The Favoured Child

16

‘Your mama is in her bedroom,’ Meg said. ‘She asked after you and thought you had gone to the doctor’s on your own.’

‘I’ll go on up,’ I said, moving towards the stairs.

‘She’ll have heard the carriage,’ Meg said in warning. I turned back to look at her. She was smiling, certain she had caught me in some clandestine courtship.

‘Thank you, Meg,’ I said pointedly. ‘That will be all.’

I waited until she had curtsied and gone to the kitchen stairs before I went to knock on Mama’s door.

She was obviously unwell. I don’t think I ever saw her ill more than twice in all my childhood. Although she was so slight-looking, she was strong, and she seemed incapable of taking fevers or colds, having nursed Richard and me through every sort of childhood ailment.

But now she was lying in bed, very pale, with her forehead and hands very hot and dry. She was moving restlessly on her pillow, seeking a cool spot to lay her head.

‘Lie still, Mama,’ I said, going to the bell-pull. ‘I’ll order a cold drink for you, and some warm water to sponge your forehead with. And I’ll have them fetch a doctor to see you.’

‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said in relief. ‘What a long time you have been with Dr Phillips today!’

I should have told her then that I had played truant that morning, but she seemed so wan and ill that I let the omission slip into a lie. I raised her up and turned the pillows and took one of the blankets off the bed, and then I went to the door to ask Meg for the things I needed and to send the footman out to the best doctor in Bath.

He came at once and felt Mama’s forehead and looked at her eyes and asked her how she felt. Then he smiled and said very soothingly that it was nothing more than a putrid sore throat, and that she would feel very ill indeed for a week or so, and then perfectly well. He gave her some laudanum and left a small bottle for the pain and to help her sleep, and he recommended lemon tea with a dash of brandy in it.

As soon as he had gone, I scribbled a note to James to ask him to come back and see me, if it was convenient, and one to Mrs Densham to make our excuses from her card party and dinner that afternoon.

James walked back with the footman and learned from him that my mama was ill. ‘Leave it to me,’ he said comfortably. ‘I’ll go to Jimmy Dart and the rest of them and get them moved into the inn. I’ll give them some money to be going along with, and I’ll have the landlady of the inn fetch a doctor for Rosie. You stay here and look after your mama, and I’ll drop in on my way home to tell you how I have done.’

Oh, thank you, James,’ I said, and put out my hand to him. ‘I knew you would. You are kind to interest yourself in them.’

He smiled. ‘I am interested in them,’ he conceded. ‘But I think I am more interested in you, Julia Lacey. Is your mama too ill for you to speak to her about us? I should like to speak to her as soon as possible.’

‘To ask for permission to propose?’ I asked, teasing. ‘You seem to have left it a little late for that!’

He drew me to him with an arm around my waist and turned my face up to him with his cupped hand under my chin. ‘Oh, my darling, you are very, very silly,’ he said softly. ‘I asked permission of your mama a week ago! I told my parents that I should propose to you whenever your mama had heard from Wideacre and given her consent. She told me last night as I took her to her chair that as far as she and your Uncle John were concerned, you might take or leave me as you wished.’

‘Oh!’ I said blankly. ‘She never said anything to me.’

‘Well, they all have this maggot in their heads, don’t they?’ said James easily. ‘They all want to know whether you can be an ordinary young lady or not. And they all think that unless you live elsewhere, you will be plagued with dreams and seeings and hobgoblins. I think they thought you would turn me down.’

‘I should hate to leave Wideacre altogether,’ I said, suddenly afraid that James might want me to live in his home town of Bristol.

‘I don’t see why you should leave it at all,’ James said. He sat down on a sofa by the fire and drew me down to sit beside him. ‘I have a substantial inheritance, which comes to me on my marriage. Why don’t we buy your cousin out of his share of the hall and live there? I could fancy being a country squire if Acre is as you describe it now!’

‘We couldn’t!’ I said, remembering Richard’s passion for the hall, and remembering with some discomfort the old childhood promise that we would marry and live there together.

