Ralph pushed back his chair from the table and stamped on his wooden legs to the door to throw it open and look out, up the little back track to Acre. ‘Look, you,’ he said, leaning on the doorpost and looking out. ‘This is a fine scheme, and a generous one from any landowner, even a bankrupt one. I respect that. But you are asking for someone to give up the way he has lived for the past fourteen years, wild, and without a master. Starving in winter maybe, but eating game and fish and fowl all summer. And free to work as he pleases, or poach as he pleases, or fish as he pleases every day of the year. You are asking a man like that to settle down into a routine of working.
‘And for what? You are not even offering a decent wage. You are offering the promise of a share in the profits on crops which are not yet in the ground. If the profits are small, you yourselves tell me that first out of the fund is the needs of the land, second is your share, and last are the workers. If there are no profits at all – well, you have the option to sell the land. And sell it now as a going concern with a village eager for work. But if there are no profits, then the people of Acre starve for another winter.
‘You landlords risk nothing – you have a derelict estate you cannot work or sell. If the village was to go for this scheme, you would have them back at work at no cost to you, and if they fail to work hard enough to make the profits your scheme needs, they are the ones who suffer. Landlords never suffer. They write the laws, they invent the rules. They make the world, and then they expect people to be grateful for small mercies!’
Ralph leaned back against the doorpost and smiled at us both as though we were rather charming brigands. ‘You offer no guarantees,’ he said. ‘Acre is guaranteed to you. Everyone here is so poor that there is nowhere they can go, and no freedom they can take. But you can suit yourselves. You can play at being radical for a few years, or you can sell the estate tomorrow at a profit, to the first buyer who comes your way, rack-renter, corn-forestaller, whatever. There are no controls over the gentry,’ he said and paused. ‘There never are,’ he added.
Richard and I sat in stunned silence. In everything Uncle John had said since his return from India, we had never seen the scheme like this. Ralph Megson, who was not of the Quality, saw the objections in a flash. And he had seen it as another ruse by the masters against the men, concealed, this time, in some persuasive egalitarian fair-share scheme, profiteering wrapped up prettily. I dropped my eyes to the tablecloth and coloured up to my ears with shame at my foolishness in not spotting such an obvious argument against the idea, and in my shame at being seen by Ralph Megson as one of the gentry who take what they have not earned and use what they have not made.
He left the door open and the evening sunlight streamed on to the brick floor and turned the dust into little stars floating in infinity. He trod heavily back to the table and the stars swirled at his passing. As he went behind me, the back of his hand just brushed the nape of my neck, and I knew it was a touch which meant forgiveness.
‘Tell Dr MacAndrew I’ll think on it,’ Ralph said, surprisingly. ‘It’s a bold scheme and if there were such a thing as a landlord one could trust, it would be a good one. It needs some guarantees from the two of you, or you will never persuade Acre to do it; and you’d not have my support. But if the two of you are committed to the idea, it might work.’
‘If you advise that the land is best worked in the old ways, with the squire owning everything and good wages paid, I think my papa would take your advice,’ Richard said quickly.
Ralph looked hard at him. ‘Do you now?’ he asked. And he said no more.
‘We must go,’ I said after a little pause. ‘Thank you for our tea, Mr Megson.’
‘You’re welcome,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Both of you must come and see me again.’ He nodded at Richard. ‘If you’re interested in hawking, my goshawk will be sent down from London in the next few days. I’d be happy to take you out with me.’
‘Thank you, I will!’ Richard said, and for the first time that afternoon his smile to Ralph was genuine – not the calculating charm he had donned since Mama and Uncle John had joined in backing Mr Megson against his accusation.
Ralph walked with us to the gate and helped me up the step into the gig while Richard loosed the horse. I put out my hand to him.
‘Good day, Miss Julia,’ he said with the mocking courtesy I had dreamed of this morning. Then he bent his proud greying head and kissed my hand. At the touch of his lips on my fingers I shivered like a birch tree in a breeze. He stepped back into his patch of garden and waved farewell to us.
