Meridon

35

The blackness lasted for a long time. Then from far away there was the sound of a robin singing, so I knew it was winter. There was a smell of flowers, not the familiar clogged smell of sweat. There was no sound of the rasping breathing, I could breathe. I could feel the blessed air going in and out of my body without a struggle. I raised my chin, just slightly. The pillow was cool under my neck, the sheets were smooth. There was no pain, the rigid labouring muscles were at peace, my throat had eased. I was through the worst of it.

I knew it before anyone else. I had woken in the grey light of morning and I could see the nurse dozing before the embers of the fire. It was not until Emily came in to make up the fire and wake the nurse and send her away for the day that anyone looked at me. Emily’s face was there when I opened my eyes after dozing and I saw her eyes widen.

‘I’ll be damned,’ she said. Then she raced to the idle old woman at the fireside and pulled at her arm.

‘Wake up! Wake up! You ole butter-tub!’ she said. ‘Wake and look at Miss Sairey! She’s through ain’t she! She’s stopped sweatin’ ain’t she? She ain’t hot! She’s broke the fever and she’s well, ain’t she?’

The nurse lurched up from her chair and came to stare at me. I looked back. Her ugly strawberry face never wavered.

‘Can you hear me, dearie?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ I said. My voice was thin, but it was clear at last.

She nodded. ‘She’s through,’ she said to Emily. ‘You’d best get her summat sustaining from the kitchen.’ She nodded magisterially. ‘I could do with some vittles too,’ she said.

Emily scooted towards the door and I heard her feet scamper down the hall. The fat old woman looked at me calculatingly.

‘D’you remember that they did marry you?’ she asked bluntly.

I nodded.

‘’E slept with your door open to ‘is room, an’ all,’ she said. ‘It’s right and tight. Was it what you wanted?’

I nodded. She could be damned for her curiosity. And I did not want to think of Perry, or Lady Clara, of the doctor who had been promised the Dower House on my land, nor of the rector who had married me while I could not speak. All I wanted to do was to hear the robin singing and look at the clouds moving across the white winter sky, and to feel the joy of my hand which was no longer clenched and sticky with sweat and a breath which came smoothly to me, like gentle waves on a light sea. I had come through typhus. I was well.

I was weary enough though. In the weeks that followed it was as if I were a chavvy again, learning to walk. It was days before I could do more than sit up in my bed without aching with tiredness. Then one day I made it to the chair by the fireside on my own. A little later on and I bid Emily help me into a loose morning dress and I made myself walk out into the corridor and to the head of the stairs before I called her and said I was too faint and would have to go back to my room. But the next day I got downstairs, and the day after that I stayed downstairs and took tea.

It was not little Miss Sarah who had come through the fever. It was not that faint shadow of a lady of Quality who had fought through. It was not little Miss Sarah who ordered Emily through gritted teeth to damn well give her an arm and help her walk, even while her legs turned to jelly beneath her.

It was the old strength of Meridon, the fighting, swearing, tough little Rom chavvy. A lady of Quality would have died. You had to be as strong as whipcord to survive a fever like that, and nursing like that. A lady of Quality would have been an invalid for life if she had survived. But I would not rest, I would not have a day bed made for me in the parlour. Every day I went a little further, every day I stayed up for a little longer. And one day, only a week after I had first walked across my room, I had them bring Sea round from the stables, up to the very front door, and I walked down the steps without an arm to support me and laid my white face against his grey nose and smelled the good honest smell of him.

It was that smell, and the sight of him all restive in a London street which took me back in to the parlour, to rest again, and to ready myself for a talk with Peregrine.

I had hardly seen him, or Lady Clara, since my recovery. Lady Clara was out of the house at all hours. At first I could not understand why, and then Emily let slip some gossip from the servants’ hall. Lady Clara was running all around town trying to keep the lid on scandal about her daughter Maria. Only months into marriage Maria was humping her piano tutor, and if Lady Clara did not buy the man off and silence Maria’s complaints, and scotch the rumour fast, it would reach the ears of the hapless husband; and Basil was already weary of Maria’s dress bills, and her temper, and her sulks.

