Meridon

19

I had thought it would be awkward speaking to James Fortescue again but I had not understood Quality manners. It seemed that if you were Quality, someone could rage and shriek at you and you could be deaf to their anger and their sorrow. Quality manners mean you only hear what suits you. Becky Miles called me to come down to drink a dish of tea with Mr Fortescue in the afternoon and he was in the parlour waiting for me, as if I had never sworn at him and screamed at him and blamed him for failing me.

Becky poured the tea for us both and handed me a cup. I kept a wary eye on James Fortescue and saw that he did not hold the plate under the cup and drink like that. He held them separately, one hand on each. I did not dare take a plate with a little cake on it as well. I did not think I could balance them all.

When he had finished, and Becky had cleared away he asked me to come with him to the dining room.

He had spread out a map on the dining-room table.

‘I can’t read,’ I said again.

He nodded. ‘I know that, Sarah,’ he said. ‘I can explain this to you. It’s a map of Wideacre, of the Wideacre estate.’

I stepped a little closer and saw it was a picture of land, like you would see if you were a buzzard, circling high above it.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘Wideacre is like a little bowl with the Downs on the south and west, and the Common to the north.’ His hand went a great sweep around the map and I saw the land was coloured green and brown.

‘Here we run a mixed farm,’ he said. ‘Much more fruit and vegetables than our neighbours because we have a skilled workforce who see the benefits of good profits. But we also farm sheep for their wool and meat, and a dairy herd.’

I nodded.

‘We grow our own fodder for the animals,’ he said. ‘As well as a lot of wheat which we sell locally and in the London market for bread.’

I nodded again.

‘It’s a most lovely country,’ he said, warmth creeping into his voice. ‘Here is Wideacre Hall, set in the middle of the parkland, d’you see Sarah? At the back of it is the Common: that’s free of fields for people to use for their own animals’ grazing, and for walking and gathering firewood or brushwood, taking small game and putting out hives. It’s bracken and gorse, some small pine trees, and in the valleys some beeches and oak trees and little streams.

‘Over here,’ he brushed the area south of the house, at the front, ‘here is the ornamental garden you see from the front window, a little rose garden, and a paddock. Then there is the woodland which stretches along the drive and right up to the road. There are some fields new planted here; but we’ve mostly kept it as a wood. This is your property, your mother wanted the parkland kept with the Hall. She played here when she was a little girl, by the side of the Fenny which runs through these woods, in the little pools and streams. She learned to tickle for trout, and she learned to swim with one of the village girls. In spring the woods are full of wild daffodils and bluebells. In summer there are little glades which are thick with purple and white violets.

‘Your boundary to the west is the Havering land.’ He pointed to a dotted line drawn on the map. ‘This map doesn’t show Havering Hall. It’s empty most of the year, the Havering family lives in London. They are distant kin to you,’ he said, ‘but they are only here in summer.’

‘Is this the village?’ I asked, pointing to a mess of little squares on the map on the right-hand side.

‘Yes,’ James Fortescue said. ‘If you come out of Wideacre Hall drive and turn right you go along the lane to the Chichester road, see? But if you go out of the drive and turn left you go down to Acre village.

‘Most of it is along the main street. The church is here,’ he pointed. ‘It was struck by lightning and has a new spire. The cottages on this side of the street were damaged in the same storm and some of them are new. But those on the other side of the street are older. In need of repair, too. Opposite the church is the vicarage – you’ll find the vicar, Dr Reed, does not wholly approve of the way Acre runs itself! And there are cottages down these lanes towards the common land. Then there are squatter houses, where people have come to make their homes but have not properly built yet.’

I nodded. I knew about squatters’ rights. It was one of the reasons the parish wardens always moved Da on. They were always in a terror that he would claim that he had been there long enough to be a member of the parish and claim parish relief.

‘Don’t you move them on?’ I asked shrewdly.

James shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We give them a chance to work and they can either take a wage – not a very big one – or take a share in the profits of the estate. If they plan to stay then they join the corporation. We don’t have so many people that we cannot afford to take them on.’

‘And where does that man live?’ I asked. ‘The manager?’

‘That’s Will Tyacke,’ James said. ‘He comes from a very old family. They have been here longer than the Laceys. His cousin was the first manager here after your mother died. But he had an accident and Will came over from another estate and took over. He lives in the manager’s cottage,’ he pointed to one of the little squares on the map set a little back from the main street. The blue wriggling line which indicated the River Fenny went past the back of the cottage through a small paddock.

