Meridon

26

I saw Will Tyacke hardly at all for the rest of the summer. He held to his promise to James to teach me about the land, but that was the last ride we took when he teased me and harangued me and quarrelled with me and let me ride away and then caught up with me so that we were the best of friends after all.

From that day onwards it was much more like work. He would make me known to the leaders of the haymaking gang or tell me the name of the shepherd and leave me with them, riding off as if always there was something more important to be done elsewhere. I thought the people changed towards me too. They no longer smiled slyly when they saw Will and me riding close. Somehow they knew we were no longer easy friends, and they were more businesslike with me. They would tell me what they were doing clear enough, well enough, but they did not smile and wave at me when I rode past a field.

I went down to the haymaking and watched them scything the crop under a pale warm sky, and tossing the sweet-smelling green grass to dry in the summer wind. The girls with the rakes smiled and called, ‘Good day,’ to Will with a note of affection, but to me they nodded and said nothing.

I knew what was happening and I did not blame Will for blabbing about our breach. I did not think he was the tattling sort and I did not think he would take every village slut into his confidence. But they knew that I was staying with the Haverings to learn to become a young lady. They knew that I was riding with Will to learn all I could about my land to strengthen my hand against them when the time came for me to make changes. They knew that although I had come home I was not at ease on the land, I was still rootless, hopeless in my heart. And so they wasted neither love nor words on me. They knew I did not belong. They knew I did not want to belong. I wanted to own the land. I did not care about loving it.

Every day that I rode with Will he became more like a clerk, or a bailiff or some middling sort of servant. He stopped calling me Sarah and speaking directly to me. Then one day he called me Miss Lacey and I knew myself to be set at a distance indeed. I could have summoned him back. I could have recalled the affection which had been growing between us. But…but I was damned if I would. When I saw his stiff back and his proudly held head trotting away from me I could have sworn and slung a flint under his horse’s hooves for being a stubborn fool. But I was learning to be a lady; and ladies do not swear and throw things.

I thought he was foolish and proud and I decided to ignore him. So I made no effort either to challenge or reconcile with him. Instead I was as haughty and as ill-tempered as he through all the hot summer days when the birds called for their mates and the swallows dipped and dived in the lingering lonely twilights. When I was alone at the top of the Downs, with Sea cropping the grass around me, I knew that I was missing my friends – not just her, but James Fortescue whom I had sent away, Will whom I had put at a distance, and all the people of Acre who had welcomed me with smiles and bright curious faces, and who had then learned that I would not live at Wideacre Hall, that I would not stay with them, that I was hard set on changing things, on changing everything.

I knew myself then to be bereft, but I had been so lonely and so hungry for so long that I did not jump up on Sea and ride down to Acre to seek Will out and make things clear with him. Instead I hunched up my shoulders and hugged my knees and watched the sun set redly in the sky, and huddled my feelings of loneliness and sadness within me, as a familiar longing.

In Will’s absence I rode with Perry, and sometimes Lady Clara took me around her own fields, or ordered her bailiff to drive out with me in her pale-blue lined-landau. He was a sharp hard-faced man; I could not like him. But I could recognize his ability to price a crop while it showed just inches above the soil, or to adjust a rent in his mind during the walk from the gate to the back door.

Will was right about the hardship on the Havering land. I saw it on every drive. Havering village was more like a campsite than a village. The houses were ready to tumble down and half were down already with their tenants sheltering in the lee of a wall with a half-thatched roof over their heads. The slops were thrown out in the village street, the stink under the hot summer sun was enough to turn your stomach. The people worked from dawn to dusk for wages which were as low as Lady Clara and Mr Briggs could keep them. More and more work was being done by the wretches brought in by a jolting wagon daily from Midhurst poorhouse. ‘It’s a service to the community to save them from idleness,’ Mr Briggs explained to me, smiling.

They planned to clear the village of Havering altogether. Lady Clara was sick of the dirt of it and the continual complaints which not all of Mr Briggs’s smiling threats could keep from her ears. The villagers who lived in the dirt and the squalor believed that if she really knew of their poverty she would pity them, she would do something.

‘All I’m likely to do is to set the soldiers on them and burn them out,’ she said grimly. ‘It’s disgusting how they live! They must lack all sense of shame!’

