The Favoured Child

4

That was the start of a friendship for me – my friendship with Clary Dench – which did so much to reconcile me to my task of becoming a young lady of Quality. Not because Clary knew my world, or cared anything for its arcane restrictions, but because with her I had an escape and a hiding-place from the standards of my mama and from the discipline I had imposed on myself by my determination to be a good daughter and, in the future, a good wife.

With Clary I could be myself. I loved her despite the differences in our lives, despite the fight at our first meeting and our regular quarrels thereafter. We forged an unquestioning friendship, in that we took enormous pleasure in each other’s company without ever wondering why we liked each other so much. I just found that it suited me very well to go every morning to the vicarage with Richard, to leave him there for his lessons and then to meet Clary and spend an hour or two of my leisured empty days with her.

We often walked together, past the mill down to the Fenny. Old Mrs Green always had a smile for me now, and sometimes I would beg a twist of tea in a piece of paper from the Dower House larder, and Clary and I would go and sit by the tiny fire in the huge fireplace while Mrs Green made tea and told our fortunes in the tea-leaves. It was all a game – I think she had no real skill. She was copying what the gypsies did when they pitched their wagons on the common land for winter and came around to the houses, selling little wooden toys and whittled flowers, and offering to tell fortunes.

When the weather was good, Clary and I would walk on the common, or down to the Fenny. During the long hot summertime we would strip down to our shifts and bathe in the deeper pools of the river. Neither of us could swim properly, but if Clary held my chin above water-level with one brown hand over my mouth to keep the water out, I could kick along for a few yards before sinking inelegantly in splashes and gales of laughter.

Clary was better. Within the week she could splash from one side of the pool to the other, and she even learned to plunge underwater and swim for half the length before coming up gasping, hair streaming. ‘I must have been born with a caul!’ she said. ‘I shan’t never drown at any rate.’

I was lazing in the shallows, in bright sunlight, but I shivered as if a cold wind had suddenly blown over me. A shadow came over the sun as she spoke, and every hair on my body stood up and pimpled the surface of my skin.

‘What is it?’ she asked me. ‘Your face has gone all pale and funny.’

‘It’s nothing,’ I said hastily. I had suddenly seen her face deathly white and her hair washing around it, and water, river water, oozing from her mouth. ‘Ugh!’ I said. ‘A horrid picture in my head. Come out, come out of the water, Clary.’

‘All right,’ she said equably and swam towards me and heaved herself out on to the bank to dry beside me in the sunshine, our naked bodies as white and shiny as the breasts of doves.

‘Promise me something,’ I said, suddenly serious, that picture of her face, soaked and sodden, still vivid in my mind. ‘Promise me you’ll never swim alone.’

She twisted around propped on one elbow. ‘Why’s that, Julia?’ she asked. ‘Why d’you look so odd?’ And then, seeing my face, she said, ‘All right! All right! I promise. But why do you look so strange?’

‘I saw…’ I said, but I was vague and the picture was fading from my mind. ‘I thought I saw something,’ I said.

‘It’s the sight,’ she said, portentously. ‘I heard my ma talking to Mrs Green. They were talking about you and Richard. They say whichever one of you is the true heir is going to have the sight. One of you’ll get it as soon as you’re grown.’

‘That’s Richard,’ I said definitely. I rolled on my front and picked a grass stem to chew. The pith of the stalk was as sweet as nectar.

‘They say in the village that it could be you,’ Clary said warningly. ‘They say you’re the spit of Beatrice as a girl when she used to come riding into the village with her pa. They say you’re her all over again. They say that you’ll be the one.’

I sat up and pulled my crumpled gown on over my head. ‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘I wouldn’t want it if it was offered to me on a plate. Richard is her son. Richard is her heir. Together we will be Laceys on the land again, but Richard will be the squire and I will be his lady. I want that, Clary!’

‘Aye,’ she nodded, and smiled her slow smile. ‘Does he kiss you, Julia?’

‘No, not really,’ I said. ‘I suppose it’s not like that for Quality, Clary. He’s more like a brother to me. Sometimes we’re very close, sometimes we quarrel. But it’s not like in novels.’

Clary looked sceptical and worldly-wise. ‘Wouldn’t do for me, then, Quality life,’ she said boldly. ‘Matthew and me hold hands and kiss often. And we’ve plighted our troth and carved our names in a tree, and everything. But he’s not strong,’ she said anxiously. ‘I wish there was more money in the village. I’m afraid for him. He coughs so much in winter, his gran thought she’d never rear him.’

‘Maybe he’ll get work indoors,’ I said helpfully. ‘You say yourself he’s thoughtful and clever. Maybe he’ll become a clerk or something and work in Midhurst! Or even Chichester! I’d like to see you in a fine town house, Clary!’

We laughed at that, but Clary tossed her head. ‘I’d not leave Wideacre,’ she said. ‘But my Matthew is clever enough for anything. Even when we were little children, he taught himself to read, and he’s always written and read letters for people in the village. And he can make rhymes as good as in books.’

I nodded, impressed; and then I turned for her to button up the back of my gown so that I could arrive at the vicarage to go home with Richard looking at least half presentable.