‘And south of the road and south of the village are fields,’ James said. ‘Some of them are resting, we leave them to grass every third year. Some of them are fruit fields – it’s very sunny there. Most of them are wheat fields. This is a famous estate for high wheat production,’ he paused for a moment. ‘There were battles about that in the past,’ he said. ‘In the old days, before it was a corporation. There was a riot, and arson when the Laceys were sending wheat out of the country but starving their workforce. But that changed when we started sharing the crop, and sharing the profits. We have fields as high up the hill as the horses can pull the plough. Above that the land is only good for sheep to graze. It’s very high land – up there on the Downs – covered with short sweet grass, and in springtime there are thousands of little flowers and orchids. There are great flocks of butterflies up there: tiny blue and yellow ones. The larks sing very loudly, and there are curlews.’ He broke off.

‘You love it here,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you live here?’

He shook his head. ‘I was going to marry your mother and build a house here with her,’ he said. ‘Once she was gone, I could not have lived here alone.’ He was silent for a moment.

‘I visit often,’ he said. ‘Will Tyacke knows more about farming than I will ever learn, but I like to come down to keep an eye on things.’

I nodded, looking at my land, spread out over James’s map like a patchwork of rich fabrics.

‘You will need to learn the land,’ he said quietly. ‘Now you are here, you will need to know your way around, and the crops that are planted, and the people who live and work here.’

I stared down at the map. It was as if it were my future laid out here, not just fields.

‘I suppose I will,’ I said.

‘Perhaps you would like to ride out, look round it,’ James suggested. ‘Will Tyacke said he would come this afternoon and take you out for a ride if you would like that. He is the best man to show you the land, and he knows everyone.’

I looked up at James and he could see the emptiness in my face. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll go.’

‘And Sarah…’ he said as I was at the door.

I turned. ‘Yes?’

‘You have wanted to be here, and now you are here,’ he said gently. ‘Let yourself enjoy the things here which are good. I won’t say forget the past because that would be folly and it would deny your previous life and the people you have loved. But open yourself up to Wideacre, Sarah. It is only you who are hurt when you see this place as something which has come too late for you.’

I paused for a moment. He was right. The hurt inside, the coldness inside would not go away, would not be healed by more grief and more disappointment. But I was stubborn. And I was angry.

‘Is that all?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ he said, resigned.

I waited in my room until I saw the brown cob trot up the drive but when I got down to the stable yard Will was in one of the loose boxes, trying to get a bridle on Sea.

‘I told Sam not to worry him,’ he said pleasantly over the half-stable door. ‘He was having some difficulty with him and the horse was getting distressed. He looked frightened. Has he been ill-treated?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He don’t usually like men.’

Will smiled. ‘I don’t usually like hunters,’ he said. ‘We’ll both make an exception.’

He tightened the girth and led him out. ‘We’ve a lady’s saddle somewhere,’ he offered. ‘Sam can hunt it out for you if you prefer side-saddle.’

I shook my head and took Sea from him. ‘Nay,’ I said. ‘I wear my breeches so that I can ride astride. I only ever wore the habit…’ I broke off and cursed myself inwardly. ‘I don’t have a habit.’ I said. ‘I s’pose I’ll have to get one and ride side-saddle all the time.’

Will nodded, and held Sea’s head while I swung into the saddle.

‘I thought I’d take you up to the Downs,’ he said. ‘So you can get a hawk’s-eye view of the estate. It’s a good day. We’ll be able to see clear across Selsey to the Island looking south.’

I flinched inside at the mention of Selsey, but kept my face impassive. Will mounted his horse and led the way down the gravel of the drive, past the terrace with the rose garden on our right and out into the rutted stony lane.

The track was so old it seemed to have sunk into the soil and become part of the earth itself. The stones in the ruts were wet and shiny, yellow in colour and the little drainage ditches either side of the road were pale and yellow too, speckled with the black of peat.

‘Sandy soil,’ Will said, following the direction of my look. ‘Wonderful for farming in the valley.’

We were shaded from the spring sunshine by a network of branches over our heads. The new leaves were showing like a green mist and the hedgerows and the woods looked as if a light grey-green scarf of gauze had been tossed over the black bones of their branches. Sea pricked his ears forward at the clip-clop noise of the hooves on the wet stones.