8
The news we brought of Ralph Megson’s reaction made Uncle John look anxious at supper and sent him into the library to look at the provisional leases he had drawn up. The next day he ordered the carriage for Chichester to see the Wideacre lawyers to ask them what they thought about a contract which would bind both the workers and the squires.
He paused as he came down the steps. I was in the front garden, the very picture of a demure young lady in a high-waisted white gown and a sun-bonnet to shield my face. But my fingers were suspiciously muddy, and when Uncle John came down the path, I was not quick enough to tuck the little spade out of sight.
‘Gardening, Julia?’ Uncle John said. He sounded appropriately scandalized, but there was an undercurrent of laughter in his voice. ‘Julia! My niece Julia! What are we going to do with you! What does your mama say about you gardening?’
‘She tries not to know,’ I said, shamefaced. ‘Uncle John, I know it is not proper, but someone had to do it. And Stride is too old, and all Jem’s plants died. And there was no one else. And you know how Mama loves flowers,’ I said, striking the very note which would persuade him.
‘Mama and I agreed that I might do it providing that no one of the Quality sees me. And that is all right, Uncle John, because no one ever comes down the drive in a carriage in the morning. And I never do it in the afternoon.’
Uncle John tried to look severe, but he cracked into a laugh of irrepressible merriment. ‘Miss Julia! You are having a clandestine affair with Nature!’ he said. ‘But how do you know anything at all about gardening?’
‘I just know,’ I said vaguely. ‘I knew of Mama’s favourite flowers from Wideacre Hall, and when I was very little, I collected the seed pods to give her. I planted them in little pots in my bedroom and when they grew, I planted them here so Mama should have her favourite flowers around her, so she should not be homesick for the hall, and the gardens.’
Uncle John nodded, his face understanding. ‘That was well done indeed,’ he said. ‘But who told you where the plants should go? Whether they like light or shade?’
I shrugged. I could not have explained. ‘I suppose I looked where they were growing and doing well in the old garden,’ I said, trying to remember. ‘But also, when I have a little bulb or a handful of seeds in my hand, I can somehow feel where they want to go. Whether they like the soil moist or dry.’ I broke off. ‘It makes no sense when I speak of it,’ I said. ‘But I seem to have been born knowing how to grow things.’
Uncle John looked at me hard, and the laughter was gone from his eyes. ‘Do they always grow for you?’ he asked suddenly. ‘No diseased plants, no sudden disappointments? No seedlings all shrivelled when you thought they were doing well?’
‘No,’ I said, surprised. ‘But the earth is so good here, Uncle John. And the weather just right. And I am only planting things which are accustomed to Wideacre, which have already done well here.’ I took a few steps towards him and put out a rather grubby hand. ‘Why do you look like that?’ I asked shyly. ‘I can stop gardening now you are home. Now you are home, you can hire a gardener. I should miss it, but if you dislike it so much, I can stop doing it.’
Uncle John shook his head, as if to clear a whirl of thoughts. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It is I who am in the wrong. I was a little shocked to find you resembling your Aunt Beatrice in this skill with the land. That was a talent she had. By the time she was dead, they had made it into
some fairytale black art in the village, but that need not concern you. All it ever was, which you have inherited, was a very valuable skill. And it strikes me that if you are a good gardener, you might make a good farmer. We will need all the skills we can to teach Acre how to make the land yield again. Would you work on the land, Julia? If your mama agreed?’
I gasped. ‘Uncle John, I should love to farm!’ I exclaimed. ‘You mean help getting the hayfields back to hay and planting wheat? Uncle John! I should love it!’
Uncle John smiled at my bright face and patted my cheek. ‘Lacey girls!’ he said with much love. ‘Land-crazed, all of them. But I shall do my best to make sure that this one does not go wrong. If your mama permits, I shall be glad to see you taking this talent of yours to the fields and getting them growing. And in return, you will remember that people matter more than crops; the village of Acre matters more than the wealth of Wideacre.’
I nodded, only partly understanding what he meant.