I had laughed off her belief in the sight and in Beatrice’s heir. But the way they looked at me in the village and the story of the old god of Wideacre stayed with me all the time I was growing and trying to be an ordinary girl in the Dower House. All the time in the back of my mind was the thought of Beatrice and the dark god who came for her and the legacy of magic she had left for her special heir, whichever one of us it was.

I tried to shrug off the Acre legend. I always knew it was some fanciful version of the night of the Wideacre fire, all exaggeration and pretence. Mama had scolded me often enough for being scared out of my wits by Richard’s ghost stories. I should not be made fearful by some silly village gossip.

But I could not forget it. It haunted me: the story of the man who was one of the old gods, who came for Beatrice. And Beatrice, who was the beautiful cruel goddess-destroyer. I carried that picture of her in my head, despite myself. It was so unlike Mama’s version of those days – Beatrice and Harry working the land in harmonious partnership. Half a dozen times I shrugged my shoulders and told myself it was forgotten. But the horse which left flaming hoofprints up the oak stairs rode into my dreams every night.

And then I started dreaming a special dream.

It was like the other – the dream I have of the woman who was me, and the baby who must be taken to the river. But this time the woman was not me. Even in my sleep I knew I was seeing through her eyes and smiling her smile. But I knew she was not me.

I first had the special dream a few nights after Clary had held me spellbound in the woods with her fairytale. But then I dreamed it again, and again. Each time the colours were a little brighter. Each time the sounds were a little clearer – like a scene in mist which is burned off by the morning sun as you watch. Every time my heartbeat went a little faster as the terror and the delight of the dream grew stronger. Then, the night before my sixteenth birthday, I dreamed it as brightly and as vividly as if I were living it.

In the dream I was in an empty house. A large house, a beautiful house, one I had never visited in my waking life. I did not know the house, and yet it was the most familiar, the most beloved, the most precious place in the world. It was a large house, a gracious house, the home of a landowner who lived on fertile lands. I was entranced by the silence of the house, of this house which was my home. I sighed in my delight that it was at last mine, all mine, and my breath was the only thing which stirred in the great echoing hall, the only thing which moved in the still silent rooms.

I walked from room to room like a ghost, like a dream of a ghost. I was as silent as a cat, with a cat’s unwinking stare, looking, looking, looking, as if I had to see everything now, every beloved inch of my home, as if I would never be able to see it again. I was printing the picture of it on my mind as if I were about to go into exile, or to fall under an enchantment. And I was imprinting myself on the place, so that this place, my home, would never, never forget me. I belonged here. I should be here for ever.

It was all so still. I made no sound, not even the quietest footfall. The silence held echoes of people who were here – but I could not be quite sure who they were. There were echoes of people who had only just left: loud voices and bitter words and the slam of a distant door. But now the house was empty. It was mine at last.

I touched things, touched like a priestess at a shrine, a worshipper of these smooth sweet things. The carved newel post at the foot of the sweep of the stairs had intricate pictures beneath my caressing fingertips, pictures of a land ripe with fertility, a cow in calf, a sheep’s fleecy side, sheaves of wheat. I knew it was my land which was celebrated here in wood smelling of beeswax, and it was warm and silky as if it loved my caress.

Opposite the newel post in the shadows of the wall was a gilt mirror, and I turned from the stairs to face it. But it was not my reflection in the dark glass. It was not my childish round-faced prettiness, my light hair, my grey eyes. It was the face of a stranger, a woman I had never met in my waking life. Yet I knew her face as well as I knew my own; for in the dream that vivid chestnut hair and those slanty green eyes were my features, and her vague half-mad look was mine. I stared at the reflection of the stranger, which was my face, for long unblinking moments, and then I dropped my eyes with a secret sly smile.

Beneath the mirror was a mahogany table. I placed my palm upon it and felt the coolness of the wood warming under my touch. There was a silver bowl on the table, filled with drooping cream roses, heavy headed, looking down at their own reflections in the polished surface. I brushed one flower with the tip of a careless finger and it shed its petals in a swift flurry like a creamy snowdrift. In my head I heard a voice – a voice just like my mama’s but in a tone I had never heard from her – saying, ‘You are a wrecker, Beatrice.’ Her voice was full of disdain.

Further up the hall was a great china bowl of potpourri and I stood beside it and dipped my hand in to feel the papery rose petals, the spiky lavender seeds, and bent to smell the sweet dried hay scent. The lighter petals and the dust spilled over the floor as I carelessly took a handful to sniff. It did not matter. Soon nothing would ever matter again.

A storm had been rumbling in the distance and now it was louder, rolling back over the head of the downs and coming close over the woods to this house. I thought of the two children, the little girl and the baby boy, fleeing from this house in a carriage with the rain drumming on the roof and the horses in a panic of fear at the storm. I knew they would be safe. They were on my land, and they were the bone of my bone and they were my blood. They would inherit Wideacre, and one of them would surely learn to hear the heartbeat of the land. One of them would make the magic of the harvest as I once did. One of them would be the favoured child.