On our right were great old trees, growing thick right up to the very margin of the drainage ditch and the road. High grey-trunked beeches and the broad knobbly trunks of oaks. On the first bend the massive chestnut tree swooped its branches low over the track, the leaves spreading like fingers in their tiny greenness, bursting out of shells of buds as brown and sticky as toffee. Deeper in the woods, on little hummocks, there were tall pine trees and the scent of their rising sap made the spring air sweet, like a premonition of summer warmth. The birds were singing in the higher branches, as near to the sun as they could get, and in the depths below the trees was a rug of old leaves and bright spots of primroses and white violets.

‘These trees are all parkland,’ Will said gesturing with his whip. ‘Ornamental. They belong to the grounds of the Hall, we only fell the timber for clearing. But there’s game in them. Rabbits and pheasants, hares, deer. Ever since the estate was made into a worker’s corporation we’ve had no game laws here. The people from Acre hunt as they wish for the pot. We don’t allow hunting for sale. A few poachers come over from Petersfield or Chichester and we keep an eye out for them. We take it in turns to watch for them if it gets out of hand. But generally we’re left well alone.’

I nodded. I had a passing sense of belonging, as sweet as cold water after a day’s thirst. My mother – the woman who had called after the cart – had come here often. I could feel it. And her mother, too.

We rode in silence, I was looking around at the woodland on one side of the road and the tidy fields on the other.

‘This is the Dower House,’ Will volunteered. ‘Your family lived here until the Hall was rebuilt. It was your ma’s childhood home.’

I nodded and looked at it.

It was deserted but well secured. The double door at the front was shut tight, all the windows barred with shutters. The front garden was tidy, a flood of golden crocus under the front windows.

‘No one lives there now?’ I asked.

‘No,’ Will said. He gave me a rueful little smile. ‘The way the estate is run does not attract the gentry,’ he said. ‘We’ve not been able to get a tenant for it for some time.’

I nodded. I did not understand what he meant yet, but I was not ready on this ride to ask questions. I wanted to take the measure of this place, of these people. To see what this place was in reality that I had been dreaming of for so long.

‘It’s a good estate,’ he said tentatively. ‘Productive.’

I glanced at him sideways. He was watching the stony drive between his horse’s ears.

‘It’s not what I was bred to,’ I said frankly. ‘I don’t know anything about it.’

‘Not too late to learn,’ he said gently. I guessed he was thinking of my scream at James Fortescue that I had come to Wideacre too late. ‘If you were the son of the house, a Lacey, you’d be coming home from school at your age, ready to learn about the land,’ he said.

‘If I was coming home from school I’d have had a gentry childhood and I’d know how to read and write,’ I said.

‘Not the schools I’m thinking of!’ Will said smiling. ‘Real Quality schools teach lads to be as ignorant as peasants!’ He shot a little smile at me as we rounded a curve of the drive and came within sight of the little box of the gatehouse and the great iron gates which stood permanently open with white flowering bindweed entwined up the hinges. Will nodded to the left.

‘That’s one of our new crops,’ he said. ‘Strawberries. We’re harrowing now, to make the soil nice and soft. We’ll be planting later. I reckon we’ll sell in Chichester. There’s a growing market for soft fruit. Wideacre strawberries could be famous.’

I glanced over the hedge. Two great shire horses were pulling a harrow, a little lad walking behind them, yelling instructions, the earth turning sweetly under the tines.

‘We planted it when the land was handed over to the people,’ he said. ‘It’s a crop which needs a lot of careful work. Weeding, and especially picking and packing. A casual paid workforce could waste more than they earned. But when people know they are working for themselves, they take more pride.’

I nodded. I was trying to get used to the strangeness of it all. I was wondering if it were not really a dream. I might wake up at any moment to the rocking caravan roof and the bitter hard life of my childhood; and look over and see her…

I shook my head to clear my thoughts and saw that Will had pulled his horse up at the end of the drive. The door of the lodge house opened and a woman with a babby in her arms came down the garden path and dipped me a low curtsey when she reached her garden gate.

‘Good day, Miss Sarah,’ she said.

For a moment I did not smile. I did not reply. She had called me Miss Sarah. Miss. Not the only other handle to my name I had ever had – Mamselle Meridon the bareback rider – but Miss Sarah. As though I were gentry born and bred. As though it were natural to her to call me thus, and natural to me to respond to it.

I nodded my head awkwardly at her.

‘This is Mrs Hodgett,’ Will Tyacke said. ‘She is a Midhurst woman who married the gate-keeper. The Hodgetts have always kept this gate.’

