The Favoured Child Read online

  Our new carriage was waiting outside the old tithe barn which Mama had commandeered for a village school. As I turned the gig, I could hear the children’s excited voices and Mama’s orders clear above the noise. I could hardly believe my ears. In all my childhood I think she had raised her voice to me once. Now I heard her yell, ‘That is enough! John Smith, Sally Cooper, you twins! Stop fighting and sit down at once.’

  There was a sudden hush at that, and then a scrabbling noise as a dozen untamed children rushed for a place on the bench and seated themselves to look at her.

  ‘That’s better,’ my mama said calmly. ‘Now, who can tell me what this is? Hands up, don’t shout out!’

  I waited no longer. I had a very clear picture of what she was doing inside the old barn with her little class seated on the benches before her. She would teach them to wash and brush their hair. She would teach them how to sew, how to light a lamp without burning themselves, how to prepare a meal.

  ‘Children want to learn,’ Uncle John had said to her. ‘They must have toys to encourage them to read and write. They must be helped to question things all the time. Then they will teach themselves. All the philosophers agree…’

  ‘Philosophers indeed!’ Mama had interrupted. ‘This is a village school for village children. When your philosophers control the country, they may tell me what a working child should learn. Until then I shall teach them how to feed themselves and how to keep themselves clean, and get them ready for their work!’

  ‘Tory!’ said John, using his worst term of abuse.

  ‘Jacobin!’ Mama had retorted; and she was running her school in her own way.

  I turned the gig left down the track past the squatters’ cottages, towards the land which had once been all common land. A waste, it was now. Beatrice had cleared the common land of its wealth of trees and scrub and bracken, and with the sweet natural growth had gone the wild animals: the game birds, the hares, the rabbits and the deer. Once Beatrice was gone, the common had regained its own, and the only trace left of her was the odd head of wheat, spindly on the wind.

  Now I was another Lacey girl, coming to change the face of the land, and I whispered a brief promise to myself that this time the changes should last for longer than a season and should be for the best.

  Even as a derelict wheatfield, this great common field had been lovely. But I had ordered them to fence it and plough it, and in three days there were no smooth sweet slopes greening with bracken and hazy with heather buds, but a morass of mud in wriggly lines from the blades of the plough. I drove the gig up to the very foot of the field and looked up at it.

  I heard a singing in my head.

  ‘It is good,’ I said fervently. I think I spoke aloud.

  It was as if the earth itself were speaking to me, as if Wideacre could tell me that the land was good and that the plans were good, and that if the common was no longer breathtakingly lovely in this one single field, then it was none the less good earth in good heart, and it would grow a crop which would feed Acre.

  The wind blew down the gentle slopes towards me. Beatrice had literally moved mountains to make this field. She had infilled valleys and uprooted a great oak tree. The work had been done badly. I could see the line of the valleys and even the faintest trace of a footpath going across the field. And the hollow where the oak tree had once stood had been the scene of my long-ago fight with Clary.

  I smiled. It was not just Beatrice who had a history here. All the Lacey landowners had left their marks here, and I would leave mine. This field would be remembered by Acre as the one which Beatrice had clawed out of common land and wrested from the people. But they would also remember it as the field where Julia Lacey had planted apples. And next summer that gamble might pay.

  I backed the pony carefully and turned the gig, and trotted home through Acre. The carriage was gone from outside the tithe barn, so Mama was before me, and I guessed she would have taken Richard and John with her. I had only one errand to do before my dinner and I set the pony into a brisk trot past the gates to the Wideacre drive and along to Three Gate Meadow.

  Ralph was sitting on the bank under the hedge with the working men, but he raised his head when he heard the sound of the gig. The men were taking their dinner break and they stayed seated and kept on eating, contenting themselves with a courteous wave in my direction. I waved back, got down into the road and looped the reins over the gate.

  ‘Good day, Miss Lacey,’ Ralph said, coming to the gate and smiling at me across the top.

  ‘Good day, Mr Megson,’ I said. ‘Uncle John asked me to tell you that the apple trees are arriving this afternoon. I have checked the common-land field and it looks dry and fairly clear of stones. I think we can plant without further ploughing or drainage work.’

  Ralph frowned. ‘I’ve no workers free this afternoon,’ he said, ‘and tomorrow I have to go to Petersfield and buy some sheep for the new flock. There will be enough men to do the planting tomorrow, but I can’t be here. It’s new work to them; I’d not like to leave them without help. Not that I know much. I was going to do it from your uncle’s farming book!’

  ‘If it’s only a question of following a book, I can do it,’ I said. ‘I don’t know much about farming, but I can read!’

  Ralph smiled. ‘You do know about farming, though, don’t you, Julia?’ he said gently. ‘How else can you tell that the field is ready for planting?’

  ‘That’s true,’ I said, not wanting to discuss the point. ‘What time shall I come to work?’

  ‘They can be in the field at seven,’ Ralph said. ‘They’ll stop for their breakfast at ten. Then stop again for dinner at one. They’ll need a break at four, and they can go home at sunset. You’re not like to be finished before.’

  ‘I know it,’ I said with feeling. ‘It’s a huge field. I should think we should be prepared for two days of planting.’

  ‘Yes, Squire!’ said Ralph, and pulled his forelock to me.

  ‘Don’t call me that,’ I said steadily, ‘not even in jest. Richard will be the squire. We are joint heirs, but he is the boy.’

  ‘But you inherit jointly,’ Ralph said. ‘I should think you would insist on your rights.’

  I thought of my grandmama’s warning that a woman’s way is not to insist, and I shook my head in denial, but I said nothing.

  Ralph smiled. ‘Then you’re no Lacey at all!’ he said, his voice warm with amusement. ‘Any Lacey would ride roughshod over anyone in the world to keep a hold on the land they own, and to gain more. And Beatrice was the worst of all of them. She stopped at nothing to get control of the land. And there you are – a legitimate Lacey heir – talking of sharing your land as if the Fenny were not in your blood and the Wideacre earth not in your bones!’

  ‘I am not Beatrice!’ I said in sudden impatience. ‘I have been raised by my mama, and I take her advice. A woman’s part is to give – not to grab. Besides, if I am generous and fair with Richard, he will…’ I broke off before I said too much.

  ‘Sits the wind in that quarter?’ Ralph said softly, almost to himself. He walked stiffly along the gate, swung it open and came out to meet me in the lane.

  ‘Land and loving,’ he said, making it sound like a proverb, ‘that’s what the Laceys want. And Lacey women want it most of all. Beatrice chose the land. I think you are choosing love.’

  I scanned his dark face, his kind eyes with the pale lines streaked around them.

  ‘Is it worth it?’ he asked gently. ‘Is his love worth the sweetest land in the whole of England?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said with confidence. I had loved Richard from childhood. I had promised to love him for ever.

  Ralph nodded. ‘You’ve made your choice, then,’ he said gently. ‘For love. For love, and the indoor life, and being a young lady.’ He gave an abrupt laugh. ‘Beatrice ’ud take her hand to your backside if she were alive!’

  ‘I have to be a young lady!’ I protested. ‘I have no choice. I was born a young lady. That is m