Meridon

20

Mr Fortescue was waiting for us in the stable yard. He asked Will to stay for dinner but Will said he had to go. He waited while I slid down from the saddle and then nodded to Mr Fortescue and to me.

‘I’ll come back this evening,’ he said. ‘When I finish work at dark.’

Then he gave me a friendly smile which also seemed somehow forgiving. Then he rode away.

‘I had better wash,’ I said. I put a hand to my cheek and felt the grime from the dust of the road.

‘Becky Miles has put some clothes in your room,’ Mr Fortescue offered, his voice carefully neutral. ‘They belonged to your mother, but she thinks they would fit you if you cared to try them.’

I could tell he was trying hard to pass no comment on my eccentricity of boys’ clothes. I looked down at the shabby breeches and jacket and I laughed.

‘It’s all right, Mr Fortescue,’ I said. ‘I know I cannot dress like a stable lad for the rest of my life. I was wanting to ask you about clothes. I also need to ask you about all sorts of other things which I will have to learn.’

Mr Fortescue brightened. ‘I only hope I can help you,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk over dinner.’

I nodded and went indoors and up to my room.

For the thousandth time that day I had a pang of pain and anger that she could not be with me, when I saw what was laid out on the bed.

It was the finest riding habit of plum velvet, edged with silky violet ribbon in a great double border. There was a matching tricorne hat to go with it, and dark leather boots with silky tassels and even cream-coloured stockings with plum clocks on the side.

I thought of how she would have flown at them and how ravishing she would have looked in them and I had to lean back against the panels of the door and take a deep breath to ease the sudden pain which thudded, as hard as a blow into my belly, at the thought that she would never see them. That in all her beauty-seeking life she had never known anything better than rags and trumpery.

So there was little delight for me in the thick smooth feel of the cloth, nor the fineness of the linen shirt and stock that went underneath. But when I had slipped on the skirt and gone to the mirror in the smart little boots I could smile with some pleasure at my reflection.

It was a half-mirror so I could not see the hem of the gown nor the boots without dragging over a chair and standing high on it to admire them. Then I slowly got down and saw how my linen shirt looked white against the neat purple waistband of the skirt, and how I looked somehow taller and older and quite strange and unlike myself. I stared at my face. The hazy green eyes looked back, the lines of my cheek, of my throat above the tumble of lace as clear as a drawn line.

My hair was still hopeless. I made a few half-hearted passes at it with the silver-backed brush but the soft bristles slid over the curls and the tangles and hardly straightened them at all. It remained an obstinate tumble of copper curls half-way down my back, and only the memory of the ragged mess of a bob stopped me from ringing for Becky Miles to bring me some scissors and hacking it all off again.

I turned from the glass and went down to dinner, feeling already stronger and more confident in boots which clicked on the floorboards of the hall and did not clump.

Mr Fortescue was waiting for me in the dining room and when he saw me his jaw dropped and he gaped like a country child at mummers.

‘Good God!’ he said.

Becky Miles who was setting a soup tureen on the table swung around and nearly dropped it in her surprise.

‘Miss Sarah!’ she said. ‘You look beautiful!’

I felt myself flush as vain and as silly as a market-day slut.

‘Thank you,’ I said steadily and took my seat at the head of the table.

Mr Fortescue sat at my right-hand side and Becky Miles loaded the rest of the expanse of mahogany with as many dishes as she could, to conceal the fact that there were just the two of us, camped out at one end of the table.

‘Did you enjoy your ride?’ Mr Fortescue asked politely as he started to eat his soup.

I watched him. He did not bend over his bowl and spoon directly from bowl to mouth with as little distance as possible. Nor had he crumbled his bread up into hearty bits to float in the soup as I had already done. I flushed again, this time with annoyance. He had kept his bread on his plate and every now and then broke off a little piece and buttered it. I tried to sit straighter but it seemed to put me a long way off from the table. I was sure my hand would shake as I was lifting the soup to my lips and then I would drop soup on my new dress. I remembered the small cloth and spread it on my lap. It all seemed designed to make it harder to eat. But if this was the way it had to be done I thought I could pick it up in time.

‘Yes, it was a nice ride,’ I agreed inattentively. When Mr Fortescue finished his soup he did not wipe around his bowl with a piece of bread. He left the bowl dirty, he left nigh on a whole spoonful spread around the bottom. I followed his example though I watched the wasted soup longingly as Becky Miles took the bowl away.

She set a great silver salver with a rib of beef on it before Mr Fortescue and he started carving into wafer-thin slices which he laid in a fan on a plate for me and Becky Miles walked around the table and placed it before me. The smell of the roast beef, dark on the outside and pinky in the middle, made me lean forward and sniff, water rushing into my mouth. Becky Miles brought me roast potatoes, crunchy and brown, new potatoes glazed with butter, tiny young carrots and new peas and half a dozen things which looked like green miniature bulrushes.

