Meridon

18

The next few days were a blur, like a dream you cannot remember on waking. I remember that the man who hated gin traps picked me up in his arms, and that I was so tired and so weary that I did not object to his touch but was a little comforted by it, like a hurt animal. He took me inside the house and there were two other people there, a man and a woman, and there were a great many quick questions and answers over my head as it rested on his shoulder. The homespun tickled my cheek and felt warm and smelled reassuring, like hay. He carried me upstairs and the woman put me to bed, taking away my clothes and bringing me a nightgown of the finest lawn I had ever seen in my life with exquisite white thread embroidery on the cuffs and hem and around the neck. I was too tired to object that I was a vagrant and a gypsy brat and that a corner of the stables would have suited me well. I tumbled into the great bed and slept without dreams.

I was ill then for two days. The man who hated gin traps brought a doctor from Chichester and he asked me how I felt, and why I would not eat. He asked me where I had come from and I feigned forgetfulness and told them I could remember nothing except my name and that I was looking for Wide. He left a draught of some foul medicine, which I took the precaution of throwing out of the window whenever it was brought to me, and advised that I should be left to rest.

The man who hated gin traps told me that Sea was safe in the stables and eating well. ‘A fine horse,’ he said, as if that might encourage me to tell of how I got him, how a dirty-faced, stunned gypsy brat came to be riding a first-class hunter.

‘Yes,’ I said, and I turned my face away from his piercing eyes and closed my eyelids as if I would sleep.

I did sleep. I slept and woke to the sunlight on the ceiling of the bedroom and the windows half open and the smell of early roses and the noise of pigeons cooing. I dozed again and when I woke the woman brought me some broth and a glass of port wine and some fruit. I ate the soup but left the rest and slept again. In all of those days I saw nothing but the light on the ceiling of the bed chamber and ate nothing but soup.

Then one morning I woke and did not feel lazy and tired. I stretched, a great cat-like stretch with my toes pointing down to the very foot of the bed and my arms outflung, and then I threw back the fine linen sheets and went over to the window and pushed it open.

It had rained in the night and the sunlight was glinting on the wet leaves and flowers of the rose garden and mist was steaming off the paddock. Immediately below me the paving stones of the terrace were dark yellow where they were damp, paler where they were drying. Beyond the terrace was the gravel of the drive where Sea and I had ridden that first night, beyond that the rose garden with pretty shaped flower-beds and small paths running between them. A delicate little summerhouse of white painted wood stood to my left; as I watched, a swallow swooped in through the open doorway, beak full of mud, nest-building.

Beyond the rose garden was a smooth green paddock with Sea, very confident, cropping the grass with his tail raised, a stream of silver behind him. He looked well, perhaps even a little plumper for his stay in a good stable with fine hay and spring grass to eat. Behind the paddock was a dark mass of trees in fresh new foliage, copper beeches red as rose-shoots, oak trees with leaves so fresh and green they were lime coloured, and sweet green beeches with branches like layers of draper’s silk. And beyond the woods, ringing the valley like a guardian wall, were the high clear slopes of the Downs, striped with white chalk at the dry stream beds, soft with green and lumpy with coppices on the lower slopes. The sky above them was a clear promising blue, rippled with cloud. For the first time in my life I looked at the horizon and knew that I was home. I had arrived at Wide, at last.

There was a clatter of horse’s hooves and I looked along the drive and saw the man who hated gin traps riding up towards the house, sitting easily on an ungainly cob. A working horse, a farmer’s horse, able to pull a cart or a plough or work as a hunter on high days and holidays. He scanned the windows and pulled up the horse as he saw me.

‘Good morning,’ he said pleasantly, and doffed his cap. In the morning sunlight his hair showed gleams of bronze, his face young, smiling. I guessed he was about twenty-four; but a serious young man appears older. For a moment I thought of Jack, who would have been a child at forty as long as he was under his father’s thumb; but then I pushed the thought away from me. Jack was gone. Robert Gower was gone. Meridon and her sister were gone. I could remember nothing.

‘Good morning,’ I said. I leaned out of the window to see his horse better. He sat well, as if he spent much of his day in the saddle. ‘A good working horse,’ I observed.

