‘Oh, good!’ she exclaimed, seeing me waiting for her. ‘I wanted you to help me choose a new brocade for the seats and the curtains in the dining-room.’
I crossed the room to her and hugged her tight. ‘You know I have no eye for colour,’ I said, ‘but I shall agree with you. I want to work indoors this afternoon, Mama,’ I said, ‘and I wish you would find me something to do indoors tomorrow as well. The sun hurt my eyes in the garden this morning, and I feel weary,’
Her soft brown eyes examined my face carefully. ‘I had thought you were not yourself,’ she said gently, ‘when you were so irritable at dinner. What is the matter, my dear?’
‘It’s…’ I started and then stopped. Then I spoke in a rush. ‘It is since I put up my hair and Uncle John came home, and I reminded him of Beatrice, Mama. Everyone in the village, and even Mrs Gough and Stride, look at me as if they half expect to see her. It makes me feel so odd. And she was not even a very nice woman, was she?’
‘No!’ Mama said instantly. ‘She was many things, but she was never that. There is much about her that I feel I should tell you, my dear. But not while we are here on Wideacre. Not while there are so many people around us who are still so haunted here. While we live here, I just want you to remember that you are Beatrice’s kin, but you are my daughter. Any resemblance between you and her is because you have the Lacey pride, and the Lacey tilt to your head. All else is fancy and the fault of this tiny little world where no one goes anywhere but Chichester, and there are long nights to make up nonsense and frighten each other half to death with ghost stories.
‘You are my child,’ she said firmly, as if that were the key to keep me safe. ‘Whatever your breeding, I reared you for my own. I am not haunted by Beatrice or Wideacre, and you need not be either. Anyway,’ she said, reliably prosaic, ‘you are just a girl growing up, my dear, and they are the moodiest people in the world. My half-sister was a thousand times worse than you at your age. She once threw a plate at a footman! My mama had her whipped. You will have to learn to curb your temper and your tongue, whatever your feelings. Everything else is just fancy.’
I shifted along the window-seat and laid my head on her shoulder, and she put a protective arm around me. I closed my eyes and sniffed the sweet flower water she wore on her hair and silks, and we sat in the sunshine in the bow-window for a long, long time, until the sun started dropping behind the higher trees of the park, and I no longer ached for Ralph, Beatrice’s young lover, Ralph, nor shied away in fear from the thought of him.
After tea in the parlour, when Uncle John did not join us, nor Richard return home, Mama ordered Stride to lay up a little tray with a scone and some jam and cream, a couple of macaroons and a pot of fresh-brewed Indian tea – the way Uncle John liked it, strong and black with neither cream nor lemon nor sugar-and carried it herself into the library. She closed the door behind her, but I heard his soft words of welcome to her and his exclamation at the pretty tray, and then her voice explaining something to him, asking something of him. I guessed that she was talking about me and took care to close the parlour door so I should not be tempted to eavesdrop. I took my seat in the parlour, the tea-urn still hissing softly before me, and I longed to be the girl my mama thought she had, a good daughter whose only wildness was due to her being reared with a boy cousin in rural isolation, and whose only moodiness was due to her becoming, slowly and awkwardly, a woman.
I did not open my eyes, even when the tea things were cleared. It was not Stride waiting in the parlour, but Jenny Hodgett from the lodge gate, who had been trained at Havering Hall and was now back to work on Wideacre. Her parents had kept the gate at the hall for my papa and for his papa before him. When the hall was burned down and the squire died, no one thought to evict them. So they stayed on, keepers of an open gate, guardians of a deserted drive. She cleared the things as softly as she could and took the urn from the table without disturbing me. I heard the door close behind her and then I think I dozed, for when I opened my eyes again my mama was there, and she had been in the library with Uncle John for some time.
‘Tired, my dear?’ she asked gently.
‘A little,’ I acknowledged, smiling to take the invalidish tone out of the words.
Mama nodded and went to her usual seat at the hearth, where the grate was now filled with a little pot of pale peonies I had dug up in the garden of Wideacre Hall and brought on in the warmth of the room.
‘I have been speaking to your uncle about his plans for us all,’ she said. ‘And I have some ideas of my own too!’