‘If your cousin cares little for the stock and for farming, then I don’t see why we should not offer him a good price for his half,’ James said reasonably. ‘Or you could sell your share of the hall to him. We could build our own house, and farm your share of the land from there.’

I looked at him suspiciously. ‘You have been planning this!’ I accused. He drew me a little closer to him until it was most easy and comfortable to rest against him, and look up and smile into his warm brown eyes.

‘Of course I have!’ he said. ‘You didn’t think that I was going to take my lovely squire Julia and shut her up in a Bristol town house, did you? Of course I want you to have Wideacre. And I shall buy it for you.’

‘And the dreams and the seeings and the hobgoblins?’ I asked softly.

‘If you are mad, my darling, then I am moving into Bedlam at once,’ he said firmly and drew my face towards his and punctuated his sentence with small gentle kisses on my cheeks, my eyelids and my nose. ‘For you [kiss] are the sweetest [kiss] and the wisest [kiss] and the bravest [kiss] and the cleverest [kiss] and the angriest [kiss, kiss] young woman I have ever had the pleasure of kissing while her mama is too ill to chaperon us!’

I leaped to my feet at that, gasped, blushed and then laughed. Oh, that is dreadful!’ I said. ‘And I am dreadful to be sitting here with you. And you, James Fortescue, are no gentleman at all!’

‘I know,’ he said mournfully. ‘Trade, my dear. Only the first generation out of the counting-house and still smelling of shop!’

‘You do indeed,’ I said firmly. ‘Now go and run my errands for me, and don’t come and see me again without one of your sisters to sit with us.’

‘I should think they would bless me for that,’ James said as I pushed him out of the room to find Meg industriously polishing the table in the hall.

‘I shall shout through the keyhole that I have the children from Acre safe,’ James said. ‘Or sing it up to your window. Anything rather than be alone with you again. Will you come to dinner tonight?’

‘No,’ I said while Meg dawdled over handing James his cape, hat and gloves. ‘I have written to your aunt. I shall stay at home with Mama.’

‘I’ll go back home to Clifton then,’ James said. ‘I want to have a word with my papa. He’ll want to know his son has joined the minor gentry.’

‘Minor!’ I said in mock outrage.

‘A very little estate,’ James said dampeningly, ‘and scarcely a dowry at all, I understand.’

I gleamed at him. ‘Not bad for a tradesman’s son,’ I said.

‘Not bad at all,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘Thank you, Meg,’ he said as he took his hat from her, and then he stepped forward and kissed me on the lips and was out of the door and down the steps before I could say a word.

‘Congratulations, Miss,’ Meg said, reverently shutting the door behind him. ‘Cook will be so surprised.’

And she was away down to the kitchen quarters before I could ask her not to tell them in the kitchen, because I had not even told my own mama yet, nor my uncle. Nor had I written to my cousin.

I should have written to Uncle John and Richard that very day, but Mama awoke from her sleep so hot and so feverish that I sat with her all the afternoon and barely had time to dash off a note to Ralph Megson telling him that I would send the Acre pauper children home to Wideacre as soon as I had confirmation from him.

I waited for his reply; and I nursed my mama. I did not leave her bedroom for more than a few minutes for my meals, or for a little rest in the afternoon when Marianne or Mrs Densham came to sit with my mama. James called every day with flowers for Mama or wonderful out-of-season fruit. She did not seem to be getting worse, so I did not write to Uncle John to bid him come to us; but as the doctor had predicted, she was very ill indeed.

I learned to love James very well during those days. Every day he came with a posy for me as well as for Mama; and his family did his bidding and offered every help they could to make Mama’s illness and my nursing easier. He was a very comfortable person. He was easy to be with, he had no moods, no storms of introspection. James was as blessedly open and as contented as a well-loved child. He cared for me well. He teased me and laughed at me; but when I was tired, he would ask Marianne to play the pianoforte for us so that we could sit side by side on the sofa in silence. In those gentle afternoons he would draw my head down to rest on his shoulder, and on one occasion I slept.

‘You snored,’ he said provokingly as he was leaving.

‘I never did!’ I protested. ‘I never snore!’