I nodded again. ‘Good day,’ I said. I found I could smile my show smile, and I pinned it on my face. Then Will clicked to his horse, and Sea fell into pace beside it as we turned left down the drive to head towards the village of Acre.

‘Your village,’ he said half in jest. ‘In the old days, when Beatrice and Squire Harry ran the land, they owned outright every one of the cottages in the village, aye, and even the church and the parson’s house as well.’ He paused. ‘I suppose you still do,’ he said, surprised. ‘We’ve been without a squire for so long that we’ve forgot how the deeds run. Of course it would still be your village outright. The cottagers have not paid rent for years. Not since Squire Richard – your papa – was killed. Mr Fortescue excused all rents and fees so that we could launch the land-sharing scheme. All he withdraws for the Lacey estate is your share of the profits. We call the village Acre, you know,’ he said. ‘It’s a Saxon name, like mine. My family were here in this village long before the Le Says came over with the Conqueror and fought for it and won it from us.’

‘The who?’ I asked. I had never heard of the Le Says. Nor of the conqueror. I had a vague idea that it might be Bonnie Prince Charlie.

Will looked at me in some surprise. ‘The Le Says were your family,’ he said. ‘They were French. Their name was changed later to Lacey.’

‘Oh,’ I said. Changing names was nothing new to me. Everyone in my world always changed their names when they were running from debts or from thief-takers.

‘They came with the Normans. When William the Conqueror invaded England,’ Will said.

I kept my face blank and nodded. I was ashamed of knowing nothing.

‘They fought for the land?’ I asked.

‘Oh aye,’ Will said. ‘I can even show you where. It’s called Battle Field and the ploughboys still turn up human bones and bits of armour. Three days they fought – the village against the Le Says – and the battle only ended when everyone was dead.’

‘Then where d’you come from?’ I asked quickly.

Will smiled. ‘Everyone was dead except one man from my family,’ he said. There was a twinkle in his brown eyes but his face was serious as if he were telling me the truth. ‘He was especially saved to found a dynasty of Tyackes. Saved from the field of battle because of his great skill.’

‘In fighting?’ I asked.

‘In running away!’ Will said and chuckled. ‘It’s old history, Sarah, nobody really knows. Anyway, the Laceys won the land from the people and they have kept it for themselves. Up until now. But the Tyackes have always lived here. And now it is my home.’

I could hear the love and pride in his voice and we halted the horses so that I could see the place properly.

It was a broad street, clean enough, with a few chickens scratching in the dust of the road. A line of cottages on the north side of the road had gardens bobbing with the fat green buds of daffodils and studded with primroses and dark purple crocuses. In one of them a young woman was sitting peeling potatoes in a bowl on her lap, a little child toddling towards her with a scrap of leaf in her hand, her face bright with discovery.

The church stood at the end of the row. An old building with a spire of newer stone. Re-built, as James had said. On the other side of the road the cottages had yards on to the lane. There was a carter’s yard with a wagon being mended inside, a cobbler’s house facing the street with the cobbler cross-legged at his window, head bowed. A smithy, and a great shire horse tied outside waiting. A thatcher’s yard with piles of wood left to season and stocks of reeds under a thatch of straw to keep them dry. It looked what it was, a humming prosperous little village of some thirty houses.

‘Most of the people are out working,’ Will said. ‘I thought you’d rather take a glance at it now before everyone wants to meet you.’

I looked down the street. The cobbler was watching us, but when he saw me look his way he waved a hand and bent his head to his last again as if he did not want to seem prying. The woman in the front garden raised her head and smiled but did not leave off her work.

‘I told them you’d come down and meet them all after church on Sunday,’ Will said. ‘I thought you’d want some time to look about you and gather your wits before you speak to everyone.’

I nodded. The place made me angry, though I wouldn’t show it. The place was so solid. It seemed as if these people had been here, planted deep as trees for years. And I had been blowing like a burr looking for somewhere to catch on to, somewhere to root.

‘How many people?’ I asked.

‘With the small farmers who own their own fields and pay rent, and the squatters who live on the Common and claim squatters’ rights; it comes to about three hundred,’ he said watching my face with a little smile. ‘But you’ll rarely see them all together. Only a few of them come to church now they don’t have to. You’ll just walk up the aisle of the church to the Lacey pew so that everyone can get a good look at you, and when you come out I’ll make you known to the people you want to meet. The vicar will most likely invite you to Sunday dinner, so he’ll tell you about the village as well.’