I said nothing. Will’s angry denunciations of the Quality were echoing in my head: ‘You leave them ignorant and then you complain they know nothing,’ he had said. I kept my eyes blank and I said nothing when Lady Clara threatened to clear the village.

I had thought she was threatening idly something that would never take place. But one day I came down to the parlour in my riding habit pulling on my gloves and she looked at me very hard and bright, and said: ‘Don’t go to Havering village today, Sarah, it’s being cleared.’

‘Cleared?’ I asked.

She nodded grimly. ‘I’ve had enough of them,’ she said. ‘Their complaints, their needs, their dirt and their diseases. There’s a case of the typhus fever been reported down there as well. I won’t have sickly people on my land.’

‘What will they do?’ I asked.

She shrugged. She was wearing a peach silk morning gown and that elegant movement of her shoulders made the pattern of the gown shimmer.

‘They’ll go to the Midhurst poorhouse I suppose,’ she said. ‘Any of them who can claim rights in other parishes will go to where they can, if they have money for the fare. I don’t care, it’s none of my concern. I won’t have them on my land any more.’

I hesitated. This blank ruthlessness was not new to me. I had been sold from a stepfather who despised me, to a master who loved me only when I earned him money. I saw no reason why I should worry over the fate of a dozen dirty villagers who were not even my tenants. And yet, in some part of my mind, I did worry. I did not feel comfortable to be sitting here in the sunny parlour looking at the sheen of Lady Clara’s peach silk while three miles away there were people arguing with bailiffs and begging them not to evict. I knew what it was to have nothing. I knew what it was to be homeless. I wondered what the people would do, those with young children who would be separated from them in the poorhouse. Those young women with husbands who would lose their homes and have to sleep apart.

‘I’ll ride the other way,’ I said uncertainly. ‘Towards Wideacre.’

She put both hands up and carefully smoothed her cheeks as if she would stroke away the faint fretwork of lines from under her eyes.

‘Certainly my dear,’ she said pleasantly. ‘If you see any of the evicted tenants don’t go too near. They may be carrying the fever and they will certainly be ill natured. They did have fair warning of my intentions, you know. Mr Briggs told them a day ago.’

I nodded, thinking that a day’s warning was perhaps not enough if you had been born and bred in a cottage and lived all your life there.

‘Perry can ride with you,’ she said. ‘Pull the bell.’

I did. At Havering we all did what Lady Clara wished. Within the hour Perry and I were obediently riding together up towards the Common at the back of the Havering estate.

The path wound through a little coppice of silver birches, their heart-shaped leaves shivering in the summer air. It was another hot day, the scent of the thick bracken heavy and sweet. When the path came out on a little hill Perry drew rein and we looked back.

There was little trouble in the village. We could see from where we watched a couple of soldiers standing with Mr Briggs at the end of the village street while half a dozen men went workmanlike down one side, pulling off rotting doors and knocking axes through old dusty thatch. Drawn up in the street, ahead of the wreckers, was a large cart with a handsome shire horse between the shafts. The Havering people were loading their few goods on to the cart, a man standing on the cart helping them. I screwed my eyes against the glare of the sunlight but I hardly needed to see him to know it was Will Tyacke.

‘Who’s that?’ Perry asked me.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. I lied before I had even considered the lie. ‘Perhaps someone from the poorhouse.’

‘Oh,’ Perry said innocently, and we stood for a little while, watching in silence.

The wreckers reached another house and there was a moment’s hesitation. We were too far to hear or see anything clearly but I guessed that someone inside had refused to leave. I shrugged. It was not my land and anyway Lady Clara was probably in the right. Since she was not going to spend money on making the cottages habitable they were better pulled down. The tenants would have to make lives for themselves elsewhere. There was no reason why Lady Clara should be responsible for each and every one of them.

‘What d’you think is happening?’ Perry asked. ‘The sun is so bright I can hardly see.’

I shaded my eyes with my hand. Sea stirred restlessly as he felt my weight move on the saddle.

‘Someone, I think a woman,’ I said. I could just make out a little figure standing in the dark doorway of one of the hovels. As I watched, the wreckers made a rush for her and she grabbed the post which propped the thatched porch. In a ludicrous pose, like a comical print, one of the men got hold of her legs while she clung to the post of her house.

