The Favoured Child (48 page)

He nodded. The dry weather had broken and the days I had spent indoors had been damp, foggy and cold.

‘It has been miserable,’ he said. ‘Thank God we got little Rosie Dench out of that cellar before this bad weather started. I don’t think she would have survived.’

James went every day to visit the Acre four. He said they were settling into their new quarters fairly well. Nat was gradually getting a little paler as the years of soot wore off under his enthusiastic scrubbing. Jimmy Dart was fattening up daily, and Rosie was coughing still, but looking better, and could get up and sit in the parlour downstairs most days. Only Julie seemed unable to settle.

‘They do understand why I have not been to see them, don’t they?’ I asked.

James nodded. ‘I made sure they did,’ he said reassuringly. ‘And they know we are just waiting for the reply from Acre to say that all is ready for them to leave.’

That reply came the next day, in Ralph’s untutored script.

Send them home
, he wrote.
Everyone here wants them back. And everyone here blesses you for finding them
.

Come back with them. Come back in time for the sowing. You should be here then
.

I showed the letter to James.

‘Not a man for lengthy speeches, is he?’ James said, smiling.

‘And he’s not vague,’ I said, pointing to the paragraph which started, ‘Come back with them.’ ‘That sounds very like an order to me,’ I said.

James nodded. ‘The best servants are our masters,’ he said lightly. ‘My papa has a chief clerk who runs the business all on his own. If he ever knew how valuable he was, he could indent for twice the salary. Your Mr Megson sounds like that.’

I laughed. ‘Mr Megson knows exactly how much he is worth,’ I said ruefully. ‘The only reason he does not charge a king’s ransom is because he wants to work on Wideacre, and work for the good of the village. It was he who developed the profitsharing
scheme and persuaded the village. My Uncle John says that he would go further if he could.’

‘How?’ James asked.

Oh, I don’t know,’ I said idly. We were taking tea together in the parlour, and Marianne was nobly sitting at the window and alternately looking at the passers-by and at a newspaper. Under the cover of the tea-table James took my hand.

‘I think he would like the village to have common rights to all the land,’ I said. ‘He would have them own the land outright and farm it in common, in the old way.’

James looked extraordinarily interested. ‘He’s not the only one in the country to be thinking of such ideas,’ he said. ‘Could such a scheme work?’

‘It might,’ I said cautiously, ‘if the land was handed over to the people in good heart, and they had enough funds to buy equipment and stock and enough cash to pay wages until the profits could be shared. Under those circumstances it would work. But of course those circumstances never come about. No landlord would hand over good land. No one would gift the sort of amounts of money one needs to launch such a massive estate.’

James looked at me, half serious. ‘I tell you what, Julia Lacey,’ he said. I paid a great deal of attention. Whenever James called me Julia Lacey, I listened well. It was generally something very loving, or something very shocking, or – best of all – both. ‘I tell you what,’ he said again. ‘,’ have those sorts of funds, and if you tell me that you and I and then our children would have a good life in Acre if the village owned its own land, then I would be prepared to offer that sort of capital. We could build our own house and have our own share in the village, and yet not be the sort of squires and the sort of masters who bring about the poverty which we saw in Fish Quay Lane.’

I hesitated. ‘No,’ I said. ‘It is your inheritance, not mine. Before you decide how it is spent or where you wish to live, you must see Wideacre and the village. I cannot imagine being happy living all my life anywhere else. But you and I must agree such things together. It would be as unjust to you if we were all our
days at Wideacre as it would be unjust to me if you took me to Bristol and I could never see my home again.’

James held his free hand out across the tea-urn in a parody of a street trader. ‘Done,’ he said. ‘And remember what I have offered. My papa calls me a radical and a Jacobin, but I have no use for such labels. What I do care about is trying to follow the French lead in an especial English way. To make a new society here, as they are trying to do there. I want to do so with you, for I think I loved you the most when I saw you in the best fashion shop in Bath telling the proprietor she was worse than a madame in a bagnio. I have been a rebel all my life and I want to find a way to make that rebellion a comfortable way to live – something for the future rather than just a reaction against the way things are.’

‘Yes!’ I said, and my heart leaped to think of trying to build a life in Acre where there were no masters and squires but just James and me and our children, and Clary Dench and Matthew Merry and their children, and all the other village children living as neighbours.

