The Favoured Child (38 page)

Mama sat with me all the time as I slept and woke and dozed again. I did not dream. John’s medicine lifted me into a daze of sleepiness. But I did not dream.

On the second day my grandmama, Lady Havering, drove over from Havering Hall for a dish of tea, and stumped heavily up the uncarpeted stairs to my little room to regard me with jaundiced eyes through her lorgnette.

‘You seem to be blooming on it,’ she remarked acidly. ‘Eccentricity always did become the Laceys.’

‘I am not eccentric, Grandmama,’ I said politely. ‘At least, I do not mean to be.’

She smiled at that and gave me a gentle pat on the cheek. ‘No, my dear,’ she said. ‘That would be quite unbearable.’

With that she went downstairs to what was a full family conference, with her and Uncle John and Mama – and even Richard, come home from Oxford on the stage-coach that morning.

‘You’re to go to Bath,’ Richard said smugly. He had come upstairs with my dish of tea and a slice of apricot bread from the tea-tray. ‘They’ve been talking it over since dinner and they’ve decided that you are going to go to Bath with your mama as soon as you are well enough. Your mama says that you are highly strung and need a rest. Papa says that there is bad blood in the
Laceys and it is coming out in you. Your grandmama says that the Laceys were always a wild lot, and that the best thing they can do is get you married to someone normal at once. So you’re to leave.’

I clattered my dish of tea on the tray and put out both hands to Richard in alarm. ‘Not for ever!’ I exclaimed. ‘Not for ever, Richard!’

‘No,’ he said, ‘just for a couple of months. Your mama wants you to take the waters, and my papa wants you to see a doctor who is a friend of his, and your grandmama wants you affianced. They think a couple of months in Bath should do all that.’

I looked at him carefully. He was smiling, but it was a tight mean smile. He was angry with me and trying not to show it.

‘And you,’ I asked breathlessly, ‘what did you say?’

‘I said nothing,’ he said. ‘There was little I needed to say. I have my own opinions as to what you were doing, and I shall keep them.’

‘I shan’t go,’ I said.

‘It’s quite decided,’ Richard said blithely. ‘You’ll go with your mama, and the two of you will stay at some dreary lodging-house. I should think it’s fearfully slow. You’re to leave as soon as they confirm the booking of the rooms and as soon as my papa has ordered horses for the journey. You’ll see this friend of his, a specialist. They trained together at Edinburgh, but since that time this doctor has specialized in particular complaints.’ His look at me was radiant. ‘Don’t you want to know what complaints those are?’ he asked.

I hesitated. Some streak of self-preservation in my head warned me that I did
not
want to know what they were. But I felt as weary and defeated as if that dream had been a promise of my future. ‘What?’ I said.

‘Insanity in young ladies,’ Richard said sweetly. ‘He specializes in young ladies who have gone off their heads. And
he
is the one you are to see in Bath. For they all think you are mad. They think you are off your clever little head.’

My plate clattered to the floor as I reached out for his hand.
‘No, Richard,’ I choked. ‘I will not go. They are wrong, you know they are wrong.’

He twisted away from my grasp. ‘That’s not all,’ he said. ‘Until you leave, you are not to go into Acre at all.’

I gaped at him. ‘Am I in disgrace?’ I asked. ‘Are they angry with me for what happened in Acre?’

‘They
say
they are afraid for you,’ Richard said smugly. ‘It’s to be given out that you are unwell. But they all believe that you are going mad.’

I put one hand on the wooden headboard of my bed, and the other hand to my cheek to steady myself. ‘This is nonsense,’ I said weakly. ‘I have always had dreams. This was just a dream like the others. It was a seeing. Everyone knows about seeings.’

‘Dirty old gypsies have seeings,’ Richard said cruelly. ‘Young ladies do not. Unless they are going mad. You have always tried to resemble my mama, Beatrice; they all say that in the end she went mad. Now they are saying it is a family madness. That you are going mad too.’

The room swam around me. ‘No, Richard,’ I said steadily. ‘It is not like that. You know it is not like that.’