I sniggered, and Perry laughed beside me. ‘She’ll pull it down herself if she doesn’t watch out,’ he observed.

We watched together smiling, but there was no sport. Will Tyacke went quickly to her and made the man put her on her feet. He bent over her and I saw she was quite a small woman. He put his arm around her and he led her to the cart. Out of the cottage behind her came three little children, the smallest a baby, lugged by the others.

Will lifted all of them one by one, into the cart and then went back into the cottage for their goods: a cooking pot, one stool, a clutter of plates and bedding. Not much. Even less than we had in the old days in the wagon.

‘Poor sport,’ Perry said in sudden distaste.

‘Aye,’ I said. I had a bad taste in my mouth and I went to spit but then I remembered that ladies do not spit. ‘Let’s ride!’ I said and touched Sea with my heels and turned his head.

We cantered along the crest of a hill until we came to the stone post which marked the start of my land. At once the path was wider, it had been cut back as a firebreak and there was a wide track as good as a race-course of the pure white sand bordered with the black peat of the Common.

‘Race?’ Perry called, and I nodded and held Sea back so that we drew level and then let him have his head.

We thundered along the track together, Sea going faster than I had ever known him go at the challenge from another high-bred horse. Perry’s horse was probably the better, but Sea was fitter from my daily rides. He was carrying a lighter rider too and we managed to pull ahead before the firebreak crested up a hill and I pulled up at the top.

Perry and his hunter were half a length behind us and Perry came up smiling and jumped from the saddle.

‘Lost my hat,’ he said with a grin. ‘We’ll have to go back that way.’

Without his hat his golden curls had tumbled into a blond mop. His blue eyes were clear and shining, his colour bright. Any girl in the world would have fallen in love with him at first sight.

I put my hand down and touched the top of his head. He looked up at me, and reached up to lift me down from Sea’s back, his hands on my waist for a brief moment. Then he released me as soon as my feet touched the ground.

‘I didn’t like seeing that at the village,’ he said.

I shook my head. ‘Me neither,’ I replied.

Perry turned from me and swung his jacket down on the heather. We sat side by side looking down into the Fenny valley. Havering Hall woodland was a dark mass to our right, Acre was over to our left. My home, the home I had longed for but seldom even visited was below us, hidden in the trees at the back of the house.

‘It’s Mr Briggs’s doing,’ he said. ‘I have no say in how the place is run until I am married, or reach my majority.’

‘Twenty-one?’ I asked.

He nodded. ‘Four years,’ he said.

‘It’s even longer for me,’ I said. ‘I’m only sixteen now. I’ll have to wait five years.’

Perry looked sideways at me. ‘I know it is what my mama wants,’ he said carefully. ‘And to be honest, Sarah, she told me to ask you. In fact,’ he said with scrupulous honesty, ‘she said she’d pay my gambling debts if I asked you.’

‘Asked me what?’ I said. But I knew.

‘Asked you to marry me,’ he said without any heat at all. ‘I tell you why I said I would.’ He lay on his back, as idle and as lovely as a fallen angel, and counted his white fingers up at the clear sky.

‘One, I would get hold of my land and capital. Two, you would get hold of your land and capital. Three, we could run them together and we could make sure that Wideacre is run sensibly but that people are not treated so badly as they have been on Havering. Four, we would not have to marry anyone else, or court, or go to London parties unless we wanted.’

I stretched alongside him and leaned my head on one hand so that I could watch his face.

‘Why don’t you want to court girls?’ I asked. ‘I’ve lived with you for months now and I’ve never even seen you sneak out late at night except to get drunk. Don’t you like girls, Perry?’

He turned his head to face me and his eyes were clear and untroubled.

‘That’s point five,’ he said. ‘We neither of us like being touched like that. I don’t mind my sisters, and I don’t mind you. But I cannot stand being pulled about by girls. I don’t like how they look at me. I don’t like how they stroke my sleeve or find ways of touching my shoulder or standing close to me. I just don’t like it. And I know I’ll never get married if I have to court someone and kiss them and pull them about.’

I nodded. I understood well enough. It was my own prickly independence but perhaps a little worse for a young man who would be expected to fondle and fumble and get his face slapped for his pains.

‘If we married we’d have to get an heir,’ he said bluntly. ‘But once we had a son we could live as friends. I thought you’d like that, Sarah.’