I nodded. Five new acquaintances would have terrified me, but walking up the aisle of a church and being stared at was just a performance like bareback riding. I thought if I had the right costume and a little training I could act it.

Will saw the hardness in my face. ‘You need not do it, you know,’ he said gently. ‘If you have friends elsewhere that you would rather be with, or a life you would rather lead, you can just go away again. Mr Fortescue can arrange to send you your money. You need not live here if you do not wish it. The estate has run well in your absence, nothing need change unless you want to be here.’

I looked down so that he should not see the flame of anger in my face at his suggestion that I might go elsewhere. I had nowhere else to go. I had longed for this place for all of my life. If I could not belong here then I was lost indeed. I no longer had her; if I lost Wide I would be a vagrant indeed.

‘Which is your house?’ I asked.

He gestured at a lane which ran down to the right.

‘That’s mine,’ he said. ‘Set back off the main street, overlooking the watermeadow and the river. I came to live there with my aunt when my cousin Ted was hurt in a ploughing accident, three years ago. She needed help with him. When he died I stayed on. That’s how I come to be in charge here though I’m young for the job. Ted was foreman for the village, and they decided I could take over early. The Tyackes have always been an important family in the village. They’ve a stone in the church wall which is the oldest in the church.’

I nooded. I could see the chimney and the stone-tiled roof. It looked like the best cottage in the village. Only the vicarage was bigger.

‘Where were you before?’ I asked.

Will smiled. ‘Not far,’ he said. ‘Just down the road on the Goodwood estate. I was working in the bailiff’s office there, so I was used to farming and keeping the books too.’

‘Married?’ I asked.

Will flushed a little. ‘Nay,’ he said awkwardly. ‘I’m not courting either. I had a lass but she wouldn’t stay in the village. She wanted to go into service and me go with her. I’m handy with horses and she wanted me to try for a job as coachman with the Haverings. I wouldn’t leave Acre. I’d not leave Acre for any lass, however bonny. So she went without me. That was last summer. I’ve had no one serious since then.

‘We go this way up to the Downs,’ he said, and turned his horse away from the church up a little track which climbed the hill.

The horses went shoulder to shoulder up the track, but I loosened the rein and let Sea increase his speed and go ahead of Will so that I could ride alone without him watching my face. The singing noise which I had heard in my head from the very first time I had come to this land, through the dark and the cold, lit only by the moon, was now louder. I was riding up the track which I had seen so many times in my dreams. We were clear of the planted fields and the tall quiet beech trees were crowding close around us. The horses’ hooves were silent on the damp earth and on the leafmould. Sea’s ears pointed forward at the bright circle of light where the trees ended and we would come out…out to what?

I knew how it would be and yet I was suddenly afraid that it would not be as I thought it should. That so much else in this place was so different from my dream. Instead of finding a warm house and a father and being a copper-headed beloved daughter I was a gypsy who had come in out of the darkness, a stranger, an intruder. James Fortescue might say he loved me for my mother’s sake, or because it was his duty, or because he felt guilty that he had failed to find me – but those things meant nothing. In my world none of those things would make a man lift his hand to brush away a fly.

Will Tyacke might take an afternoon to show me around the estate and make me welcome – but I could see that this private little world had run perfectly well without me for sixteen years. They were used to having no one at the Hall. They preferred it that way. I was not a welcome heir, finding her way home at last. I was an unwanted orphan. My so-called guardian and the foreman of my village had done well enough without me all this time.

If the land was not right, I thought, I should go away. Not as they hoped, not a ladylike organized departure, telling people that I did not like the country, that I preferred to live in a little town. If the land was not right I should run off tonight. I would hack my hair into a bob, I would steal the silver and the pretty miniature portraits on the small tables in the parlour, and anything else light enough to carry in my pockets. I should ride until I found a hiring fair and hire myself out as a groom to a good stud farm where I could work with young horses. I was fit for nothing. I did not know the ways of the Rom – and besides, as the old woman in Salisbury had seen, I was no Rom. I was not one of those special people.

I could not go back to work with a show. I would never work again in a ring. I could not have smelled the woodshavings and the horse sweat without freezing with horror. And I did not belong here. Not in the Hall with this difficult mannered life, not in those rooms where you could scream at someone and then they would pour you tea, not in this mad village with these peculiar people who let squatters settle and paid them wages, and who paid a pension to people too old to work

If the land was wrong I would go away and try and find somewhere that I could be myself. Another place.

Another place to search for again.