‘I
don’t
know,’ Richard said swiftly. ‘I used to think I knew you, but ever since my papa came home, you have been trying to be his favourite. Ralph Megson arrived in the village and you have tried to make yourself first with him, and first with Acre. Just because you are friends with those stupid little peasants, you are queening it around the whole time trying to play the squire. I get sent to my lessons, but you roam around as you please. Then as soon as I have to leave for Oxford, you are down there all the time, making up to Megson and pretending to work the land as if you were
my
mama come again. Now you see what comes of it! Much good it has done you! You plotted to make it seem as if you are the favoured child and now no one believes you; they just think you are crazy.’

‘I am not!’ I said, suddenly angry, fighting through the soporific haze of the drug and through my sense of fatigue and defeat. I threw back the bedcovers and started to rise. ‘I have the sight,’
I said defiantly. ‘And it meant I was able to save the village from the falling spire and from the fire. I did not plan to do it. I did not plot. I was drawn down there and I could not help myself. It
was
Beatrice. It
was
a seeing.’

He put hard hands on my shoulders and pinned me, seated, to the bed. ‘There are no such things,’ he hissed, his face black with fury. ‘There are no such things as seeings. Beatrice is dead, and what you just said proves that we are all right and you are mad. You are going mad, Julia, and we will have to put you in a madhouse; and you will never live in the new Wideacre Hall, and you will never be the favoured child in Acre.’

I put up my hands to hold his wrists and silence him. But nothing would stop him.

‘You are going mad, and they will send you to Bath, and your mama will take you to see a doctor, and he will know at once that all these dreams and these seeings and these singings in your head are because you are mad, and getting madder every day.’

I screamed.

I took my hands from holding him and punched him hard, punched at his body and screamed at him.

At once he thrust me face down into the pillow and held me there, half stifled, with all his force while I writhed and struggled and tried to push myself up. When I lay limp, he relaxed his grip and turned my face around towards him.

‘Better be quiet,’ he said, and his whisper was infinitely sweet. ‘If they hear you screaming, or think that you are getting violent, it would make it so much worse.’ He smiled at me, untroubled, his face alight with joy. ‘You look mad,’ he said sweetly. ‘And you were screaming just then, quite out of control. You were violent with me, you attacked me, and now you are crying. Anyone who saw you would be certain that you have to be put in a madhouse. Better stay quiet, Julia.’ He stroked my hair from my hot forehead in a terrifying parody of care. ‘There, there,’ he said.

I shuddered under his touch.

He lifted my bare feet from the floor and tucked them under
the bed covers again and smoothed the sheet under my chin. ‘Lie still,’ he whispered softly, his mouth very close to my ear. ‘Lie still. Your grandmama is still downstairs, and you would not want her to hear you screaming, would you? Little pet of the family.’

I lay frozen. I did not even move when he kissed me softly on the cheek, gently, as if he loved me. Then he turned his back on me and trod light-footed to the door and shut it behind him.

I lay where he had left me, staring blankly at the ceiling, my cheeks wet with cooling tears, with the start of a secret panic building inside me.

It was like a nightmare, the next few days. Every sweet smile of my mama’s, every time Uncle John looked at me and asked how I was feeling was a confirmation of what Richard had said: they thought I was going mad. I knew my face was strained and my eyes wary. I tried so hard to act normally, to seem like an ordinary girl, but every day my behaviour grew odder and odder.

The weather tormented me, for the wind and the rain had blown away into half a dozen cold sharp days with a frost in the morning and a bright red sun in the afternoon. Misty in her stable ate oats and grew restless, and yet they would not let me ride. I hardly dared glance out of the window for fear that Mama should see some wildness in my face which would appear abnormal. I was afraid even to sit on a stool at her feet and gaze into the log fire in case Uncle John should say gently, ‘What are you thinking, Julia?’

His eyes were on me all the time and when I looked idly into the flames, he watched my rapt face. I was under observation.

Misty was restless in the loose box of the Dower House, for Ralph had brought her back the very next day, loaded with little presents from the children of Acre. They had made me chains of little paper flowers, they had made me a bouquet of twigs with tiny buds as a promise of spring and they had collected farthings and walked to Midhurst to buy me a box of sweetmeats. But Ralph had not been allowed to see me. They had told him, they
had told all the callers from Acre, that I was resting and would be leaving for Bath within the week.