I drew my knees up to the ache in my chest and hugged myself for comfort.

‘I don’t know,’ I said softly.

Perry closed his eyes and turned his face up to the sunshine. ‘I thought it would be a way out for both of us,’ he said. ‘I know you’re afraid of going into Society, even with Mama there. This way, you’d be known as my affianced bride. You’d not have to go around so much. Men wouldn’t trouble you. My mama or my sisters could always be with you. And you could always have me there.’

I nodded. Deep inside myself I had been dreading the London Season, and cursing the obstinacy in myself which had insisted on moving in the best of circles when I was no more fined for it than any bareback dancer.

‘I’d like that,’ I conceded.

‘And you could run your own estate,’ Perry pointed out. ‘As you wanted, without having to wait all that time.’

I nodded. Five years was an unimaginable lifetime from my sixteen-year-old viewpoint. I could not imagine waiting until I was twenty-one. And the shrewd business streak in me warned me that five years was a long time to leave Will Tyacke and James Fortescue in charge of my fortune.

‘And we’re neighbours,’ Perry said. ‘If you marry anyone else they’ll take you away to live in their house. They could live anywhere. You’d only be able to get back to see Wideacre when they let you.’

‘Oh no!’ I said suddenly. ‘I hadn’t thought of that!’

‘You’d have to,’ he said. ‘And your husband would put his manager in and he might do it even worse than it’s being done already.’

I put my hand out and turned his face towards me. He opened his eyes.

‘Kiss me,’ I said.

The kiss was as gentle and as cool as the brush of his mother’s fingertips on my cheek. His lips barely touched mine, and then he pulled back and looked at me.

‘I do like you,’ he said. ‘I do want us to be friends. Mama wants us to marry and I think she is right. But I do want us to be friends anyway.’

The loneliness and sadness I carried with me always suddenly swelled and choked me as he offered his friendship. The kiss had been as light and as cool as Dandy’s good-night pecks and I suddenly thought how long it had been since I had been touched by someone who liked me. I gave a little moan and buried my face in my hands and lay face down on the heather.

I did not cry. I had promised myself that day that I would never cry again. I just lay, stiff as a board and heard myself give three or four little moans as if my heart were breaking with loneliness.

Perry did nothing. He sat there like a beautiful flower, waiting for me to have done. When I ceased and lay still he put out a hand and rested it on the nape of my neck. His hand was as cool and as soft-skinned as a woman’s.

‘I’m unhappy, too,’ he said quietly. ‘That’s why I keep drinking. I’m not the son Mama wants. That was George. She’ll never love me like she loved him. I thought that if you and I could marry we could both be less lonely. We could be friends.’

I turned around. My eyes were sore with unshed tears, as sore as if I had grit from the road blown into them. I rubbed them with the back of my gloved hand.

‘Yes,’ I said. I spoke from the depths of my loneliness and from my despair in knowing that I would never love anyone again. ‘Yes, it might work. I’ll think about it,’ I said.

Nothing could be worse than this arid waiting for the pain to pass. Perry and I were children who had been left behind. My sister had gone, his talented, brilliant brother George had gone. We two were left to inherit all the wealth and the land and the houses. We might be able to help each other feel more at home with them all. ‘Yes,’ I said.

‘All right then,’ Perry said. We got to our feet and he shook his jacket carefully and put it back on, pulling down the coat-tail and smoothing the sleeves down. ‘Mama will pay my gambling debts now,’ he said pleased. ‘Shall we tell her at dinner?’

‘Yes,’ I said. It seemed like years since someone had shared a decision with me and asked for my help. It was good to be part of an ‘us’ again, even if it were only poor silly Perry and me.

‘We can marry when the contracts have been drawn up,’ Perry said. ‘In London if you like, or here.’

‘I don’t mind,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter to me.’

Perry nodded, and cupped his hand to throw me up into the saddle.

‘Mama will be really pleased with me,’ he said and smiled up at me. He feared his mama at least as much as he loved her, probably more.

‘She’ll be pleased with both of us,’ I said, and I felt glad to be part of a family, even a cold-blooded Quality family like the Haverings. I smiled for a moment, thinking of her and her hopes of a Quality marriage, of netting some flash young squire. Who’d have thought in those days that plain dirty little Meridon would be saying ‘yes’ to marriage with a lord! My smile turned into a little rueful grimace, and then I clicked to Sea to follow Perry’s horse back down the slope. And who’d have thought that I’d say yes to a marriage not for need, nor for desire, nor in any hope. But because need and desire and hope were gone and I was instead looking for power and wealth and control over my land.