Sea put his head down and cantered towards the circle of light at the head of the track and we scrambled up the last slope. Will had stayed behind, letting me ride alone. The light dazzled me, the sudden piercing sound of a lark singing up high was as sharp in my ears as the swelling singing which had come to me on this land. The spring grass was a bright mouth-watering green, the sky a pale pale blue streamered with white slight clouds. Sea breathed deep and blew out. I turned his head towards the valley and looked over Wideacre.

I could just see the house. Its pale sandstone yellow colour was like good butter, a little pat among the green of the park. I could see the round turret of the parlour and the wedge of the terrace in front of it. The heads of the trees were thick, like a sheep’s winter fleece, the pines standing out dark against the light spring green.

At the foot of the hill I could see the village. My village. The village my mama had known. I saw it through my eyes, I saw it through her eyes. I saw it as I had dreamed it for one longing dream after another. I knew that it was my home. I had been coming towards it all of my life, for all of my life. I had loved it and missed it and needed it, and now I was coming into the very heart of it.

I breathed in a deep gasp of the wind which was blowing softly across the top of the Downs. I wanted to belong here. I wanted this place. Even though I knew it was too late for me, I longed for it as a man might long for a woman who left him long, long, ago.

Will’s horse came up behind me and he pulled it up. ‘That’s our land, beyond the village: that’s Wideacre Common land up as far as you can see north,’ he said, pointing with his whip. ‘To the west that is the Havering estate. These Downs are Wideacre estate too, twenty miles going north, ten miles to the west. Then it’s Havering land again. All of this valley is Wideacre land.’

I breathed in the smell of it, you could almost taste the chalk in the soil. The grass was fine as hair and short-cropped, studded with flowers and in the hollows there were great clumps of violets and the pale yellow of primroses.

‘Gets thick with cowslips later on,’ Will said, following my gaze. ‘We come up and pick them to make cowslip wine. We come up here on Mayday morning too. You’d like that. We come up and watch the sun rise.’

I nodded my head, not speaking. I had a distant memory of a dream of standing looking towards Acre and seeing the sun come up pale and pink on a May morning.

‘It is as I always thought it would be,’ I said speaking half to myself. ‘I have dreamed and dreamed of this place ever since I can remember. I have wanted to be here all my life.’

Will brought his horse closer alongside Sea and put his calloused hand over mine as I held the reins. I flinched at the touch and Sea stepped to one side.

‘It will not be as you thought it,’ he said gently. ‘It could not be. Nothing ever is. And while you have been dreaming of us, things have been changing here, we have been working towards a dream of our own. We are trying to do something here which is both an example and a model to the rest of the country. And it is part of a long tradition. A forgotten tradition which people try to ignore. Ever since there have been landlords there have been ordinary men and women claiming the right to run the land in their own way, of earning their own bread, of living together as a community. It may seem strange to you now, Sarah, but I think we can be the family you don’t have.’

I shook my head. ‘I’ve got no family,’ I said coldly. ‘I dreamed of a landscape. I didn’t dream of you, or of James Fortescue. All the family I had are dead, and now you two tell me they weren’t even kin. And my real kin…well they’re dead too. I’ve got no one, and I need no one. It was the land I dreamed of; and it’s the land I want.’

Will shrugged his shoulders; and did not try to touch me again. He pulled his horse over to one side and let me admire the view on my own.

‘Would you like a gallop over the Downs and then round by the Common to your home?’ he asked, his voice carefully polite. ‘Or do you want to see more of the village?’

‘Common land and home,’ I said. I glanced at the sun. ‘What time do they eat dinner?’

‘At six,’ he said coldly. ‘But they’ll wait till you are home before they serve dinner.’

I looked aghast. ‘That would be awful,’ I exclaimed.

The black look was wiped off his face in a second. Will laughed aloud. ‘If you think so,’ he said chuckling. ‘I’ll get you home in plenty of time. Could your horse do with a gallop?’

‘Oh yes,’ I said. Sea had been fretting ever since his hooves had been on the soft turf.

‘This way then!’ said Will and his brown cob sprang forward, suprisingly quickly for a horse that size. Sea was after him in a moment, and we chased them along the level track which arrowed, straight as a die, along the top of the Downs. We drew level in a few minutes and I heard Will laugh as we forged past them, Sea put his ears forward at the thunder of the hooves and then slackened his speed so that the brown cob inched forward again. They raced side by side, changing the leads as if they were enjoying themselves until Will called ‘Hulloa! Woah!’ and we slowed them down and they dropped into a canter and then we pulled them up.

