Meridon Read online

  ‘Hello,’ she said kindly. ‘Good to see you up. Will sent me up to bring you down to the parlour when you’re ready.’

  ‘I’m ready,’ I said.

  She walked ahead of me, talking over her shoulder as she went towards the shallow curving staircase and down the stairs to the hall.

  ‘I’m Becky Miles,’ she said. ‘Mr Fortescue put us in here, me and Sam, to work as housekeeper and caretaker. If there’s anything you want, you just ring the bell and I’ll come.’

  I nodded. There was too much to take in. I wanted to ask why they should wait on me, and who was Mr Fortescue but she led me across the shadowy hall, her heels clicking on the polished wooden floor, silent on the bright rugs, and opened a door at the front of the house and gestured that I was to go in.

  ‘I’ll bring you some coffee,’ she said, and shut the door behind her.

  The room was a parlour, the walls lined with a silk so pale as to be almost cream, but pink in the darker corners. The window-seat, scattered with cushions of a deep rose colour, ran around the inside of the tower at the corner of the room and overlooked the terrace, the rose garden and the drive in its circular sweep. The carpet, set square on the polished floorboards in the main part of the room, was cream with a pattern of pink roses at the border. The half-circular turret part of the room had its own circular rug in deep cherry. There was a harpsichord on the wall beside the fireplace, and a number of occasional tables standing beside comfortable rose-cushioned chairs. In the middle of all this pinkness was the man who hated gin traps, with his brown cap clutched in his big hands.

  We smiled at each other in mutual understanding of each other’s discomfort.

  ‘It’s a lady’s room really,’ he said. ‘It’s the parlour.’

  ‘A bit pink,’ I said.

  ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘It’ud suit some.’

  He paused and looked at me, as awkward as himself in my hand-me-down boots and my plain riding breeches and my too-big jacket.

  ‘We could go into the dining room,’ he suggested.

  I nodded and he led the way across the hall and through handsome double doors into a dining room dominated by a massive mahogany table which would seat, I thought, sixteen people. On one side was a huge sideboard gleaming with silver, on another a table set with chafing dishes. The man who hated gin traps pulled out a chair for me at the head of the table and sat by my side.

  ‘Now,’ he said. ‘We’ll wait the main business until Mr Fortescue comes and I’m pledged to tell you nothing till he arrives. He’s the trustee for this estate. He came down from his London offices when I sent word that you had come here. He’ll be in to take coffee with us in a moment.’

  ‘Who is he?’ I asked. I was nervous, but the man who hated gin traps gestured to me to sit in one of the high-backed chairs and I gained confidence from his ease.

  ‘He’s the trustee of the estate,’ he said. ‘The executor of the will. He’s a straight man. You can trust him.’

  I nodded. I thought, ‘I can trust you too,’ but I sat down in silence, and put my hands together on the polished table as if we were about to start some business.

  The door opened and Miss Miles came in carrying a tray with a silver coffee pot, some biscuits and three cups. Behind her came a tall man dressed like Quality, but he held the door for her. He made much of helping her with the tray and setting the biscuits on the table and the cups before the three of us but I knew that he had taken in my appearance in his first quick glance as he came into the room, and that he was scanning me under his dark eyelashes still.

  He was about the age of Robert Gower, with clothes cut so soberly and so well that I had never seen their like. He had an air of such authority that I thought he must have been born wealthy. His face was lined and severe, as if he were sad. I thought that he was being polite to Becky Miles to cover his searching survey of me but also because he was always polite to her, to all servants.

  He set the things to his satisfaction and then he gave an assumed and unconvincing little start of surprise. ‘I’m not introducing myself,’ he said to me. ‘I am James Fortescue.’

  He held out his hand and looked at me inquiringly. The man who hated gin traps said nothing, so into the little silence I volunteered my own introduction.

  ‘I’m Sarah,’ I said.

  The hand that clasped mine tightened a little, and his sharp gaze narrowed. ‘Have you used that name all your life?’ he asked me.

  I hesitated for a moment. I thought, with my quick tinker’s brain, about stringing some lie together; but nothing came.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I had a dream, like a belief that it was my real name. But the people I lived with called me by something else.’

  He nodded, let my hand go and gestured for me to sit down. In the silence that followed the man who hated gin traps pulled the tray towards himself and carefully poured three cups of coffee. When he handed one to James Fortescue I could see that the gentleman’s hands were trembling.

  He took a sip of coffee and then looked at me over the rim of the cup. ‘I think I would have known her anywhere,’ he said softly, almost to himself.

  ‘You need to be sure,’ the man who hated gin traps said in a level voice. ‘For your own sake, for all our sakes.’

  I turned and looked at him. ‘What are you talking about?’ I asked. There was an edge of irritation in my voice and the man heard it. He gave me a slow reassuring smile.

  ‘You’ll know at once,’ he said. He nodded to James Fortescue, ‘He’ll tell you in a moment.’

  Mr Fortescue put down his cup and took some papers and a pen and ink-pot out of a little case beside him.

  ‘I have to ask you some questions,’ he said.

  Ask he did! He asked me everything about my life from my earliest memories until the time when I rode up the drive to Wideacre Hall. After two or three slips I dropped the pretence that I could not remember and told him all he wanted to know: all that I could remember of my ma, what her family name had been, where her gypsy family travelled and where they stayed. Then I shook my head.

  ‘She died when we were just little babbies,’ I said. ‘I can hardly remember her at all.’

  Then he asked me everything I could remember of my early life. I told him about Da, and the travelling around. The grand projects and the few jobs. I glided over the bad horses and the cheating at cards. And I found, although I tried to say her name once or twice, that I could not say it at all. Even to think of her was like scratching at an unhealed scar on my heart.

  I did not want them to know about Gower’s Show and Mamselle Meridon, so I told him only that I had been apprenticed to a man who trained horses, that I had chosen to leave him, and found myself here. I came to a standstill and trailed into silence. James Fortescue looked at me over the top of his coffee cup as if he were waiting for more.

  ‘There are things I do not want to talk about,’ I said stubbornly. ‘Nothing criminal. But private.’

  He nodded at that, and then asked to see my string and clasps and asked me once more where I had got it. He looked at it carefully through a special little glass he took from his pocket, and then finally he handed it back to me.

  ‘Do you have none of your baby clothes?’ he asked. ‘Did you never see them?’

  I screwed my eyes up with an effort to remember. ‘I saw them,’ I said hesitantly. ‘We shared them, of course. I saw a white lace shawl, very fine, trimmed in lace. Someone must have given it to us.’ The memory of the white lace shawl slipped away from me as if it had disappeared into darkness. ‘Everything was sold after Ma died,’ I said again.

  Mr Fortescue nodded, consideringly. Then he said, very softly. ‘You say “us”. Who was the child who shared your childhood?’

  My chair scraped as I suddenly pushed it back. My hands on the table had started their trembling again. I looked at them carefully until they were still. Then the man who hated gin traps leaned over and put his large calloused hand over mine.

  ‘You d