‘Were the Chichester solicitors helpful?’ I asked politely. ‘Can he offer some guarantees for Acre?’
‘Yes,’ Mama said. ‘The Wideacre heir and Acre village have to be equally bound by a legal contract, and they will both contribute to a savings scheme. Both can withdraw, but Acre keeps the fund. And if Acre is sold within five years, then a proportion of the profit is to be paid to Acre as compensation.’
I nodded. ‘Is Uncle John going to ask Mr…Megson what he thinks?’ I asked. I hesitated over his name, and it sounded odd in my voice.
‘Of course,’ said Mama. ‘John thinks that Mr Megson is the key to winning Acre to the plan. It will only work if all of us, Mr Megson, Richard, you and I are prepared to work very hard until the village is put to rights again, she said. ‘John wants me to take responsibility for the health and education of the village children and babies. He wants Richard to supervise the rebuilding of the hall, and he wants the two of you to assist Mr Megson on the land.’
I said nothing, but looked at her wide-eyed. She gave me a little smile. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she said wryly. ‘You are thinking that you have never seen me involved with Acre. That I was afraid of the village and did not like you going there. That was once true, but it all must change. Everything must change on Wideacre if this experiment is to work.
‘And I was not always afraid of Acre,’ she said honestly. ‘There was a season, two seasons, when I was very much, involved in the lives of the village people. Now I have something to offer them, something more than mere sympathy. I want to go back into the village and set things to rights, as I should have done earlier if we had had the money to do it.’
I looked at her with new respect. This was a side to Mama that I had not seen before when I had thought of her as the frightened widow in the Dower House, dependent on her step-papa’s charity for her food and on her brother-in-law’s gifts for her money. Something of that must have shown in my eyes, for she gave a little chuckle of amusement.
‘I am well aware, Julia, that you think that no one knows the land but you and Richard! But I do assure you that I am not entirely incompetent!’
‘Not at all, Mama!’ I said hastily and untruthfully. ‘But what does Uncle John want me to do? And when do I start?’
‘You may as well start at once,’ Mama said calmly. ‘And so may I. Mr Megson is coming this evening, and if he agrees to the new proposals, then I shall go down to the village tomorrow and speak to Dr Pearce about opening the village school again. You and Richard and Mr Megson will have to decide about priorities on the land. I suppose you’ll start ploughing and sowing?’
‘Too late this season,’ I said. ‘But if Uncle John plans to use turnips, and also wants to try some new crops of fruit, we could get them in ready for them to be productive next year.’
Mama looked at me shrewdly. She had supervised my education, taught me my letters and the names of the birds and flowers. She had seen me learn Latin and Greek at Richard’s shoulder. She knew full well that no one had ever taught me the times when the land should be readied and crops sown, and that I had never seen a ploughing team on Wideacre. ‘How do you know?’ she asked softly.
I met her wary look with absolute honesty. ‘I don’t know,’ I said truthfully. ‘I just do.’
She nodded as if it confirmed something she had already heard from John. ‘It would be possible to make a great deal of fuss about that,’ she said levelly, ‘and
about the slight resemblance you bear to your Aunt Beatrice in your looks. But it is essential, Julia, that you do not concern yourself with it. Your Uncle John believes that you have inherited the Lacey ability to farm. All well and good. But do not start worrying that you are therefore like your Aunt Beatrice. You are my daughter, and as such you can be a farmer, just as I shall have to be a village schoolteacher for this next year. We are all going to have to work for the good of Wideacre.’
I beamed at her. I had a wonderful sense of home-coming, of growth, of at last seeing my way before me. And if I could feel unafraid of the dream and unafraid of Beatrice, and work and live on Wideacre then I should have an enviable life indeed.
9
It was as well that I welcomed the work like a sheepdog come late to training, for that day of idleness in garden, wood and parlour was the last lazy day I had. From that evening – when Uncle John and Ralph Megson shook hands over the deal which was to share the profits between masters and men – none of us ever had an empty hour again.
Richard’s life changed the least, for Uncle John insisted that his education be kept up, and every morning he still went to Dr Pearce.