My place on the land was taken by Richard.

Every day he ordered Prince out of the stables and rode to Acre to consult with Ralph on what should be done that day. And Ralph – easygoing, imperturbable – accepted the change as our wishes, as my wishes. He knew that Richard had no eye for the cows and did not like to work with the sheep, but January is a slack time of the year and there was little to do on the land. The urgent work was to shore up the west wall of the church to make the roof waterproof and then to rebuild the five wrecked cottages as soon as possible.

Richard knew the builders, knew them better than anyone. Richard had done the round of the local quarries and knew exactly the cost of stone at each one and when they could deliver. Richard could draw a plan himself or adapt one from out of his own library of building books. Richard was the one they needed in Acre in that month, with little farming work to do, but with an urgent need for someone to plan and supervise the repair of the church and the rebuilding of the cottages.

Richard set them to work to rethatch and reroof the Smiths’ and the Coopers’ homes, and he was out in the lane of Acre every day, watching them replace the rafters and lay the thatch. In the afternoon when the light started to fail, he would take them down to the Bush and treat them to great mugs of ale at his own expense.

He did not forget the women or children either. When Little ‘Un was ill, Richard called out the carriage to take him up to the Dower House to see Uncle John and brought him home again, wrapped up warm around the throat and dosed with laudanum against the pain. He always had a handful of ribbons in his pocket for the pretty girls of Acre. He acted like a beloved young squire and showed no preference. Clary was still the leader of the young people of the village, and he always saved the broadest, reddest ribbon for her. Only Ted Tyacke stood out against Richard’s charm. Only Ted refused to drink with him, failed to pull a
forelock to him. ‘He’s surly,’ Richard said at dinner, his smile newly confident, ‘but he doesn’t matter. I can manage the village without the blessing of Ted Tyacke.’

It was as if I had died on that night of the church spire falling. Died, and my place taken by Richard. Died and been forgotten.

Mama and Uncle John ordered Stride to deny me at the front door to visitors. In the kitchen they told village callers that I was unwell and resting. If you wanted a decision on the land, you went to Ralph Megson. If you wanted a decision on buildings, or a favour, you went to Richard. It was as if I were not there, as if I had already gone to Bath and would never return.

Mama knew that I was unhappy, but she did not ask me for an explanation, and I was as wary of opening my heart to her as a suspected criminal. The worst thing for me was how they watched me, but also I could not rid myself of that bleak memory of the dream. It was as if I had looked into an enchanted mirror and seen my face, haggard with suffering, lined with age, as if I had been cursed with a glimpse of the future which held no restored Acre, no rebuilt hall, just loneliness and pain and fear, and an unwanted baby which had to be murdered.

If I could have rested, if they could have let me alone, I might have recovered my spirits, I might have looked less strange. But they watched me all the time, with anxious loving eyes. And neither my mama nor Uncle John could conceal their impatience to get me away, off the land, away from my home, exiled. I watched the post-bag and I knew that Uncle John had written to his friend the doctor. The reply came on the same day as the confirmation that the rooms booked by Mama were available.

‘We can leave tomorrow,’ Mama said to Uncle John over the coffee-pot at breakfast-time.

‘And Dr Phillips will see you at your convenience,’ he said.

Both of them were studiously avoiding looking at me. I kept my eyes on my plate. I was afraid to say anything. The room was full of fearful silences.

‘I’ll be off.’ Richard said brightly. We all looked up at him as he pushed back his chair and went towards the door, pausing
only to kiss Mama on the top of her lace cap as he went past her. ‘The Smiths and the Coopers should be able to move back in today, and I can start work in earnest on the other three cottages,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You
do
agree, don’t you, sir, that I need not go back to university until I have seen this work through, and the cottages up again?’

Uncle John nodded approvingly at Richard. ‘Yes, indeed,’ he said. ‘No one else could have drawn up the plans and ordered the goods so quickly. Acre is in your debt. No one could take over now.’

Richard smiled sweetly. ‘I’m glad to help!’ he said. ‘But I don’t think we should let Julia home from Bath until she promises not to pull down any more of Acre. I agree there are times when I could quite cheerfully raze it to the ground, but
not
in the middle of a thunderstorm in the middle of January!’