The Favoured Child Read online

Uncle John – a town-bred man, and the son of a line of traders – did not think it odd. The sheep and the little herd of dairy cows became my responsibility from that day onwards. Someone had to do the work. Mama had her school, Uncle John had the health of the village and the business side of the estate, Ralph Megson supervised everything on the land, Richard took charge of the hall and I was out every day looking at the animals, and the fields, and the crops. I was busy, and weary…and very much a Lacey on her land.

  Richard did not deal with livestock.

  Richard did not deal with the land and the crops.

  Richard did not deal with the tenants, and the copy-holders, and the cottagers and the labourers and the intricate details of land ownership and land sharing on Wideacre.

  Richard’s great love, his great project, was his work on the hall. And Mama and I, and even Uncle John, had to accept that he knew more and more about the rebuilding of our home every day. Only Richard had the love – almost a passion – to pursue the right colour of stone through twenty quarries until he found one he thought fit.

  ‘It is darker than the usual sandstone,’ he explained to Uncle John and Ralph Megson and me in the library one morning when we had gathered to take a decision about planting soft-fruit crops. ‘It will blend with the old stone of the hall. The architect wanted it all new, and the builder too. But I am sure that I am doing the right thing in choosing this stone, even though it is so far to transport it. We will need half as much by using the old stone. And I like the idea of the hall being rebuilt from the ruins.’ Ralph Megson cocked an eyebrow at that, but kept his head bent low over the plans of the hall spread before us on the table. ‘I cannot spare many men,’ he said briefly. ‘They have not the skills. They could only do day labouring for you.’

  Richard nodded. ‘I have spoken to the architect and we think it best to bring in experienced building labourers,’ he said. ‘They can be housed in Midhurst and come out daily in a wagon. D’you think that will cause any unrest in Acre?’

  Ralph puffed out his cheeks and looked hard at John. ‘These men are on wages, I take it? No profit-sharing scheme for them?’

  Uncle John met Ralph’s ironic gaze steadily. ‘I do not need to argue the fall of the Bastille here,’ he said. ‘They are on fair rates. After all, we are bringing in a ploughing and sowing gang this autumn to sow the wheat. They will be on day wages too. I see no reason why Acre should object.’

  ‘As long as we make a profit which is better than day wages, no,’ Ralph said.

  ‘Well, that is my intention,’ Uncle John said. ‘Mr Megson, will you oblige me by looking at this map…’ and he covered up Richard’s plan of the hall with a map of the fields of Wideacre coloured in different shades to denote the different crops. Richard and I exchanged a rueful smile. No one cared for the hall as much as Richard. ‘My intention is to have a thoroughly balanced farming estate,’ Uncle John said. ‘Whatever weather the climate produces should suit one crop. I should like us to grow a wide variety.’

  ‘All fruit needs sunshine,’ Ralph observed, looking at the swaths of fields coloured green to show fruit crops.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Uncle John replied. ‘But it can tolerate rain, and they are developing strains of fruit which are more and more hardy. There is a great market out there in the growing towns. I want Wideacre fruit to go to Chichester, to Portsmouth, even to London.’

  Ralph nodded. ‘I think you see the future aright,’ he said briefly. ‘There will be more and more people in the cities and they will need to be fed. But if there is any chance of a war against France, the price of bread will go sky-high. Wheat is a good crop in wartime.’

  Uncle John nodded. ‘What of Acre?’ he said. ‘How would they feel about a large corn crop?’

  There was a silence in the sunny room. You could almost smell the smoke of old riots.

  Then Ralph smiled. ‘Why not?’ he said wryly. ‘No one in Acre was ever against a reasonable profit. No one in Acre was ever against the export of food. No bread riot ever took place except with hungry people seeing their food sent away.’

  ‘You make riots sound reasonable,’ Richard said. His voice was level, encouraging. ‘Have you had personal experience of such affrays?’

  ‘I’ve seen bread riots,’ Ralph said. The slight sideways smile he shot at me told me well enough that he had never been a neutral observer. ‘I’ve never seen one that was not, in its own way, orderly.’

  ‘An orderly riot?’ Uncle John queried. But John had been raised in Edinburgh and had lived the past fourteen years in India.

  ‘Yes,’ Ralph said simply, ‘it’s generally the women anyway, so it is not as if it was fighting men or trouble-makers. I saw one in Portsmouth, where they surrounded a bread shop where the baker was selling light-weight loaves for the full price. They took the door off the front of the shop and sat on the baker while someone called for a Justice of the Peace. He looked at the weights the baker had been using. They were underweight, for he had shaved them off. The magistrate reweighed every loaf in the shop and sold them to the women at the proper price. Then they got off the baker’s fat belly and left him. He was unhurt, and his shop was not damaged, except that the door was off the frame, and he had cash in his cash-box.’

  Uncle John was puzzled, but Richard and I were smiling. ‘The Justice of the Peace agreed with the rioters?’ John asked incredulously.

  Ralph shrugged and smiled. ‘He believed in the old ways too. No one likes a cheating tradesman, no one likes bread-hoarders. And the women were pleasant respectable women, but, oh, my, they were angry! I’d have given them half the shop if they had so much as looked at me!’

  ‘They did look at you, though, didn’t they, Mr Megson?’ I asked slyly. ‘What were you doing there?’

  ‘I was doing nothing,’ Ralph Megson said innocently. ‘I was just standing there, holding the door…and the chisel…and the hammer.’

  Uncle John, Richard and I laughed out loud, and Ralph chuckled too.

  ‘Those days are over,’ Ralph Megson said, sounding regretful. ‘The days when the poor people could insist on a fair price in the local market. It took me some time to see it, but I know it now. That’s why I’ve no objection to Wideacre sowing corn and selling it at a profit. The only way the poor of England are going to be fed is if there is enough food in all the markets, and food being moved around the country. The poor can no longer depend on their local produce, and they cannot control the movement of grain.’

  Uncle John nodded. ‘With our profit-sharing scheme, we should sell surplus corn in London,’ he said. ‘Everyone would do better with the profits from a London sale than with cheap-priced corn in the Midhurst market.’

  Ralph nodded. ‘You’d always need to keep enough back to feed Acre,’ he said, ‘but you could grow that on half a dozen fields, and Wideacre has the capacity for scores of fields.’

  ‘It’s not just Acre that should be fed,’ I said. ‘When our corn goes into Midhurst, it is bought by the poor from all around the area. The sensible thing would be to agree with other landowners that we should all supply the local market at a reasonable price, and then make what profits were possible with the surplus.’

  ‘A selling ring to benefit the poor!’ Ralph said with a chuckle in the back of his voice. ‘Miss Julia, you should be on the barricades. I have heard of selling rings to obtain the best price, but you are talking of one to make a fair price! A ring of producers to benefit the consumers! It would be a great novelty.’

  ‘And it might even work,’ Uncle John said thoughtfully. ‘You were not here, Mr Megson, when Julia’s papa, the squire, started his agricultural experiments and Beatrice ran the estate. During the good years Wideacre held sway in the whole county. Wideacre was much respected then and its example followed. If we could show that the estate was feeding the poor neighbours and all the workers and making a good commercial profit, there are many who would follow suit.’

  ‘And Wideacre showed that the other way, of chasing profit,