The wallpaper was soft underneath my fingertips, rich. The velvet drapes at the window of the parlour were as silky soft as the fleece of a new-born lamb. The thick glass in the windows was icy cold from the rain pouring down outside. I leaned my forehead against its coolness and smiled.

The house was filled with silence. I could hear the parlour clock tick with a light metallic tick…tick…tick. In the hall the grandfather clock had a deeper wooden tone, tock…tock…tock. And I could hear another sound. There was the deep rumble of the storm but that noise did not alarm me. Above that rumble there was another sound, a new sound. I was listening carefully for it, as sharp-eared as a rat in a dark hole.

It was the sound of many feet, bare feet, on the drive, coming to the house. I could hear it before it was more than a distant shuffle, because I was expecting to hear it. I had been waiting for it. I knew this dream; and I knew what happened next. I could not stop it. I could not halt it. There was no escape for me. For what was coming for me was my destiny. What was coming for me was rough justice. What was coming for me was the village I had tried to destroy and the man I had attacked. For I was Beatrice. Beatrice Lacey of Wideacre Hall, with a wild smile on my lips, staring into the storm-drenched darkness. I was Beatrice, waiting in the darkened house. I was Beatrice and I was alone at Wideacre, waiting for the men who were coming from Acre led by a god who was half-man and half-horse, who would ride up the oak stairs, leaving hoofprints of fire, and take me away to the secret world of his own.

I awoke in terror, but with a feeling also of mad elation, as though the world were ending, but ending by my will. The excitement and the fear drained from me as I looked around my room, and my real life – plain ordinary Julia Lacey’s life – came back to me. I was no copper-headed witch. I was plain ordinary Julia Lacey in her patched nightgown in her cold room.

I turned and lay on my back and looked up at the ceiling, which was pale yellow in the spring dawn. The dream faded from me, and the richness of the colours and the delight of the textures went with it. It was a dream, it was nothing but a dream. But it left me longing to know the woman who had been Beatrice, longing to know her life and her death. And it left me confused, and somehow dissatisfied with this little house and my quiet pleasures and my bending to Richard’s will and to Mama’s gentle rule. It left me with a feeling that the woman who was Beatrice would never have tolerated the indoors life which I was teaching myself to enjoy. She would have snapped her fingers at it, insisted on having her own horse and ridden out every day. She would not have let her inheritance go to rack and ruin – she would have borrowed money to plant the fields, to buy stock. And her skill and determination and her magic would have made it work.

I sighed. I knew I was not like that. I was too loving and obedient to my mama to overrule her, or even to challenge what she said. And I was too much Richard’s faithful betrothed to think an independent thought. It seemed I had been set in a mould before I had time to make a choice. I was a docile, ordinary young lady and I must take my little enjoyments indoors and with proper decorum.

But then I suddenly remembered what day it was, and I forgot my passing irritation with my life. Today was not a plain ordinary day at all. It was the day of my sixteenth birthday. The dream slid away from me and I jumped out of bed and pattered to the window to see what sort of day it was. I wrapped myself in a shawl and waited for my morning chocolate and for the day to begin.

I expected some changes. But I had expected slight, trivial, delightful changes. I thought that the most exciting things would be Mama coming to my room after breakfast, with her tortoise-shell hairbrushes and a box full of pins, and seating me before my little spotted looking-glass and pinning up my hair. My thick ripple of light-brown hair was to be pinned up for ever. And my skirts were to be longer. I was to be a young lady. In so far as Mama could do it – with no money, and no London season, and no ball – I was Out.

Richard banged at the door. ‘Am I allowed to watch?’ he called.

‘Certainly not,’ Mama said, her mouth full of hairpins. ‘You may wait in the parlour in awed silence until we are ready.’

‘I don’t want Julia to look all different,’ he said mutinously.

‘She is going to look like a lady and not like a hoyden,’ Mama said firmly. ‘Now, go away, Richard!’

We heard the clatter of his boots as he went downstairs, and I met my mama’s eyes in the mirror and smiled.

‘I can’t do it very well,’ she said apologetically. ‘You should really have it cut properly. But hairdressers are very dear, I’m afraid. I so wish that you could have had a party and we could have gone to the Assembly Rooms. But there is little point waiting. You are sixteen, and it has to be now, with just me as your dresser and dinner this afternoon as your coming-out ball.’

I nodded, not minding, impressed already with the changes she was making. Mama had swept up my thick mass of hair and was coiling it like a fat snake round and round and pinning it skilfully on my head. On either side of my face she parted the hair and trimmed it shorter, twisting it with her fingers into soft waves. She was intent upon my hair and did not look into the mirror to see the overall effect until she had her pins firmly in place. Then she looked up to see me and the smile faded from her face and she was suddenly pale.

‘What is it?’ I demanded. I was smiling; I thought myself at the very pinnacle of style.

Mama swallowed. ‘It is nothing,’ she said. She smiled, but she did not seem happy. ‘It is that you are suddenly so grown-up,’ she said. She dropped a kiss on the top of my head.