His eyes crinkled in his familiar loving smile. ‘Well, I’ll soon know, won’t I?’ he asked in a voice as soft and as warm as a caress. ‘When you and I sleep together in the same bed, every night of our lives.’

My cheeks warmed with a blush at that, but I held his gaze. ‘I should like that,’ I said honestly.

James sighed very softly and bent and kissed me gently and was gone.

Every time he came he brought me a little gift, a bunch of flowers or a single unseasonal daisy from his garden at Bristol. One day he brought me a hoop and a stick.

‘I thought we should take some exercise,’ he said innocently. And despite my protestations, he took me out to the park and we bowled the hoop down the paths, weak with laughter, while the old Bath tabbies looked at us askance.

Every time he left he kissed me. He kissed, with meticulous care, the fingertips of both hands, then the two thumbs, and then finally, as light as the brush of a feather, he kissed me on the mouth.

Every time except once, when Marianne had forgotten her reticule and he came back inside to fetch it. I had gone to the drawing-room window to wave goodbye, and when the door opened, I spun around in surprise. He crossed the room in a few swift strides and caught me into his arms without saying a word. He held me so hard that I could scarcely breathe and he covered my face with kisses and then buried his face into the warmth of my neck and sniffed at my skin hungrily.

‘My God, Julia,’ he said breathlessly. He pulled back a little. ‘I am sorry,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Did I startle you?’

I smiled at him as an equal. I knew he was apologizing for this sudden eruption of passion into our temperate life. He was anxious in case I was a true Bath miss, full of fluster and girlish fears.

I beamed at him. ‘Startle me again,’ I recommended.

We collapsed with giggles at that.

‘Strumpet,’ James said with deep satisfaction, and he cupped his hand under my chin and turned my face up to him. I gazed into his brown eyes without a flicker of unease. If he had wanted, he could have taken me, then and there, on the deep carpet in the afternoon sunshine.

‘Julia Lacey,’ he said slowly. ‘I want you to know that it is only the chaperon system which stands between you and total dishonour.’

‘You love me dishonourably?’ I asked, a little smile lurking at the back of my voice.

‘Deeply dishonourably,’ he assured me, and he bent his brown head down and his mouth sought mine.

We stood, locked in each other’s arms, for long minutes. I was pressing closer and closer to him so that I could feel him down the length of my body; as he tasted my mouth, he groaned very softly.

There was a tap on the door behind us. We moved apart as slowly as if we were swimming underwater. I looked at James. His eyes were dark with desire, his hair rumpled. I put my hand to my head and tried to pin a straying ringlet. Neither of us was able to say, ‘Come in.’

The door opened with commendable caution, and Marianne put her head around it.

‘My reticule,’ she said conversationally to the carpet midway between James and me, ‘was in the hall, where it has been all along. I have now collected it. I am now ready to leave. However, if it is your wish that I should chaperon the two of you from beyond your front door, I should be very glad to have a rug and a cushion on the step, and perhaps a candle at nightfall.’

James laughed and took his sister’s hand. ‘Forgive us,’ he said. ‘We treat you shamefully. Let me take you home now.’ He turned to me with a smile. ‘Until tomorrow, Julia Lacey,’ he said. Then he walked out of the drawing-room and was gone.

I sank down into the window-seat and leaned my head against the shutter and did not know whether to laugh or to weep in my delight at being so well loved. So well loved at last.

Mama remained ill, and she was especially restless in the early hours of the morning. James wanted me to hire a night nurse and undertook to find me one, but four interviews convinced him that there was no one in Bath he would trust.

‘Besides, the doctor is confident that her illness is reaching a crisis and then she will be better,’ I said to him. ‘I am sure it is the fault of the horrid damp city. If she were on Wideacre, she would be well again.’

He nodded. The dry weather had broken and the days I had spent indoors had been damp, foggy and cold.

‘It has been miserable,’ he said. ‘Thank God we got little Rosie Dench out of that cellar before this bad weather started. I don’t think she would have survived.’

