I stumbled, trying to explain, but as soon as she understood it was men’s business she frowned. ‘You are no longer in control of Wideacre,’ she said. ‘And your former manager’s concerns are not yours. Have you asked Richard if he would pay for the man’s defence?’
‘No,’ I said quietly.
‘I dare say you have your reasons for that,’ she said, and there was a world of understanding in her voice. ‘But if you cannot ask your husband for a sum of money, it is unlikely you will be able to obtain it anywhere else, Julia. If I had it, I would give it to you. But my own fortune is tied up and his lordship does not provide me with that sort of sum as pin-money.’
She paused, and I saw her swallow her pride like a lump in her throat. ‘I have only twenty-five pounds’ pin-money a quarter,’ she said, her voice very low. ‘I have spent this quarter’s allowance, and I have no savings.’
I nodded. I was blinking hard, for there were tears in my eyes. ‘How do married women get money if their husbands will not give them enough?’ I demanded. I had some vague idea of loans, or of jewellers who would buy a trinket.
Grandma looked at me as if I were a little child once more and she was teaching me how to hold my fish-knife. ‘If their husbands do not provide for them, they have no money,’ she said blankly. Of course, a wife is dependent upon her husband’s goodwill.’
I looked at her as if I were a fool who could not understand plain English. I was seventeen years old and I still had not learned that I had no rights in the world. I had no money of my own and I had no land. Everything around me, the water I drank, the food I ate, belonged to Richard, for in marrying him I had made it over to him entire. And whether I wanted three halfpence of what I had once called my own, or whether I wanted two hundred pounds, I had to apply to him. And he could refuse me.
He did refuse me.
I buried my pride and told him I thought Ralph Megson wrongly accused and that I should like to send him some money to pay for a lawyer. Richard looked at me with a sparkle in his eyes as though I had said something most extremely funny.
‘Oh, no, Julia,’ he said, his voice very warm and indulgent. ‘Most certainly not.’
The days got colder, and it was grey when I awoke in the mornings and dark by dinner-time in the afternoon. I did nothing to help Ralph Megson in a prison far away in London. Jenny Hodgett told me they had put their savings together in the village and asked Dr Pearce to send them to him in London. Dr Pearce, torn between his horror at law-breakers and murderers and his pity for the distress of Acre, added to the little fund on his own account, and contacted his own cousin and asked him to see Ralph in gaol and keep the fees low.
I knew then that the time I had seen was here, the time when Ralph would not be able to help me and I would not be able to help him.
I was very lonely.
In autumn the countryside is very beautiful. A Wideacre autumn is a season when the world seems full of colour and you cannot believe that the bright leaves could ever fade. The hedgerows are full of glossy berries: the tulip-shaped scarlet hips and haws, the fat black bobbles of blackberries. The hawthorn trees are dotted with berries of a deep, dark redness, and the ivy flowers with waxy green delicate bouquets.
As the chestnut leaves started falling in great yellow fans on to the drive, I took to walking in the woods opposite the Dower House, going quite far in random sweeps, but staying under the trees as if they could give me some sort of comfort which the empty common lands could not.
Sometimes on my walks I would back against a tree and look up at the blue sky patterned all over with the copper, yellow and orange leaves. I would eat a handful of blackberries or crack beech-nuts open and eat the little sweet kernels. I would put my hands behind me and feel the rough bark of the tree and try to hear the beat of the land. But I could hear nothing at all.
I tried to count my blessings, but something must have been wrong with my arithmetic, for I could not make it come right. I knew I loved Richard with a long love with its roots in my earliest childhood and its flower in my belly, but I could find no happiness in knowing that we were at last where we had longed to be: a married couple on Wideacre.
I thought that was because Wideacre felt like my familiar home no more. Acre had changed already, and would change again when Richard was out on the land with the ploughing teams. I would be indoors with the new baby so there would be no smiles for me, and no calling of ‘Speed the plough!’