‘You may want to go to university,’ Uncle John had said firmly when Richard remonstrated with him, ‘and, in any case, no youth under my guardianship is going to be a dunce.’
So every morning Richard jogged off down the lane to Acre with his books and was not home until dinner-time. Sometimes he was late. The old antipathy between him and my friends the village children seemed to have gone. Richard basked in the glory of being the young squire-to-be. The village girls blushed scarlet when he strode down the lane and bobbed curtsies with their faces tilted downwards, but their eyes smiling up. Muddy-faced friends of my childhood were now young women preening themselves in their new dresses, and always with some business which kept them outside the vicarage gate when Richard was due to arrive or at the time when he left.
Whenever Richard drove the gig to Midhurst, there was always a couple of girls with pressing business in the village that day. And whenever he went to Chichester, he always brought back a handful of ribbons as presents for them. The village lads liked him too. The old sour resentments had been blown away from Acre as if Ralph’s coming were a spring wind. And though Richard was a demigod to the girls, the boys were not jealous. Richard was unobtainable and he seemed uninterested. I fancied that it was because he loved me, because he considered himself betrothed, but Uncle John was perhaps nearer the mark when he told my mama that Richard was too young for village girls.
‘He is not arrogant in the village?’ Mama asked.
Uncle John shook his head, but turned to me for confirmation.
Oh, no,’ I said. ‘He is trying very hard to be liked. Besides, he can do no wrong, for he is Uncle John’s son!’
It was true. To the village which had become accustomed to four deaths for every child safely raised, Dr MacAndrew was a heaven-sent angel. Uncle John held a free doctor’s surgery in the village every week, when the thin-faced women brought their crying babies to see him and Uncle John stripped off the lice-ridden clothes and probed the skinny bodies, which looked as they twisted themselves up in pain from hunger and from years of bad nourishment.
‘Will ‘e live?’ whispered Margery Sharp to Uncle John while I waited for his orders one morning in the sunlit vestry of the church where he had set up an impromptu consulting room.
‘Aye,’ Uncle John said kindly.
Her hard eyes filled with tears as though John himself had taught her how to cry. ‘I thought he would die,’ she said bleakly. ‘All the others did.’
‘How many?’ John asked gently, flexing the little hands and feet. The baby was tiny, about eight months old, and skinny, with his ribs showing. His flesh was speckled with the scars of old flea-bites and bug-bites, spotted with a rash. He smelled. He was fouled with old excrement and urine. Uncle John handled him as if his skin were silk, his hands full of love.
‘Four,’ she said. ‘No, five!’
I said nothing, but I flinched a little, amazed that a woman could be brought so low as to forget how many babies she had buried.
‘The last one only lived a day,’ she explained. ‘I never had time to name her, nor nothing.’
‘No christening?’ John asked, knowing what that would mean to a superstitious village woman.
She nodded. ‘Dr Pearce done it,’ she said. ‘Dr Pearce done it for me, because he knew I couldn’t have borne to see her in hell. He christened her although she was dead. Now, there’s another good man.’
‘A good man indeed,’ John agreed. ‘Now, Mistress Sharp, I’ll tell you what you must do. You must get this little lad here into some clean clothes. Go to the school room and see Lady Lacey. She’ll give you what you need. He’s not to have swaddling clothes, and he’s not to be wrapped too tight.’
She raised her head to protest, and I saw Uncle John’s weary smile.
‘I know you like to swaddle them,’ he said kindly, ‘and I know it stills their crying. But that is because when they are swaddled really tight, they cannot get breath to cry. It’s like being bound too tight would be for us. You’ve done well to keep this child alive, Mistress Sharp. Let’s not take any chances with the little lad now.’
She nodded at that, responding to the affection in his voice.
‘He’s to be washed,’ said Uncle John. She gave a gasp of protest, but Uncle John ignored her and carried on. ‘He’s to be washed every time he soils himself,’ he said firmly. ‘Washed and put into a clean clout. And he’s to be taken out into the sunshine all this summer. Have one of the village children watch him.’
Margery Sharp nodded, her eyes wide at this string of ridiculous instructions.