‘If you two are holding hands above the tea-urn as well as below it, then I cannot help but feel that my presence here is somewhat superfluous,’ Marianne observed drily.

We released each other and laughed like a pair of guilty children.

‘Never that,’ James said, and crossed to the window to kiss her cheek. ‘At your least you are always ornamental. Tell us what Dr Phillips said today,’ he commanded, sitting beside her and taking the newspaper from her. ‘Julia has to see him for the first time in days tomorrow and she is going to tell him that she will discontinue her visits. They need her back at home and since she has survived perfectly well without seeing him, I am trying to convince her that she is as sane as anyone in the world, and a good deal saner than anyone I have ever known before.’

Marianne shot me a shy smile. ‘Except for your liking for my brother, I would agree,’ she said. Then her face grew graver. ‘Dr Phillips is working very hard to help me cat properly,’ she said.
‘Even if I find it sometimes very wearying, I cannot deny that he is very painstaking. I cannot help but wish that sometimes everyone would just leave the whole thing alone. If I was on a desert island, I am sure that I would be hungry and eat. It is just that everywhere I go, people press food on me, and when I refuse, they look at me and argue with me. Since I have been to Dr Phillips, and Mama has told people about it, everything has got worse.’

‘When we are married, and living in earthly paradise in the heart of Sussex, you shall come and stay with us and you shall eat nothing!’ James promised. ‘Nothing at all for days at a time until you feel you could fancy a little something. And no one will look at you, and no one will question you.’

Marianne sighed. ‘I look forward to being your first guest. But you are a little forward, James. The engagement has not even been announced, and I don’t think Julia has even told her mama.’

‘I cannot,’ I said. ‘She has been so ill and so tired, I did not want to trouble her. She would at once start planning parties and wedding gowns. I want her to be entirely well before she starts such a campaign.’

‘In the meantime, you must chaperon us,’ James said. ‘Do you have time tomorrow to go with Julia to Dr Phillips? We are to dispatch the Acre paupers in the afternoon, and Julia thought of seeing Dr Phillips first thing.’

Marianne agreed to escort me, and then go with me down to the inn to see that the four lost Acre children were ready to go home.

‘Would you like me to visit the doctor with you?’ James whispered softly to me as we said goodbye in the drawing-room while Marianne slowly tied on her bonnet before the mirror in the hall.

I hesitated. I was tempted to say yes and call on the help I knew he would give me. But I had been tempered in the fire of the most fashionable modiste in Bath, and I thought I could defend myself against Dr Phillips.

‘No,’ I said. ‘There will be much to arrange tomorrow. I shall
meet you at the Fish Quay Inn; and I shall be a free woman then, for I shall have told Dr Phillips I shall visit him no longer. I should tell him on my own, face to face. It is only fair, for he has spent a deal of time with me, doing the best that he could. I am a little apprehensive, but it will be no worse than Mrs Williams’s shop. Nothing could be worse than that.’

‘And I was so much help there!’ James exclaimed. He took both my hands and took one to his lips and turned the other around to cup his face. ‘Keep me in your mind until tomorrow,’ he said. ‘For I cannot sleep at nights for thinking about you.’

Then he kissed me on my lips and strode out to the hall, swept up Marianne and was gone with a little smile for me.

‘I shall see you tomorrow at the doctor’s,’ Marianne called. ‘Don’t be late!’

I nodded and I was not late, for it was nine o’clock when I slammed the front door and started to run up the hill; I was still there ahead of Marianne. The solemn footman showed us into Dr Phillips’s bleak parlour like two twin flies for a plump spider at exactly five minutes after nine o’clock.

Marianne went to the seat by the window where my mama usually sat, and Dr Phillips waved me towards the comfortable seat before the fire. But I remained standing with one hand on the back of the armchair where I had poured out my dreams and nearly lost them altogether.

‘I have come to thank you and to bid you farewell,’ I said. ‘My mama has been unwell and as soon as she is well enough to travel, I shall want to take her home. They need me at home on the estate.’

Dr Phillips went behind his heavy wooden desk and leaned back in his chair, watching me over his folded hands. ‘I think that would be unwise,’ he said gently. ‘Unweasonable. Have you consulted your mama? No? Have you witten to your uncle? No?’ He smiled gently at me. ‘These things are genewally better done by pawents or guardians,’ he said. ‘When you first came to me, you were suffewing from a number of delusions. I am pleased to say that we have made inwoads. I think you have had no dweams
since you came to me? And no experience of the singing in your head? And no hallucinations?’ He nodded to himself. ‘I think we have been making gweat pwogwess. I shall expect you to come again when your mama is well enough to bwing you, unless I hear to the contwawy fwom her or fwom your uncle.’