‘Do you like asparagus, Sarah?’ Mr Fortescue said, pointing at them.

‘I don’t know,’ I said honestly. ‘I’ve never had them before.’

‘Try one or two then,’ he recommended. ‘We grow them on the Home Farm here under glass. Will Tyacke has it in mind to put some more glass houses up and grow more of it.’

I nodded and Becky Miles put two of the green slivers on my plate.

She held out a great sauce boat of deep red shiny gravy and poured it thickly over the meat.

I was so hungry I could have grabbed my knife and cut up the bigger bits at once and shovelled the rest into my mouth with the spoon. But I forced myself to wait and watch Mr Fortescue.

He took an age, while I sat there and my nostrils flared at the scent of the food and I ached to begin. First he was served with all the vegetables, then Becky Miles brought wine for him and water and wine for me. I would rather have had small beer, but I did not feel able to say so. Then finally, after he had made a little pile of salt at the edge of his plate he picked up his knife and his fork, at once, in both hands and cut and prodded, and managed to talk at the same time without showing what he was chewing.

It was beyond me. I ate as daintily as I could but when I was trying to cut the meat some gravy slopped over the side of my plate and stained the tablecloth. And the asparagus dripped butter into my lap so the napkin was soiled. If I had not been so starving hungry I should have lost my appetite at the discomfort of sitting opposite such a neat feeder as Mr Fortescue. But I had been hungry once, and he had not, and I was sure that the difference between us went deeper than manners. He could see food as something he could leave or take, as he pleased, with the knowledge that there were other meals if he wished for them. I ate as if I might never see food again, and I thought I should never learn to treat meal times lightly.

After the meat there was apple pie and a creamy kind of dish which Becky Miles served in a glass. After that came some cheeses and biscuits and port for Mr Fortescue and a glass of sweet yellowy ratafia for me. I thought of Robert Gower offering David a glass of port after dinner, that time. It seemed like another lifetime. It seemed as if they were years away from me.

‘Now Sarah,’ Mr Fortescue said gently as Becky Miles cleared away everything but a bowl of fruit on the table and the two decanters. ‘If this were a proper household you would withdraw to the parlour and leave me to my port and my cigar. But since it is just the two of us will you sit with me?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

He seemed to be waiting. He gave me a little smile. ‘And may I smoke?’ he asked. ‘I know it is a disgusting habit, but…’

I looked at him in utter incredulity. ‘Why d’you ask me?’ I demanded.

‘Because you’re a lady,’ he said. ‘A gentleman cannot smoke in a lady’s presence without her specific permission.’

I was still blank. ‘Whyever not?’ I asked. ‘What’s it to do with her?’

Mr Fortescue could not seem to explain. ‘I suppose it is about showing respect,’ he offered.

We looked at each other in mutual incomprehension.

‘I’m never going to understand this,’ I said miserably. ‘I’ll need to have someone to teach me.’

Mr Fortescue brought out a little silver pair of scissors and snipped at the end of his cigar, then he lit it, and blew out thoughtfully, watching the smoke curling off the glowing ember.

‘I’ve had some thoughts on that,’ he offered. ‘There’s something I can suggest. What you are going to need is the education of a country lady.’ He stopped and smiled. ‘Nothing very sophisticated! Your mother was brought up here with only the teaching of her mother. She never saw a city bigger than Chichester until she went to Bath. She never went to London at all.’

He glanced at me. I kept my face still.

‘I spoke with my sister Marianne, as soon as I heard you had come home. Marianne was a special friend of your mother’s and she suggested to me that as soon as you are settled here you will need a companion. Fortunately she knows someone who might do. It is a lady who used to be a governess. She’s a friendly lady, the widow of a naval officer and the daughter of a country squire herself so she would understand the life you are going to lead. She’d be prepared to come here and to teach you the things you need to know. To read, and to write. How to run a house and how to engage servants. What your duties are in the house and what church and charitable works you should do.’

He paused, waiting for a response from me. ‘It’s not all dull,’ he said encouragingly. ‘She’ll teach you how to dance and how to play the piano and sing and paint. She’ll teach you how to ride side-saddle, and you can go hunting. She’ll chaperone you into country society and advise you about the people who you can visit and those you should not meet.’

Still I said nothing. Mr Fortescue poured himself another glass of port. I knew he was uncomfortable with my silence. He could not judge for himself what it meant.

‘Sarah,’ he said gently. ‘If you mislike any of these plans you need only say. All I want to do is the best for you. I am your guardian until your marriage or until you are twenty-one but I know you are no ordinary young lady. You have special needs and special abilities. Please tell me what you would like, and I will try and provide it for you.’