‘When I was a girl, hair was worn powdered. But I think it is prettier left in its natural fairness,’ she said. ‘Especially in the summer when it goes lighter and you are quite fair.’ She gathered up her brushes and pins and swept from the room as if she were in a hurry to leave. I watched her abrupt departure, puzzled; but then I looked back at my mirror.

I knew at once whom she had seen.

She had seen Beatrice.

I looked like the face in the dream. The plaits I usually wore had hidden the clear lines of my profile, had blurred the shape of my face. Now, with my hair swept up and the teasing little waves around my face, you could see my high cheek-bones and the odd little slant to my eyes which I had inherited – as clear as a voice calling across a generation – from my aunt. My face was still round, distressingly chubby, I thought. I smiled an experimental smile at myself in the glass. In a few years’ time I could count on being pretty. But if I became beautiful, it would be Beatrice’s clear loveliness shining through.

Perhaps it should have troubled me, but I was just sixteen and I wanted, more than anything else in the world, to be a pretty girl. If I had inherited the notorious beauty of Beatrice, then my delight in that outweighed my fear of the woman in the dream. I smiled again at my reflection.

I did not look so very much like the woman in the dream, I thought. I did not want to think of the dream today. Today I wanted everything to be joyful and normal and ordinary. I did not want to be a haunted Lacey heir reaching adulthood. I wanted to be Julia, finally old enough to wear her hair up, and with a very good chance of a pair of silver-backed hairbrushes of her very own wrapped in pretty paper by her place at dinner that afternoon.

‘Julia! Aren’t you done yet?’ Richard called from the foot of the stairs. ‘If you don’t hurry and come, we won’t get to Havering Hall and back again in time for dinner!’

‘Coming!’ I called back, and I looked once more at myself in the mirror and ran from the room, banging the door behind me and clattering down the uncarpeted stairs.

I had hoped that Richard would fall back on his heels at the change in my appearance. I was young enough and silly enough and vain enough to think that he might think me pretty, perhaps even beautiful. But he just grinned when he saw me. ‘Very smart,’ he said. ‘Very grown-up. I s’pose you’re too grown-up now to run through the wood to Havering and we’ll have to walk around by the road?’

I grinned back and lost my disappointment in my relief that nothing had changed between us. ‘No,’ I said. ‘We can go through the woods. But if my hair falls down, you’ll have to pin it up before we go in to Grandmama, Richard, for I’ve not learned how to do it yet.’

‘No worse than tying knots, I suppose,’ Richard said, and we stepped out of the front door into a spring day of sunlight as bright as peach wine.

Wideacre glowed like a gift for me. It had rained overnight and the buds on the trees and the grassy banks were glittering with raindrops. The hedges were pale green with buds as if someone had thrown a gauze veil over the black twigs and branches. Pale strips of clouds lay on the horizon and the sweet wind of Wideacre blew in my face, saying welcome from the land to a Lacey. To my left the downs reared up, up to the pale sky, streaked with chalk scree and covered in the sweet green colour of chalk-grown grass. And ahead of us, like a wall of tree-trunks, were the thick woods of Wideacre Park.

Without another word Richard and I turned up the drive towards Wideacre Hall and then plunged into the woods following the little track which would take us to Havering.

The Fenny was in spate, flooded with the winter rain and the bubbling little chalk springs from the downs. As we walked beside it, we said nothing, listening to it singing over the stones which glowed golden in the depths. Bits of wood, twigs and last year’s brown leaves tumbled over and over in the current. We paused for a moment to toss in some bracken fronds and watch them whirl away down river, past the Greens’ idle mill, over the weir, past Acre, southwards to the sea.

The bridge we used was a felled tree. Once there was a path clearly marked across it, for people from Acre used to walk this way and take the short cut over the tree-bridge to Wideacre Hall. But it had been many years since the poor of Acre would seek out a Lacey, and few people went to the hall after it was burned, except Richard and me and the Lacey ghosts. The path was overgrown and I had to pull my gown away from brambles and burrs as we walked. Mama had let down the hem for me, and I saw, as she had warned me, that I might not always relish the change.

‘Wait, Richard,’ I said impatiently. ‘I’m going to hitch it up.’

Richard chuckled and held my coat out of my way as I kilted up my skirt. ‘You’re a hoyden,’ he said, smiling. ‘Not a young lady at all.’

‘I am a young lady,’ I said grimly, and my picture of Beatrice was bright in my mind. ‘But I cannot always be a perfect young lady on Wideacre.’

I walked easier after that, and we balanced our way across the slippery tree-trunk, holding on to the branches without mishap. Then it was a stroll down a grassy ride to the Havering estate, where Grandmama congratulated me on my new hairstyle and was generous enough to overlook that my newly lengthened gown was very muddy around the hem. We stayed for a dish of tea and then Grandmama ordered the carriage out to take us home.

‘We can walk, Lady Havering,’ Richard said courteously.

She smiled. ‘My granddaughter is a young lady today,’ she said. ‘I think she should certainly ride home in a carriage.’

So we arrived home in fine style in the shabby carriage with the faded crest on the door, and Mama waved to us from the parlour window and hastened out on to the front step.

