The Favoured Child (30 page)

‘Will ‘e live?’ whispered Margery Sharp to Uncle John while I waited for his orders one morning in the sunlit vestry of the church where he had set up an impromptu consulting room.

‘Aye,’ Uncle John said kindly.

Her hard eyes filled with tears as though John himself had taught her how to cry. ‘I thought he would die,’ she said bleakly. ‘All the others did.’

‘How many?’ John asked gently, flexing the little hands and feet. The baby was tiny, about eight months old, and skinny, with his ribs showing. His flesh was speckled with the scars of old flea-bites and bug-bites, spotted with a rash. He smelled. He was fouled with old excrement and urine. Uncle John handled him as if his skin were silk, his hands full of love.

‘Four,’ she said. ‘No, five!’

I said nothing, but I flinched a little, amazed that a woman could be brought so low as to forget how many babies she had buried.

‘The last one only lived a day,’ she explained. ‘I never had time to name her, nor nothing.’

‘No christening?’ John asked, knowing what that would mean to a superstitious village woman.

She nodded. ‘Dr Pearce done it,’ she said. ‘Dr Pearce done it for me, because he knew I couldn’t have borne to see her in hell. He christened her although she was dead. Now, there’s another good man.’

‘A good man indeed,’ John agreed. ‘Now, Mistress Sharp, I’ll tell you what you must do. You must get this little lad here into some clean clothes. Go to the school room and see Lady Lacey. She’ll give you what you need. He’s not to have swaddling clothes, and he’s not to be wrapped too tight.’

She raised her head to protest, and I saw Uncle John’s weary smile.

‘I know you like to swaddle them,’ he said kindly, ‘and I know it stills their crying. But that is because when they are swaddled really tight, they cannot get breath to cry. It’s like being bound too tight would be for us. You’ve done well to keep this child alive, Mistress Sharp. Let’s not take any chances with the little lad now.’

She nodded at that, responding to the affection in his voice.

‘He’s to be washed,’ said Uncle John. She gave a gasp of protest, but Uncle John ignored her and carried on. ‘He’s to be washed every time he soils himself,’ he said firmly. ‘Washed and put into a clean clout. And he’s to be taken out into the sunshine all this summer. Have one of the village children watch him.’

Margery Sharp nodded, her eyes wide at this string of ridiculous instructions.

‘Have the big child carry the little one outside,’ Uncle John said. ‘If he stays indoors all the time, he won’t eat. The fresh air will give him an appetite and help him to sleep at night and stay awake during the day.’

‘But washing…’ the woman protested.

‘Miss Julia here is organizing a fuel store for the whole village so you can always have a fire,’ Uncle John said steadily. ‘You can
keep a kettle by the hearth so you can have warm water to wash him. When he has soiled his clout, you can wash it out and dry it by the fire. Then you’ll have a clean one to put on him next time.’

‘He’d need changing time after time all day!’ Mrs Sharp protested.

‘I know,’ John said kindly. ‘I’ve cared for a baby too, you know. But if you keep them clean, they don’t get sores and they cry less, and they don’t get ill. I
promise
you it will work, Margery. Will you try it?’

Still she hesitated, her face full of doubt.

John’s tone became warmer and more charming. Will you try it for
me
, Margery?’ he asked, his voice very low.

She blushed scarlet and shot an embarrassed look at me. ‘Oh, Doctor!’ she said, and I saw that beneath the defeated, exhausted woman there had once been a flighty amorous village girl. ‘All right, then,’ she said unwillingly. ‘If you’re sure it will work. But if he gets ill from all that washing, I’ll stop it, mind!’

‘Agreed,’ said John, and bundled the little child into his rags again. ‘Now, you go over to the village school, and Lady Lacey will find some clothes for him, and some clouts, and a towel as well. And she’ll show you how to wash him all over, I’ll be bound. You know what her ladyship is like with babies!’

The woman found a smile from some remembered happiness and looked Uncle John full in the face. ‘It’s good to have you back, sir,’ she said, and then she bundled up her son, her only little survivor from a family of six, and took him away.

‘Uncle John, you flirt!’ I exclaimed.

The face he turned to me was alight with mischief. ‘Just trying to teach Acre to raise healthy children,’ he protested.