‘We’ll go down this little track,’ Will said, and led the way down a track which was sticky with white creamy mud. Sea blew out and followed the cob as it skidded and slipped. The ground levelled off at the bottom and the mud gave way to white sand.

‘This is the Common,’ Will said.

It was a different kind of landscape entirely, but as familiar to me and as beloved as the Downland and parkland of my home. It was wild countryside, there were no hedges or fields or any sign of farming. As I listened I could hear the faint tinkle of a cow-bell or goat-bell. The busy village of Acre and the well-tended fields, away to the south, seemed miles away.

The hills were covered in heather, the fresh growth showing as a pale mist around the dead white flowers and grey of the old plants. All around us young fronds of ferns were growing leggy and short, necks curled up towards the sky. Over to my right there was a little coppice of silver birches, their trunks pale as paper.

‘Some of this has been enclosed, it is wonderful growing soil,’ Will said. ‘But most of it has been left as it always has been. A bit of a wilderness.’

He turned his horse’s head and Sea fell in beside the cob. The path was very wide, pure white sand, with a covering of black soil at the edges.

‘We keep this open for a firebreak,’ Will said.

‘It catches fire?’ I asked, bemused.

‘Sometimes in a very hot summer, but also we burn off the old heather and bracken so that it stays fit for grazing,’ he explained. ‘Even in the old days, when the Laceys ruled the land as they wished, it was always a right for the people of Acre to graze their own beasts up here. Cows mostly, but some people keep goats or sheep. Quite a few pigs, too.’

I nodded.

‘We’ll just go and look at the orchard, and then cut across the Common for home,’ he said. ‘Have I lost you yet?’

I screwed up my face to think. ‘No,’ I said. ‘The Downs curve around the village and we came down that path so that we were north of the village. I reckon it’s that way…’ I gestured with my left hand.

Will nodded. ‘You’ve a good sense of direction,’ he said. ‘But you would have that with the travelling you must have done.’

He waited in case I should tell him something about my travelling but I said nothing and he trotted on ahead of me along the firebreak, across a marshy little stream, where Sea jinked and shied, and then in a long easy canter along a path and into a wood of tall beech trees and the occasional pine. Ahead of us was the river and I followed Will on the brown cob when he turned to the left and rode along its banks. The water was deep, dark brown in the curves and bends by the banks, but sparkling and bright in the shallows. We came out on to a cart track and then Will pulled his horse up and said, ‘There.’

Ahead of us was a high and lovely fold of hills, capped by silver birches and the ungainly growing heads of baby ferns. Over to our left the hills ran down to the river, brown with last year’s bracken but lightened with the new growth. The old heather showed as dull pewter and old silver. Before us, in a huge sprawl of a field, were straight well-planted rows of apple trees, the leaves green with soft silvery undersides as the wind rolled through them.

‘Your ma planted this,’ Will said and his voice was filled with wonder. ‘Before you were born. Your ma Julia planted it, and my cousin Ted Tyacke was here when she did it. He said it took them all day to plant it and when they had finished they were so tired they could hardly walk home.’

I nodded. For a moment I forgot my sadness and my anger as I looked at the great fertile sweep of the land and saw how the strong branches bobbed as the wind played through them.

Will’s voice was warm. ‘Ted told me that none of them had ever planted apple trees before, it was a new idea. To set the estate back on its feet after the fire and everything going bad. He said that it was one of the first things Julia ever did on her own. She worked all day on her own down here and she counted out all the trees and got them set in straight rows.’

I looked again at the orchard. I thought I could even tell that they had planted from left to right, the first two rows were a bit wobbly, as if they had been learning how to keep to the line. After that they were straighter. I thought of my mother, a young woman little older than me, trying to set the land right.

‘He said she was up and down each row twenty times,’ Will said, a laugh in the back of his voice. ‘And at the end of it, all the trees were in and she looked around and there was one left on the cart! They laughed until they cried and she swore that she would give the sapling to the village to keep so the children could have apples off it.’ He paused. ‘She planted it on the green,’ he said. ‘The tree is getting old now, but the apples are very sweet.’

I felt a rush of tenderness for the mother I had never known, for the other Tyacke who had worked with her and laughed when she ended with one tree too many, for all the people she knew who worked with her to set this land on its feet again so that it could grow rich and fertile.