‘My second carriage visitor today!’ she said, and her eyes were shining. ‘We have a guest for dinner! You two, upstairs at once and change. I won’t have you in my parlour in all your dirt. Hurry now!’ And she whisked back into the parlour with a ripple of laughter as if she were a young girl, refusing to respond to our bemused faces, running from our questions.

Richard turned at once for the kitchen. The place was in chaos. The fire was burning fiercely, and Mrs Gough’s white cap was askew and she was alarmingly red in the face.

‘Who is here?’ Richard demanded. ‘Mrs Gough, who is the extra place at dinner?’

‘Wait and see!’ she said tersely, slapping a mound of pastry on the floured table. ‘But your ma said to tell you, Miss Julia, to change into your best gown, and you are to put on your Sunday suit, Master Richard!’

‘Lord Havering,’ I hazarded. Mrs Gough pressed her lips together, rolled out some of the pastry and turned it a quarter of the way around to keep it smooth.

‘Lady de Courcey!’ Richard guessed.

Oh, get along, do!’ she said with the tolerance in her voice which was always there for Richard. ‘Can’t you see that I’m rushed off my feet! Go and get dressed, Master Richard! And you, Miss Julia, be a good girl and go into the yard and see if Jem is back yet. He’s fetching some fruit and vegetables and some game for me from Midhurst, and I cannot get on without it!’

I nodded and went obediently to the back door, but Richard stood his ground and went on guessing. Jem still had not come, and the rising flush on Mrs Gough’s pink cheeks warned even Richard that her temper was about to boil over. We made ourselves scarce, creeping through the green baize door into the hall. A gentleman’s hat was on the hall table with tan gloves beside it, good-quality leather. We could hear the murmur of voices in the parlour and suddenly Mama’s laugh rang out as clear as a flute. I had never heard her laugh so joyously in all my life before.

Richard would have listened at the door, but Stride came out of the dining-room and shooed us upstairs.

‘Who is it, Stride?’ I asked in a whisper as I hovered on the stairs.

‘The sooner you are dressed for dinner, the sooner you will know,’ he said unhelpfully. ‘Now, go, Miss Julia!’

I dropped my muddy things on my bedroom floor and drew my new cream silk gown out of the chest. ‘New to you,’ Mama had said ruefully. It was cut down from an old gown from Mama’s half-sister, and the seams showed pale where the colour had faded. But the main silk of the gown was shiny and yellow, bright as the heart of a primrose, and I felt taller and older as soon as the ripple of sweet-smelling silk eased in a flurry over my head. I stood on tiptoe to see as much of it as I could in my little mirror and saw how the colour made my face glow warm and my eyes show hazy and grey. Then Richard banged on my door and I spun around to slip into my best shoes and we went downstairs to see who was the guest for dinner so important that his identity was an exciting secret and Mrs Gough was allowed to buy fruit and game for his meal.

It was John MacAndrew.

I knew it the second the door opened. Not because he was standing, tall but slightly stooping, at the fireplace as close to the hot fire as he could get, needing the heat, but because I saw Mama’s face, pink and rosy like a girl’s, glowing with a happiness I had never seen before.

‘Julia! This is…’

‘My Uncle John!’ I interrupted, and ran into the room with both hands held out to him. He beamed at my welcome and caught both hands in his and drew me to him for a hug. Then he set me back and kissed my forehead like a blessing, and stepped back to see me.

Suddenly the easy smile went cold on his lips and his pale blue eyes lost their warmth. He looked at me as if he were seeing an enemy, not his own niece. He looked over my head to Mama, who had risen from her chair and was watching his face with something like fear in her face.

‘What is it, John?’ she asked, her voice urgent.

‘She reminded me so…she reminds me so…’ he said, searching for words, his eyes fixed on my face. He looked afraid. I stepped awkwardly away from him, towards my mama, and looked to her for prompting.

‘No!’ she said abruptly, and I jumped at the sharpness in her voice. ‘She is nothing like Beatrice!’

At the mention of her name Uncle John breathed out.

‘She is not like Beatrice at all,’ Mama said again, like some brave rider going for a difficult fence. ‘She has quite different hair colour, quite different eyes. Quite different altogether. You have been away too long, John. You have had the picture of Beatrice in your mind for too long. Julia is not in the least like her. She is very much my daughter. She is very like me. She is naughty sometimes, and Wideacre-mad! But all children are naughty at times and it means nothing. Julia is my little girl. If you had seen her yesterday – before she put up her hair – you would not have thought her a young lady at all!’

Uncle John shuddered and shook his head to clear his mind. Of course,’ he said, and he smiled at me, drawing strength from Mama’s common sense. Of course. It was the way she ran into the parlour, and her voice, her smile, and the set of her head…but she will have learned that grace from you, Celia, I know.’

‘I am glad you think so,’ Mama said. ‘For I think her a most mannerless hoyden!’

He smiled at that and I saw the warmth in his eyes which made me glad for Mama. I could see at once that he loved her. And the first picture I had – of a man stooped and tired, yellow-faced and ill – faded before the sparkle in his eyes and the way his mouth made a little secret smile as though he could not help laughing but was trying to stay serious.

