The Complete Wideacre Trilogy: Wideacre, The Favoured Child, Meridon

Once the lumber room upstairs was cleared of the heavy old furniture, I found much there that had belonged to my papa. Servant-like, the maids had bundled away his things into a mess of saddles, riding crops, hacking jackets and thongs of whips. My papa had fancied himself as an amateur saddler and his saddle rack and a wooden horse had also been thrown in the room. Once the furniture was set in the room below, the horse stood, forlorn, in the little room at the top of the stairs. Some whimsicality, some respect for my papa, stopped me throwing it out with the odd saddles and the whip he had been mending. Instead I put them all in the centre of the room and set myself to learning the skills that had come so easily to him. Long afternoons I spent there, my fingers busy with pulling threads through leather, my palms rosy with the sting of the saddler’s needle, oddly at peace.

Downstairs I had collected Papa’s old rent table: a great round table that looked as old as Arthur’s and could be spun so each labelled drawer faced the Squire in the great carver chair. Each drawer bore a letter of the alphabet and all the papers relating to each tenant were kept under the letter of his name. Beside it I placed the great money chest and here, monthly or quarterly, I collected the rents and, weekly or daily, paid out the wages. This was the office, the centre of the great money-spinning business of Wideacre, and I held the keys. I had ordered from Chichester an artist’s easel and commissioned a detailed scale map of the estate, so boundaries could at last be precisely recorded instead of being argued out on the spot in the old way. I had also purloined my papa’s old desk from the library – one with pigeonholes and two secret hiding places – to stand beside the window, so I could look up from the accounts to gaze across the roses to the paddock and the green woods and see the sun roll across the top of the downs, smiling on Wideacre crops and Wideacre profits.

The smaller downstairs room I had been unable to save from Mama’s mania for pastel and gold and it was a conventional lady’s parlour. She had furnished it for me with a pale carpet, spindly furniture and pretty brocaded curtains. I made sure I had a sweet smile of thanks, and concealed my grimace of distaste at the vapid prettiness. The most important thing about the room, as about the whole wing, was that it was accepted by everyone that I might sit here in the evenings alone, and that I might spend my mornings, or even all day, in the office.

The infant angel contributed to my peace in this. Even Mama agreed I could not possibly work, add up accounts, or write letters of business, with a small baby gurgling or crying in the same room. Since Harry or Celia had her brought into the parlour every afternoon and evening, it was easy for me to be excused attendance on the little treasure for at least a part of that time.

What I could not escape was my own response to the baby. She really was enchanting. She had kept the deep blue eyes she was born with and had soft brown hair, soft as silk to the touch, soft as puppies’ coats. In the sunshine one could clearly see the touch of my own rich copper, and when she grew strong enough to rear up in her cradle, I could see the gleam of my own curls on the warm little head.

Celia put her out to sit in the sunshine of the terrace every afternoon in fine weather and on warm days. When I had my office window open I could hear the sound of her coos and gurgles mingling with the buzz of bumblebees and the deeper coos of the wood pigeons from the woods. When I was stuck for a phrase in a business letter, or could not make a column of figures say the same thing more than once, I would look out of the window and see her little legs kicking in the air, or her fists waving as she tried to catch at the sun or the lacy edge of her sunshade.

One day her coos were so resonant and contented I nearly laughed aloud at the noise. She sounded so like me, with my passion for sunshine and warm breezes on my skin. In all this house of people who trod the land as if it were floorboards, it seemed only I and my daughter, Celia’s daughter, were the ones who knew where we were. I, and a baby too small to speak, too young to understand. As I watched and listened I saw one of her toys, a well-sucked toy rabbit made of lamb’s wool, fly out of the cradle. The contented gurgle was silenced in the sudden disappointment and a note of complaint took its place. Without thinking twice, I opened the tall window of my office and stepped over the window sill on to the terrace.

I picked up the toy and tucked it back in the crib beside her. Ignoring it altogether she beamed up at my face and her legs and arms went into a little frenzy of kicks to welcome me. She gurgled loudly; she reached for me. I chuckled; she was irresistible. No wonder the entire household was demented over her smiles. She was as much of a domestic tyrant as I could ever be. We were much alike, this little baby and I.