‘Have the big child carry the little one outside,’ Uncle John said. ‘If he stays indoors all the time, he won’t eat. The fresh air will give him an appetite and help him to sleep at night and stay awake during the day.’
‘But washing…’ the woman protested.
‘Miss Julia here is organizing a fuel store for the whole village so you can always have a fire,’ Uncle John said steadily. ‘You can keep a kettle by the hearth so you can have warm water to wash him. When he has soiled his clout, you can wash it out and dry it by the fire. Then you’ll have a clean one to put on him next time.’
‘He’d need changing time after time all day!’ Mrs Sharp protested.
‘I know,’ John said kindly. ‘I’ve cared for a baby too, you know. But if you keep them clean, they don’t get sores and they cry less, and they don’t get ill. I promise you it will work, Margery. Will you try it?’
Still she hesitated, her face full of doubt.
John’s tone became warmer and more charming. Will you try it for me, Margery?’ he asked, his voice very low.
She blushed scarlet and shot an embarrassed look at me. ‘Oh, Doctor!’ she said, and I saw that beneath the defeated, exhausted woman there had once been a flighty amorous village girl. ‘All right, then,’ she said unwillingly. ‘If you’re sure it will work. But if he gets ill from all that washing, I’ll stop it, mind!’
‘Agreed,’ said John, and bundled the little child into his rags again. ‘Now, you go over to the village school, and Lady Lacey will find some clothes for him, and some clouts, and a towel as well. And she’ll show you how to wash him all over, I’ll be bound. You know what her ladyship is like with babies!’
The woman found a smile from some remembered happiness and looked Uncle John full in the face. ‘It’s good to have you back, sir,’ she said, and then she bundled up her son, her only little survivor from a family of six, and took him away.
‘Uncle John, you flirt!’ I exclaimed.
The face he turned to me was alight with mischief. ‘Just trying to teach Acre to raise healthy children,’ he protested.
Outrageous,’ I accused. ‘You put on a soft voice and your accent got as broad as if you had just come down from the Highlands with a kilt still on! I sha
ll tell Mama of you! You should be ashamed!’
Uncle John laughed aloud. ‘Don’t tell Celia,’ he begged. ‘She’ll have me publicly named as a charlatan! I promise you, Julia, it’s all part of my teaching technique!’
We laughed together, and then there was a tap at the door and another woman with a wan child held by the hand.
‘Here is Mrs Miles and her son Peter,’ I said to John. ‘Is Peter not well, Mrs Miles?’
‘He can’t keep his food in his belly,’ she said, talking past me to John. ‘All this new food which you and Mr Megson have bought, and I can’t get him to eat it, then when he does it comes straight up again. ’Tis not the worms, not the bloody flux, ‘tis not the gripes…’
‘I must go,’ I said, shamefaced but hopelessly queasy at this list.
‘Chicken-hearted,’ Uncle John said in an undertone. ‘I’d rather be a flirt than a coward any day.’
‘You are,’ I said, and made my way towards the door.
‘One moment, Mrs Miles,’ John said with a smile to her. ‘Julia, if you’re on your way to find Mr Megson, he’s setting them to hedging and ditching on Three Gate Meadow. Will you tell him that the apple trees will be delivered this afternoon? He’ll need a gang to plant them out as soon as the ground is ready.’
‘It’s ready now,’ I confirmed. ‘The ploughing team finished yesterday. I’ll check it for stones and waterlogging and if it’s clear, they can go in at once.’
‘Good.’ John nodded and turned his attention to whey-faced little Peter, who was explaining in a whiny voice that he could fancy nothing but sweetmeats now that the good times had come.
Outside the sun was bright in the churchyard. The fleet of fresh graves from the winter’s deaths was greened over with new grass, and the work Uncle John was doing in the vestry was a promise that there would not again be deaths like that, nor another merciless winter. I strode out through the graveyard, past the imposing gates of the Lacey vault and under the lich-gate to where I had left the new pony, Rusty, grazing on the corner outside the church wall which, for some reason, they called Miss Beatrice’s Corner. There were two mounds there, like misplaced graves, and Rusty was eating some old flowers which had been left on one of them. I gathered my smart new driving dress in one hand to hold it clear and hauled myself up into the gig.