‘Uncle John,’ I said shyly. ‘Here is Richard too.’

John turned swiftly towards his son, and I saw his shoulders suddenly straighten, taking on a burden that he had long promised himself. He put out a hand as Richard came into the room, and his voice and his smile were practised. ‘Richard,’ he said, ‘I am very glad to see you’, and he put his arm around Richard’s shoulders and hugged him hard, and then, still holding him, turned to Mama and laughed. ‘Celia, all this while I have been picturing you with little children, and here is Richard nearly as tall as me and Julia up to my shoulder.’

Mama laughed too, and I knew that she had expected that hesitation from Uncle John and was skilfully glossing over it before it could be noticed. ‘And the clothes they need! And the shoes!’ she exclaimed.

‘I see I shall need all my rubies and diamonds,’ Uncle John beamed.

‘Do you have rubies and diamonds, sir?’ Richard asked quickly.

‘Minefuls of ’em!’ Uncle John replied promptly.

Mama beamed at him. ‘We shall spend them all,’ she promised. ‘But do sit down now, John, and rest before Stride serves dinner. And tell us your news. You can unpack your elephants later!’

The dinner was the best that Mrs Gough could rush together and was served on the Havering china with the crest; and we used the best crystal glasses. Lady Havering had spared no trouble when Jem had been sent out again after his return from Midhurst to tell her that Dr MacAndrew was home. She had even packed a cold bottle of champagne, and we drank it with the pudding and toasted all our futures.

‘We must talk, Celia,’ said Uncle John when Mama rang for Stride to come and clear the plates.

‘We can talk later,’ she offered with a loving concerned glance at his pale face.

John summoned a smile. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I am tired, and I don’t mind admitting it. I had dose after dose of fever in India, and it has left me weaker than I should be. But there are things I want us to decide as a family, and I want us to decide quickly. Let’s go into the parlour and have a council of war.’

‘Who are we making war on, Uncle John?’ I asked him with a smile as we crossed the hall to the parlour. The fire had burned down in the grate and Mama rang for fresh logs as we settled ourselves around the parlour table.

‘I think we are making war on the past,’ Uncle John said seriously. ‘The old bad ways of thinking, and the old bad ways of doing things. I want us to remake Wideacre, and that would be a victory indeed.

‘I have been a lucky man in India,’ Uncle John said by way of introduction. ‘I was able to do a service to one of the independent Indian princes.’ He paused and smiled wryly. ‘The villages under my supervision escaped an epidemic which was very serious for the rest of the country. The combination of luck and cleanliness was credited to me and he has awarded me a very large grant of land. It is good land for growing tea and spices. In addition to that there is a small mine, which is profitable now and could be expanded.’

Richard raised his head. ? mine?’ he asked. ‘Mining what?’

‘Opals,’ said Uncle John. He smiled, but his tone was ironic. ‘It seems I am to have another chance at being a wealthy man,’ he said. ‘I lost my last fortune on Wideacre. I shall take better care of this one!’

‘Opals,’ said Richard softly. He licked his lips as if they were something sweet to eat..

‘I have come home to help,’ Uncle John said firmly. ‘I have come home to set the land right, and the people right. Wideacre is notorious. Acre men are blacklisted locally and cannot find work. The local farmers will not have fire-raisers on their land. That is a heavy legacy for a village to carry. It is Beatrice’s legacy,’ John said quietly. ‘Poverty in Acre, hatred between village and gentry, a village notorious for violence. And a wicked inheritance for the children.’

‘Uncle John,’ I interrupted, but when he turned his severe face towards me, I could say little except, ‘I don’t understand.’

He glanced at my mama. ‘You have told them nothing?’ he asked.

‘As we agreed,’ she said steadily. ‘We agreed they should not be burdened with such a past while they were young. I have told them nothing but that there was a fire and the Laceys and Acre were ruined, even though at times they pressed me for more information. I think they are ready to know the outlines of the story now.’ I fancied she emphasized the word Outlines’.

John nodded. ‘Very well, than. You will have heard that the estate was farmed well by Julia’s papa, the squire, and his sister, Beatrice. But that was not so. They wrung the land dry to meet mortgages to pay to change the entail so that the two of you could inherit jointly. Both Celia and I opposed them. We opposed both the changing of the entail and the planting of nothing but wheat.

“The countryside was very poor, and there were starving mobs. One night a mob came to Wideacre Hall. We had received advance warning, and Celia and I took you children away to Havering Hall. But Beatrice decided to stay. She died in the fire. Julia’s papa died of an attack of apoplexy. He always had a weak heart. It is a family weakness.’

Richard and I exchanged one long bemused look.

Oh,’ Richard said blankly. ‘My mama was left all alone at the hall with the mob coming?’

‘Yes,’ Uncle John replied levelly. ‘It was her choice, and we had not lived as husband and wife for some time. It was not my duty to make her leave, nor to stay and protect her. I considered my duty to be to protect the two of you. Beatrice elected to stay behind. She could have come in the carriage if she wished.’

