did not think about the bunk opposite from where I used to see her dark head and her slow lazy waking smile.

Robert Gower had been good to me, by his lights. He had paid me my ten guineas and he had cared for Sea without charge. When I came off the trapeze he had me nursed in his own house and I never paid him a penny out of my wages for the doctor’s bill. I thought of the little house off Warminster High Street, I thought of the wagon with the painting and the curly writing on the side and how, somewhere, it would be parked up for the night, the fire burned down to embers outside the steps, a pan of water nearby for Robert to wash in the morning. On the side of the wagon there was my likeness and my name. My old name. The one I would never use again from the life I had left.

It seemed that all my life there were departures. The one I had only seen in my dream, when the little baby was held to a strange breast and did not hear her mother call after her. The crude sale when Da handed us over and drove out of town too quick for us to change our minds. And the evening when I took my horse and my gold and my string and gold clasps and went away from Robert Gower as if he had been my enemy. I thought
now that perhaps he had been a good friend and I could have stayed there, and that he would have helped me with my grief. Here I could not speak of it, could not be seen to be grieving. Here I had to lock it up in some cold part of my heart and never let anyone know, never let anyone see, that I was cold and aged and as dead as a smashed doll inside.

I leaned my head against the cold glass of the window and looked out. The sky was cloudy tonight, the moon three-quarters full, misty and shaded by ribbons and lumps of clouds over its face. My room faced east, over the paddock at the back of the house, towards the Common. I looked towards the skyline where a little clump of firs showed black against the sky. I had wanted to sleep and wake with this view all my life. I was home. It was foolish to find that it gave me no joy at all.

I turned from the window and drew the curtains. The room seemed too big, too full of echoes and ghosts and longing without the cold light of the moon showing a bed far too big for me, in a room far too big for me. With a little sigh I slipped off my costly dress and laid it carefully over a chair. I kept on my chemise and petticoat and wrapped myself in the coverlet from the bed and lay down on the hard carpet without a pillow. I knew tonight would be one of the nights when I would get no rest unless I slept hard and woke cold. Sometimes the life was too soft for me, I could not bear that it should be so easy for me when the one who would have loved it, who would have been extravagant and playful and laughing and spendthrift, she – and I still could not say her name – she had gone.

If I had been the crying sort I would have wept that night. But I was not. I lay wrapped tight in the coverlet on my back. When I woke in the night my face was wet and the carpet under my head was damp as if all the tears from the day, and from all the days, had crept out from under my eyelids when I was asleep. I got up then, stiff and chilled, and slid between the sheets. It was about three o’clock in the morning. I wished very much that it had been me who had died and not her.

I woke early, and I looked at the cool light on the white ceiling, and then I said it. I said the words that had gone with
me all my life, which I had hoped to escape here: ‘I don’t belong here,’ I said.

I lay still then for a few moments, listening to the desolation of that voice inside me which told me that I was alone, that I was lonely, that I belonged nowhere now, that I had never belonged anywhere, that I never would belong anywhere. I knew it was true.

I was keeping travellers’ hours and I was as restless as a stable cat shut indoors. There was no noise from the kitchen nor the sound of the maid cleaning the fires, it was too early even for her.. I trod softly over to the wardrobe and looked for my riding habits. One was being washed and the other was not there. I had torn a seam the day before and Lady Clara’s maid had taken it away to mend it. She would bring it back at breakfast time, but I needed to be out now. At the bottom of the wardrobe, pushed well back, were my old clothes. Jack’s old breeches, his boots, Robert’s thick jacket. I pulled them out and dressed myself quickly. I pulled my good riding boots on and they fitted me a deal more comfortably than ever had Jack’s hand-me-downs. I went soft-footed to the door and opened it a crack to listen.

I had been right, it was too early for anyone to be stirring. As I crept down the wooden stairs I heard the clock in the hall strike the quarter-hour. I looked at it in the pale light. It was only a quarter past five. I stepped as delicately as a mare on an icy road over the black and white tiles of the hall and through the baize door to the kitchen. All was clean and tidied away and quiet. A red eye of embers glowed inside the kitchen stove, a black cat asleep on the flat top.