Love I did not think of at all.

We told Lady Clara that night at dinner. I think if she had shown the least gleam of satisfaction I would have been on my guard. As it was she looked at me steadily across the table and said:

‘You are very young, Sarah, this is a big step. Do you think you had not better wait until you see what London society has to offer you?’

I hesitated. ‘I thought this was your wish, Lady Clara?’ I said.

The door behind me opened and the butler came to clear the table. Lady Clara made one of her graceful gestures and he bowed at once and withdrew. I knew I would never in a million years learn how to do that.

‘Certainly it is my wish that the estates be run together, and I can think of no two more suitable young people,’ she said. ‘Your upbringing has been unusual, Sarah, but Perry is the only young man of Quality that I know who is entirely free from any snobbery. He is informal to a fault, and you two are clearly very fond of each other.’ She paused and smiled slightly at Perry who was sitting on her right, between us. ‘And you two are well suited in temperament,’ she said delicately.

Perry looked glumly down at his plate and I nearly snorted with suppressed laughter at the thought of Lady Clara recommending him to me because he was cold and I was unwomanly.

‘But I do not know what Mr Fortescue will say,’ she said. ‘It will mean that you can take the running of the estate away from him at once.’

‘There is nothing he can say,’ I said brusquely. ‘The matter will be out of his hands. He cannot control my choice of husband, and in any case, no one could object to me marrying Perry who is a lord, and a neighbour, and a cousin.’

‘Voice,’ said Lady Clara.

‘Sorry,’ I said.

She raised her eyebrow at me.

‘I mean, I beg your pardon,’ I amended.

She smiled.

Perry kept his head down and poured himself another glass of port.

‘If you are so determined then there is nothing I can say,’ Lady Clara said with a fair show of helplessness. ‘The engagement can be announced at once. Then Perry can be with you at all the balls and parties of the Season and when the Season is over we can come back here and perhaps have a wedding next spring at Chichester cathedral.’

I nodded and Perry said nothing.

‘You should write to Mr Fortescue at once to tell him of your decision,’ Lady Clara said. ‘And inform him that I will be notifying my solicitors to draw up a marriage contract. They will contact his solicitors for sight of the deeds of Wideacre, of course.’

‘Wideacre will still be mine,’ I said. ‘It is entailed upon the oldest child, whether male or female.’

Lady Clara smiled. ‘Of course, Sarah,’ she said. ‘It will be entailed upon your first-born. Havering is entailed upon the first-born son. There should be enough meat in that to keep the lawyers occupied all summer and autumn.’

‘But Wideacre will still be mine,’ I repeated.

Lady Clara paused. ‘Married women cannot own property, Sarah,’ she said gently. ‘You know that. Wideacre will become Peregrine’s when you marry. Any husband of yours would own Wideacre.’

I frowned. ‘Even though it is me that inherited it?’ I asked.

‘Even though it is I who…’ Lady Clara amended.

‘There’s nothing I can do about that?’ I queried.

‘It is the law of the land,’ she said dryly. ‘Wealthier women than you have had to hand over bigger fortunes. But you could consult your lawyer or Mr Fortescue if you wish. You’ll still be better off with the estate properly run under Peregrine’s name, than held for you by Mr Fortescue and his band of Jacobins.’

I nodded. ‘I know that,’ I said certainly.

‘Anyway, Sarah can run it herself,’ Peregrine said. He had taken another glass of port and his cheeks were pink. He smiled at me very sweetly. ‘No reason why not,’ he said. ‘She’s been riding all around learning about the fields. If she doesn’t want a bailiff she could run it herself.’

Lady Clara nodded and picked up her fan. ‘Certainly,’ she said. ‘That is for the two of you to decide. How nice to have another wedding in the family!’

Peregrine rose steadily enough and took his mother’s arm as she went towards the door. He opened it and held it wide for her and me to pass through. As I went by he gave me a grin as brotherly and warm as an urchin who has scraped out of an adventure.

‘Pretty fair,’ he said under his breath, and went back to the table.