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

3

For three unbearable days, Mama, in a flutter of excitement over Harry’s promised return, had the landau out every day to take us into Chichester to buy new wallpaper for his room. The journal she read was full of the craze for the Chinese style, and Mama and I leafed through prints of dragons until my head spun with weariness and boredom. Three long days, while the early summer sun grew hotter and, somewhere, by the river, Ralph waited. Yet I spent every one of them in the drapers of Chichester choosing a new bedspread for Harry, selecting new brocades for the curtains and hangings in his room.

It was all for Harry, all for Harry’s return. When I asked if I might also have new curtains and hangings for my room, I met with one of Mama’s most hurtful rebuffs.

‘It hardly seems worth it,’ she said vaguely. She said no more. She needed to say no more. It was not worth the expense for the second child, in second place. It was not worth the expense to please a girl. It was not worth the expense to decorate a room for one who was merely passing through on her way to a marriage and another home.

I said nothing; but I begrudged Harry every penny. I said nothing; but I begrudged him every fraction of his unearned status. I said nothing; but I ill-wished him every morning of those three long days.

If I knew my brother at all, he would enjoy them for the first week, then forget them. But I knew also his sweetness, and that Mama would be repaid for her trouble in full by one of his tender, gentle smiles. Nothing would repay me for my trouble because I loathed days in Chichester, sitting idly in a shop while Mama played princess and hesitated between one shade of colour and another. Worse than all of this, for some reason I was ill.

I did not tell Mama, for I dreaded her concern, and for some reason I did not want to be touched by anyone. When I stretched out my kid-gloved hands and spread the fingers, I could see they trembled. Worse, my belly gave great, unaccountable leaps in swoops like fear or dread. I was not hungry. Only Mama’s obsession with the redecorating distracted her from the fact that for the past three days I had eaten only at breakfast.

Stroking the pile of some printed velvet in one shop, I thought suddenly of the smoothness of the skin of Ralph’s shoulders and my knees buckled suddenly. I sank into a chair and found my heart racing and I could not catch my breath. ‘I must be ill,’ I thought.

On the evening of the third day we followed the sun home. It was setting over the downs in a gold and rosy glow. Mama was a fulfilled woman. In the bandboxes of the landau we had silks and satins for new cushion covers, quilting and new patterns. Following us tomorrow would be brocades, wallpapers and several pieces of extremely ugly furniture which were to convert Harry’s lovely old English bedroom into something as like a pagoda as the Chichester merchants and Mama could imagine.

Mama was at peace with her purchases all around us, and I was smiling like a madonna to be driving home through the mild evening air of a Wideacre spring. The smells of the roadside flowers blew towards us as the weary horses trotted home, ears pricked for their stable. In the banks I could see the greeny yellow of the last primroses and in the little coppices the bluebells shimmered in a watery haze. Blackbirds singing for their loves trickled out notes so sad and lovely, and as we turned through the tall lodge gates, I could hear the insistent call of the cuckoo.

In the shadow of a great yew tree by the lodge gate stood Ralph. The horses were walking and I was carried slowly past him. His eyes were fixed on mine as if neither of us could see anything else. All around me the wood grew dim as if I were suddenly blinded. My belly gave a great lurch as if in mortal terror and then the terror turned to joy and I smiled at Ralph as if he himself had brought the spring, the bluebells and the cuckoo. He tipped his head at the landau – but he did not tug his forelock in the usual way of our people – and his eyes never left mine. His face warmed and his eyes crinkled in a slow intimate smile. The carriage went past at walking pace, but oh! far too fast. I did not look back, but I felt his eyes, warm, desiring, on the back of my neck all the way up the drive until the sweep around the great copper beech hid me from him.