‘Nothing like your beauty,’ he replied. ‘But he does well enough for me. Are you feeling better? Are you well enough to dress and come downstairs?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am quite better. But that woman took my clothes.’

‘That’s Becky Miles,’ he said. ‘She took them and washed them and ironed them. They’ll be in the chest in your bedroom. I’ll send her up to you.’

He turned his horse and rode past the front door round to the back of the house to the stables. I shut the window and opened the chest for my clothes.

There was warm water in a jug with a bowl beside it in exquisite cream china with little flowers painted on the outside, and a posy at the bottom of the jug. I splashed a little water on my face and dried myself reluctantly on a linen towel. It was so fine I didn’t like to dirty it.

I dressed and felt the luxury of ironed linen and clean breeches. There was a minute darn on the collar of Jack’s old shirt where I had torn it weeks ago. I shrugged on the old jacket as well – not that I would need the warmth, but because I felt awkward and vulnerable in this rich and beautiful house in my shirtsleeves. My breasts showed very clear against the thin cotton of the shirt; I pulled the jacket over to hide them.

There was a comb, a silver-backed hairbrush, a small bottle of perfume and some ribbons laid out before a mirror of the purest glass I had ever seen on the dressing-table and I stopped in front of it to brush my hair. It was full of tangles as always, and the riot of copper curls sprang out from the ribbon bow I tried to tie around them. I gave up the struggle after the third time and just swept it back from my face and left it loose. The man who hated gin traps did not look as if he were a connoisseur of female fashions. He looked like a simple working man, and one who could be trusted to deal with a person fairly, however they looked. But the house, this rich and lovely house, made me feel awkward in my boy’s clothes with my red hair all tumbled down my back. It was a fine house, I somehow wanted to be fine to suit it. I didn’t look right there, in darned linen and someone else’s boots.

There was a tap at my door and I went to open it. The woman he called Becky Miles stood outside. She smiled at me. She was taller than me, a large-built woman running to plumpness, her fair hair starting to turn grey at the temples, a little sober cap on her head, a dark dress and a white apron.

‘Hello,’ she said kindly. ‘Good to see you up. Will sent me up to bring you down to the parlour when you’re ready.’

‘I’m ready,’ I said.

She walked ahead of me, talking over her shoulder as she went towards the shallow curving staircase and down the stairs to the hall.

‘I’m Becky Miles,’ she said. ‘Mr Fortescue put us in here, me and Sam, to work as housekeeper and caretaker. If there’s anything you want, you just ring the bell and I’ll come.’

I nodded. There was too much to take in. I wanted to ask why they should wait on me, and who was Mr Fortescue but she led me across the shadowy hall, her heels clicking on the polished wooden floor, silent on the bright rugs, and opened a door at the front of the house and gestured that I was to go in.

‘I’ll bring you some coffee,’ she said, and shut the door behind her.

The room was a parlour, the walls lined with a silk so pale as to be almost cream, but pink in the darker corners. The window-seat, scattered with cushions of a deep rose colour, ran around the inside of the tower at the corner of the room and overlooked the terrace, the rose garden and the drive in its circular sweep. The carpet, set square on the polished floorboards in the main part of the room, was cream with a pattern of pink roses at the border. The half-circular turret part of the room had its own circular rug in deep cherry. There was a harpsichord on the wall beside the fireplace, and a number of occasional tables standing beside comfortable rose-cushioned chairs. In the middle of all this pinkness was the man who hated gin traps, with his brown cap clutched in his big hands.

We smiled at each other in mutual understanding of each other’s discomfort.

‘It’s a lady’s room really,’ he said. ‘It’s the parlour.’

‘A bit pink,’ I said.

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘It’ud suit some.’

He paused and looked at me, as awkward as himself in my hand-me-down boots and my plain riding breeches and my too-big jacket.

‘We could go into the dining room,’ he suggested.

I nodded and he led the way across the hall and through handsome double doors into a dining room dominated by a massive mahogany table which would seat, I thought, sixteen people. On one side was a huge sideboard gleaming with silver, on another a table set with chafing dishes. The man who hated gin traps pulled out a chair for me at the head of the table and sat by my side.

