Meridon

  We paused at the corner of David Street and I looked down the road to where the Havering House stood on the corner. I could see smoke coming from the chimneys as Emily went around lighting fires, back to her usual back-breaking work now the dirty work of nursing me was done.

  ‘Emily,’ I said.

  She had cared for me when no one else would do so. She had let me out to see Will and told no one about it. She had helped me get Perry up to bed and kept mum. And she had held me and bathed the sweat off my forehead and sat with me night after night with no thanks, and no tip, and no rest. She would go on lighting the fires and cleaning the grates and sweeping the stairs and sleeping in a cramped bare attic until she grew too old to work. Then Lady Havering would throw her out and if someone had said to her, ‘But the old woman will have to end her days in the poorhouse,’ her ladyship would widen her blue eyes and ask why Emily had never saved her wages since she had worked from childhood? and exclaim, ‘How improvident are the poor!’

  ‘Emily,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ Will asked. They were hesitating, ready to turn down the street, waiting for me. Sea champed at his bit, reined-in too tight.

  ‘I’m taking Emily,’ I said, deciding suddenly. ‘She shouldn’t be left there. She shouldn’t be left with Lady Havering, in that house. She should come with us to Wideacre.’

  Will’s face was a picture of rising rage. ‘You are taking your maid?’ he demanded. ‘You, a jumped-up gypsy brat, need to take a maid with you?’

  ‘No, you idiot,’ I replied briskly. ‘She was the only one in that whole household who ever showed me a ha’penny of love. I’m not leaving her behind. She’d be happy on Wideacre. She can ride pillion behind Gerry.’

  I slid down from Sea and tossed the reins to Will. He caught them, and before he could protest I had run up the street and tapped on the big front door. I heard Emily’s little feet pattering down the hall and her nervous: ‘I ain’t allowed to open the door…’ tail off as she opened the door and saw first a slim young man in grey, and then my face under the grey tricorne hat.

  ‘Sarah! I beg pardon m’m, I means your ladyship!’

  ‘Hush,’ I said peremptorily. Not all the escapes in the world could make me unstintingly pleasant. ‘Don’t chatter, Emily. Fetch your bonnet and all the money you have. You can come away with me if you want. I’m running away to my home in Sussex and you can come too. There’s work you can do there, farm work – but fairly paid and not too hard. You might like it. D’you want to come? I’m leaving now.’

  She flushed scarlet. ‘I’ll come,’ she said defiantly. ‘Dammit! I will!’ and she turned on her heel and bounded up the main staircase where she was not allowed to go, and then scuttered along the passageway to the attic stairs.

  I glanced back down the street. The daylight was getting brighter, the sun was up in a sky the colour of primroses, it would be a fine day. A cool clear day. A good day for travelling. Will made an impatient beckoning motion at me. I smiled and waved back.

  I was not afraid of being seen, I was not afraid of being caught. Since I had lain beneath Will in the darkness of the park, I had lost every scrap of fear I had ever known. There was a warmth and a lightness about me as if I would never fail or fear anything ever again. I did not fear Lady Havering, nor poor Perry. I knew at last who I was and where I was going. A lifetime of travelling had not taught me half so much.

  There was a rush along the hall and Emily came out, wrapped in a tatty shawl and with a bonnet on her head. She carried a shawl roughly knotted in one hand, and a little withy birdcage in the other with a starling in it.

  ‘Can I bring ‘im?’ she asked me anxiously. ‘I’ve ‘ad ‘im for a year, and ‘e sings marvellous.’

  I glanced down the street to Will who was now rigid with anger. ‘Of course,’ I said and my voice shook with laughter. ‘Why not?’

  Emily pulled the door gently to close and came down the steps. We walked back towards the horses.

  ‘Your young man,’ she said with quiet satisfaction as she saw Will. She did not seem in the least surprised.

  I held her bag and the cage as Gerry jumped down from his horse and lifted her up and then mounted behind her. I passed the bundle up and then the cage. The starling, annoyed by the jolting, began to sing loudly. I shot a sly look at Will.

  He was not fuming at all, he was not seething with irritation. He sat on his horse as easily and as calmly as if he were taking the air on Wideacre.