The next day, God bless them, the carters lost a wheel from the wagons and could not bring the goods. Mama was in a fidget to set me to work hemming curtains but she had to wait. Tomorrow, I might be indoors labouring over Harry’s damned dragons, but today I was free. The day stretched before me like a reprieve from a death sentence. I changed out of my morning dress into my new green riding habit – back from Papa’s tailor only that week – and twisted my hair under the matching green hat with especial care. Then I was off on pretty Bella, down the drive and across the stone bridge over the Fenny. I turned her to the right to let her canter down the track that runs alongside the river.

The Fenny was swollen with the spring rains and was brown and boiling like clear soup. Its swirlings and splashings over new-formed waterfalls matched my mood and I rode at an easy canter beside the river, smiling. The beech trees were in their early haze of green over my head and between the rustling leaves of last autumn new straight shoots were poking through, miraculously slender and strong. Every bird in the world was calling, calling for a mate. The universe of Wideacre was alive with the urgency of love and springtime, and I was dressed in green like life itself.

Ralph was sitting beside the river, a rod in his hands, his back against a fallen pine. He looked up at the sound of my horse’s hoofs and smiled without surprise. He seemed as much part of my beloved Wideacre as the trees themselves. We had not planned this meeting but it was as natural as the birdsong that we should meet whenever we wished. Ralph by the river drew me to him as surely as hidden water draws a forked willow stick to point downwards.

I tied Bella to an elder bush and she drooped her head in recognition that we were here for the afternoon. My steps rustled in the leaves as I walked towards him and stood, waiting, before him.

He smiled up at me, squinting against the brightness of the springtime sky behind me.

‘I’ve missed you,’ he said suddenly and my heart jumped as if I had taken a tumble from one of Papa’s hunters.

‘I could not get away,’ I said. I put my hands behind my back so he should not see them tremble but, absurdly, my eyes seemed to be filling with tears and I could not keep my lips from quivering. I could hide my hands and no one could tell under the smooth skirts of my green gown that my knees were weak, but my face seemed naked as if I had been caught in sleep or in a second of shameful fear. I risked a glance at his face and caught his eyes upon me. I saw in that second his easy confidence had gone. Ralph, too, was as tense as a snare. I could see his breath was as fast as if he had been sprinting. In wonder, I stepped forward and put out a hand to touch his thick, black hair. In a swift, unpredictable movement he snatched my hand and tugged me down beside him. Both his hands on my shoulders he glared into my face as if torn between a desire to murder, and a desire to love me. I had no thoughts. I just gazed back as if I was famished for the look of him.

Then the dangerous, fiery look melted from his eyes and he smiled at me as warm as a summer day.

‘Oh, Beatrice,’ he said, lingeringly. His hands slid from my shoulders down the neat-cut jacket to my waist and he pulled me close and kissed my lips, my eyelids and my throat. Then we sat side by side, with his arm around me and my head on his shoulder, watching the river and the bob of his pine-cone float for a long, long time.

We spoke little, for we were still country children. When the float bobbed and Ralph jumped to pull the line in, I had his cap ready to catch the fish as neatly and surely as in our childhood summer. Dead leaves, bracken and old twigs made a little fire under the trees by the river, and Ralph cleaned the trout and spitted it on a twig while I fed the little flames. I had eaten little for three days and the burned skin of the trout was salty and good. It was part raw, but whoever cares for such things when it is your own trout from your own river cooked on a fire of your own twigs? I washed my fingers and mouth in the rushing water and drank some of the sweet flood. Then I leaned back against the log and Ralph’s arms were around me.

Young ladies, girls of the Quality, are said to have painful childbirths, difficulty monthly seasons, fearful loss of virginity. Without one direct, honest word, Mama had ensured I knew that wifely duties included the making and bearing of an heir, and had convinced me that the task would be disagreeable and painful. Perhaps it is. Perhaps mating the man of your parents’ choice in the great wooden family bed, with the plans of two families on you, and your duty clear before you, is a painful insult to your body. All I know for certain is that to lie with the lad of your choice, like any free maid, under the Wideacre trees and sky is to become part of the old magic of the land, to hear the great heart of Wideacre thud in your ears, to feel the pulse of the earth.