I bent to smile at her, before I left her and went back to my study, and flicked her cheek with one careless finger. She caught it with a surprisingly strong grasp and guided it unerringly towards her smiling, toothless mouth. The little gums closed on it and the cheeks hollowed as she sucked vigorously, her eyes hazy blue with delight. I chuckled; the child was an utter sensualist, like myself. And she grabbed her pleasures, like I do, with a firm grip. When I tried to pull away she hung on and was half lifted from the cradle before I relented and scooped her up and placed her against my neck.

She smelled so sweet. That delicious baby smell of warm clean skin and soap. That sweet smell lingering around their mouths from drinking only warm milk. That lovely clean smell of newly laundered cotton and newly washed best wool. I tucked her little head securely into my shoulder and swayed a little. Her coos of pleasure started again, resonant by my ear, and when I turned my face to sniff the warm little crease of her plump neck she made me laugh aloud by suddenly fixing her mouth on to my jaw line, like a little vampire, and sucking noisily and with evident satisfaction.

The smile still on my face, my feet still dancing to jiggle her, I turned towards the house. Someone was in the parlour window watching me. It was Celia. She stood utterly still, her face like white marble.

My face was still warm with laughter and affection for the little baby, but as I met her eyes the smile died from me and I felt uneasy and guilty – as guilty as if she had caught me with my hands in her lace drawer, or if she had found me reading her letters. She disappeared and a few seconds later the front door opened and she came out on to the terrace.

Her hands were trembling but her face was set and her walk was swift and direct. She came to me without a word, and lifted the baby from the warmth of my neck with as much emotion as if she were taking a scarf off me.

‘I put Julia out for her sleep,’ she said unemotionally. She turned her back to me and placed Julia in the cradle. Disappointed, the child started a wail of protest, but Celia tucked her in as firmly as any strict nurse.

‘I would rather she were not disturbed when she should be having her rest,’ said Celia.

I felt as awkward as a boy in an apple orchard.

‘Of course, Celia,’ I said deferentially. ‘She dropped her toy and I merely came out to give it back to her.’

Celia straightened up and turned to me. ‘She would be happy to play that game all afternoon,’ she said. ‘But you, I am sure, have work to do.’

I was dismissed. Little insignificant Celia, standing tall with the power of her motherhood over the child, had dismissed me like an unreliable maid.

‘Of course,’ I said, and I smiled like an idiot. ‘Of course.’ And I turned on my heel and went back down the terrace to where my office window stood open and my desk waited, piled with papers. In the length of that short, awkward walk, I could feel Celia’s eyes on my back, Celia watching me with no affection in her gaze.

I should have learned from that, I suppose. But Julia drew me. A little, only a little. I had no great longing for her. When I occasionally heard her cry out in the night I slept better for my deep contentment that it was not me who had to get up to see to her. When she was fretting during the day, or when Celia missed supper and the tea tray because she was up in the nursery, I felt no instinct then to be with the baby. But sometimes – when the weather was hot and I could see her little legs kicking and hear her cooing – I would slink out to the terrace like a clandestine lover and smile at her, and tickle her plump little palms and feet.

I learned discretion. Celia never again caught me hanging over the cradle. But when she went to Chichester with Harry to choose some new hangings for the nursery, and Mama lay down feeling unwell because of the heat, I spent an easy, laughter-filled half-hour playing peep-bo with the baby, dodging round her sunshade and appearing as if by magic on one side of the cradle and then the other, which made her gurgle with laughter so much she nearly choked herself.

Predictably, I tired of the game long before she did. Besides I had to drive down to the village to see the smith. She gripped my face when I kissed her goodbye, but when I actually disappeared she set up such a howl of protest that her nurse came bustling out of the house to see what was wrong.

‘She won’t settle now,’ she said, eyeing me with disfavour. ‘She’s all awake and playful now.’

‘It’s my fault,’ I confessed. ‘What would settle her down?’

‘I shall have to rock her,’ said the nurse, grudgingly. ‘The movement of the cradle might do it.’

‘I have to drive to the village,’ I offered. ‘Would she fall asleep in the carriage?’

The nurse’s face brightened at once at the prospect of an airing in my smart curricle and she bustled off to get her bonnet and an extra shawl for Julia.

I had been right. As soon as she was lifted from the cradle, Julia beamed her approval and started her delightful coos of pleasure. And when we trotted down the drive with the bars of sunlight and shade from the roof of trees flickering in her eyes she waved her little hands to greet the wind and the sound of trotting hoofs and the brightness and rush and beauty of it all.