I shot the bolts on the kitchen door and let myself out into the cold dawn air. Robert’s jacket was warm and rough against my cheek. It smelled of the earlier life: of his pipe tobacco, of fried bacon, of horse sweat, of oats. The smells of my childhood, which was no childhood at all.

Sea was turned out in the paddock wearing just a headcollar. There was a spare rope by the water pump, I needed nothing else to ride him. I went to the gate and whistled for him (a lady
never whistles) and he raised his head and pricked his ears and came blithely towards me as if he were glad to see me in my old familiar clothes. As if I were about to take him back to the old life. I clipped the rope on his headcollar and led him through the little white gate. I had forgotten how high he was. I had been lifted into the saddle as if I were a child or an old lady for months. I had nearly forgotten how to vault.

I said, ‘Stand,’ to him and found I had lost none of my skill. I was on his back in one clear leap and his ears went forward as he felt me astride him as I had always ridden him before we came here. I touched him gently with a soft squeeze of both legs on his warm flanks, and he stepped out gently down the drive towards the old woodland track through the parkland to Wideacre.

A blackbird had started singing, his voice sounded surprised to be awake this early, but all the other birds were still silent. The sun was not yet up, the morning was cool and grey. Sea and I were like ghosts of ourselves, leaving in dawnlight as we had come in moonlight. I put my hand in my pocket and felt the golden guineas were still there safe. We could go as we had come and disappear into the world of the common people. The world of wagons and travellers and shows, and no one would ever be able to find us again. Wideacre could stay as it was – fair, fruitful, generous. Nothing need change if I was not there, demanding my rights like a late-hatched greedy cuckoo chick. Perry could drink and play, annoy his mother and seek her forgiveness without me. He would come to his fortune at the end. It would make no difference to Lady Clara.

I could sink from the sight of this new life and no one would grieve for me. Within three months they would have forgotten all about me again.

Sea’s hooves rang as he came out of the woods on to the stones of the lane towards Acre and I turned his head east towards my land. I had half a will to look at it once more and then to go, to leave it for ever. I belonged neither there on the land, nor in my old life without her. I belonged nowhere and I had nowhere to go and no idea what I should do. I rode as I had ridden that
night, without direction and Sea stopped at the little stream, as he had stopped that night and dipped his head to drink while I smelled the cold mist off the water.

‘Sarah,’ a voice said, and I looked up. My eyes were blurred – they had been watering as I rode – and I blinked to clear them. It was Will Tyacke standing under the trees on the other side of the stream.

‘You,’ I said.

Sea put his ears forward and went out of the stream towards Will and put his great head down for a pat. He liked Will; he was the only man he did like.

‘Sarah, in your old clothes,’ Will said.

‘My riding habit’s being mended,’ I said. ‘I wanted to ride early.’

‘Sleepless?’ he asked.

I nodded and he gave me a little smile. ‘Too soft for you at Havering?’ he asked.

The months of our quarrel slid away from us both. ‘Too soft, too big, too grand,’ I said in a little voice. ‘It’s not my place.’

‘Where is your place?’ he asked. He patted Sea’s neck and came close to stand at his shoulder so that he could look up into my face.

‘Nowhere, as far as I know,’ I said. ‘I’ve come too late for this life, and I don’t care to go back to the old one. I’ll never learn to be a lady as Lady Clara. I suppose now I couldn’t be happy with the work I used to do. I’m betwixt and between. I don’t know where I should be.’

He reached up to me and rested his hand on my leg. I stayed still, I did not mind his touch. ‘Could you be here?’ he asked very low. ‘Could you be with us in Acre? Not up at the Hall as gentry, but in the village with the ordinary people? Living with us and working with us, making the land grow and feeding the people, selling in the market and working and planning?’