James went every day to visit the Acre four. He said they were settling into their new quarters fairly well. Nat was gradually getting a little paler as the years of soot wore off under his enthusiastic scrubbing. Jimmy Dart was fattening up daily, and Rosie was coughing still, but looking better, and could get up and sit in the parlour downstairs most days. Only Julie seemed unable to settle.

‘They do understand why I have not been to see them, don’t they?’ I asked.

James nodded. ‘I made sure they did,’ he said reassuringly. ‘And they know we are just waiting for the reply from Acre to say that all is ready for them to leave.’

That reply came the next day, in Ralph’s untutored script.

Send them home, he wrote. Everyone here wants them back. And everyone here blesses you for finding them.

Come back with them. Come back in time for the sowing. You should be here then.

I showed the letter to James.

‘Not a man for lengthy speeches, is he?’ James said, smiling.

‘And he’s not vague,’ I said, pointing to the paragraph which started, ‘Come back with them.’ ‘That sounds very like an order to me,’ I said.

James nodded. ‘The best servants are our masters,’ he said lightly. ‘My papa has a chief clerk who runs the business all on his own. If he ever knew how valuable he was, he could indent for twice the salary. Your Mr Megson sounds like that.’

I laughed. ‘Mr Megson knows exactly how much he is worth,’ I said ruefully. ‘The only reason he does not charge a king’s ransom is because he wants to work on Wideacre, and work for the good of the village. It was he who developed the profitsharing scheme and persuaded the village. My Uncle John says that he would go further if he could.’

‘How?’ James asked.

Oh, I don’t know,’ I said idly. We were taking tea together in the parlour, and Marianne was nobly sitting at the window and alternately looking at the passers-by and at a newspaper. Under the cover of the tea-table James took my hand.

‘I think he would like the village to have common rights to all the land,’ I said. ‘He would have them own the land outright and farm it in common, in the old way.’

James looked extraordinarily interested. ‘He’s not the only one in the country to be thinking of such ideas,’ he said. ‘Could such a scheme work?’

‘It might,’ I said cautiously, ‘if the land was handed over to the people in good heart, and they had enough funds to buy equipment and stock and enough cash to pay wages until the profits could be shared. Under those circumstances it would work. But of course those circumstances never come about. No landlord would hand over good land. No one would gift the sort of amounts of money one needs to launch such a massive estate.’

James looked at me, half serious. ‘I tell you what, Julia Lacey,’ he said. I paid a great deal of attention. Whenever James called me Julia Lacey, I listened well. It was generally something very loving, or something very shocking, or – best of all – both. ‘I tell you what,’ he said again. ‘,’ have those sorts of funds, and if you tell me that you and I and then our children would have a good life in Acre if the village owned its own land, then I would be prepared to offer that sort of capital. We could build our own house and have our own share in the village, and yet not be the sort of squires and the sort of masters who bring about the poverty which we saw in Fish Quay Lane.’

I hesitated. ‘No,’ I said. ‘It is your inheritance, not mine. Before you decide how it is spent or where you wish to live, you must see Wideacre and the village. I cannot imagine being happy living all my life anywhere else. But you and I must agree such things together. It would be as unjust to you if we were all our days at Wideacre as it would be unjust to me if you took me to Bristol and I could never see my home again.’

James held his free hand out across the tea-urn in a parody of a street trader. ‘Done,’ he said. ‘And remember what I have offered. My papa calls me a radical and a Jacobin, but I have no use for such labels. What I do care about is trying to follow the French lead in an especial English way. To make a new society here, as they are trying to do there. I want to do so with you, for I think I loved you the most when I saw you in the best fashion shop in Bath telling the proprietor she was worse than a madame in a bagnio. I have been a rebel all my life and I want to find a way to make that rebellion a comfortable way to live – something for the future rather than just a reaction against the way things are.’

‘Yes!’ I said, and my heart leaped to think of trying to build a life in Acre where there were no masters and squires but just James and me and our children, and Clary Dench and Matthew Merry and their children, and all the other village children living as neighbours.

‘If you two are holding hands above the tea-urn as well as below it, then I cannot help but feel that my presence here is somewhat superfluous,’ Marianne observed drily.