I slowed down on the bridge over the Fenny.

‘This is the Fenny,’ I told her solemnly. ‘When you are a big girl I shall teach you how to tickle for trout here. Your papa can teach you how to use a rod and line like a lady, but I shall teach you how to tickle them and flick them out on the bank like a proper country child.’

She beamed at me as if she understood every word, and I beamed back in mutual approval. Then I clicked to Sorrel and we trotted past the lodge gates where Sarah waved to us and out down the sunny lane to Acre.

‘These are the meadowlands, resting this year,’ I told Julia, gesturing with my whip. ‘I think good fields should be rested every three years and grow just grass. Your papa thinks they should be rested every five. You can be the judge of that for we have rested some for three years and some for five, and when you are a lady, farming the land like me, you can be the judge of which system kept the land in the greatest heart.’

Julia’s little sun bonnet nodded gravely as if she could understand every word. But I think she may have caught the inflexion of my voice and heard my tones of love for the land, and of a growing tenderness for her.

Half-a-dozen people were outside the smithy when I drew up, villagers and one fanner tenant waiting for his work-horse to be shod. The women were around the curricle in a second, admiring the pretty baby and the exquisite lace dress. I tossed the reins to the smith, who came out, wiping grimy hands on his leather apron, and passed the baby carefully down to the village women.

They cooed over her, as maternal as broody hens; they touched her lace petticoats and her fleecy shawl and they stood in line so that each might hold her and admire the smoothness of her skin, the blueness of her eyes and the utter whiteness of her clothes.

By the time I had finished with the smith, she had reached the end of the line, a little dishevelled but none the worse for being handed round like some sacred relic.

‘Better change her before her mama gets back,’ I said ruefully to her nurse, noting the lace trimming on her little gown was grey where it had been fingered by hands ingrained with years of dirt.

‘Indeed, yes,’ said Nurse stiffly. ‘Lady Lacey has never taken her to the village and would never have let those people touch her.’

I glanced sharply at her, but I said nothing for a moment.

‘She’s taken no harm,’ I said eventually. ‘Have you, little girl? And these people will be your people, as they are mine. These are the people who make the money that keeps Wideacre prosperous and beautiful. They are dirty so that we can have daily baths and fine clean clothes. You must always be ready with a smile for them, little one. You belong to each other.’

I drove in silence then, enjoying the wind in my face and keeping a careful eye on the road ahead to make sure we struck no stones which might jog her. I was driving so carefully I hardly heard the noise of a carriage and pair and I jumped like a criminal when I suddenly saw, in the road ahead of us, the family chaise. They were just ready to turn into the lodge gate; another second earlier and I might have been home before them. As it was, Celia, gazing out of the offside window, had a perfect view of my curricle trotting briskly down the lane from Acre, with her nurse and her child sitting up bold as brass in the passenger seat.

Her eyes met mine and her face was blank. I knew she was angry and I felt no surprise. I had a sinking feeling in my gut, the like of which I had not felt since I was a child in disgrace with my papa. I had never thought Celia capable of rages. But to take her child out for a drive without permission was, I knew, something she would regard as wrong. And faced with that icy stare I felt extremely guilty.

I did not hurry to follow them up the drive, but there was no enraged mother waiting for me in the stable yard. Nurse and Julia dismounted and went into the house by the west-wing door, to slink up to the nursery for a total change of clothes, I guessed. I handed Sorrel over to the groom and went round to the front door. Celia was waiting for me in the hall and she drew me into the parlour. Harry, discreetly, perhaps obediently, was nowhere to be seen.

I turned to the mirror above the fireplace and took off my hat.

‘What a wonderful day,’ I said lightly. ‘Did you find the things you need in Chichester? Or will you have to send to London?’

Celia said nothing. I had to turn from the mirror to face her. She was standing still in the middle of the room, dominating it with her slight presence and the force of her anger.

‘I must ask you never to take Julia out without my express personal permission,’ she said evenly, totally ignoring my questions.

I met her eyes but said nothing.

‘I must also remind you that Harry and I decided that Julia should not be taken out in a curricle, or any open-topped carriage,’ said Celia. ‘We, her parents, decided we did not think it safe for her so to travel.’