I knew Lady Clara well enough to know that she was not doing this for love for her daughter, nor for her respect for the holy estate. She was in mortal terror that Basil would throw Maria out, and she would be back home with the piano tutor in tow, her reputation ruined: a costly disgrace to her family.

Lady Clara said as much to me when we passed on the stairs that afternoon.

‘I am glad to see you up, dear,’ she said. ‘And glad to see you are well enough to dine downstairs. Perry is home from Newmarket tomorrow, is he not?’

‘Yes,’ I said. I hesitated, my hand on the cold metal banister. ‘You look tired, Lady Clara.’

She made a little face. ‘I am,’ she said. ‘But I have to go out at once to Maria. Basil is coming home to dine this evening and I dare not let the two of them be alone together. Maria has such a sharp tongue she’ll goad him, I know it. There are enough people who would tell him what has been going on if he were willing to hear it. I shall have to be a peace-maker.’

I looked at her coolly. ‘You specialize in profitable marriage-making,’ I said. ‘But making the marriage stick is more difficult, is it not?’

She met my eyes with a gaze as hard as my own. ‘Not when it suits both parties,’ she said bluntly. ‘Maria is a fool and cannot see beyond her own passions. You are not. You have access to Perry’s fortune and to your own. You are welcome to live in the country, in the town, or on the moon for all I care. You wanted to be launched into society and I did that for you. I will sponsor you at Court, your child will be the biggest landowner in Sussex. You consented to your marriage Sarah, and it will serve you well. I’ll take no blame.’

I nodded. ‘I’ll learn to live with it,’ I said and my voice was hard. ‘But I did not consent.’

She shrugged. She was too wise and too clever to be drawn. ‘It will serve you well,’ she said again. ‘And anyway, now you have no choice.’

I nodded, but I still had a gleam of hope that I might get free. It was one thing to consent to marriage to Perry when I pitied him, and pitied myself and respected – almost loved – Lady Clara. It was another damned thing altogether when I had seen Perry steal from my purse when I was ill, and seen Lady Clara rob me of my lands when she thought I was dying. If I could break free I would. And if I could break free there would be Wideacre, waiting for me. And Will might still be there.

I sent a footman flying with a note to James Fortescue’s lawyer and took him privately into the dining room and told him bluntly what had happened. His jaw dropped and he strode around the room like a restive cat before placing himself before the hearth.

‘I did not know!’ he said. ‘All I heard was a special licence because you were unwell. And I knew you had been living in this house as part of the family for months.’

I nodded. ‘I’m not blaming you,’ I said. I had little energy for this conversation and I wanted to hear if I was indeed, trapped tight. ‘I’m not blaming you,’ I said. ‘It is no one’s fault. But tell me if the marriage is valid. If I have any choice now?’

He turned to the fire and studied the logs. ‘Has he slept in your bed?’ he asked delicately.

I nodded. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘They took care of that. But we never did it.’

His whole body jumped as if I had stuck him with a pin at my indelicacy. But I was little Miss Sarah no more.

‘I see,’ he said slowly, to cover his nervousness. ‘So a medical examination, if you could bear to allow such a thing would establish that you are indeed…’ he hesitated.

‘An examination by a doctor?’ I asked.

He nodded. ‘To prove non-consummation of the marriage, with a view to obtaining an annulment,’ he said watching the hearthrug beneath his boots and blushing like a schoolboy.

I thought of the horses I had ridden and the tumbles I had taken. I thought of riding bareback and climbing trees. I made a grimace at his turned-away face.

‘I’ve not had a man, but I doubt I could prove it,’ I said. ‘Where I come from there’s few girls who stain their sheets on their wedding night. We all live too hard.’

He nodded as if he understood. I knew damn well he did not.

‘Then we would be faced with the problem of obtaining a divorce,’ he said carefully. ‘And a divorce would not return your lands to you, even if it were possible.’

I leaned back against the padding of the chair. I was very weary indeed. ‘Let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘I cannot get the marriage annulled.’