We released each other and laughed like a pair of guilty children.

‘Never that,’ James said, and crossed to the window to kiss her cheek. ‘At your least you are always ornamental. Tell us what Dr Phillips said today,’ he commanded, sitting beside her and taking the newspaper from her. ‘Julia has to see him for the first time in days tomorrow and she is going to tell him that she will discontinue her visits. They need her back at home and since she has survived perfectly well without seeing him, I am trying to convince her that she is as sane as anyone in the world, and a good deal saner than anyone I have ever known before.’

Marianne shot me a shy smile. ‘Except for your liking for my brother, I would agree,’ she said. Then her face grew graver. ‘Dr Phillips is working very hard to help me cat properly,’ she said. ‘Even if I find it sometimes very wearying, I cannot deny that he is very painstaking. I cannot help but wish that sometimes everyone would just leave the whole thing alone. If I was on a desert island, I am sure that I would be hungry and eat. It is just that everywhere I go, people press food on me, and when I refuse, they look at me and argue with me. Since I have been to Dr Phillips, and Mama has told people about it, everything has got worse.’

‘When we are married, and living in earthly paradise in the heart of Sussex, you shall come and stay with us and you shall eat nothing!’ James promised. ‘Nothing at all for days at a time until you feel you could fancy a little something. And no one will look at you, and no one will question you.’

Marianne sighed. ‘I look forward to being your first guest. But you are a little forward, James. The engagement has not even been announced, and I don’t think Julia has even told her mama.’

‘I cannot,’ I said. ‘She has been so ill and so tired, I did not want to trouble her. She would at once start planning parties and wedding gowns. I want her to be entirely well before she starts such a campaign.’

‘In the meantime, you must chaperon us,’ James said. ‘Do you have time tomorrow to go with Julia to Dr Phillips? We are to dispatch the Acre paupers in the afternoon, and Julia thought of seeing Dr Phillips first thing.’

Marianne agreed to escort me, and then go with me down to the inn to see that the four lost Acre children were ready to go home.

‘Would you like me to visit the doctor with you?’ James whispered softly to me as we said goodbye in the drawing-room while Marianne slowly tied on her bonnet before the mirror in the hall.

I hesitated. I was tempted to say yes and call on the help I knew he would give me. But I had been tempered in the fire of the most fashionable modiste in Bath, and I thought I could defend myself against Dr Phillips.

‘No,’ I said. ‘There will be much to arrange tomorrow. I shall meet you at the Fish Quay Inn; and I shall be a free woman then, for I shall have told Dr Phillips I shall visit him no longer. I should tell him on my own, face to face. It is only fair, for he has spent a deal of time with me, doing the best that he could. I am a little apprehensive, but it will be no worse than Mrs Williams’s shop. Nothing could be worse than that.’

‘And I was so much help there!’ James exclaimed. He took both my hands and took one to his lips and turned the other around to cup his face. ‘Keep me in your mind until tomorrow,’ he said. ‘For I cannot sleep at nights for thinking about you.’

Then he kissed me on my lips and strode out to the hall, swept up Marianne and was gone with a little smile for me.

‘I shall see you tomorrow at the doctor’s,’ Marianne called. ‘Don’t be late!’

I nodded and I was not late, for it was nine o’clock when I slammed the front door and started to run up the hill; I was still there ahead of Marianne. The solemn footman showed us into Dr Phillips’s bleak parlour like two twin flies for a plump spider at exactly five minutes after nine o’clock.

Marianne went to the seat by the window where my mama usually sat, and Dr Phillips waved me towards the comfortable seat before the fire. But I remained standing with one hand on the back of the armchair where I had poured out my dreams and nearly lost them altogether.

‘I have come to thank you and to bid you farewell,’ I said. ‘My mama has been unwell and as soon as she is well enough to travel, I shall want to take her home. They need me at home on the estate.’