‘But we will get nowhere unless I can get an agreement past my stiff-necked farm manager,’ Uncle John said dourly, and went towards the garden gate. ‘Anyone would think that he was employing me and giving me orders instead of vice versa. What he will not understand is that I am no more free than the workers of Acre. I have to find some way to convince the lawyers that I am not cheating you and Richard of your inheritance. And, indeed, I am cheating you! You would make more money if we simply got Acre working and sold it as a going concern.’
I opened the gate for him and stood by it as he went through towards the waiting carriage, with Jem standing by the steps. I heard the sense in Uncle John’s words and my own Quality-trained mind responded at once to the idea of high profits for the landlords. But the dream of Ralph had put me in tune with the land. Since yesterday morning in the summer-house I had seemed to feel the air on my cheek like a caress, the sun on my face more warm; the grass on the Dower House lawn was softer, greener than any summer grass before. The great lush forest that was Wideacre woods took my breath away, and the circles of downs beyond were ripe mountains.
Ralph’s words in the living-room of the cottage which was the best cottage in Acre and yet still a hovel compared with the Dower House had taught me, in a sudden bolt of shame, that we were rich because Acre was poor. And however kindly intentioned we were, or however we planned to make the division of profits more fair, none the less we belonged to the wider world, and we could live as we pleased. We were rich and free in a way that the villagers never would be. And we did not invite them to tea.
‘It is not just ownership of the land,’ I said tentatively to Uncle John. ‘It is power. We can make all the promises we like, and yet, if we wish, we can walk away from Acre tomorrow, and sell to the first comer. They know that.’
Uncle John grinned wryly. ‘You are as bad as Acre,’ he said. ‘They think that the gentry are incapable of sharing their rights. They will not believe a gift when they see it. And so they argue and want guarantees when you and I and Richard and your mama want nothing more than to make the land right again.’
He smiled at me, the swift grin of a man who knows his own mind, and I felt myself smile back. I liked Uncle John, and I knew why my mama loved him. He had no feeling for the land; he was an utter outsider on Wideacre. But he was a man of such honour that he would never leave a debt unpaid. He felt he owed a debt to Acre, and he would work until it was clear. He was a man without deceit, a man one could trust.
‘No one doubts you, Uncle John,’ I said. ‘They only doubt the world you live in.’ He smiled at that. ‘Have a pleasant day,’ I said, almost as a blessing, ‘and do not get too tired.’
Uncle John threw me a mock salute and climbed into the carriage. Jem folded up the steps, shut the door and climbed on to the driving box. He twirled his whip in a salute to me and set the bays going. They were fresh and happy to be out in the spring sunshine and they leaped forward; the carriage was gone in a swirl of white dust.
I glanced back at the house, but there was no one waving from the windows. Mama had some patterns for brocades for curtains, and the morning’s post had brought her details of houses for sale in Bath. She had taken them to the parlour to read, and she was not looking out of the window, not even to wave farewell to Uncle John. Richard had long since gone to his lessons with Dr Pearce.
No one was watching me.
I was alone.
I laid my basket of seedlings down in the shade of a flowering currant bush. An early bee buzzed hopefully around the scarlet buds, looking for pollen and nectar, and the sound reminded me of high summer. There was not a muscle in my body which was not pliable and soft. My skin felt like warm cream, melting in the sunlight. I wandered down to the garden gate without a thought in my head. I wanted to be in a place where I could lie down in the shade and daydream.
I went up the drive as I had done before. But this time I did not want to go to the hall. I half thought the dream might be waiting for me there, but there was no singing which called me onwards in that direction. I wanted to see the Fenny. I wanted to lie beside the river and hear it burble over the stones. I wanted to see it flow and watch the sunshine dance in dappled brilliance on the water. I wanted to lie in shifting sun and shadow and dream of the young man who had held me.
I turned down the little path which leads from the drive to our childhood fishing pool, secret and dark amid the tall trees of the wood. It was a tight fit now that the early summer growth was sprouting, and a bramble caught at my gown as I pushed through. But once I was inside the deep wood I could move easily.
