The Favoured Child Read online

  It had frozen overnight and the ground was good and hard. Jem suggested going over the hills on the little tracks to Petersfield, and we took a chance that the roads would not be soft and the going difficult. We were right to gamble. The frost had made the mud firm, and we were rewarded for our daring by a drive through the sweetest countryside in England: the Hampshire-Sussex border. Best in Sussex, of course.

  The beech hedges around the larger houses had kept their leaves and were bay-coloured or violet. The grass beneath them was white with frost, and until the sun melted it, every little twig which leaned over the road from the bordering trees was a little stick of ice: white perfection. The streams were not flooding but were small and pretty under the stone bridges of the roads; and it was warm enough for the children to play out on the village greens. This was the wider landscape in which my home was set, and I knew from the size of the streams, from the ice in the shadows and from the set of the wind how things would be at home. The land would be dry, crunchy with frost, but not frozen hard. The Fenny would be full but not flooded, and there would be little corners of the common and little hollows on the downs where it would still be warm enough to sit and put your face up to the winter sunshine.

  We dropped down the steep hill into Midhurst, the brakes hard on and the wheels slipping, Jem whispering curses on the driving box. Then we rattled through the little town; the inns leaned in so far that the whip in the stock tapped on the walls as we went past. It was market day and the streets were full of people; the stalls were unpacked and wares were being sold in the square. I glanced at the price of wheat and saw it low – a sure sign of good stocks still with the merchants, and the likelihood of getting through the rest of the winter. There was the usual crowd of labourers looking for work, and some of the faces were pinched and pale with hunger. In one corner of the square there was a group of beggars, in filthy rags, blue with cold. Lying face down by some steps was a working man, dead drunk. I could see the holes in his boots as the carriage drove past.

  Then we were clear of the village and trotting up the steep hill on the road towards Chichester. I felt my heart beating a little faster and I leaned forward in my seat and looked out of the window as if I could absorb through the very skin of my face all of Wideacre which I had missed for so long. The singing in my head was like a tolling bell calling me home, and the carriage could not go fast enough for me as we swept around the left-hand bend down the track towards Acre. It was only a short distance, and now I was in no hurry, for the trees on one side of the road were Wideacre trees, and the fields on the other side were Wideacre fields; and I was home.

  Uncle John smiled at me. ‘You look like someone who has run a race and come in first,’ he said. ‘Anyone would think you have been pulling the carriage yourself, you look so relieved to be here.’

  ‘I am,’ I said with feeling. ‘It is so good to be home.’

  We swirled in at the lodge gates and I bent forward and waved to the Hodgett children who were leaping at the roadside, then we pulled up outside the Dower House, and I caught my breath in my joy at my home-coming.

  ‘Now,’ said Uncle John, ‘I have a surprise and a half for you, Celia! See how hard we bachelors have worked to tidy the house for your return!’

  Mama gasped. There was indeed a transformation. Ever since Uncle John had brought his fortune home, she had been buying little things to make the house more comfortable for us all. But Uncle John had worked a miracle. The old furniture of the house, which had been ours on permanent loan from Havering Hall, was all gone, and the little scraps of rugs which had been an attempt to make the house less echoey and cold had been thrown away. In their place were gleaming new rugs of fresh wool, and standing on them were beautifully crafted pieces of deep-brown teak and mahogany furniture.

  ‘It’s an enchantment!’ Mama exclaimed. Uncle John flung open the door to the parlour and showed us the room remade, the walls a clear, pale blue, the cornice newly plastered and gleaming white. A deep white carpet was spread on the shining floorboards and a brand-new round table and four chairs were standing against the wall. Mama’s favourite chair was in its usual place, but unrecognizable; it had been re-covered with a pale-blue velvet which matched the other chair seats, the window-seat covers and curtains.

  ‘Do you like it?’ Uncle John demanded, his eyes on Mama’s awestruck face. ‘It was the devil’s own job deciding on the colours. We nearly lost our nerve altogether and thought of writing to you to ask. But I wanted you to have a surprise.’

  Mama was speechless. She could only nod.

  ‘But see the library!’ Uncle John said, as enthusiastic as a boy, and swept her from the room. All my childhood the library had stood empty. We had no volumes to fill the shelves, only the few reading primers and children’s books and Mama’s novels from the Chichester Book Society.

  Now all that was changed. The walls glowed with the red of tooled morocco leather. There was a new great polished table in the centre of the room and a heavy chair behind it. A pair of easy chairs was on either side of the fireplace and matching little tables were within easy reach.

  ‘This is my room,’ Uncle John said with pride. ‘But you may look at my books if you knock before entering and stay very quiet while you are in here.’

  ‘I shall do my poor best,’ Mama said faintly. ‘But, John, you must have spent a fortune! And all this while Julia and I have been buying dress after dress in Bath, and renting lodgings, and giving parties, and I don’t know what else!’

  ‘I knew it was a mistake to let you go alone,’ Uncle John said gloomily, and then, seeing that Mama was genuinely concerned, he gave her a quick hug and said cheerfully, ‘My dear, there is plenty of money, and even if there was only a competence, you should still have a house in the town and one in the country.’

  Mama smiled and sat on one of the new chairs.

  ‘Enough of this!’ Uncle John said. ‘I prescribe a warm bed for this invalid and a rest until dinner, which you shall have served in your room. Upstairs with you.’

  ‘I’ll come with you, Mama,’ I said. ‘But then I will take the children down to Acre.’

  ‘Of course!’ Uncle John said. ‘You will be wanting to change into another gown, I dare say. You may have been in that one for – oh! all morning!’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ I said solemnly. ‘And tomorrow I shall have to order some more. This one is going out of fashion even as I stand here!’

  Uncle John laughed, and then I saw my mama into her bed, where she looked glad enough to be, and went up to my room, up to the room of my girlhood and childhood where I had hidden when Richard had been angry with me and where I had dreamed my dreams and wept when I feared I was going mad.

  It looked out over the back garden, over the paddock and orchard, towards the common with the high horizon of the downs beyond. The twilight was falling and the sun had gone, leaving only strip upon strip of rose, jasmine and violet clouds to show the west. An icy-cold star was low in the sky, sparkling like a snow-flake.

  I swung the window open and leaned my elbows on the sill to look out. The downs were as dense as the wool of a black lamb against the shadowy sky. I could dimly see the streak of white which was the chalk on the forehead of Acre hill, pointing down to the village. The air was scentless and cold. I could feel the night-time frost coming. In the distance an early owl hooted twice.

  If ever I should have felt Beatrice, it would have been then. I waited in utter stillness and silence for her coming. I waited, getting chilled in my new sleek gown, and I dared her to come. I breathed a half-silent sigh and waited for the shiver that meant she was passing near me, or for the hum in my mind which meant she was coming, or for the slide into unreasoning mindless joy which meant I had become her.

  Nothing.

  Nothing happened.

  No shiver shook me, no humming sounded in me, no daydream overtook me. I was not ridden by hobgoblins. I was at peace. Alone, gazing at Beatrice’s sky over Beatrice’s land and lit by a sm