There was a bowl of pale primroses on the table, and I was staring at them. Staring at them but hardly seeing them. They were wilting over the rim of the silver bowl and they reminded me of another silver bowl and the heavy heads of cream roses looking down at their reflections and my mama’s voice saying so bitterly, ‘You are a wrecker, Beatrice.’

They had left her in hatred. I knew it. I did not know why. But I remembered the silence of the dream and the sense of peace I had felt to know that at last they had all gone and the house was empty. That all the work and the lying and the cheating were over. And I remembered Beatrice looking down the drive, waiting for the mob.

‘Did they have a leader?’ I asked suddenly, thinking of the old god who was half-man, half-horse.

‘No one was ever taken,’ John said steadily.

‘Where did they all come from?’ Richard asked.

‘No one ever knew,’ John said again in the same level tone.

I looked up from the flowers and saw his pale-blue eyes upon me. I knew he was keeping back the truth from us. Beatrice knew the mob. I thought she even knew the man they now called a god in Acre. But I had a strong sense of grown-up secrets and long-ago fears, and I knew nothing for certain.

‘What does this mean?’ I asked. ‘What does this all mean for us?’

‘It means I want to set the estate to rights,’ John said. ‘It is time for a new chance for the estate. A new life for all of us. I have some detailed ideas about new crops – fruit and vegetables which we might sell in Chichester or London. And I want us to try to share the profits with the village. That will bring them back to work, and draw them into the new century which is coming.

‘I have been following the events in France,’ John said, and his eyes were bright with enthusiasm. ‘I truly believe that there is a new age coming, a time when people will work together and share the wealth. A time of science and progress and a brushing away of old restrictions and superstitions. The new age is truly coming, and I want Wideacre to be part of it!’

We were all silent, a little overwhelmed by Uncle John’s fervour, and also by the prospect of a changed Wideacre.

‘Julia will have a proper season,’ my mama said slowly. John nodded.

‘And the hall can be rebuilt,’ Richard said.

‘Rebuilt, and the parkland refenced, and the estate growing and fertile again,’ John confirmed.

‘And no more poverty in the village,’ I said, thinking of the children and the parish overseer due for another visit to take paupers away to the mills in the north.

‘That is my first priority,’ Uncle John said.

There was a silence while we absorbed the fact that all our dreams might be a reality.

‘I am counting on all of you,’ Uncle John said. ‘I shall find a manager to run the farmland. But I shall need all your advice and support. This is your inheritance we are setting to rights, Richard, Julia.’ He nodded gravely to each of us in turn. ‘I shall need your help.’

‘Shall I not go to university, sir?’ Richard asked eagerly.

John smiled, his eyes suddenly warm. ‘You most certainly shall,’ he said firmly. ‘The time for squires who know nothing but their crops is long gone. You shall go to Oxford, and Julia shall go to Bath for the season and to London also. There will be time enough during the summer months for you to work on the land.’

‘Good,’ said Richard.

Uncle John looked at me. ‘Does that suit you, Miss Julia?’ he said with an affectionate, jesting tone.

I beamed at him. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, indeed. Ever since I first made friends in the village I have been longing for the day when it would be possible to put it right. I am very, very happy.’

Uncle John exchanged a long look with my mama. ‘Then we are all content,’ he said. ‘And now I shall unpack my bags and see if I have remembered to bring you all anything from my travels!’

Uncle John set himself out to please us at supper. We were all still strange with him. Mama was anxious and loving, and I was shy, showing my country-bred awkwardness; but Richard was as relaxed and as charming as only he knew how to be. Uncle John sat at the head of the table in Richard’s seat and smiled on us like the father of a fine family. He had unpacked his presents and had some wonderful yards of silk and muslin for Mama and me, as well as a slim velveteen box for Mama.

He pushed it towards her when Stride had cleared the plates, and he smiled mysteriously when she asked, ‘What is it, John?’

She opened the catch and drew out a necklace. It was exquisite. They were matched pearls, hatched from oysters in the warm waters of oceans thousands of miles from Wideacre, each one a perfect, smooth sphere.

‘But they’re pink!’ exclaimed Mama as she held them up to the candlelight.

‘Pink pearls,’ Uncle John said with satisfaction. ‘I know pearls are your favourites, Celia, and I could not resist them. There are matching ear-rings too.’

‘Wherever did you find them?’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh! India, I suppose.’

‘And the devil’s own job I had getting them!’ John said, his face quite serious. ‘Pearl-diving every Sunday after church in a shark-infested sea is no joke, Celia, I can tell you.’

Mama gave a gurgle of laughter, sounding as delighted as a courted girl at his nonsense, and put the necklace around her neck. I waited as she fumbled with the catch in case Uncle John would put them on her. But he was deliberately holding back from playing the part of her lover before our bright curious gazes.

‘They’re wonderful,’ she said with pleasure. ‘Must I save them for best?’

‘No!’ John said. ‘You shall have finer things for “best,” Celia, I promise you. This is just a home-coming present, for everyday wear.’

