Meridon

41

Will tapped on the door and called: ‘It’s me,’ and I heard someone stir inside. ‘It’s Sally Miles,’ he said to me. ‘She watches the bairns for me when I’m away.’

The door opened and Will pushed me into the firelit room. A woman in her thirties smiled at me, and then gaped when she recognized me. ‘Miss Sarah?’ she exclaimed. ‘I mean, Lady Havering?’

Her eyes widened even further when Will took my riding cape and she saw my jacket and breeches.

‘Your ladyship?’ she gasped.

Will chuckled at her face. ‘Sarah’s left Lord Peregrine,’ he said simply. ‘She’s come home to us. She’s come home to me. She’ll live here now.’

Sally Miles blinked, then she dipped a curtsey and smiled at me.

‘Well!’ she said.

I put out my hand and shook with her. ‘Don’t curtsey to me,’ I said. ‘There’s no need. I never was a proper lady in the manor. Now I’m where I belong, and right glad to be here. I’ll need you to teach me how to go on with the children and the house.’

She nodded, still bemused. ‘Aye,’ she said. ‘Of course.’ Then she looked at Will. ‘How’s all this then?’ she asked. ‘I thought you were moving up north, just going to London to say your farewells?’

Will kneeled at my feet and pulled off my wet boots. ‘It’s as you see,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you all about it in the morning, Sally. We want to get to bed now, we’ve been travelling all day, and we were up all last night too.’

She nodded. ‘Of course,’ she said blankly. ‘Well, there’s porridge in the pot and ale in the jar. I could make you some tea?’

Will glanced at me and I shook my head.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Babbies all well?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Sleeping sound.’ She paused, she was longing to stay. ‘I’ll be off then,’ she said hesitantly.

‘Good-night, many thanks,’ Will said briskly.

She paused in the doorway to look at me. ‘I knew your ma Miss Julia,’ she said softly. ‘I think she’d be glad to know you’ve come to live among us. It’s an odd thing to do, but I think she’d have done it herself if she could.’

I nodded. ‘I think so,’ I said.

Then she opened the door and a cold gust of air blew in and made the flames leap in the little hearth, and she was gone.

‘Be all around the village by daybreak,’ Will said philoso-phically. ‘Saves telling people. Hungry, are you?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Bed then,’ he said softly.

Now we were so close to being lovers I was suddenly cold with nerves.

‘Yes,’ I said uncertain.

He drew me towards him and he took me in his arms, lifted me gently, and carried me up the creaking wooden staircase to the upstairs room at the back of the cottage where the window looked out on a dark field and beyond it, the Fenny, with the stars in the night-time sky above and the black downs of Wideacre all around us. He took off my wet stockings and breeches, as gentle as a lady’s maid, took off my linen shift, and laid me down on the soft hay mattress. Then he loved me until the sky paled with dawn and I heard the spring birds singing.

I woke so slowly and so silently that it seemed hours before I even knew I had woken. The first thing that caught my attention was the silence. There was no rumbling of carts, no shouting of London street-traders, it was so quiet that you could hear your own breath, and against the silence, sharpening it, was the twittering of birds.

I turned my head. The man who hated gin traps was still asleep, as warm as a fox cub in a burrow. His face tucked into my shoulder, his nose pressed against my skin. I smiled as I remembered him saying last night, ‘Dear God, I love the smell of you!’

I moved away from him cautiously, so as not to wake him. The sunshine was bright on the lime-washed wall. The bedroom faced east and the shadow of the lattice window made a fretwork of patterns above the bed. I raised myself on one elbow and looked out of the window.

There had been a light frost overnight and the grass was soaked and sparkling. Each blade of grass held a drop of water which shone in the sunlight. Our window was half open and the air that breathed in was sweet and cold as spring water.

I moved to sit up and at once Will’s arm came around me in a demanding, irresistible grip. He held me like a child might hold a favourite moppet – quite unconscious in sleep, quite unyielding. I waited till his grip loosened slightly then I stroked his arm and whispered: ‘Let me go, Will. I’m coming back.’

He did not wake even then, but he released me and buried his face deeper into the pillow so that his face was where my head had laid. I crossed barefoot to the window and swung it wide, I was home at last.

The hills of the Downs were on my left, higher and more lovely than I had remembered. Soaring up, streaked with white, reaching to the clouds, massively solid. On the lower slope there was a scar where timber had been felled, and then further down, the plough line where the horses could not drag a plough so our fields ended on a continuous curving line which girdled the high slopes.

I could see the pale dried fields of stubble and the rich dark fields where the earth was new-turned. The fields which were resting looked green and lush. Even the hedges looked dark and fresh where they were still clinging to their leaves. They had burned the stubble in one field and there were little black tracks where the flames had been. The ash would make the land grow. The burning had come and gone, and the land would grow the better for it.