He nodded.

‘I might be able to get divorced.’

‘Only for flagrant abuse and cruelty,’ he interjected softly.

I shot an inquiring look at him.

‘Imprisonment, torture, beatings, that sort of thing,’ he said quietly.

I nodded. Where I came from, if you were tired of your husband or he was tired of you, you could stand up in a public place and announce you were man and wife no more. That was the end of it and you went your ways. But the Quality had to think about land and heirs.

‘I’ve had none of that,’ I said. ‘But even if I had, and I could make a divorce stick, are you telling me that I’d not get my land back?’

The lawyer turned from the fire and faced me, and his expression was kindly but distant.

‘It is his land now,’ he said. ‘He is your husband and master. Everything you owned at marriage became his, at marriage. It is his to do with as he pleases. This is the law of the land, Lady Havering.’ He paused. ‘And you have been offered a most generous allowance and settlement,’ he said. ‘I have seen the contract and it is very generous indeed. But both religion, law and our traditions insist that it is better if the husband owns everything.’

‘Everything?’ I asked. I was thinking of the beech coppice on the way up to the Downs where the sun filters through the leaves and the shadows shift on the nutty brown leaf-mould at the foot of the treetrunks.

‘Everything,’ he said.

I nodded. ‘I’m good and wed then,’ I said. ‘And I’d best make the most of it.’

He picked up his hat and his gloves. ‘I am sorry for this confusion during your illness,’ he said formally. ‘But once you put your name to the marriage register the deed was done.’

I managed a smile, my hard-eyed beggar-girl smile. ‘I understand,’ I said. ‘And I should have been on my guard. I’d lived among thieves all my life, Mr Penkiss. I should have known I was among them still.’

He dipped his head at that. He did not quite like the widow of a peer of the realm being lumped among a parcel of thieves, but he was paid by the estate which had been mine and he would not correct me to my face.

He went and I rang the bell for Emily. I wanted her strong young arm around me to help me upstairs to rest on my bed. I was as weak as a half-drowned kitten.

I did not see Perry during the long weeks of my convalescence because he was out of town, at Newmarket for the races. He came home the day after my conversation with the lawyer, on a bright crisp January day with the smell of snow in the air that not all the smog of the London streets could steal.

I had tried a drive out in Lady Clara’s oversprung landau and was coming in, weary with overtaxing myself in my gritty struggle back to health. Perry was bright as a new guinea, golden-haired, blue-eyed, smiling like sunshine.

He was also drunk as a wheelbarrow. He fell out of the travelling chaise and giggled like a baby in sunshine. The footmen coming gracefully down the steps to fetch in his baggage suddenly put on a turn of speed and heaved him up out of the gutter. Perry’s legs went from under him and tried to race off in opposite directions while he laughed aloud.

‘Why Sarah!’ he said catching sight of me. ‘You up and about already! You look wonderful!’

I scowled at him. I knew I was as white as ice and my hair was a copper mop of curls again which looked ridiculous under a bonnet and half-bald under a cap.

‘I’ve had such luck!’ he said joyously. ‘I’ve won and won, I am weighed down with guineas Sarah! I’ll take you out to the theatre tonight to celebrate!’

‘Bring him in,’ I said abruptly to the footmen, and went ahead of them into the parlour.

Perry walked steadier when he was in the house. He dropped into a chair and beamed at me.

‘I really have done well, you know,’ he offered.

I managed a thin smile. ‘I’m glad,’ I said.

There was a tap on the door and the parlourmaid came in with tea. I took a seat by the fireside and my cup when she handed it to me. Perry drank his eagerly and refilled it several times. ‘It’s good to be home,’ he said.

‘I’ve seen my lawyer,’ I said abruptly. ‘The marriage is unbreakable and the contracts are going through. They’ll send the deeds of Wideacre to you at once.’

Perry nodded, his face sobering. ‘I was washed up, Sarah,’ he said. ‘I was quite under the hatches. It would have been the debtors prison for me if we had not married.’

I nodded, but my face was stony.