Dr Phillips went behind his heavy wooden desk and leaned back in his chair, watching me over his folded hands. ‘I think that would be unwise,’ he said gently. ‘Unweasonable. Have you consulted your mama? No? Have you witten to your uncle? No?’ He smiled gently at me. ‘These things are genewally better done by pawents or guardians,’ he said. ‘When you first came to me, you were suffewing from a number of delusions. I am pleased to say that we have made inwoads. I think you have had no dweams since you came to me? And no experience of the singing in your head? And no hallucinations?’ He nodded to himself. ‘I think we have been making gweat pwogwess. I shall expect you to come again when your mama is well enough to bwing you, unless I hear to the contwawy fwom her or fwom your uncle.’

‘No,’ I said steadily. This was worse than the millinery shop, for I had no tide of anger to sweep me into certainty. ‘No,’ I said. ‘This is a decision I may take for myself. I will not be coming back to see you again. I shall tell you why,’ I said. My hands were trembling and I thrust them into my muff so he should not see. ‘You have indeed stopped my dreams, and I think in time you could have stopped the seeings altogether. But if you succeeded in that, I would no longer be Julia Lacey. I should be someone else. I do not know if I want that. I suspect that you have given no thought to that at all. You saw what you thought was a silly girl having delusions. But I believe that I am a special private person with special private experiences – with a gift, if you like – and I should resist being robbed of that as strongly as I should resist being robbed of my money.’

‘Has something happened?’ he asked acutely.

‘Yes,’ I said honestly. ‘Out of all the linkboys in Bath I recognized one as an Acre child, one who was taken from Acre ten years ago, one I had never seen before. I heard a voice in my head saying, “Take him home.” And I am going to take him home.’

Dr Phillips never moved, but his eyes were suddenly sharper. ‘Are you saying this is a pwoven experience of what is called second sight?’ he asked.

I shrugged with a little laugh. ‘I don’t know!’ I said. ‘I don’t care what it is called. It is as natural to me as seeing the colour of the sky, or hearing music when it is played. I will not have my sight and my hearing taken from me because other people do not have a name for it.’

He nodded, and rose to his feet. ‘Vewy well,’ he said. ‘But let me give you one word of warning. What you think of as second sight can be a guide in certain times and places. But you cannot be a seer and also a young Bath lady. Most of the time you would do well to be guided by convention and manners.’

I nodded. ‘Thank you,’ I said.

Marianne stepped forward beside me. ‘I too am saying goodbye,’ she said softly. I saw her face was white and strained but her teeth were gritted. ‘I thank you for the work you have done for me,’ she said, ‘but I want time to consider my own position without forever having to explain myself.’

Dr Phillips sat plump down on his chair again and looked at both of us. ‘My entire system depends upon the patient talking the twouble out of their minds,’ he said. ‘And I have a pwoven success wate.’

‘I have no trouble in my mind,’ Marianne said steadily. ‘My trouble is in my home where my mama is unhappy and my papa ill-treats her. The only time we ever see Papa is at mealtimes, and I am so distressed that I cannot eat. My papa pays your fees, Dr Phillips, and you have never wanted to hear this simple explanation from me. I understand that you will not hear it, but there is no reason in the world why I should go on pretending that all this is my fault, and that I can somehow be cured from the consequence of my parents’ bad marriage. I cannot eat at home because I am miserable there. I am miserable because my papa is unfaithful to my mama, and because they choose the family dinner table as a place for their disagreements. I will not sit in your armchair and talk and weep and blame myself any longer.’

‘Yes,’ I said softly. I felt more like shouting, ‘Hurrah!’ and throwing my bonnet in the air.

Dr Phillips got to his feet again and looked at us unpleasantly. ‘If this is the new wadical woman, then I cannot say I am impwessed,’ he said. ‘You may tell your mamas that I will submit my final bill and that I, not you, terminated our discussions. I find you both unsympathetic’

I bit back a retort, and curtsied in silence instead. Then Marianne and I got ourselves to the door and out into the damp street and around the corner into Gay Street before we whooped and laughed and congratulated ourselves, tumbled into a pair of sedan chairs and set off for the Fish Quay Inn.