Immediately below the window was the cottage garden – a little chequerboard of hard labour. One main path, and then a score of others like a grid so that the garden was divided into square, easily reached beds. I could see clumps of lavender, and mint, and thyme and a great pale-leaved sage bush. There was some rue and fennel and whole beds of other plants I did not know. I would have to learn them. Someone in the village would teach me. I knew I would learn the country remedies as if I had known them all my life. I was no longer little Miss Lacey who could be drugged and tricked by a London charlatan.

A wood-pigeon called softly, as sweetly as a cuckoo. Beyond the garden was a rich paddock of good grass and as I looked I saw Sea walk from one end to another, ears pricked, moving like a waterfall. They must have brought him in late last night, he had taken no hurt from the journey. I called softly to him: ‘Cooee, Sea!’ and he looked towards the window with his grey ears pricked up towards me, and then nodded his head as if in greeting before turning back to crop the grass. He looked pleased to be in the little field. He looked at home.

A floorboard behind me creaked and a broad arm came around me and the man who hated gin traps lifted my thick mop of curls and kissed the nape of my neck.

‘Mmmm,’ he said by way of greeting, and then his other arm came around me and I leaned back against him and closed my eyes, and let the sunlight and the cool morning, and the greenness of the fields and the warmth of his body against my cool skin wash over me in a great wave of delight.

He slid his hand down my flank and cupped one rounded buttock gently in his hand, then without hesitation his hand went between my legs from behind and his fingers, skilled and knowledgeable, parted my gentle flesh and found the core of the little maze of my body, and stroked me so that I sighed again and again until, still holding me with my back pressed against his warm chest, he entered me and I clung to the window-sill and rested my head against the cool of the window frame and thought for one moment, ‘I have never never felt such delight.’

Then we tumbled down together on the hard floorboards, giving and taking pleasure, moving and seeking, demanding and contented in a great frenzy of happiness until I sighed out loud – and then there was a silence and nothing but the birdsong and the wood-pigeons calling in the silence and the sun was very warm on my shoulder and on my rapt face.

We lay very still, and then Will reached up to the bed and drew me up too. I sat naked on his bare thighs and felt the pleasure of being close and naked like innocent animals. He looked more like a fox cub than ever, his eyes brown and smiling and sleepy. He was radiant with love, I could feel the glow of it on his skin, all over.

‘I hope you’re not going to expect that every morning,’ he said plaintively. ‘I’m a working man, you know.’

I laughed delightedly. ‘And I’m a working woman,’ I said. ‘I must go into Chichester this very day and see about leasing the Hall. It would produce a good income for the corporation, and a nice couple, a London merchant, or a retired admiral or someone like that, would be good neighbours to have.’

‘It’ll be odd: them coming to a cottage to pay rent,’ Will offered. He stood up and stretched so that his head brushed the low ceiling. ‘Odd for them to see you living here.’

‘I have low tastes,’ I said lightly and I kissed his warm chest and rubbed my face against the soft hairs.

I pulled on my breeches and Gerry’s best shirt. ‘I’ll need some more clothes, too,’ I said.

‘I knew it,’ Will said gloomily. ‘Can’t you make do with hand-me-downs?’

‘I’ll work in breeches,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘But I’ll have one – no, two! – dresses for best!’

There was a clatter from the room next door.

‘Is that the chavvies?’ I asked. I was alert at once. I could not help but fear them, Becky’s daughters, the children Will had chosen to raise.

Will nodded, and the next thing the door burst open and all three of them were upon him swarming all over him like puppies.

‘And look who’s here!’ Will exclaimed as he got clear.

They all three turned to look at me, six unwinking eyes surveyed me from head to bare feet.

‘Is this Miss Sarah?’ the oldest one asked uncertainly, taking in my rumpled hair and my breeches.

‘She was Miss Sarah,’ Will said. ‘But now she has come to live with us. She’s finished with living in London, and with grand folks. She’s my true love and she’s come home to me.’

The middle one, very ready to believe in princesses coming to cottages, came forward and put her hand out to me. ‘And will you be my ma and comb my hair without pulling?’ she asked.

I took a deep breath. ‘Yes I will,’ I said bravely, and took her hand. Will beamed at me across their heads.

‘Will can be your da, and I’ll be your ma,’ I said plunging in. ‘But you’ll have to help me go on, I was never anyone’s ma before.’

‘She’s a circus girl,’ Will said impressively. ‘She can dance on horseback and she can swing on a trapeze. There’s not many little girls who have a ma who can do that. You come on downstairs and she can tell you all about it while I make the porridge!’