Outrageous,’ I accused. ‘You put on a soft voice and your accent got as broad as if you had just come down from the Highlands with a kilt still on! I shall tell Mama of you! You should be ashamed!’

Uncle John laughed aloud. ‘Don’t tell Celia,’ he begged. ‘She’ll have me publicly named as a charlatan! I promise you, Julia, it’s all part of my teaching technique!’

We laughed together, and then there was a tap at the door and another woman with a wan child held by the hand.

‘Here is Mrs Miles and her son Peter,’ I said to John. ‘Is Peter not well, Mrs Miles?’

‘He can’t keep his food in his belly,’ she said, talking past me to John. ‘All this new food which you and Mr Megson have bought, and I can’t get him to eat it, then when he does it comes straight up again. ’Tis not the worms, not the bloody flux, ‘tis not the gripes…’

‘I must go,’ I said, shamefaced but hopelessly queasy at this list.

‘Chicken-hearted,’ Uncle John said in an undertone. ‘I’d rather be a flirt than a coward any day.’

‘You are,’ I said, and made my way towards the door.

‘One moment, Mrs Miles,’ John said with a smile to her. ‘Julia, if you’re on your way to find Mr Megson, he’s setting them to hedging and ditching on Three Gate Meadow. Will you tell him that the apple trees will be delivered this afternoon? He’ll need a gang to plant them out as soon as the ground is ready.’

‘It’s ready now,’ I confirmed. ‘The ploughing team finished yesterday. I’ll check it for stones and waterlogging and if it’s clear, they can go in at once.’

‘Good.’ John nodded and turned his attention to whey-faced little Peter, who was explaining in a whiny voice that he could fancy nothing but sweetmeats now that the good times had come.

Outside the sun was bright in the churchyard. The fleet of fresh graves from the winter’s deaths was greened over with new grass, and the work Uncle John was doing in the vestry was a promise that there would not again be deaths like that, nor another merciless winter. I strode out through the graveyard, past the imposing gates of the Lacey vault and under the lich-gate to where I had left the new pony, Rusty, grazing on the corner outside the church wall which, for some reason, they called Miss Beatrice’s Corner. There were two mounds there, like misplaced
graves, and Rusty was eating some old flowers which had been left on one of them. I gathered my smart new driving dress in one hand to hold it clear and hauled myself up into the gig.

Our new carriage was waiting outside the old tithe barn which Mama had commandeered for a village school. As I turned the gig, I could hear the children’s excited voices and Mama’s orders clear above the noise. I could hardly believe my ears. In all my childhood I think she had raised her voice to me once. Now I heard her yell, ‘That is enough! John Smith, Sally Cooper, you twins! Stop fighting and sit down at once.’

There was a sudden hush at that, and then a scrabbling noise as a dozen untamed children rushed for a place on the bench and seated themselves to look at her.

‘That’s better,’ my mama said calmly. ‘Now, who can tell me what this is? Hands up, don’t shout out!’

I waited no longer. I had a very clear picture of what she was doing inside the old barn with her little class seated on the benches before her. She would teach them to wash and brush their hair. She would teach them how to sew, how to light a lamp without burning themselves, how to prepare a meal.

‘Children want to learn,’ Uncle John had said to her. ‘They must have toys to encourage them to read and write. They must be helped to question things all the time. Then they will teach themselves. All the philosophers agree…’

‘Philosophers indeed!’ Mama had interrupted. ‘This is a village school for village children. When your philosophers control the country, they may tell me what a working child should learn. Until then I shall teach them how to feed themselves and how to keep themselves clean, and get them ready for their work!’

‘Tory!’ said John, using his worst term of abuse.

‘Jacobin!’ Mama had retorted; and she was running her school in her own way.

I turned the gig left down the track past the squatters’ cottages, towards the land which had once been all common land. A waste, it was now. Beatrice had cleared the common land of its wealth of trees and scrub and bracken, and with the sweet natural growth
had gone the wild animals: the game birds, the hares, the rabbits and the deer. Once Beatrice was gone, the common had regained its own, and the only trace left of her was the odd head of wheat, spindly on the wind.

Now I was another Lacey girl, coming to change the face of the land, and I whispered a brief promise to myself that this time the changes should last for longer than a season and should be for the best.