We rolled together as inexpert, yet as graceful, as otter cubs; then the inexplicable, unexpected, unplanned sensations added and added and added up to a sudden crisis of delight that left me gasping and weeping into Ralph’s shoulder while he said, ‘Oh,’ as if he were extraordinarily surprised.

Then we lay in silence, clasped together as close as interlaced hands. And then, like the children we were, we fell asleep.

We woke, cold, cramped and uncomfortable. My back was patchy with the impress of twigs and leaves and Ralph had a red line across his forehead from pitching forward against the bark of the log. We huddled into our clothes and hugged for warmth as the quick springtime twilight lengthened the shadows of the bushes and the trees. Then Ralph cupped his hands for my foot and tossed me into the saddle. There was one wordless, warm look between us and then I turned my horse’s head and trotted for home. I felt badly in need of a hot bath and a huge meal. I felt like a goddess.

Those first wordless meetings set a pattern of pleasure that grew and grew all spring and early summer as the days warmed and the crops greened the dark fields. The lambs, the cows in calf and the sowing kept me out of Mama’s way with an excuse for absence almost every day. Once I had looked over the animals, or helped move the flocks up to the sweet grass of the spring downs, I could do as I pleased. Ralph knew some hidey-holes in the woods further afield than where we had played as six-year-olds, and on the few wet days we met at the old mill again. Above our shifting bodies, the little swallows hatched and were fed. I knew we had been lovers for weeks when the little hungry squeaks from the nest of mud grew louder and louder, and then one day they had flown. It was the only sign I noticed of passing time.

The transition from spring to high summer seemed to stand still that year to allow Ralph and me endless warm secret afternoons. The land itself conspired to hide us as the bracken on the common grew taller, and the undergrowth in the woods thicker and more lush. The weather of that wonderful spring smiled and smiled until Papa said he had never known such a season – that it must be magic to make the hay so early.

Of course it was magic. Through every warm day and through every dream at night, Ralph strode like a dark god of the earth making all of Wideacre glow with growth while our passion and our loving made the days sunny and long and the night skies full of the clearest stars.

We grew more skilled at pleasing each other but we never lost some sense of awe at each other’s mere presence. Just being there, under the swooping tall beech trees or curled up under the bracken, seemed a continual wonder to me. Anything we could imagine, any refinement of pleasure we could dream, we did with tenderness, with laughter, with breathless excitement. We would lie naked for hours touching each other all over, taking turns.

‘Is it nice if I touch you like this? Like this? Like this?’ I would ask while my fingers, face and tongue explored Ralph’s outstretched body.

‘Oh, yes. Oh, yes.’

We loved the excitement of near discovery as well. We met unplanned one afternoon when Ralph had come to the Hall with a hare and I was picking roses for Mama in the garden. He came from the kitchen at the back of the house and the gate clanged as he entered the garden. I turned, saw him and the basketful of roses dropped, instantly forgotten. Reckless of the windows of the house, which overlooked the garden, Ralph simply strode towards me, took my hand and led me to the summerhouse. He stood, back arched to carry my weight, and lifted me on to him, my silk dress creased and bunched between us, his head pressing down to kiss my breasts. We gasped in hasty incredulous pleasure, and Ralph set me down on my feet again. Then we laughed, and could not stop laughing at the sheer comic audacity of love-making in the garden in broad daylight before Mama’s parlour, before every window in the front of the house.

On my birthday morning in May, when I woke early with excitement to hear the birds singing and singing at the rosy dawn, my first thought was not of the expensive presents I could expect from Papa and Mama, but what Ralph might bring me.

I did not have long to wonder. While I splashed water on my face I heard a low, long whistle under my window and, wearing only my shift, I swung open the casement window to lean out and see Ralph, smiling with joy at seeing me.

‘Happy birthday,’ he called in a hoarse whisper. ‘I have brought you a present.’