‘Thank you,’ I said, and for that moment I was simply grateful that he had taken the time and the trouble to bring me down here, to show me the orchard, and to explain to me what the land had meant to my mother. How she had been when she had been a young girl with the rights and duties of a squire. How she had been when she had loved and owned the land.

Will nodded and clicked to his horse so that we rode on beside the river, past the orchard. ‘She wanted to end the line of the Laceys,’ he said gently. ‘She told them that in the village one day. When her husband Squire Richard was bringing in day labourers and paying only the poor-rate wages. She said there should be no more squires.’

I felt myself stiffen, and the cold hardness which had been around me all my life came back to me.

‘Then she should have drowned me in the river as she planned, and not given me away,’ I said. ‘She should have had the courage to do the thing properly, or not at all. She gave me away and I was lost for all those years. So now I do not understand the land, and the village is used to having no squire.’

Will looked very attentively at the path ahead of us, at the stream moving so sweetly and easily across the land.

‘We could become accustomed,’ he said. ‘We will both have to change a little. We will become accustomed to having a Lacey in the Hall again. You will learn how to be Quality. Perhaps this is the best way. For she did not end the squires, but here you are, a squire who knows what it is to be poor. It is different for you, because you were not bred to it. You’ve seen both sides. You’ve not been trained in Quality ways, you’ve not learned to look away when you see beggars. Your heart is not hard in the way they learn.’

He kept his eyes straight ahead so that he was not looking at my clothes, hand-me-downs, of a cheaper quality than his own. There was a hole in one of the boots. ‘You know what it is like for poor people,’ he said discreetly. ‘You would not make their lives hard for them if you could choose.’

I thought about that as I rode. And I knew it was not so. Nothing in my life had taught me tenderness or charity. Nothing had taught me to share, to think of others. I had only ever shared with one person. I had only ever had a thought for one person. Will’s belief that my knowing the underside of a cruel and greedy world would make me gentle could not have been more wrong.

We rode without speaking, listening to the river which flowed clattering on stones and whirlpooling around twigs beside us. In the distance I could hear the regular slap slap and creak of a mill wheel. Then we rounded a little bend and I saw it on the opposite side of the river, a handsome plain square building in the familiar yellow stone.

‘That’s the new mill,’ Will said with satisfaction. ‘The Green family run it as their own business. They grind Wideacre corn for free but they also take in corn from the other farmers and charge them a fee for grinding.’

‘Who owns it?’ I asked.

Will looked surprised. ‘I suppose you do,’ he said. ‘Your mother got it running again, but it was built by the Laceys. The Green family came as tenants, long ago. But they’ve paid no rent since the corporation was established.’

I nodded. I looked at the trim little building and at the bright white and purple violets in the windowboxes. I looked at the pretty curtains in the windows, and the mill wheel turning around. On the roof there were white doves cooing. I thought of the times I had gone hungry, and she had been hungry too. I thought of the times we had been cold, and how very often Da had beaten me. I thought of her sitting on gentlemen’s laps for a penny, and me being thrown from horse after horse for ha’pence. And I thought that all the time, for all of that time, these people had been living here in comfort and plenty, beside this quiet river.

Will set his horse to a trot and then we went alongside the strawberry field I had seen in the morning. The lad had nearly finished the harrowing and he waved to us as we rode by. There was a little track between two fields and it brought us out on the driveway towards the Hall.

‘You’ve never been poor have you?’ I said shrewdly. ‘You’ve always worked, wherever you said it was – Goodwood – and here. But you’ve never gone short.’

The horses walked shoulder to shoulder up the drive. The birds still sang in the treetops but I could not hear them. The sweet singing noise had gone from my head, too. ‘You’d never have such hopes of me if you had been poor, hard poor. You would know then that the only lesson anyone learns from poverty is to take as much as you can now, for fear that there will be nothing for you later. And don’t share with anyone, for certainly they’ll never share with you.’

Will kept his eyes on the lane before his cob. He never turned his head.

‘In all my life I only ever shared with one person,’ I said, my voice very low. ‘I only ever gave anything to one person. And now she is gone. I shall never share nor give to anyone else.’

I thought for a moment. ‘And except for her,’ I said consideringly, ‘no one ever gave me a damned thing. Every penny I saw I worked for. Every crust I ate I earned. I don’t think I’m the squire you hoped for, Will Tyacke. I don’t think I’m capable of gentry charity. I’ve been poor myself, and I hate being poor, and I don’t care for poor dirty people. If I’m rich now, I’ll stay that way. I don’t ever want to be poor again.’