‘Now,’ he said. ‘We’ll wait the main business until Mr Fortescue comes and I’m pledged to tell you nothing till he arrives. He’s the trustee for this estate. He came down from his London offices when I sent word that you had come here. He’ll be in to take coffee with us in a moment.’

‘Who is he?’ I asked. I was nervous, but the man who hated gin traps gestured to me to sit in one of the high-backed chairs and I gained confidence from his ease.

‘He’s the trustee of the estate,’ he said. ‘The executor of the will. He’s a straight man. You can trust him.’

I nodded. I thought, ‘I can trust you too,’ but I sat down in silence, and put my hands together on the polished table as if we were about to start some business.

The door opened and Miss Miles came in carrying a tray with a silver coffee pot, some biscuits and three cups. Behind her came a tall man dressed like Quality, but he held the door for her. He made much of helping her with the tray and setting the biscuits on the table and the cups before the three of us but I knew that he had taken in my appearance in his first quick glance as he came into the room, and that he was scanning me under his dark eyelashes still.

He was about the age of Robert Gower, with clothes cut so soberly and so well that I had never seen their like. He had an air of such authority that I thought he must have been born wealthy. His face was lined and severe, as if he were sad. I thought that he was being polite to Becky Miles to cover his searching survey of me but also because he was always polite to her, to all servants.

He set the things to his satisfaction and then he gave an assumed and unconvincing little start of surprise. ‘I’m not introducing myself,’ he said to me. ‘I am James Fortescue.’

He held out his hand and looked at me inquiringly. The man who hated gin traps said nothing, so into the little silence I volunteered my own introduction.

‘I’m Sarah,’ I said.

The hand that clasped mine tightened a little, and his sharp gaze narrowed. ‘Have you used that name all your life?’ he asked me.

I hesitated for a moment. I thought, with my quick tinker’s brain, about stringing some lie together; but nothing came.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I had a dream, like a belief that it was my real name. But the people I lived with called me by something else.’

He nodded, let my hand go and gestured for me to sit down. In the silence that followed the man who hated gin traps pulled the tray towards himself and carefully poured three cups of coffee. When he handed one to James Fortescue I could see that the gentleman’s hands were trembling.

He took a sip of coffee and then looked at me over the rim of the cup. ‘I think I would have known her anywhere,’ he said softly, almost to himself.

‘You need to be sure,’ the man who hated gin traps said in a level voice. ‘For your own sake, for all our sakes.’

I turned and looked at him. ‘What are you talking about?’ I asked. There was an edge of irritation in my voice and the man heard it. He gave me a slow reassuring smile.

‘You’ll know at once,’ he said. He nodded to James Fortescue, ‘He’ll tell you in a moment.’

Mr Fortescue put down his cup and took some papers and a pen and ink-pot out of a little case beside him.

‘I have to ask you some questions,’ he said.

Ask he did! He asked me everything about my life from my earliest memories until the time when I rode up the drive to Wideacre Hall. After two or three slips I dropped the pretence that I could not remember and told him all he wanted to know: all that I could remember of my ma, what her family name had been, where her gypsy family travelled and where they stayed. Then I shook my head.

‘She died when we were just little babbies,’ I said. ‘I can hardly remember her at all.’

Then he asked me everything I could remember of my early life. I told him about Da, and the travelling around. The grand projects and the few jobs. I glided over the bad horses and the cheating at cards. And I found, although I tried to say her name once or twice, that I could not say it at all. Even to think of her was like scratching at an unhealed scar on my heart.

I did not want them to know about Gower’s Show and Mamselle Meridon, so I told him only that I had been apprenticed to a man who trained horses, that I had chosen to leave him, and found myself here. I came to a standstill and trailed into silence. James Fortescue looked at me over the top of his coffee cup as if he were waiting for more.

‘There are things I do not want to talk about,’ I said stubbornly. ‘Nothing criminal. But private.’

He nodded at that, and then asked to see my string and clasps and asked me once more where I had got it. He looked at it carefully through a special little glass he took from his pocket, and then finally he handed it back to me.