But I knew also that there would be no smiles for Richard. The special magic of Wideacre – that masters and men could try to work together in unity – had quite gone. Never again would the fastest reaping gang in the country celebrate their triumph in the Bush at Acre. Next year there would be hired hands, paid labourers. Never again would they stand waist-deep in their own corn and laugh for joy at the richness of the land which had grown such a crop, and boast of their own skill in cutting it.
Acre was different, and I was different too.
I was mourning my mama still. Even now it had been less than two months. I was haunted by her in dreams which made me happy while I was asleep, but made me weep and weep when I awoke. I dreamed once that I was sitting before my mirror and pinning on my hat when she walked into the room as though she had been out in the garden picking flowers. In my dream I said, ‘Mama! Oh, Mama! I thought you were dead!’ and she said with such a sweet smile, Oh, no my darling. I’d never leave you in such a pickle!’ I was so persuaded that she was alive and loved me still that I could not believe it when I woke in the quiet early-morning house and remembered she would never call me her darling again.
I dreamed she walked into the parlour and asked me where her clothes had gone. I stammered that I had given them away because I had thought she was dead. Then she laughed, a clear easy laugh, and called out of the window to John to share the joke. I gazed from one bright laughing face to another and was as certain as I could be that there had been some foolish mistake and my lovely mama was still alive.
It was pointless for me to try to accept her death. Grandmama Havering urged me to come to terms with it and put it behind me. I smiled vaguely and did not reply.
I did not try to accept it, but neither did I try to escape it. I simply could not believe that I would never see her again. And, although I often wept for her on my long walks and found that I was crying from longing for her hand on my forehead, her smile and the love in her voice, I could think two sad, silly thoughts at once: that I would never see her again, and that it was not possible that she could have left me for ever.
I was very lonely.
She had been my companion and best friend, and I had never noticed before how the autumn kept us so much indoors. When it grew colder and my walks grew shorter, I found I was spending most of the days in the parlour. Sometimes I would sit before the roaring fire and try to be glad that I was inside warming my toes, and sometimes I would sit in the window-seat and press my face to the glass and watch the rain sluicing down the cold windows, and wait for dusk, and wait for night and sleep, and then lie sleepless and wait for morning.
As I grew heavier and more and more tired, I was not glad of the rest, but impatient with this lumpish body which kept me isolated in the little room in the little house while Richard could ride down to Acre or up on the downs, or across the common and drop into any tenant’s house and take a pot-luck dinner.
He was popular only with our wealthy neighbours. The poorer farmers saw their interests as at one with Acre. They depended on wage-work to supplement their farming and they needed Wideacre to be a generous employer. They bought much wheat from us, and fodder and straw; and they needed Wideacre to sell at a fair price in the local market. But the bigger farmers nearby were happy to farm hard and sell high, they liked the lordly way Richard condemned ‘new-fangled levelling notions’.
There was always a place ready for the handsome young squire at their tables, and Richard came home from these dinners in good humour, tipsy with port, flattered by deference, b
ursting with charm and conceit.
He had grown so strong since he had become owner of Wideacre. No one had been able to stand against him, and the complaints about him in the village were so soft that only I could hear them.
He had grown so confident. I, who used to laugh at the people who called me Squire Julia, had become a fat tired woman who sat alone in her parlour and longed for her mama who was dead, and for her friend who was in a London gaol, and feared the birth of her child as another Lacey to run the land.
But I had one friend yet.
I thought of him. I had thought of him almost daily since the death of my mama. I had thought of him without shame. I was not thinking of a man as a married woman should not think. I was thinking of a young man who was part of my careless childhood when Mama had been happy, and I had been happy, that short season in Bath.
I was thinking of James.
He was young, he was wealthy, and I knew he would do me a favour if I asked him.
I left the fireside chair and lit one of the candles at the mantelpiece. I went to the library and opened the drawer for paper, an envelope and sealing-wax. Then I took pen and ink and went back into the parlour, the women’s room of the house. I had thought the letter would give me some trouble to write, but I wrote it as easily and as simply as I had talked to him all those months ago when we had driven and walked and danced in Bath.
