The Favoured Child Read online

  ‘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