  ‘Quite ready, my darling?’ he asked me, and I started to hear an endearment from him and then smiled and coloured up like a silly wench.

  Quite ready? Nothing and no one you have forgotten? No one else you would like to bring with us? No chimney sweeps, or lap-dogs, or crossing boys?’

  ‘No,’ I said. I took back my reins and swung myself up into the saddle and then burst into laughter.

  ‘Do tell me you’re glad I brought the starling,’ I begged as Gerry led the way south, towards the river.

  Will laughed joyously, his brown eyes filled with love. ‘I am delighted,’ he said.

  40

  Gerry led us southwards, across the Green Park and then down the Vauxhall road, a part of the city I did not know. It was odd, sometimes like countryside, sometimes a town. There were little fields and byres where they kept dairy cattle, and carts with young women riding on them came down the road towards London and waved to us. There were a few grand houses too, and many many tumbledown cottages with barefoot children peeping out of unglazed windows. We crossed the river by the Vauxhall Bridge. Sea threw his head up at the sound of his hooves ringing hollow, and I held him still for a moment and looked downriver.

  The early morning mist was slowly lifting, the river was all silver and pearl. There were river-trading ships with sails, ghostly in the mist, and wherry boats and fishing smacks fading in and out of sight as the mist curled around them. The city eastwards gleamed like a new Jerusalem in the morning sunlight.

  ‘It could be a wonderful place,’ Will said softly beside me. ‘Even now, if they used the new machines they are inventing, and the new ideas they have, for the benefit of the poor. If they thought of the land and how to keep it sound, if they thought of the river and how to keep it clean. This could be the most wonderful city in the world, and the most wonderful country.’

  ‘People always say that,’ I said. ‘People always say it could have been good. But then they say it’s too late to go back.’

  Will shook his head. ‘If we go on as we are going, with people thinking of nothing but making fortunes and caring nothing for their workers and caring nothing for the land then they will regret it,’ he said certainly. ‘They think they can count the cost of living like that – a high rate of accidents perhaps, or no fish in a river where fish once used to spawn. But the cost is even higher. They teach themselves, and they teach their children a sort of callousness, and once people have learned that lesson it is indeed too late. There is nothing then to hold back rich people from getting richer at the expense of the poor, nothing to protect the children, to protect the land. The rich people make the laws, the rich people enforce them. Time after time we have a chance to decide what matters most – wealth, or whether people are happy. If they could only stop now, and think of the happiness for the greatest number of people.’

  I smiled at him. ‘They’d tell you that the way to make people happy is to make them rich,’ I said.

  Will shrugged and the horses moved forward. ‘I don’t think people can be happy unless they are well fed and well housed and have a chance at learning,’ he said. ‘And you’ll never do that by opening the market place and saying it’s all free to those with money to buy it. Some things are too important to be traded in a free market. Some things people should have as a right.’

  I thought of the Havering land and the clearing of the Havering village. I thought of some of the people I had met in London who had no more skill nor wit than Da, but lived in great houses and dined off gold plate. And I
thought of her, and of me, dirty-faced little children with never a farthing of a chance to get out of that miserable life and think of something other than getting and keeping money.

  ‘I got from the bottom to the very top,’ I said. I thought of Robert Gower’s long struggle from the failed cartering business, to the horse-riding act, and then his own show. And I thought of what it had cost him. It had made him a man with stone where his heart should be, and it had made his son a murderer.

  ‘It’s not the rising or falling which matters,’ he said. ‘There shouldn’t be a bottom where children are cold and hungry and beaten. Not in a rich world.’

  I nodded, and we rode in silence for a little while.

  ‘You’re pale,’ he said. ‘Are you well?’

  ‘I’m all right,’ I said, lying again. I was deathly tired, but I wanted to ride to my home, to Wideacre. I wanted to ride without stopping until midday when we might have enough money between the four of us to buy bread and cheese and a flask of ale. ‘I’m all right,’ I said.

  Emily looked back. ‘She does look poorly,’ she confirmed. She scanned my face. ‘You’re still too weak to be up all night, Miss Sarah,’ she said. She looked at Will. ‘She didn’t ought to be riding,’ she said.