Dear James,
You will be surprised to hear from me, but I know you will understand that I am writing to you because I need your friendship. Not for myself, but for a friend of mine who finds himself in some trouble.
You may remember Ralph Megson, our family’s farm manager? He was taken up for an old alleged offence of rioting and transferred to London before I could aid him. I believe he may have a lawyer, but I am anxious for him.
You will relieve my mind very much if you could see him and ascertain that he has adequate advice and adequate funds to secure his acquittal.
Any monies he needs I would repay you, as soon as I can, if you were to be kind enough to help him now while the case is urgent.
I beg your pardon for calling on your aid, but there is no one else who will help me.
Your friend,
Julia MacAndreiv (née Lacey)
I could do no better than that in a hurry, in my worry for Ralph. I sealed the letter with the Lacey seal, and I called Jenny to the parlour.
‘It’s about Mr Megson,’ I said to her. I knew Richard was out, but I still kept my voice low. She glanced to see that the door was shut tight. ‘Take this letter down to the village,’ I said. ‘Take it to Jimmy Dart, and tell him to make sure that Mr James Fortescue receives it. He’d best take it to their home in Bristol. I hope that Mr Fortescue will help Ralph Megson.’
Jenny nodded. ‘Your young man,’ she said wistfully.
‘Yes,’ I said. Then I drew a deep breath. ‘My husband would not wish me to write to him,’ I said. I flushed scarlet with the shame of what I was saying. ‘Keep it hid, Jenny. It’s for Ralph’s defence.’
She nodded, her eyes sharp. ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘I’ll take it down now. Mrs Gough won’t notice I’m gone if you don’t ring for an hour.’
‘I won’t,’ I said. I went to my writing-desk. ‘Give Jimmy this guinea,’ I said, ‘for his journey. And tell him to be as quick as he can.’
She nodded, a little smile behind her grave eyes. ‘We’ll get him free, Miss Julia!’ she said. ‘I’m sure of it!’
I nodded and let her go. A few minutes later I saw her trotting down the lane, her skirts held in one hand, the other one holding her shawl, and the letter hidden, if I guessed right, under her pinny.
Then I set myself to wait for the reply.
I thought James Fortescue might wait until he had seen Ralph before he wrote back to me, so I warned myself that I must be patient for at least a week. But I could look forward to the return of Jimmy. I thought he would come to the Dower House at once to tell me what James had said. I waited three days patiently. I waited for the fourth with concern. The fifth day I ordered out the carriage and went down to Acre.
Ralph Megson’s cottage, where Jimmy now lived alone, was shuttered, the door barred. Jimmy was not yet back, then. With my hood pulled up against the cold drizzle I crossed the road, walking carefully in the greasy mud, to Rosie’s little cottage.
Her door was open, and Nat stood helplessly by a doused fireplace. Rosie was tying a knot in a shawl which was lumpy with what I guessed were all her clothes and perhaps a little food.
‘What is happening?’ I asked.
They had turned as they heard my foot on the doorstep. Neither of them smiled nor said a word of greeting. Rosie looked through me as if I were not there.
Nat struggled to answer my question.
‘It’s Jimmy,’ he said. His voice was still hoarse from the years of soot, and harsher now with bad news. ‘He’s been taken up by the Winchester magistrates for vagrancy. They’re holding him in the poor house. Rosie’s going to get him out.’
I looked blankly from one hard face to the other.
‘At Winchester?’ I asked. ‘When?’
‘We don’t know,’ Nat said. ‘He said he had a message to take to Bristol, that he wouldn’t tell no one about. He could have been taken on his way home.’
I nodded. ‘This is my fault,’ I said sorrowfully. ‘I sent him with a message. But I gave him a guinea for his fare. They can’t arrest a man with a guinea for his fare.’