‘No,’ I said steadily. This was worse than the millinery shop, for I had no tide of anger to sweep me into certainty. ‘No,’ I said. ‘This is a decision I may take for myself. I will not be coming back to see you again. I shall tell you why,’ I said. My hands were trembling and I thrust them into my muff so he should not see. ‘You have indeed stopped my dreams, and I think in time you could have stopped the seeings altogether. But if you succeeded in that, I would no longer be Julia Lacey. I should be someone else. I do not know if I want that. I suspect that you have given no thought to that at all. You saw what you thought was a silly girl having delusions. But I believe that I am a special private person with special private experiences – with a gift, if you like – and I should resist being robbed of that as strongly as I should resist being robbed of my money.’

‘Has something happened?’ he asked acutely.

‘Yes,’ I said honestly. ‘Out of all the linkboys in Bath I recognized one as an Acre child, one who was taken from Acre ten years ago, one I had never seen before. I heard a voice in my head saying, “Take him home.” And I am going to take him home.’

Dr Phillips never moved, but his eyes were suddenly sharper. ‘Are you saying this is a pwoven experience of what is called second sight?’ he asked.

I shrugged with a little laugh. ‘I don’t know!’ I said. ‘I don’t care what it is called. It is as natural to me as seeing the colour of the sky, or hearing music when it is played. I will not have my sight and my hearing taken from me because other people do not have a name for it.’

He nodded, and rose to his feet. ‘Vewy well,’ he said. ‘But let me give you one word of warning. What you think of as second sight can be a guide in certain times and places. But you cannot
be a seer and also a young Bath lady. Most of the time you would do well to be guided by convention and manners.’

I nodded. ‘Thank you,’ I said.

Marianne stepped forward beside me. ‘I too am saying goodbye,’ she said softly. I saw her face was white and strained but her teeth were gritted. ‘I thank you for the work you have done for me,’ she said, ‘but I want time to consider my own position without forever having to explain myself.’

Dr Phillips sat plump down on his chair again and looked at both of us. ‘My entire system depends upon the patient talking the twouble out of their minds,’ he said. ‘And I have a pwoven success wate.’

‘I have no trouble in my mind,’ Marianne said steadily. ‘My trouble is in my home where my mama is unhappy and my papa ill-treats her. The only time we ever see Papa is at mealtimes, and I am so distressed that I cannot eat. My papa pays your fees, Dr Phillips, and you have never wanted to hear this simple explanation from me. I understand that you will not hear it, but there is no reason in the world why I should go on pretending that all this is my fault, and that I can somehow be cured from the consequence of my parents’ bad marriage. I cannot eat at home because I am miserable there. I am miserable because my papa is unfaithful to my mama, and because they choose the family dinner table as a place for their disagreements. I will not sit in your armchair and talk and weep and blame myself any longer.’

‘Yes,’ I said softly. I felt more like shouting, ‘Hurrah!’ and throwing my bonnet in the air.

Dr Phillips got to his feet again and looked at us unpleasantly. ‘If this is the new wadical woman, then I cannot say I am impwessed,’ he said. ‘You may tell your mamas that I will submit my final bill and that I, not you, terminated our discussions. I find you both unsympathetic’

I bit back a retort, and curtsied in silence instead. Then Marianne and I got ourselves to the door and out into the damp street and around the corner into Gay Street before we whooped and
laughed and congratulated ourselves, tumbled into a pair of sedan chairs and set off for the Fish Quay Inn.

They were in a delightful flurry of packing. All their new possessions, which James had provided, could have gone in one small bandbox; but the joy of private ownership was upon them and each had a separate box. Nat was now flesh-coloured all over his face, except for odd-looking sooty traces around his eyes, and he was very smart in a new suit. Rosie Dench was pale and thin still, but the sores around her mouth were healing and she did not cough at all. Jimmy Dart bustled around them both, as spry as a Bath sparrow in a brown homespun suit. I could not have recognized them for the sorry little crew in that dirty room. But I could not see Julie.