They were in a delightful flurry of packing. All their new possessions, which James had provided, could have gone in one small bandbox; but the joy of private ownership was upon them and each had a separate box. Nat was now flesh-coloured all over his face, except for odd-looking sooty traces around his eyes, and he was very smart in a new suit. Rosie Dench was pale and thin still, but the sores around her mouth were healing and she did not cough at all. Jimmy Dart bustled around them both, as spry as a Bath sparrow in a brown homespun suit. I could not have recognized them for the sorry little crew in that dirty room. But I could not see Julie.

‘She won’t come,’ Jimmy said, his face losing all its light at once. ‘She won’t come with us. She’s in her room. She won’t even come down for her dinner before the journey. She says she’s staying in Bath. She only just told us.’

I looked around for James. ‘It’s as well,’ he said softly. ‘She could hardly ply her trade in Acre. And she could not do without drink.’

‘Trade?’ I said blankly. ‘I did not realize she worked. What trade?’

James made a little grimace. ‘Leave it, Julia,’ he said. ‘I’ll explain later. She does not wish to leave Bath, that’s all.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘She’s an Acre child. It is my duty to know what is happening.’ Ignoring him, I turned into the inn and ran up the stairs to the bedroom she shared with Rosie.

She was lying on the bed, fully dressed, with her face to the wall. The lattice window was shut, but you could still hear the noise outside of coaches coming and going and passengers calling orders about their bags.

‘Julie?’ I asked hesitantly.

She turned around to see me and her eyes were as red as her rouged cheeks. She had been crying. Oh, it’s you,’ she said. ‘Go to Acre with the others,’ I said intently. ‘You can go down now and take the coach with them this afternoon. Go home, Julie.’

She sat up and leaned back against the wall; her eyes were hard as Wideacre flints. ‘I can’t,’ she said blankly.

‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘Is there some trouble here?’

‘No.’ She said it like a sigh.

‘What is it, then?’ I demanded. ‘Why won’t you go home?’

There was a tap on the door behind me and James came quietly into the room.

‘Ask him!’ she said, wearied. ‘Ask him! Don’t ask me! You are the little miss perfect Julia Lacey! You are the one who will marry the man with the fortune. Don’t ask me to explain it to you. Ask your finance. Ask him what men of his type do, and what they pay. Ask him where he goes and how much it costs him.’

I turned to James. ‘What is all this about?’ I asked. I had not an idea what Julie was saying.

James’s face was grave. ‘Can you not put this behind you, leave it and forget it, and start again in Acre?’ he asked her.

Julie’s face was bright with bitterness. ‘It’s my trade,’ she said harshly. ‘Will the little princess here let me practise my trade in Acre? Will there be customers for me there?’

‘What is your trade, Julie?’ I demanded. I was all at sea with her sharpness and her especial malice towards me. There was also some private knowledge between James and her which disturbed me.

‘Little fool,’ she said. And then she nodded at James. ‘You tell her.’

I turned to James; his eyes were sombre. ‘She’s a prostitute,’ he said baldly. ? whore.’

‘That’s what I am,’ Julie said to me. ‘I am a street-trader, I sell my body to men. I did it when we were working at the mill so that the little children could have bread. I did it first when I was eleven. It hurt, and I hated to do it. I have done it since, and I have learned to endure it. Sometimes I like it. It is the only way I know of getting money to buy bread and gin. If I had not sold my body – oh! again and again! – all the way down the weary road from Manchester to here, then the children would have starved and I would have lost them all, as well as little Sally. Now you can take them home, and keep them safe. But I cannot come home. Acre is no longer a home for me. I need gin to drink and men to pay to take their pleasure on me. I am lost, Julia Lacey. And though I carry your name, I might as well be a slave in the sugar islands for the gulf there is between us.’

My head was thudding.

‘I did not know,’ I said to Julie, but I knew it was no excuse. ‘I did not know such things happened to a girl as young as you.’

She gave a harsh laugh. “They happen!’ she exclaimed. Oh, yes, they happen. It is whores like me who make it possible for you to keep your precious virginity until it is sold in marriage. How old is this man of yours? Is he a virgin? Silly fool, Julia Lacey! He has lain with whores. He will have been with whores like me. And it is because he has been with them that he can dance with you and walk with you and kiss your hand and wait for a wedding night that may be years away. Isn’t that so?’