‘Do you have none of your baby clothes?’ he asked. ‘Did you never see them?’

I screwed my eyes up with an effort to remember. ‘I saw them,’ I said hesitantly. ‘We shared them, of course. I saw a white lace shawl, very fine, trimmed in lace. Someone must have given it to us.’ The memory of the white lace shawl slipped away from me as if it had disappeared into darkness. ‘Everything was sold after Ma died,’ I said again.

Mr Fortescue nodded, consideringly. Then he said, very softly. ‘You say “us”. Who was the child who shared your childhood?’

My chair scraped as I suddenly pushed it back. My hands on the table had started their trembling again. I looked at them carefully until they were still. Then the man who hated gin traps leaned over and put his large calloused hand over mine.

‘You don’t need to say,’ he said softly.

I took a deep shuddering breath. ‘I won’t say more than this,’ I said. ‘We were raised together, we were sisters. She never dreamed of Wide as I did. We were twin sisters, but we looked different.’

‘And where is your sister, your twin sister, now?’ Mr Fortescue asked.

I heard a low cry like an animal in pain and I hunched up over the pain which was like hunger-cramps in my belly. I felt a thud of pain on my forehead, over my eyes, and I heard a low thumping sound. Then another, and then another, and then someone grabbed my shoulders and I realized I had been banging my head on that dark shiny table. The man who hated gin traps pulled me around and held my shoulders tight until I stopped shaking and that distant moaning noise stopped.

‘That’s enough,’ he said over my head to James Fortescue. ‘We’ve got enough. It’s her. She can’t bear to tell us more now.’

I heard footsteps cross the room and the clink of a decanter on a glass. ‘Drink this,’ Mr Fortescue said, and I knocked back half a glass of cognac as if I were my da.

It hit me in the cold sad part of my belly and spread a warmth all through me. I rubbed my face with my hands, my cheeks were dry and warm. I had shed no tears, I felt as if I would never cry again. My forehead was sore. I felt a flicker of fear that I had been hurting myself so. But then the cold dullness was all around me and I did not care what they thought of me. I did not care what I did.

‘I’m all right now,’ I said. The man who hated gin traps still had his hands on my shoulders. I shrugged him off. ‘I’m all right now,’ I said again, irritably.

There was a silence in the dark room. Outside in the stable yard someone was whistling.

‘I have enough,’ Mr Fortescue said. ‘I had enough as soon as I saw her. I won’t vex you with more questions, Sarah. I shall tell you why I needed to ask you them.’

I nodded. I was still trembling from that welling-up of pain, but I took the cup of coffee for its warmth. There was a knack to balancing it on the little plate which was under the cup. I watched it carefully until I had it safe up to my mouth, and then I blew on it cautiously and supped it. It was a strange taste, but hot and sweet and strong. I thought about the taste of it, I watched the little plate under the cup, I curled my toes up hard inside my boots until I could get the picture of her, and my pain at losing her, out of my mind.

Then I looked up and listened to Mr Fortescue.

‘I believe that you are the daughter of Julia and Richard Lacey, and the only heir to this estate,’ he said simply. ‘Your mother was in fever after your birth and she gave you away to the gypsies. Your father was killed by an escaped criminal who came back here seeking his revenge. Your mother died shortly after.’ He was silent for a moment. When he spoke again his voice was even. ‘She wrote to me before her death,’ he said. ‘She had no close relations and she entrusted to me the task of trying to find her daughter and to care for the estate until the child was of age.’

He looked at me. ‘I am sorry I failed you so badly, Miss Lacey,’ he said. ‘I did indeed try, for all these years I have had men looking for you. We traced the gypsy family and then much later your foster mother; but then the trail went cold. I never knew of the man you call your stepfather.’

I nodded, but I said nothing. If they had found the two of us before some of the beatings I had taken. If they had only found us before Da sold us to Robert Gower. Or if they had found us just yesterday, when we were a day’s ride away and she had been playing in the sea and her hair had tasted of salt when I kissed her.

I shrugged off the pain and took a deep breath. In a few moments the picture of her would be out of my mind and I would be able to hear Mr Fortescue’s voice again.