Even as a derelict wheatfield, this great common field had been lovely. But I had ordered them to fence it and plough it, and in three days there were no smooth sweet slopes greening with bracken and hazy with heather buds, but a morass of mud in wriggly lines from the blades of the plough. I drove the gig up to the very foot of the field and looked up at it.

I heard a singing in my head.

‘It is good,’ I said fervently. I think I spoke aloud.

It was as if the earth itself were speaking to me, as if Wideacre could tell me that the land was good and that the plans were good, and that if the common was no longer breathtakingly lovely in this one single field, then it was none the less good earth in good heart, and it would grow a crop which would feed Acre.

The wind blew down the gentle slopes towards me. Beatrice had literally moved mountains to make this field. She had infilled valleys and uprooted a great oak tree. The work had been done badly. I could see the line of the valleys and even the faintest trace of a footpath going across the field. And the hollow where the oak tree had once stood had been the scene of my long-ago fight with Clary.

I smiled. It was not just Beatrice who had a history here. All the Lacey landowners had left their marks here, and I would leave mine. This field would be remembered by Acre as the one which Beatrice had clawed out of common land and wrested from the people. But they would also remember it as the field where Julia Lacey had planted apples. And next summer that gamble might pay.

I backed the pony carefully and turned the gig, and trotted
home through Acre. The carriage was gone from outside the tithe barn, so Mama was before me, and I guessed she would have taken Richard and John with her. I had only one errand to do before my dinner and I set the pony into a brisk trot past the gates to the Wideacre drive and along to Three Gate Meadow.

Ralph was sitting on the bank under the hedge with the working men, but he raised his head when he heard the sound of the gig. The men were taking their dinner break and they stayed seated and kept on eating, contenting themselves with a courteous wave in my direction. I waved back, got down into the road and looped the reins over the gate.

‘Good day, Miss Lacey,’ Ralph said, coming to the gate and smiling at me across the top.

‘Good day, Mr Megson,’ I said. ‘Uncle John asked me to tell you that the apple trees are arriving this afternoon. I have checked the common-land field and it looks dry and fairly clear of stones. I think we can plant without further ploughing or drainage work.’

Ralph frowned. ‘I’ve no workers free this afternoon,’ he said, ‘and tomorrow I have to go to Petersfield and buy some sheep for the new flock. There will be enough men to do the planting tomorrow, but I can’t be here. It’s new work to them; I’d not like to leave them without help. Not that I know much. I was going to do it from your uncle’s farming book!’

‘If it’s only a question of following a book, I can do it,’ I said. ‘I don’t know much about farming, but I can read!’

Ralph smiled. ‘You
do
know about farming, though, don’t you, Julia?’ he said gently. ‘How else can you tell that the field is ready for planting?’

‘That’s true,’ I said, not wanting to discuss the point. ‘What time shall I come to work?’

‘They can be in the field at seven,’ Ralph said. ‘They’ll stop for their breakfast at ten. Then stop again for dinner at one. They’ll need a break at four, and they can go home at sunset. You’re not like to be finished before.’

‘I know it,’ I said with feeling. ‘It’s a huge field. I should think we should be prepared for two days of planting.’

‘Yes, Squire!’ said Ralph, and pulled his forelock to me.

‘Don’t call me that,’ I said steadily, ‘not even in jest. Richard will be the squire. We are joint heirs, but he is the boy.’

‘But you inherit jointly,’ Ralph said. ‘I should think you would insist on your rights.’

I thought of my grandmama’s warning that a woman’s way is not to insist, and I shook my head in denial, but I said nothing.

Ralph smiled. ‘Then you’re no Lacey at all!’ he said, his voice warm with amusement. ‘Any Lacey would ride roughshod over anyone in the world to keep a hold on the land they own, and to gain more. And Beatrice was the worst of all of them. She stopped at nothing to get control of the land. And there you are – a legitimate Lacey heir – talking of sharing your land as if the Fenny were not in your blood and the Wideacre earth not in your bones!’

‘I am not Beatrice!’ I said in sudden impatience. ‘I have been raised by my mama, and I take her advice. A woman’s part is to give – not to grab. Besides, if I am generous and fair with Richard, he will…’ I broke off before I said too much.

‘Sits the wind in that quarter?’ Ralph said softly, almost to himself. He walked stiffly along the gate, swung it open and came out to meet me in the lane.