He shrugged. ‘Mama said…’ he started, then he broke off. ‘I’m damned sorry if you are angry with me, Sarah,’ he said. ‘But I could think of nothing else. The doctor told us you would die, I was not even thinking of getting Wideacre. I was just thinking of getting my own money, and I thought you would not mind. It’s not as if you wanted to marry anyone else, after all. And we are very well suited.’

I looked at him, I was too weary for anger. I looked at him and I saw him as he was. A weakling and a drunkard. A man too fearful to stand up to his own mother and too foolish to stay out of gambling and off the bottle. A man no woman could fall in love with, a man no woman could respect. And I thought about myself – a woman spoiled from the earliest childhood so she could not stand a man’s touch, nor accept a man’s love. A woman who had dreamed all her life of living in a certain way, of seeking a certain place. And when I had found it, it had meant very little.

I was no longer little Miss Sarah with her hopes of a brilliant London season and her eagerness to learn how society people lived, her belief in the best. I was Meridon who had been cheated until my heart was hard all my childhood, and had been robbed in adulthood by the people I had thought of as a refuge.

‘We’re well suited,’ I said wearily. ‘But I don’t have a lot of hopes for us.’

Perry looked dashed. ‘You wanted to go home…’ he offered ‘Home to the country. When you’re well enough for the journey, we could go to Havering,’ he glanced at me. ‘Or Wideacre if you’d prefer.’

I nodded. ‘I would like that,’ I said. ‘I would like to go to Wideacre as soon as possible. I should be well enough to travel in a few days. Let’s go then.’

He gave me a little smile, as appealing as a child.

‘You’re not really angry are you Sarah?’ he asked. ‘I didn’t mean to make you angry, or disappoint you. It was Mama who was sure. Everyone was certain that you would die, I didn’t think you’d mind doing it. It would have made no difference to you, after all.’

I got to my feet, steadying myself with a hand on the mantelpiece.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t really mind. There was no one else I wanted to marry. It is not what I planned, that’s all.’

Perry stumbled as he went to hold the door open for me. ‘You are Lady Havering now,’ he said encouragingly. ‘You must like that.’

I looked down the long years to my childhood to where the dirty-faced little girl lay in her bunk and dreamed of having a proper name, and a proper home, and belonging in a gracious and beautiful landscape. ‘I should do,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘I’ve wanted it all my life.’

That reassured him and he took my hand and kissed it gently. I held still. Perry had inherited his mother’s diffidence, he would never grab me, or overwhelm me with kisses, or brush against me for the pleasure of my touch. I was glad of that, I still liked a distance between me and any other person. He let me go and I went past him and up the shallow stone stairs to my bedroom to lie on the bed and look at the ceiling and keep myself from thinking.

For the next week I worked at becoming stronger. Lady Clara complained that I never went into society at all. ‘Hardly worth your while to make me take the title of Dowager if you’re going to be a hermit,’ she said to me at dinner one day.

I gave her half a smile. ‘I am too grand to mix with the common people,’ I said.

That made her laugh and she did not tease me further. She was still too busy trying to keep Maria with her husband to waste much time on me. A notice of our private marriage had appeared in the paper but all of Lady Clara’s friends knew that I had been seriously ill. They would hold parties for me later on. I told everyone I met in the park that I was not well enough to do more than ride a little and walk, at present.

Sea was very good. He had missed our daily rides and the grooms in the stables did not like to take him out because he was frisky and naughty. If a high-sided coach went past him he shied, if someone shouted out in the street he would be half-way across the road before they could steady him down, and if they so much as touched him with a whip he would be up on his hindlegs in a soaring rear and they could not hold him.

But with me he was as gentle as if he were a retired hack. The first outing I let the groom lift me into the saddle and I gathered up the reins and waited to see what would come. I would have felt a good deal safer astride, but we were in the stable courtyard and I was in my green riding habit, pale as skimmed milk in the rich colour.

I had a silly little cap perched on my head instead of my usual bonnet – but with only short curls no pins would hold. Lady Clara had been scandalized when I had threatened to ride bareheaded.