‘I’ve done better with the estate, I think,’ he said. ‘We restored it to the profit-sharing scheme started by your mother, and we have expanded. It is now quite famous as a village corporation – an experiment in communal planning and communal land-use. Will Tyacke here acts as foreman and keeps in touch with me in my offices in London or Bristol. I only supervise. All of the decisions are made here, by the people themselves.’

‘Is it a wealthy estate?’ I asked bluntly.

Mr Fortescue looked down at a little case he had by his chair. ‘Run as a corporation it does not make a profit,’ he said. ‘It pays you an annual share of some £10,000. If you were to withdraw an economic rent you would earn some £40,000. I have the figures here for you to see.’

He went to pick them up but I checked him.

‘I…I cannot read,’ I said awkwardly.

He nodded as if there were no reason to think that anyone could. ‘Of course,’ he said gently. ‘Then we can go over them together another time. But you may believe me that you have a good estate, run as a corporation, with the people who live here sharing in the wealth. It is showing substantial and steady profits.’

I thought of the nine guineas I had in my little purse and the work I had done to earn them. I thought of her dancing with her skirts up for pennies, and of Da selling us in a job lot with a young pony. I thought of Jack, so fearful of his father’s ambition that he killed to keep his favour, to inherit the show. And I thought of myself, flint-hearted and hungry…and wealthy beyond anything I could ever have dreamed.

I blinked. ‘It is mine?’ I asked.

Mr Fortescue nodded. ‘You are the heir to the whole of the Wideacre estate,’ he said. ‘All the debts on the land are paid, you own it entire. Your mother wanted it gifted to the village, I have a letter she wrote to me in which she makes clear that is her intention. She died before she could write it into her will. She wanted you to have the Hall as your home. The Hall, the gardens and parkland. We have set up a trust so that you could sign your rights to the land over to the village as soon as you wish. But while you are a minor,’ he looked at my confused face, ‘until you are twenty-one or married, then you may draw an allowance from me, and I shall act as your guardian and run the estate as I think fit. When you are twenty-one or married it is yours.’

I rose slowly from the table and went to look out over the cobbled yard. There was a man there mucking out a stable, I watched him fork over the soiled straw.

‘That man works for me,’ I said slowly.

Mr Fortescue, in the room behind me cleared his throat and said, ‘Yes.’

‘And Becky Miles,’ I said.

‘And Mistress Miles,’ he repeated. ‘Indeed,’ he said, ‘if the village were run in the usual way with the workers hired by the quarter and paid wages instead of our profit-sharing scheme you would have something like a hundred people working for you.’

I leaned my head against the coldness of the thick glass and thought what this sudden wealth, what this sudden power meant. I need never go hungry, I need never go cold, I need never work in the wind or the rain or the cold. I need never work again at all. I would have a meal on the table, set before me by someone else, a servant, my servant, more than once a day, four times a day! I had won through to what I had always wanted, to what I had always thought was impossible. I had not had to whore, I had not had to trap someone into marriage as Robert Gower had foretold. I had inherited as easily and as naturally as if I were one of the Quality.

I stopped myself there. I was one of the Quality. I was born Sarah Lacey with a silver spoon in my mouth and I was now where I belonged. Where I had an absolute right to be. And this house, this huge beautiful house was all mine, staffed with servants who were mine to command. No one would ever make me do their bidding again. I held that thought in my mind for a long moment. And I thought what it meant for me now.

‘It’s too late,’ I said desolately.

‘What?’

‘It’s too late,’ I said again.

I turned back to the room; they were both watching me, puzzled, uneasy. I looked at Mr Fortescue.

‘It’s too late for me, damn you for a fool!’ I exploded. ‘I wanted it for me, oh! yes, of course I did! I was hungry, I was beaten! I was tired all the time from working too hard and not enough food! But I wanted it for her! I wanted to give it to her! I wanted to bring her here and make her safe!’

I could hear my voice rising into a scream. ‘And all the time you have been sitting here, you fat merchant, sitting here on my land while I was out there, beaten and cold, and she was out there too and I could not keep her safe!’