‘Oh, come now, Celia,’ I said airily. ‘She took no harm. I had the safest horse in the stable between the shafts. I trained Sorrel myself. I just took her down the lane to Acre because she would not settle on the terrace.’

Celia looked at me. She looked at me as if I were an obstacle on her road that somehow had to be crossed over or gone around.

‘Her father and I decided we do not wish her to travel in an open carriage and that includes your curricle, whatever horse you are driving,’ she said slowly, as if explaining something to a stupid child.

‘Further, I do not wish her to be taken out of her cradle, or out of the house, or out of the estate, without my express and personal permission.’

I shrugged. ‘Oh, Celia, let’s not pull caps over this,’ I said easily. ‘I am sorry. I should not have done such a thing without first confirming you had no objection. I merely had to drive to Acre and it amused me to take Julia and show her the land, her home, like my papa used to do with me and with Harry.’

Celia’s gaze never wavered and her expression did not warm to the casual tone of my apology. ‘Her situation is very different from either yours or Harry’s,’ she said steadily. ‘There is no reason why she should have a similar upbringing.’

‘She’s a Wideacre baby!’ I said in surprise. ‘Of course she must learn about the land and go out on the land. This is her home, just as it is mine. She belongs here, even as I do.’

Celia’s head jerked and her cheeks suddenly flushed scarlet.

‘No,’ she said. ‘She does not belong here as you do. What your plans are, Beatrice, I do not know. I came into this house to live with my husband and with your mama and with you. But my Julia will not live here all her life. She will marry and leave. She will spend her girlhood here, but I dare say she will be away at school for much of the time. Then she will make visits to friends. Wideacre will not be the only house in the world for her. There will be very much more in her life than the land and the house. She will not have a childhood like yours, nor interests like yours, nor a life like yours.’

I gaped at Celia, but there was nothing I could say.

‘As you wish,’ I said in a tone as cold as hers. ‘You are her mother, Celia.’

And then I turned on my heel and left her, standing alone in the middle of the parlour. And I went to my office and shut the door and leaned back against the panels. And I stood still in the quiet of my office with my papers around me, for a long time.

Julia was utterly Celia’s child. It was all done as Celia wished. Mama would have had the baby’s diet supplemented with a spoonful of molasses, or at least honey, at every mealtime. Celia refused and the baby drank only pure breast milk. Harry wanted to give her little sips from his glass of port when she sat on his knee after dinner. But Celia did not allow it. Mama wanted her swaddled, and Celia stood up to her with as much polite certainty as she had ever shown against a wish of my mama’s – and she carried the day.

Mama had threatened that Julia’s limbs would grow crooked if she were not strapped tightly to boards, but Celia stood against her and even called in Dr MacAndrew for support. He was full of praise for the decision and promised she would be stronger and healthier for her freedom.

Dr MacAndrew’s voice in our household carried a great deal of weight. In our absence he had become a friend and confidant to Mama, who told him, I suspected, much about herself and her married life and her ill health. She told him also, I imagined, something about the problems she had encountered in rearing me, for I did not like the gleam I sometimes saw in the doctor’s eyes when we met. He looked always as if he liked what he saw, but he looked always as if I might somehow amuse him, in some way I could not fathom. And Mama watched us closely.

The first time we met after our return from France was awkward. I was pouring tea for Mama in the parlour when he came in for a routine call on Julia and made social conversation to me with the skill of a well-mannered man, which ignored my quick flush, that had risen when he first came into the room.

‘You look as if France agreed with you, Miss Lacey,’ he said. Mama’s eyes were sharply upon us and I withdrew my hand from his clasp and sat down again behind the urn.

‘Indeed it did,’ I said equably. ‘But I am glad to be home.’

I poured him tea and handed him the cup and saucer with a hand that was rock-steady. It would take more than a gentle smile from Dr MacAndrew to make me tremble.

‘I have made a new acquisition while you were away,’ he said, conversationally. ‘I have bought a new horse from abroad, a full-bred Arab, as a saddle-horse. I shall be interested to know what you think of him.’

‘An Arab!’ I said. ‘I think we shall not agree on that. I still prefer the English breeds for our climate and our terrain. I have yet to see a pure-bred Arab with the staying power necessary for a long day’s hunting.’