‘He could have refused to be press-ganged,’ Nat suggested. ‘Or not taken his hat off when bid. They can arrest you for nigh on anything, Miss Julia, if they want to.’
‘What will you do, Rosie?’ I asked.
She spoke to me for the first time. ‘Dr Pearce has given me a letter to show them,’ she said. ‘And three guineas, which must be enough to get him off whatever charge it is against him.’
‘And then you’ll bring him back here,’ I said. I looked around the room. Rosie’s few goods were packed, the hearth was empty of her pan.
‘I’ve been given notice to quit,’ she said. ‘Jimmy too. I had a letter today, from your husband, the squire. I’ve to leave at once, and Jimmy’s tenancy is cancelled too.’
‘Richard is turning you out?’ I asked, disbelieving.
She looked at me and her face was hard. I had never seen her look at me like that before. ‘Aye,’ she said. ‘It seems like only yesterday that you brought us here. I was glad of it then, but now it seems almost worse to have been here, to have planned for the future, and now to have to lose it all.’
‘I’ll speak to him ..,’ I said quickly.
Her shrug seemed to suggest my promises were worthless. ‘We all know you can do nothing, Miss Julia,’ she said. ‘You married the wrong man to give your baby a name. We all understand that. I don’t expect any good from you now.’
‘Rosie!’ I said. It was a cry for her forgiveness.
She smiled her weary smile at me and said, ‘It’s no good, Miss Julia.’ And she picked up her kerchief bundle and handed it to Nat, who hefted it over his shoulder and went out before her into the grey dampness.
‘Where will you go?’ I asked.
She turned in the doorway to answer me. Outside the drizzle had turned to sleet, lancing sheets of wet ice.
‘Back to Bath,’ she said. ‘We can get free passage there, and I can embroider gloves again. I know I can sell them in Bath and we know the city.’
I said nothing. There was nothing I could say.
She nodded at me in silence. Then she pulled her shawl over her bowed head and went out over the threshold into the cold.
I called the carriage over and rode home dryshod.
The weather worsened. We had a long week of fog when not even Richard got out often, and then we had three days of rain. Every day Richard’s new groom, George, came trudging through the mire, or rode on his skidding horse, with the post; but he brought no message for me from James.
I thought
of everything.
My worst fear was that Jimmy had been arrested on his way to Bristol, that he had been stopped on his way. But I had faith in Jimmy. He would have walked across the Avon for Ralph, and he trusted James as a worker of miracles. He would have gone to great lengths to get the message through. And he had wit enough to get it into the post – even from prison.
But I also feared that the message had come too late. Maybe Ralph was already hanged, and James could not bear to tell me. I hoped desperately that Ralph had escaped, and James was looking for him and not writing until he had clear news. Possibly James and Ralph had met and Ralph had forbidden James to send me news until the case was heard. I even wondered if James would simply ignore my letter. But I put that fear aside. I knew he would not. He had liked and admired Ralph. And he was always generous to me.
I thought I had thought of everything.
I thought of every option except the obvious one. As silly as a child, I did not think of that at all.
I took to rising early in the morning and putting on my wrapper, which enfolded me less and less as I grew broader, and going quietly downstairs to drink my morning chocolate in the parlour so I could watch the drive for George coming from the London stage with the mail.
He never came much before seven or eight, so I could as well have stayed in my room; but in some hopeful corner of my heart I thought I was keeping a sort of vigil. As the grey mist cleared away down the lane, I thought that perhaps Ralph was sitting up on some dirty straw in a London cell and opening his eyes knowing that James Fortescue had engaged a good lawyer for him, and knowing for certain that I had stood his friend and that my friendship could make a difference.
Richard saw me there one morning and asked me what I did. I told him I was just sitting, looking at the misty garden, doing nothing. I smiled deprecatingly to suggest it was a whim of pregnancy, and Richard nodded and went out through the kitchen door to the stable yard.
I heard Mrs Gough laugh as he went through the kitchen and I thought resentfully that she always had liked him best.