  Will glanced at me in surprise. ‘Are you still weak?’ he asked. ‘I heard you were ill, but then I heard you were married and I thought you must have recovered.’

  I gave a wry smile. ‘I’m well enough,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t ‘e know?’ demanded Emily of me. ‘Don’t ‘e know what happened?’

  ‘Apparently not,’ Will said tightly. ‘What is this?’

  I looked down. Sea’s neck and mane were rippling under my gaze as if we were swimming through water. The sun was growing brighter, its glare hurt my eyes and I was hot, wrapped up in my cape.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ I said softly. ‘I’ll tell you later, Will.’

  ‘She’s awful white,’ Emily said. Gerry pulled his horse up and looked anxiously back. ‘She shouldn’t be riding,’ Emily said. ‘Not after being out all night.’

  ‘What the devil is wrong?’ Will said in sudden impatience. ‘Sarah! What’s the matter.’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said irritably. ‘I was ill for a long time, and now I am better. I get a little tired that’s all.’

  ‘Are you well enough to ride?’ he asked.

  My tough little Rom spirit rose up in me. ‘Of course,’ I said. The road was shimmery and bright, I half closed my eyes.

  ‘Ride all the way home?’ Will demanded.

  ‘Of course,’ I said again, my voice was softer, my throat seemed to be tightening like it had done when I had the fever. ‘How else can we get there?’

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asked again, and now his voice was tender.

  ‘Oh Will,’ I said wearily, accepting my weariness and my weakness at last, just as I had accepted the joy in my body earlier in this long night. ‘Oh Will, my love, please help me. I’m as sick as a dog,’ I said.

  Then I pitched forward on to Sea’s neck and the darkness of the road came up to meet me.

  When I came to, it was broad daylight and I was being jolted, rhythmically like a rocking cradle. I was lying on straw, wrapped warm in my heavy cloak, bedded as snug as a winter fieldmouse. I blinked up at the winter sky, bright and blue above me, and I looked to my right and there was Will Tyacke unstoppering a flask of ale and looking smug.

  ‘Drink,’ he said and held it to my lips. It slid down in a cool malty swallow.

  ‘Whaa?’ I asked.

  ‘More,’ he said firmly, and I gulped again and my parched throat was eased at once.

  ‘Emily and Gerry are coming along behind us, leading Sea, riding the Havering horse and my bay,’ Will said. ‘You and I have bought a ride with this carter who is taking a load of Irish linen bales to Chichester. He will ride straight past your very doorstep, m’lady.’

  ‘Money?’ I asked succinctly.

  ‘Gerry had a handsome sum saved against his wedding day,’ Will said happily. ‘I promised I would repay him when we got to Wideacre, and he split the hoard. I’m so glad you decided to rescue him from his servitude. We’d have been stuck penniless without him.’

  I chuckled. ‘Where are they now?’ I asked.

  Will nodded behind. ‘Dropped back to rest the horses. The carter has an order to meet in Chichester, he’ll be changing his team as we go. We’ll be home by nightfall.’

  I snuggled a little deeper and put my hands behind my head to gaze up at the sky.

  ‘Then we have nothing to do…’ I said.

  ‘Nothing,’ Will said sweetly. ‘Except rest, and eat, and drink ale, and talk.’

  He shifted round so his arm was behind my head and I was leaning against his shoulder, comfortable and warm. He held the flask of ale to my mouth and I took a gulp, then he stoppered it up and leaned back and sighed.

  ‘Now,’ he said invitingly. ‘Tell me all about it. I want to hear everything, all the secrets, and all the things you thought about when you were alone. I want to know all about you, and it’s time you told me.’

  I hesitated.

  ‘It’s time I knew,’ he said decisively. ‘You must start from the very beginning. We’ve got a long ride and I’m not at all sleepy. Start from the very beginning and tell me. What’s the very first thing you remember?’

  I paused and let my mind seek backwards, down the years, a long way back to the dirty-faced little girl in the top bunk who never heard a kind word from anyone except her sister.