She smiled down the table at him, her eyes very warm. ‘I shall wear them every day then,’ she said. ‘And when they do not match my gown, I shall still keep them on. And nothing you buy me in future could be finer for me than the present you brought home when you were safe home at last.’

John was silent as their eyes met and held.

‘I believe that pearl-fishing is very cruel to the natives,’ Richard observed.

Uncle John glanced at him. ‘In general it is,’ he said. ‘It happens that these pearls grow in relatively shallow waters and the divers work for a man who trains them well and cares for their health. I would not have bought them otherwise.’

There was a little silence. Richard, ousted from his old place at the head of the table, looked at the tablecloth as if the pattern were new to him.

‘Uncle John,’ I said tentatively, ‘what is that package?’

‘What is that package indeed!’ Uncle John said, recalled to business with a start. ‘As if you did not know, little Miss Lacey, that it has your name on the front!’ He pushed it across to me and I unwrapped it. It was a fine box of watercolours, and Uncle John smiled at my thanks and then gave a rueful chuckle when Mama said he might have saved his money, for all I could ever be prevailed upon to draw was field plans and landscapes.

‘Richard is the artist of the household,’ Mama said gently. ‘He has a great interest in fine buildings and classic sculpture.’

‘Is he?’ John said, smiling approvingly at his son.

‘But perhaps such a lovely box of colours and a palette will encourage you, Julia,’ Mama said, prompting me.

‘It shall,’ I promised. ‘And you are a very dear uncle to bring me such a lovely gift.’ I rose from my chair and went to him and gave him a kiss on his tired, lined forehead, which was both a kiss of thanks and a half-apology for not being the indoors pretty-miss niece he had imagined.

‘What has Uncle John given you, Richard?’ I asked, for Richard’s parcel stood in the corner of the room, a pole as high as his chest with a fascinating knobby bit at the foot. Richard tore at the wrapping and out came some sort of mallets – a pair of them – and half a dozen hard heavy balls. He glanced at his father in bewilderment and hefted the mallet in his hands.

‘Polo sticks and balls,’ said Uncle John. ‘Ever seen it played, Richard?’

Richard shook his head.

‘It’s a wonderful game for a good horseman, and an exciting game for a poor one! We can hire a couple of horses until we find a decent hunter for you, and I will have a knock with you.’

I think no one but I would have noticed Richard’s sudden pallor. John’s eyes were bright as he explained to Richard how the game was played, and the speed and the danger, while Stride brought in the fruit and sweetmeats and port. Uncle John and Richard passed the decanter civilly, one to another, and Mama smiled to see the two of them learning to be friends.

We left them still talking horses and withdrew to the parlour. Mama went straight to the mirror over the fireplace and smoothed her hair with a little smile at her own reflection. I watched her in silence. It was the first trace of vanity I had ever seen in her, and I smiled. In the reflected image, lit by the best beeswax candles sent from the Havering store, the picture was a kind one. Her delight in Uncle John’s return had smoothed the lines off her forehead and around her eyes like a warm iron on cream silk. Her brown eyes were velvety with happiness, the grey in her fair hair was all that betrayed her age. And her widow’s cap was pinned so far back on her head that it was just a scrap of lace on her chignon. She saw my eyes on her and coloured up, and turned from the mirror with a smile.

‘I am so glad they can at least talk horses,’ she said. ‘I was afraid that they would have nothing in common. It matters so much that they should be friends.’

I nodded and tucked myself up on the window-seat, drawing the curtains to one side so I could see the drive, eerie in the silver light of the moon, bordered by the shadowy woods. A wind was moving in the upper branches like a sigh for a life which had all gone wrong.

Inside the house the candlelight was warm, yellow. Mama moved a candelabra closer to light her sewing. But outside in the darkness and the moonlight, the land remembered. And it called to me.

I fell into a dreamy reverie, sitting there, my face to the cool glass and my eyes staring out into the shadows. I knew that Uncle John had told us only half of the story. I felt certain that the woman in the dream was Beatrice at the hall. And she had known – I had dreamed her certainty – that the mob was led by a man she knew. They were coming from Acre, and she had earned their anger.

I knew also that they hated her in Acre no more. They had forgotten the frozen seasons when her shadow had meant death and the young men had feared her. They remembered now the smiling girl who had brought them hayfields and wheatfields thicker and taller than had ever grown before. And staring out into the cold moonlit garden I longed to be a girl like that. With my back to the little parlour and Mama bending over her stitchery, I longed with all my heart to be someone who could make the land grow and could bring Acre back to life. I suppose for the first time that evening I faced the fact that I wanted to be the favoured child.

I sat so still, and in such a dream, that I jumped when the parlour door opened and the two of them came in. Richard saw the night and the moonlight in my face and he raised an eyebrow at me as if he were listening for the wind. But he could hear nothing. It was a night for talking about horses and for travellers’ tales from Uncle John, and for reminiscences of the time when the land was easy and good. It was very late before we went to bed. But when I was in bed, I did not dream of the hall and the rioters coming through the darkness. I dreamed of new gowns and ballrooms, like any young girl who has just become a young lady.