‘I am not sure yet,’ I said. And I spoke the truth although certainty was gathering around me all the time. ‘I’ve been angry since I came here, but neither you nor that Will Tyacke pay me any mind at all.’

James Fortescue smiled at me through the cigar smoke.

‘I don’t know enough about this life to be able to say what I want,’ I said. ‘It’s clear you don’t plan that I should run the estate like my mother did. I saw her apple orchard today and Will told me that she supervised the planting of it herself.’

‘No,’ Mr Fortescue said definitely. ‘I don’t want you working directly on the land. It would be contrary to your mother’s wishes and quite contrary to the way the estate is now run. For the past sixteen years, ever since your birth and your mama’s death, the estate has been developed by the people who work here, for themselves.

‘There is no place now for a squire of the old sort to run the land. The time when a Lacey squire was needed to keep the village together has long gone. It is run now as a joint venture by the labourers themselves and that is what your mother wished for it. She specifically told me that she did not want her daughter to be another Lacey squire. She wanted you to have the house and the gardens and the parkland – and you will see for yourself that is a handsome legacy – but she wanted the farming land, the Common land and the Downs to be owned legally and entirely by the village.’

I nodded. That was what I had thought he would say.

‘So the life you think I should live is mostly idle?’ I asked. I was careful to keep my voice neutral so that he could not shape his answer to please me.

‘As you wish,’ he said agreeably. ‘My sister Marianne works long hours and gets much pleasure out of a charitable school she set up all on her own for the education of young orphans or children abandoned by their parents. Her husband is an alderman of London and she saw much poverty and hardship. She works longer hours than I do! Yet she is unpaid. She leads a most worthwhile life. There are many good causes you could work for here, Sarah.’

I kept my lashes lowered over the gleam in my green eyes. I knew what his sister Marianne was like. When I was little we used to pick the pockets of her sort most successfully. One of us would sit on a lady’s silken lap and cry and say our da beat her, and one of us would take a sharp little knife and cut the strings which tied her purse to her belt and run off with the booty. We were caught only once and when we burst into floods of tears the lady made us promise never never to do it again or Baby Jesus would not be able to save us from hell. We promised readily and she gave us a shilling out of her recovered purse. A simpleton.

‘Or you could pursue interests of your own,’ Mr Fortescue went on. ‘If you found you had a talent for music or singing or painting you could work at that. Or if that horse of yours is anything to go by, you could find a good manager and have him set up a stud of horses.’

I nodded. ‘And there are people who could teach me everything I need to know?’ I asked. ‘Music teachers and dance teachers and manners teachers? I could learn everything?’

He smiled as if I was being engagingly eager. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Mrs Redwold could teach you everything you need to know. She could teach you to be a young country lady.’

‘How long?’ I asked.

‘I beg your pardon?’ he said.

‘How long?’ I asked. ‘How long would it take for me to learn everything about being a young lady.’

He smiled at that as if the question were funny. ‘I think one learns good manners all one’s life,’ he said. ‘But I should think you would be comfortable in good society within a year.’

A year! I thought to myself. It had taken me less than that to learn to be a bareback rider with my own act. It had taken her two months to learn tricks on the trapeze. Either gentry skills were very difficult – or else they were full of nonsense and idiocy, like eating things while sitting so far away that you were certain to drop them.

I said nothing and Mr Fortescue leaned forward and poured me another glass of ratafia.

‘It’s a lot to take in,’ he said gently. ‘And you must be tired, this is your first day up after your illness. Would you like to go to your bedroom now? Or sit in the parlour?’

I nodded. I was learning some of the gentry rules already. He did not mean he thought I was tired, he meant he did not want to talk to me any more. I felt a bad taste in my mouth and I went to spit but caught myself in time. ‘I am tired,’ I said. ‘I think I shall go to my room. Good-night, Mr Fortescue.’

He got to his feet as I went towards the door and he went past me and opened it for me. I hesitated, thinking he meant to go out too but then I realized he had opened it for me for politeness’ sake. He took my right hand and raised it to his lips and kissed it. Without thinking what I was doing I whipped it away and put it behind my back.

‘I beg your pardon!’ he said, surprised. ‘I just meant to say good-night.’

I flushed scarlet with embarrassment. ‘I am sorry,’ I said gruffly. ‘I don’t like people touching me, I never have.’

He nodded as if he understood; but I wagered he didn’t.

‘Good-night, Sarah,’ he said. ‘Please ring the bell if there is anything you want. Shall I ask Becky Miles to bring you up a cup of tea later?’

‘Yes please,’ I said. Having a cup of tea in bed would be comfortingly like eating dinner in my bunk, in the old days when it was too cold to eat out of doors, or when we were so tired we took our dinners into our bunks with us and dropped the tin plates down on the floor when we had done.