They tumbled downstairs in a rush at that offer and while they spooned porridge into their mouths and Will made strong hot tea for them I told them a little about Robert and Jack and learning to ride bareback and the falls. Then I told them about winning Sea and they all rushed upstairs to pull on their woollen stockings and their clogs under their nightshirts so that they could go out at once and meet Sea.

‘Will you do circus tricks for us here?’ the oldest one pressed me. ‘Will you teach us how to dance on horseback, and we can all be in a circus?’

Will laughed aloud at my aghast face.

‘Nay,’ he said. ‘Her travelling days are over. She may teach you some tricks for fun, but her main work should be training horses for people to buy.’

‘To dance with?’ asked the littlest one, eyes and mouth round.

‘No,’ I said smiling. ‘To ride. But I will show you how I used to dance bareback if we ever have a horse who will let me do it. Sea would not stand for it for one moment!’

Will sent them upstairs then to get dressed in earnest and wash their faces in time for school. Then he and I walked together to take them to school and went hand in hand down the village street to bid good-day to other people of Acre and to tell them that I had come home at last.

It was a busy couple of days. There was Gerry and Emily to settle in with two familes down the village street. Emily bloomed like a rose in the countryside but Gerry was surly and cross until he went into Midhurst and got himself a job at the Spread Eagle, then he was very full of bragging to the other ostlers about London ways. He brought home a good wage, and he paid a share of it into the common fund for the corporation. He seemed settled, and Will and I repaid him our debt.

I went, as I had promised, to Chichester and the Hall was offered for rent. We would get a handsome sum for it, the agents thought. I spoke to them before I went to the dressmakers for new clothes so they had to deal with me in my breeches. It was to their credit that they never so much as glanced at me. They called me Lady Havering throughout and I did not know how to stop them. They never so much as mentioned Perry, nor the fact that the name on the deeds of the Hall was now ‘The corporation of Acre, manager Will Tyacke’. But I knew that once I had set so much as a step out of the office, the tale would be all around Sussex – aye and Hampshire too, by tea-time.

I had to go and see the vicar and tell him how everything was changed, and the world upside down for him. He could not comprehend why a rich woman could choose to be poor. He could not understand why I should wish to live in a cottage and rent out the Hall. Finally I told him bluntly that though I was married to Lord Havering I would never live with him, and that Will was my lover. He had been trying to maintain a pretence that I was living in Will’s cottage as a rich woman’s whim. But when I said outright that Will and I loved each other, and loved the land, and would live here together for the rest of our lives, he went white with shock, and rang the bell for me to be shown the door.

‘I’ll never be able to go to church,’ I said to Will that evening. I was sitting on the settle, skinning a rabbit with my sleeves rolled up, as he cooked the supper. ‘I’m a scarlet woman. I’ll never be able to take the chavvies in to say their prayers, not even sat at the back. Vicar’ll look badly at you too.’

Will turned, a wooden spoon in his hand and licked it with relish before he smiled and answered me. ‘Small lack,’ he said. ‘But he’d best remember which side his bread is buttered.’

When I looked blank he beamed at me. ‘You’ve made the village into a squire!’ he said grinning. ‘We own the living. If he’s impertinent I think we can refuse him his wages, certainly don’t need to pay the Wideacre Hall’s share of his tithe. If you don’t fancy having a vicar we can leave the post empty after he is gone. You can persuade the whole village to turn pagan if you wish.’

I laughed in return. ‘I had forgotten!’ I said delightedly. ‘But I wouldn’t do it! The whole place is pagan enough already! But I had forgotten we own the living, the vicarage and all!’

‘Aye,’ Will said, and turned himself to the important task of game stew.

The only thing which fretted me at all in those busy spring days was the thought of Mr Fortescue. I spoke of him one morning, when the letters for the estate came in and there was no reply from him. Will took a handful of my curls and gently shook my head. ‘He’s a good man,’ he said softly. ‘He only ever wanted your happiness. He’ll be shocked, but I reckon he’ll take it. He was deep in the dismals when he knew you were set on marriage to Lord Peregrine. And I never heard a word from him that you’d been forced to it. It shook him to the marrow, he was too pained even for speech. He’d think that anything was better for you than that. I wager he’ll be glad enough that you’ve run away from that Havering crowd. And we have Wideacre safe. Safe for ever, safe for the corporation. He’ll be glad enough of that.’

I nodded. And Will was right. Only a couple of days later, when I was turning over the earth in the front garden with Lizzie helping and getting in the way with a spoon in her grimy hands, and mud on her face, the post-boy came down the street with a letter addressed to Lady Sarah Havering, care of Will Tyacke, which I thought a masterly compromise between postal accuracy and scandal.

James Fortescue was brief and to the point: ‘I am more happy than I can say to know that you two have found happiness together. Please do not think of the opinions of Society. You are building a new world on Wideacre, you cannot expect to be welcomed by all those who live in the old. You have my blessings on your brave attempt to break free.’