He laughed. ‘Well, I shall take a wager with you on that,’ he said. ‘I would back Sea Fern against any hunter in your stables, on the flat or over hurdles.’

‘Oh, racing,’ I said dismissively. ‘I would not argue with you there. I see how well they do in short races, but it is stamina they lack.’

‘I have ridden Sea Fern all day on calls and he has been ready for a gallop over the downs in the evening,’ Dr MacAndrew said. ‘Miss Lacey, you will not fault him.’

I laughed. ‘My papa always used to say it was a waste of time to talk sense to a man who was selling land or who had bought a horse. I shall not try to persuade you. Let me see him after one winter and perhaps we will agree then. After you have paid your corn merchant for an animal too high-bred to stomach anything but oats all the year round, you may come to agree with me.’

The young doctor smiled, his blue gaze easy and direct.

‘Of course I shall spend a fortune on him,’ he said easily. ‘One should be proud to be ruined feeding a fine animal. I would rather spend money on oats than in my kitchen or on my cellar.’

‘Well, there we do agree,’ I smiled. ‘Horses are quite the most important thing in a household.’ I went on to tell him of the horses I had seen in France – such poor things on the streets and such fine animals in the noblemen’s stables. And he told me more about his precious Sea Fern. Then we talked of form and breeding until Harry and Celia came in with Nurse carrying the baby, and all rational conversation was ended for that day, for the baby had learned to hold her toes.

But at parting he took the tips of my fingers in his assured clasp and said, ‘So when will you ride your challenge, Miss Lacey? Sea Fern and I are ready. Shall we ride a race? Ground and distance of your choosing.’

‘A challenge?’ I asked and laughed. Harry heard our voices and looked up from the cradle where he was dangling his watch.

‘I think you may lose, Beatrice,’ he warned me. ‘I have seen Dr MacAndrew’s horse and he is not one of the dainty Arabs that you know but something more impressive.’

‘I shall take my chance against any Arab in the land on Tobermory,’ I said, naming the best hunter in the stables.

‘Well, I’ll back you,’ said Harry with enthusiasm. ‘Fifty crowns, sir?’

‘Oh-ho! A hundred!’ said Dr MacAndrew and then we were all betting. Celia waged her pearl necklace against my pearl earrings; Mama bet me a new bookcase for the office. Harry promised me a new riding habit if I defended the honour of the Wideacre stables and I bet him a new silver-handled hunting whip that I would do so! Then John MacAndrew looked at me and I met the challenge of his sandy-lashed gaze.

‘And what shall be our wager?’ I asked.

The room went silent; Mama watched us curiously, a half-smile on her face.

‘Winner names the forfeit,’ he said promptly, as if he had planned this. ‘If I win I shall claim a prize from you, Miss Lacey. And you may claim one from me.’

‘An open wager is a dangerous game for the loser,’ I said with a gurgle of laughter at the back of my voice.

‘Better win then,’ he said and left.

The forthcoming race did two things to Harry. It concentrated his attention on me again and he and I spent a happy morning in the office with the new-drawn map of Wideacre before us, planning the course. Then, and this was even better, it inspired him to leave the baby and Celia and ride out with me to check the route where we could see the condition of the ground. It was the first ride we had taken together since my return and I deliberately suggested the bridle-way along the downs that passed the hollow where we had first made love.

It was a sweet day, hot and promising to be hotter, with the smell of new-mown hay blowing off the meadows. On the upper slopes leading to the downs they were harvesting and the heady smell of the crops, herbs and the long-stemmed flowers breathed over us. Every heap of straw gleamed with red poppies, blue larkspur and the white and gold of moon daisies. I hooked up a swatch of a heap with the handle of my crop and sniffed at it with passionate delight. I should so adore to be a horse and eat the stuff. The smell of it is so appetizing, like the very best tea or good quality tobacco. I tucked the poppies under the band of my hat, although I knew they would be faded by the end of the morning. Poppies, like pleasure, do not last. But one should have them, anyway. My riding habit this year was a deep crimson and the scarlet of the flowers, bright as a blacksmith’s furnace, clashed wonderfully against the deep darkness of it. If Mama had seen the two reds shrieking at each other she would have smiled and said, ‘Beatrice has no eye for colour.’ But she would have been wrong. I had such an eye for colour, especially the colour of Wideacre flowers, that no colour can seem wrong to me. Harry smiled at me.