Sea snuffed the air, as if wondering whether to race for the park at once, but then he tensed his muscles as he felt my lightness.

‘Sea,’ I said, and at my voice his ears went forward and I felt him shift a little beneath me. I knew he remembered me, remembered the red-faced man who had been his owner before I had come to him. Remembered the little stable in Salisbury behind the inn, and how I had sat gently on him, half the weight of his usual rider, and spoken to him in a quiet voice. I thought he would remember the journey home, tied to the back of Robert Gower’s whisky cart, with me dripping blood and drooping with tiredness, my head on Robert’s shoulder. I thought he would remember the little stable at Warminster, and how I would go down to him in the morning, clattering down the little wooden staircase to greet him before going in to breakfast and bringing him back a crust of a warm roll. And I was sure he would remember that night when there had been no one on the land but him and me. No one in the whole world but the two of us going quietly through the sleeping Downland villages. Me, as lost as a child without its mother, and him quietly and certainly trotting along lanes where he had never been before, drawn like a compass point to our home.

I reached down and patted his neck. He straightened and obeyed the touch of my heels against his side. He moved with his smooth flowing stride out of the stable yard and into the mews lane, then down the busy roads towards the park. The groom fell into step behind us, watching me nervously, certain that I was not well enough to ride, that Sea would be sure to throw me at the first sight of a water cart, or a shrieking milk maid.

He did not. He went as steady as a hackney-horse with blinkers. Past open doors and shouting servants, past wagons, past delivery carts and street sellers. Past all the noise and bustle of a big city to the gates of the park. And even then, with the smooth green turf before him and the soft furze beneath his feet he did nothing more than arch his neck and put his ears forward as we trotted, and then slid into a smooth steady canter.

He would have gone faster, and I was finished with the conventions of polite society for ever: I would have let him. But I could tell by the light buzzing in my ears, and the strange swimmy feeling, that I was pushing my new strength too far, and I should go home.

We turned. Sea went willingly enough though I knew he longed for one of our wild gallops. He went back through the streets as gentle as he had come, and pulled up outside the front door as sweet as a carthorse on a familiar delivery round.

‘He’s a marvel with you,’ the groom said. ‘I wish he’d be as good with us. He was off with me last week and I thought I’d never get him turned around for home. I couldn’t pull him up, the best I could do was bring him around in a circle. All the old ladies were staring at me an’ all! I was ashamed!’

‘I’m sorry, Gerry,’ I said. I had one hand on the balustrade to support me and I patted Sea’s cool flank with the other. ‘He’s never liked men very much, he was ill-treated before I got him. It spoiled his temper for a man rider.’

The groom pulled his cap and slid from his own horse. ‘I’ll lead them both,’ he said. ‘That way I won’t get pulled off if he plays up as soon as you’re gone.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll come around to the stables tomorrow, same time.’

‘Yes, miss,’ he said politely. Then he corrected himself. ‘I mean, yes, Lady Havering.’

I hesitated on hearing my title, ‘Lady Sarah Havering’; then I shrugged my shoulders. It was a long way from the dirty little wagon and the two hungry children. She would laugh if she knew.

I grew stronger after that ride. I rode every day, I walked every day. Sometimes Perry was awake and sober and he came with me. Otherwise, in the middle of a dazzling London season I lived alone, in quietness and isolation. Sometimes they stopped in their carriages in the park to bid me good day and ask me if I would be coming to one party or another. I always explained I did not yet have my strength back, and they let me be excused. Sometimes I would be in the parlour when Lady Clara’s guests came in and I would sit quietly in the window for some time before saying that I needed to go to my room for I was still a little tired. They let me go. They all let me go.

I did not need to stay. I was accepted, I was an heiress in my own right, I had a title, I was married to the largest landowner in Sussex and, apart from Perry’s growing scandalous drunkenness, there was not a breath of rumour about me. I was odd and unsociable, certainly. But they could not complain of that. And I think the hard eyes of Meridon looked out from under the short-cropped hair, and they knew that I was strange and alien in their world. And they let me go.