I had never thought then that I would look back on those times with any of this lonely longing I had now.

‘And you may call me James if you wish,’ he said. ‘Uncle James, if you prefer.’

‘I have no family,’ I said dully. ‘I won’t pretend to an uncle I don’t have. I’ll call you James.’

He made a little bow with a smile but he took care not to take my hand again.

‘James,’ I said as I turned to leave, ‘how often do you come down to the estate?’

He looked surprised. ‘Once a quarter,’ he said. ‘I come down to meet with Will and I make up the books for the quarter.’

I nodded. ‘How do you know he is not cheating you?’ I asked bluntly.

He looked deeply shocked. ‘Sarah!’ he exclaimed, as if it were wrong to even think such a thing. But then he recollected himself and he gave me a rueful smile.

‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘This evening you look so like a demure young lady it is hard to remember that you have been brought up in a quite different world. I know he is not cheating me because he brings me bills of sale for all his purchases for the estate and we agree what the main expenses are to be each quarter before he buys them. I know he is not cheating me because I see the wage bills of the estate. I know he is not cheating me because the village is on a profit-sharing system with the estate and he sees that we all get good profits and thus a good share. And finally, but most important to me, I know he is not cheating me because, although he is so young, he is an honest man. I trusted his cousin and I trust him.’

I nodded. The trust based on bills of sale and agreed expenditure I understood but ignored. I don’t believe I had ever seen a straight reckoning in all my life. Bills of sale meant nothing. Same for the wages bill. The trust based on Will Tyacke as an honest man was worth a good deal. It also told me something that I needed to know about how the estate was run.

‘Does the corn mill pay rent?’ I asked.

James Fortescue’s look of surprise that I was thinking of such a thing turned into a smile. ‘Now Sarah,’ he remonstrated. ‘You need not puzzle your head with such detail. The corn mill has paid no rent since the setting up of the Acre corporation. The corn mill was obviously a separate business and is run in the same way as the blacksmith’s forge or the cartering business. They charge special rates, or no rates to Acre people and they make their profits with outside customers. They take a share in the profits of the village when they work as labourers, otherwise they are independent. When the village was getting back to work Will’s cousin Ted Tyacke and I decided that the mill should pay no rent so that it could work for free for Acre. Things have stayed that way.’

I nodded. ‘I see,’ I said quietly, then I half concealed a pretended yawn. ‘Oh! I’m tired,’ I said. ‘I’ll go to bed.’

‘Sleep well,’ he said gently. ‘If you are interested in business you can have your first lesson on how to read the estate books in the morning. But you will need a night’s rest for that. Sleep well, Sarah.’

I smiled at him, a smile I had learned long ago from her when she was trying to be charming, an endearing childlike sleepy smile. Then I went slowly towards the staircase.

I had heard enough for one night. James Fortescue might be an astute man of business in Bristol and London – though I frankly doubted that – but in the country here he could have been cheated every day for sixteen years. He trusted entirely in one man who acted as clerk, manager and foreman. Will Tyacke decided what was to be spent and what was to be declared as profit. Will Tyacke decided what share individuals in the village could claim from the common fund. Will Tyacke decided on my share of the profits. And Will Tyacke was Acre born and bred and had no wish to see the Laceys taking a fortune from the village, or even claiming their own again.

My fingers touched the carved newel-post at the foot of the stairs and I heard a cool voice in my head which said, ‘This is mine.’

It was mine. The newel-post, the shadowy sweet-smelling hall, the land outside stretching up to the slopes of the Downs and the Downs themselves stretching up to the horizon. It was mine and I had not come all this way home to learn to be a pretty parlour Miss in that sickly pink room. I had come here to claim my rights and to keep my land, and to carve out an inheritance of my own whatever it cost me, whatever it cost others.

I was not the milk-and-water pauper they thought me. I was a rogue’s stepdaughter and a gypsy’s foster child. We had been thieves and vagrants all our lives, for every day of our lives. My own horse I had won in a bet, the only money I had ever earned had been for trick riding and card sharping. I was not one of these soft Sussex people. I was not even like their paupers. I was no grateful village maid, I was a baby abandoned by its mother, raised by a gypsy, sold by a stepfather and wise in every gull and cheat that can be learned on the road. I would learn to read the estate books so that I would know how much this fancy profit-sharing scheme had cost, and who were the rogues who were cheating me. I would take my place in the Hall as a working squire, not as the idle milksop they hoped I would be. I had not come home to sit on a sofa and take tea. I had come through heartbreak and loneliness and despair for something more than that.

I walked lightly up the stairs and sat for a while on the window-seat in my bedroom looking out over the sunlit garden, watching the pale clouds gather away to my right and turn palest pink as the sun sank towards them. ‘This is mine,’ I said to myself, as cold as if it were mid-winter. ‘This is mine.’