  ‘Her name was Dandy,’ I said, naming her for the first time in the long sorrowful year since her death. ‘Her name was Dandy, and my name was Meridon.’

  I talked as the carter drove. I broke off when we went into inns, and we climbed down from the back and bought the man an ale. He took up another passenger one time, a pretty country girl who sat in the front with him and giggled at the things he said. We sat still and quiet during that time, around noon. But we did not court as they were courting. Will did not kiss me, and I did not box his ears and blush. I rested my head on his shoulder and I felt the tears roll down my cheeks for the two little children in the dirty wagon, and even for Zima’s little babby we had left behind.

  When the girl had gone, climbing down at her home, a darkshuttered cottage, leaving with a wave, Will had said softly, ‘You asleep?’ and I had said ‘No.’

  ‘Tell me then,’ he said. ‘After that first season with Gower, where he took you for winter quarters, tell me about that.’

  I thought of the cottage at Warminster, of Mrs Greaves and the skirt which I stained so badly, falling from Sea, that I never had to wear it again. I told him about Dandy and her pink stomacher top and her flying cape, and of David who trained us so kindly and so well.

  Then I buried my face in his jacket and told him about the owl which flew into the ring, and about David warning us about the colour green. And how I had forgotten.

  I wept then, and Will petted me as if I were a little well-loved child, and wiped my face with his own cotton handkerchief, and made me blow my nose and take a gulp of ale. He took some bread rolls and some cheese from his pocket and we ate them as the sky was growing darker again with the quick cold twilight of winter.

  ‘And then…’ he prompted, as I finished eating.

  I sprawled back against the softness of the straw and turned my face to the sky where the pale stars were starting to show. The evening star hung like a jewel above the dark latticework of the twigs of the passing woods.

  My voice was as steady as a ballad singer, but the tears seeped out from my eyelids and rolled down my cheeks in an easy unstoppable flood as if I had waited for a year to cry them away. I told him of Dandy’s plan, and how she trapped Jack. How she teased him and courted him until she had him, and how she got a belly on her which she thought would bring us to a safe haven with the Gowers. That she thought Jack would cleave to her, and that Gower would be glad of a grandson to inherit the show. That she was always a v
ain silly wench and she never troubled herself to wonder what others might want. She was so anxious to seek and find her own pleasures, she never thought of anyone else.

  I should have known.

  I should have watched for her.

  And I confessed to Will that I had known in some secret shadowy way, I had known all along. I had been haunted. I had seen the owl, I had seen the green ribbons in her hair. But I did not put out my hand to stop her and she went laughing past me, and Jack threw her against the flint wall, and she died.

  We were quiet for a long time then. Will said nothing and I was glad of that. It was silent but for the creak, creak noise of the wheels and the steady jolting of the cart, the clip, clop, of the dray horses and the carter’s tuneless whistle. A wood pigeon called for a few drowsy last notes, and then hushed.

  ‘And then you came to Wideacre,’ Will said.

  I turned in his arm and smiled at him. ‘And I met you,’ I said.

  He dipped his head down to me and kissed my red swollen eyelids, and my wet cheeks. He kissed my lips which tasted of salt from my tears. He buried his face in my neck and kissed my collar-bone. He reached into my little nest of straw and hidden by my cape his hands stroked me as gentle as a potter moulding clay, as if he were shaping my waist, my breasts, my arms, my throat, my cheekbones. Then his hands slid down over my breasts to the baggy waistband of Gerry’s breeches, and his flat hand stroked down my belly to between my legs.

  ‘Not now,’ I said. My voice was very low. ‘Not yet.’

  He leaned back with a sigh of longing, and pulled my head on to his shoulder. ‘Not long now,’ he said in reply. ‘You’ll come to my cottage tonight.’

  I hesitated. ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘What would Becky say?’

  Will looked puzzled for a moment.

  ‘Becky,’ I said. ‘You told me…that day in the park…you said you were promised to wed her. You said that she loved you. I can’t come to your cottage…I don’t want to spoil things for you…’ I tailed off. I lost my words at the thought of having to share him with another woman. ‘Oh Will…’ I said miserably.