I looked blankly at James. ‘You have been with women?’ I asked, my voice very thin. I sounded like the silly child they thought me.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is true, and I do not deny it. I am twenty-four and I have lain with women. All whores. I never hurt them, I always give them more money than they ask of me. I am a man with desires. What would you have me do?’

I hesitated.

The whore who had been bought and sold like meat at Smith-field looked from one to another of us with hard eyes. And I saw that the man that I loved was one of the gentry – as I am – who take their pleasures or satisfy their needs, but never, never pay in full.

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

A coach horn outside the window blew loudly to warn the passengers that the stage was going. It reminded me of the immediate issue of the journey home this afternoon.

‘Go to Acre,’ I said to Julie.

She lay down and turned her face to the wall again. ‘Nay,’ she said, and her voice had something of the Sussex drawl of our home. ‘I’m lost. Let them go, and you give them a job and somewhere to live. But it is too late for me. The Laceys ruined me, and the mill ruined me, and the cheap gin and no work ruined me. I am lost. I won’t see you again.’

I stepped forward hesitantly and put my hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it off as if I were a beggar.

‘If I could be melted with a touch, I should be drowned in tears by now,’ she said harshly. ‘Get out of my room, Julia Lacey, and take your man with you. Or leave him here. I only charge a shilling during the day.’

I opened my reticule and took out all the money I had – three guineas – and laid them on the pillow beside her tumbled copper hair. Then without looking at James I walked past him and down to the inn parlour.

It was not easy to smile and say farewell to the children and promise them that the hired coach would come for them at two o’clock prompt that afternoon, and that I would see them in a few weeks at Acre. I think I deceived them with my smiles. But not Marianne.

‘What’s the matter?’ she said in an undertone as we left the parlour and walked across the wet cobbles.

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Julie won’t go home and it upset me. I must get back to Mama. I’ll take a chair.’

I moved towards the waiting chairmen, but James was at my elbow.

‘Julia…’ he said hesitantly.

I waited in silence.

‘I hope you don’t think too badly of me,’ he said awkwardly. ‘It is true that men do go with such women, me among them. You’ve seen well enough how everything in our world goes to the highest bidder. It’s true for this too. Everything in this world is for sale. Even little girls.’ His eyes scanned my face. ‘You are disappointed in me,’ he said evenly.

‘Yes, I am!’ I said in a sudden rush of words. ‘I thought that you were different. I thought that you were not one of those who take and ill-treat the poor. There is no fair price for a woman’s body. There is no fair price for her ruin. You have helped to ruin girls. None of them will ever be able to go home – just like Julie. None of them will be able to marry – like her. I did not know how such things happened. I would not have dreamed that you would be part of it.’

James smiled a wry smile. ‘I am no hero, Julia,’ he said gently. ‘I am an ordinary man, very ordinary, I dare say. You must not think too highly of me – or of anyone. I am no better than times allow.’

‘Well, you should be,’ I said fiercely. ‘I did not think you were a hero, but I did think you were special, very special. And now…’ I stopped. My voice was failing as my throat grew tighter with tears. ‘Everything is spoiled,’ I said like a little child.

James put his arm around my waist and guided me towards the waiting chair. ‘Don’t say that,’ he said gently. ‘I do not believe you mean it, but it cuts me to the quick. I cannot tease you out of words like that, Julia. Don’t say such final things unless you mean them indeed.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what to think. I shall go home now and I shall write you a note this afternoon.’

He bowed as formally to me as if we had been strangers, and then he turned to Marianne and guided her to his phaeton. She was chattering and laughing and I saw him make an effort to smile and guessed she was telling him that she was no longer visiting Dr Phillips. She waved as they went past my chair, but James just looked at me. He looked at me as if I were a ship sailing out of harbour and away from him.

I drew the curtains on the window of the chair and put my head in my hands. I did not cry. I just sighed out my disappointment and my love and my longing into my gloved hands and wondered that the world we gentry had made to suit ourselves should sometimes give us so little joy.