I tucked the letter into the pocket of my breeches to show Will when I met him in the fields at midday.

It was good to know that I had not disappointed James Fortescue. He was the only contact with the mother I had never known, Julia Lacey. If he could see that we were trying to build a new world, to be new people, maybe she would have understood too.

It was only Mr Fortescue who had worried me. I did not think of Perry at all. All of the Haverings, all of their bright talkative social world, had fallen away from me as if it had never been. They had gone, I could barely remember the meaningless lessons I had learned from them and the empty life I had lived with them.

Lizzie and I returned our attention to the flowerbed. Will had promised me a rose bush in the middle of the patch of earth and Lizzie and I were turning over the soil and digging in muck. My thoughts were running so much on James Fortescue and his letter, that when I heard hooves coming up the lane and the noise of carriage wheels, I straightened and scooped Lizzie up and set her on my hip to go down to the little garden gate, thinking I would see a hired post-chaise, and James smiling out of the window.

It was a bright morning and I put up my hand to shield my eyes, the other hand clasped around Lizzie’s little body, her chubby arms around my neck. With a shock of sudden surprise I saw that it was not James’s carriage pulling up outside my little gate. It was the Havering crest, and as the footman lowered the steps I saw it was Perry on his own.

‘Sarah?’ he asked in bewilderment. He came down the steps, blinking in the bright sunlight. ‘Sarah?’

I saw he was so bad with drink, that he could hardly recognize me. He was shaking, and his eyes were clogged with sleep and screwed up against the light. The footman was standing like a block, eyes straight forward. A man trained so well that he could appear deaf and dumb, especially when dragged into scandal such as this. Perry put a hand out on the footman’s shoulder and leaned on him like one might lean on a gate.

‘Is that a baby?’ he asked, bewildered.

‘No I ain’t!’ said Lizzie, immediately argumentative.

I tightened my grip to hush her and I said, ‘It’s a little girl, Perry, Will Tyacke is her da. I look after her with him.’

He looked past me and Lizzie to the little cottage. There were a few late-blooming roses still in frozen buds around the front door. A bush of forsythia was yellow as brass at the garden wall.

‘Charming!’ he said uncertainly. Then he paused. It was as if he did not know what more to say.

‘I’ve come to fetch you home,’ he said. His mama’s lesson had suddenly returned to his wandering mind. ‘If you come at once there’ll be no scandal and I’ll say no more about it. I will forgive you,’ he said pompously. ‘We can live in the country all the time if you wish. I’ll give up gambling, and I’ll give up drinking.’

He paused for a moment and screwed up his eyes as if he were trying to recapture some thought. ‘No!’ he said. ‘I’ve given up already. Shock of your leaving us like that. I’ve given it all up already. So you should come back.’

‘Oh Perry!’ I said gently. ‘What is in your pocket?’

Blinking owlishly he put his hand into his right pocket and then flinched as he closed his hand on the hip flask which I knew he would have there. From his other pocket he pulled out a handful of papers. They were gambling vowels: IOUs from other gamblers. The wintry wind caught a few of them and blew them down the street. It was small loss. I guessed they were useless.

‘No, Perry,’ I said softly. ‘I am not coming home. Tell your mama I thank her for her kindness and that I will not contest a divorce action. Tell her I have a criminal connection and she can have me put aside so that you can marry again. Tell her I am sorry, but I shall be living here on Wideacre with the man I love.’

Perry blinked again. He took out his flask and unstoppered it and took a swift swig. On the clean cold Wideacre air the smell of warm gin was sickly-sweet. He turned and stepped unsteadily back into the carriage. The footman, as impassive as a statue, folded the steps in and shut the door and swung on to the back of the carriage. His hands were blue with cold. He did not look at me.

Perry dropped the window holding the leather strap. ‘I don’t know what people will say about you,’ he said with the sudden spitefulness of a thwarted child. ‘They will say the most dreadful things, you know. You will never be able to go anywhere again. No one will blame me. No one will blame me at all. They will say you are at fault, and no one will call you Lady Havering ever again.’

I shifted Lizzie’s warm weight and I smiled at him with compassion. I was far from his world now. I was far from the world of the landed, of the squires, of the owners. I was the last of the Laceys and I had turned my back on ownership, I was trying a new way. I wanted to build a new world.

‘I don’t need your name,’ I said. ‘I don’t want your title. I am Will Tyacke’s whore, that’s good enough for me.’

‘Sarah…’ he said.

I stepped back a pace and the coachman flicked the horses.

‘My name is not Sarah,’ I said. And I smiled at him in my sudden certainty. ‘My name is not Sarah. My name is Meridon. Meridon; and this is where I belong.’