I jumped down from the window seat and went to my dressing-table drawers for a ball of yarn. Like a fairy-tale princess, I dropped it from my window and Ralph tied a little withy basket carefully on the threads. I pulled it in as gently as if I were landing a salmon, and laid it on the window seat beside me.

‘Is it alive?’ I said in surprise when I heard a rustle of leaves inside the meshes.

‘Alive and scratching,’ said Ralph and held up a hand to show me a long red scratch along the back.

‘A kitten?’ I guessed.

‘Not for you,’ Ralph said dismissively. ‘Something more exciting.’

‘A lion cub,’ I said promptly and smiled to hear Ralph’s slow country chuckle.

‘Open it and see,’ he advised. ‘But open it carefully.’

I unfastened the little catch on the lid and peeped inside. A deep blue gaze met mine, a glimpse of ruffled, fluffed-out, angry feathers – a baby owl, rolled on his back with his sharp taloned feet pointing up at me in defence, a hoarse, cross squeaking coming from his open, red-tongued beak.

‘Oh, Ralph!’ I said, entranced. I glanced down; Ralph’s face was beaming with love and triumph.

‘I climbed the pine tree right up to the top for that one,’ he said proudly. ‘I wanted to give you something no one else could give you. And something from Wideacre.’

‘I shall call it Canny,’ I said, ‘because owls are wise.’

‘Not very wise,’ he said, teasing. ‘We nearly fell out of the tree when it scratched me.’

‘And I shall love it for ever because you gave it to me,’ I said, gazing at its mad, deep blue eyes.

‘Wisdom and love then,’ said Ralph, ‘and all earned by one little owl.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, with my heart in the words.

‘Coming out later?’ he asked casually.

‘I might,’ I said and beamed down at him. ‘I’ll be down at the mill straight after breakfast,’ I promised. Then I turned my head to listen for the noise of a maid stoking the kitchen fire. ‘I must go,’ I said. ‘See you at the mill, and thank you for my present.’

There was a small, disused store room among our outbuildings and there we decided to keep Canny. Ralph taught me how to feed the baby bird with raw meat wrapped in fur or feathers, and how to gently stroke its breast feathers so it hooded its blue eyes to doze.

That summer, Ralph would have climbed any tree, dared any risk for me. And I would have done anything for him. Or almost anything. One thing I would never do for him, and if he had been wiser, or less in love, he would have been warned by it. I would never take him into my papa’s bed. Ralph had a longing to lie with me there, in the great master bed, under the dark, curved wooden roof upheld by the four pillars as thick as pine trunks. But I would not. However much I loved the gamekeeper’s lad, he would never lie with me in the bed of the Squires of Wideacre. I evaded the question, but one day, when Papa and Mama were visiting in Chichester and the servants were on a half-day holiday, Ralph asked me directly to lie with him there, and was met with a direct refusal. His eyes went black with anger, but he said nothing and went alone to set snares in the woods instead. He soon forgot that one isolated refusal. A wiser man would have remembered and carried that reservation of mine through every day of that golden, timeless summer.

It was no timeless summer for Mama, who counted the days until the return of her golden boy from his school. She even made a little calendar, which she hung on the parlour wall, marked with the days of his term. Indifferently, I saw one day ticked off every evening. With little enthusiasm, and even less skill, I hemmed curtains and helped embroider the dragon counterpane for Harry’s new-style bedroom. And despite my ham-fisted efforts with the curly tail of the stupid beast, it was completed in time and spread on Harry’s bed to await the arrival of the emperor himself.

The first day of July, too good a day to waste at the parlour window listening for Harry’s carriage, saw us waiting for him. As soon as I heard hoofs on the drive I obeyed my instructions and called to Mama. She summoned Papa from his gun room and we stood on the steps as the carriage swept around the bend in the drive and drew up before the front door. Papa greeted Harry, who jumped boyishly from the carriage, without waiting for the steps to be let down. Mama surged forward. I held back, resentment, jealousy and some sort of fear in my heart.