‘Sarah…’ The man who hated gin traps was up from the table, coming towards me, his hand held out, like you would try to calm a frightened horse.

‘No!’ I screamed as loud as I could and dodged past him towards the door.

‘Where were you three nights ago?’ I shouted at James Fortescue. ‘I was a day’s ride down the road! You weren’t looking for me then! You weren’t doing all you could then! I was there alone, not knowing what to do to keep her safe! And she…and she…and she…’

I turned to the door and scrabbled at the panels in an agony of haste to get out of the room. I found the door handle and tore it open and ran up the stairs to the room they had given me, my own room in my own house, while she lay cold and still in the ground and all her little things burned and scattered.

I flung myself into a corner of the bedroom and sobbed, deep aching hopeless dry sobs which seemed to tear me apart.

And when my throat was so sore that I was hoarse with sobbing, so that no more sound would come, the pain had not eased at all. It was still there, unslaked, as hot and hard and heartbroken as ever.

There was a knock at the door and James Fortescue opened it softly and came into the room.

He squatted down on the floor beside me, careless of creasing his fine breeches and coat, and he did not offer to touch me, nor did he say easy foolish words of comfort. He looked quickly at my red eyes which were still dry after nigh on an hour of weeping, and then he looked down at the carpet underneath his fine shoes.

‘You are right to blame me,’ he said softly. ‘I have failed you, and I have failed the woman I love. I know the grief you are feeling because I also loved a woman and I did not keep her safe.’

I looked up a little.

‘It was your mother,’ he said. ‘Her name was Julia Lacey and she was the bravest, funniest, most beautiful girl I ever met.’ He paused for a moment, and then nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Those were the things that I loved most about her. She was very brave, and she used to tease me all the time and make me laugh, and she was very very lovely.’

He took a little breath. ‘You are very like her,’ he said. ‘Though she was fair and your hair is copper. Her eyes were set aslant like yours, and her face was shaped like a flower, like yours is; and her hair curled like yours does.’

He paused for a moment. ‘She was forced into marrying her cousin, your father, and he destroyed the plans she had made with the village,’ he said. ‘She wanted to send you away, off the land, so that you would be safe. And she wanted to end the line of the squires here so that people could make their own lives in their own ways.’

‘I’ve dreamed it,’ I offered. He turned quickly to look at me, as we squatted side by side on my bedroom floor, a foolish sight if there had been anyone there to see.

‘Dreamed?’ he asked.

‘Aye,’ I said. ‘I used to dream of Wide, of here. And often I dreamed I was a woman going out in the rain to drown her baby. Then she saw the gypsies and gave them the baby instead. She called after the wagon as it went away,’ I said. ‘She called after the baby. She said, “Her name is Sarah”.’

James Fortescue rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand.

‘I posted advertisements in all the local papers, I employed men to search for you,’ he said. ‘And I have gone on doing that, Sarah. Every year I changed the advertisements to show your right age and appealed for anyone who knew you to contact me. I offered a reward as well.’

I shrugged. ‘It’s too late now,’ I said bitterly.

He got to his feet slowly, as if he were very weary.

‘It is not too late,’ he said. ‘You are young and you are the heir to a fine estate. There is a fine future ahead of you and I will find ways to make up to you for the pains and sadnesses of your childhood, I promise it.’

I nodded, too sick at heart to argue with him.

‘You are home now,’ he said warmly. ‘Home on Wideacre; and I will love you like the father you never had, and you will be happy here in time.’

I looked at him and my face was as hard as every street-fighting hungry little wretch which has ever had to beg for food and duck a blow.

‘You’re not my father,’ I said. ‘He sounds like a real bad ‘un. You’re not my mother either. I had a woman I called Ma; and now you tell me I don’t have her either. I had a sister too…’ My voice was going, I swallowed hard on a dry throat. ‘I had a sister and now you tell me I never even had her. You’re no kin to me, and I don’t want your love. It’s too late for me.’

He waited for a moment longer, but when I said nothing more he gently touched the top of my head, as you would carefully pat a sick dog. Then he went out of the room and left me alone.