I looked down at his face and saw his brown eyes were full of love. He wanted me to say yes. He wanted me to say yes more than he wanted anything else in the world. Despite our quarrel, despite my turning from him to go to Lady Clara’s parlour, he wanted me to say yes and to go to Acre with him, as his equal.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Don’t waste your hopes on me. Will Tyacke. I am dead inside. There is no place for me to be happy, not in the Hall, not in the village, not at Havering nor Wideacre. Don’t look like that and don’t talk like that. You are wasting your time: I have nothing for you and nothing for the village either.’

He dropped his hand and he turned away. I thought he was going to walk from me in a rage but he took only a few steps and then he turned to face the stream and dropped down to his haunches and watched the flow of it go past us. Sea had stirred up the mud of the river bed and as we watched it grew clearer and then flowed clean again.

‘I’ve just walked back from Havering village,’ he said. ‘Some of them have moved into Acre, sharing cottages. One lass wanted me to see if I could find something she had left behind, but they have burned it out.’

I said nothing.

‘They even carted the stones away,’ he said wonderingly. ‘In a few months’ time you won’t be able to tell there ever was a village there. They have wiped the land clean of the people who lived there for hundreds of years.’

‘Were you there with the cart?’ I asked.

Will looked quickly up at me. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I didn’t see you.’

‘I was riding, up on the Common behind,’ I said. I suddenly remembered that I had been with Perry and that we had laughed at the woman who clung to the doorpost. ‘I wasn’t allowed to come near,’ I said. It was a weak excuse. ‘They had the typhus fever.’

Will shook his head. ‘Nay,’ he said. He was angry but his voice was so low and soft no one but me could have guessed it. ‘There was a woman there who was feverish and delirious through hunger. She didn’t have typhus, she was dying in a fever. She had been giving her smallest child the breast to try and keep her alive and so when there was no food to be begged or bought it hit her the hardest.’

‘Did she cling to the doorpost?’ I asked.

‘You saw that, did you?’ Will asked. His voice was thick with
condemnation of someone who could see that naked need of a woman and leave her to the mercies of paid wreckers. ‘Aye, she clung to the doorpost. She had nowhere to go. She was afraid of going to the poorhouse and the babbies being taken off her. I’ve taken her into my cottage and her three children. It’ll do for them for a while.’

‘Will you play nursemaid to three little babies?’ I said laughing. I wanted to hurt him, I wanted him to flare up at me since he thought I was so much in the wrong. I was angry with him for taking the woman and her children in. I did not like the thought of him living there, like a husband and a father with a sickly wife and three babies.

‘I’d rather live with three babbies than up at the Hall with one great baby and his ma,’ Will said, scowling at me.

‘You mean Lord Peregrine?’ I said in a tone as near to Lady Clara’s disdainful drawl as I could manage.

Will got to his feet and met my eye squarely. ‘Don’t speak to me like that, you silly slut,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard you learn to talk like that and I’m damned if I know why you want to turn yourself into something you’re not. I’ve heard Ted Tyacke talk about your ma, Lady Lacey she was, and she once rolled in the mud cat-fighting with one of the Dench girls. Her best friend was a village girl and she was in love with James Fortescue. She’d never have talked like that! And your grandma Beatrice swore like a plough boy and would have tanned your backside for talking to a working man like that.’

I dug my heels in Sea and turned him so sharply that he nearly reared. He plunged down the bank into mid-stream again and from there I turned and yelled at Will: ‘You’re sacked, Will Tyacke!’ I shouted. ‘Sacked and you can get off my land and go to hell! You’ll pack up today, you and your cottage-full of drabs. Get off my land all of you, and don’t you dare come back.’

He put his fists on his waist and shouted back at me. ‘You don’t own this place or run it, Sarah Lacey. You’re a minor still, you can sign nothing, you can appoint no one, you can sack no one. I takes my orders from James Fortescue and I will do for another five years. So take that back to Lord Perry with the compliments of his neighbour.’