The wood-pigeons in the trees above my head cooed of love and mating and the thrushes in the lower branches warbled a long lovely liquid song which went on and on, like someone playing on a flute without a tune or pattern. The brown leaf-mould soft under my feet was starred with wood anemones in a carpet of white, and at the base of each broad grey tree-trunk there was a mass of spiky green leaves, promising a rich crop of bluebells later in the month. The land, supposedly wrecked and derelict, was thick with life. The woods, which had not been clipped or pruned or cropped in fourteen years, were rich with growth. I touched a beech tree and felt the bark warm under my palm. Then I followed the little path to the pool, to Richard’s pool, to my pool, where no one else ever came.
Ralph was there.
Of course he was there.
Without my knowing it, my feet had brought me here to be with him. Without an idea in my head, I had been seeking him ever since I had left the garden. Ralph was here.
He was seated on the ground, leaning back against a great fir tree which stretched even higher than the others, like a great tall pillar up to the blue sky, beyond the thick criss-crossing branches which were the roof of the wood, the ceiling of this private shadowy world. He was wearing a felt hat, pulled down to shade his eyes, like a common man. I stood silently, watching him, thinking that he might be asleep. He had laid aside his wooden legs and his body looked oddly short, stopping thus at the knees, as if in some jest he had buried himself in the leaves.
I realized, with a shock, that he was no younger than Uncle John, whom I had sent on his way with an anxious reminder not to get too tired. But John was worn with longing and duty, and Ralph – for all the pain he had suffered and the danger he had run – had never gone against his own inclination once in his life.
He tipped back his hat and his eyes were open. ‘Miss Julia,’ he said sleepily. ‘I give you good day.’
‘Mr Megson,’ I said, equally formal, but my voice shook and gave me away.
He looked up at me with a smile, his eyes warm. ‘Do sit down,’ he said, as courteous as he would have been in a drawing-room. ‘The ground is not damp.’
I gathered my pale skirts under me and sat beside him, within reach, but not too close. I had a feeling that he measured the distance I had chosen with eyes of some experience.
‘I am here poaching,’ Ralph said. ‘Would you like to watch me tickle for trout? Was there anyone to teach you whe
n you and Richard were little?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No one. There was only Mama, and the servants, of course.’
‘There was a whole village of poachers down the lane who could have shown you,’ Ralph said, ‘But, of course, they would not count.’
‘We hardly ever went there when we were small,’ I said, half apologetic. ‘It was only when I made friends with Clary that I started to know the people in Acre at all. It is still unusual for Mama to go to the village, except for church on Sunday.’
‘Because of the fire?’ Ralph asked as if it were an historical event of no great interest.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She was afraid of the village after that.’
He nodded, his face non-committal. ‘No need,’ he said. ‘Everyone in Acre respected your mama. They knew what she tried to do for them. The firing of the hall was to break the power of the Laceys – Beatrice and Harry – no attack upon your mama or your Uncle John.’
‘Perhaps it was a little hard for her to make the distinction,’ I said waspishly. ‘That night left her a widow with a bankrupt estate and two children to rear alone. If Acre did not mean to harm her, then it botched the job pretty thoroughly.’
Ralph beamed down at me, not at all put out by my suddenly sharp tone. ‘Oh, the gentry!’ he said, amused. ‘The Quality voice!’
Then he swung around and shuffled to the side of the pool. I was ready to retract everything I had said, but Ralph had forgotten it already.
‘The way to do it is to make the trout think that your hand is part of the water,’ he said as he leaned over the lip of the pool. ‘They have very sensitive skins, and I think they can smell the water too. So one of the first tricks is to make your hands clean and cold. Before you even start to feel for him, you leave your hand in the water for a while.’
Ralph stripped off his jacket and spread it out for me to lie on. Then he rolled up his sleeves and washed his hands carefully in the water of the pool, and rubbed a little mud from the side into his palms. I pushed my lacy cuffs up above my elbows and copied him exactly, and then we lay, faces staring into the pool, hands in the water, for silent minutes.