The Favoured Child (64 page)

There were footsteps outside the door and ‘I leaped to my feet, the colour rushing into my face. It was Mr Jeffries, the landlord. Not James. Not James at all.

‘Just come for the coffee-tray, Miss Lacey,’ he said. ‘Coming post, your friend, is she?’

I stammered a reply.

‘Late anyway,’ Mr Jeffries said cheerfully. ‘I expect you are
sorry to be indoors on a day like this, and it’s a busy time on Wideacre, I hear.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Mr Jeffries, would you bring another pot of coffee, please? And two cups this time. My friend will be here at any moment, I am sure.’

I waited for the coffee. I waited for James. There was a creeper growing up outside the window and it tapped on the glass softly, as soft as a kitten patting a ball of wool; but in the silence of each moment I could hear it. The sunshine was streaming through the window and little motes of dust danced in the beam. The carpet was faded around the window, where the sunshine of countless summers had bleached it. It was worn thin in a little track from the door to the table where landlord and serving wench had walked. I felt I had been in the little room all my life. I felt I would have to stay there for ever.

The clock on the mantelpiece chimed a quarter chime. James was late.

In all our time in Bath he had never been late to see me. He was always there whenever I arrived. He told me once that he often waited for as long as an hour for me. I thought he must have found the roads harder going than he had expected. Or perhaps a horse had gone lame. But then I heard the door from the stable yard bang and my heart leaped. Footsteps came down the corridor and I stood unsteadily and walked towards the table waiting.

The footsteps walked past the room. It was not James.

The coffee came, and I sat beside the cooling pot and watched a blackbird on the patch of grass, making little runs and then freezing in silence, head cocked, listening to sounds which no one but he could hear.

The chime of the half-hour sounded very loud. The coffee was luke-warm. I drank a cup. I would order a fresh pot when James came.

When James came.

I knew he would come. I knew it was not possible that he should not come, just as in my deepest heart I knew that if he came and I told him frankly and truly what had happened to me,
he would forgive me. I trusted him, I trusted my love for him, and his for me.

The clock ticked. The blackbird sprang forward, tugged a worm out and carried it triumphantly away in his beak.

The clock chimed the full three-quarters of the tune. It was quarter to eleven. I bet with myself that he would be with me in five minutes. But at ten minutes to eleven he still had not come. I bet myself a hundred guineas that he would dash into the parlour at five minutes to eleven, covered with dust and full of apologies. But he did not.

The clock struck the full chimes, jangly, tedious, loud. Mr Jeffries put his head around the door.

‘There’s a gentleman here…’ he began.

‘James!’ I said certainly and got to my feet.

‘Says that the road from London is clear, and he has passed no post-chaise in the last twenty miles,’ Mr Jeffries went on. ‘Maybe your friend is not coming, Miss Lacey.’

‘I’ll wait another half-hour,’ I said. I could feel the blood draining from my face so fast that I thought I might faint. I sat down on the seat again and leaned my head against the window-pane. The glass was cold. In one pane someone had tried to cut their name with a diamond. It looked like Stephen something, and last year’s date.

It was twenty minutes past eleven.

At half past eleven Mr Jeffries came in to ask me if I would like to leave a message with him, and he would promise to deliver it, to save me the further inconvenience of waiting. I said I would wait until noon.

The clock ticked. The blackbird came back.

I said to myself that it was not possible, that James would not just not come. He would never simply fail to meet me. I had asked him to meet me here and he had agreed. He must have had an accident on the road and, instead of sitting here doubting him, I should be sending out people to search the road for him and bring him home safe to Wideacre. But in my heart I knew he had not had an accident. He was not coming.

It was half past twelve before I knew with certainty. Even then I might have seen his post-chaise with delight, not surprise. But at half past twelve, two and a half hours late for our appointment, I told myself he was not coming and I might as well go home.

I rose from the window-seat like an old woman, stiff and tired. He was not coming. He had known I was waiting for him and yet he had not come to me. What I should say to him now was a problem for the future. He was not coming today, though I had asked him to come and see me.

My arm was aching and I did not know if I would manage Misty on the ride home. I was as weary as if I had been riding around on the downs all the day. Misty would be fresh from her rest in the stables, and I would have trouble mounting her with only one hand.

I pinned on my hat and went out into the yard.

Richard was there.

He was sitting in Uncle John’s gig with the steadiest of the driving horses between the shafts, and Misty hitched with a halter to the back. He was stretched out in the driver’s seat with his smart boots crossed before him on the splashboard. The smoke from his cigar circled in the still air above his head. He turned when he heard the door shut behind me and got down, slowly taking his tricorne hat off and smiling his secretive smile.

‘What a long time you have been, my dear,’ he said kindly. ‘As I had some business to do myself in the inn, I thought I would wait for you. Your mama was concerned at you riding. She will be glad that we met and I could drive you home. Where shall we tell her we met?’

He took me by the waist and lifted me up into the gig before I could say a word, and then he flapped the reins on the horse’s back, tossed a coin to the ostler and drove us out of the yard.

I said nothing for a moment. Just seeing Richard there was a shock. But then I found my voice. ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.

‘Business,’ Richard said as if he had business in a Midhurst
inn every day of the week. ‘I had to see a man.’ He gave one of his sly giggles. ‘I had to deliver some letters to a gentleman,’ he said, ‘so I thought I would wait and drive you home. I thought you might be tired, coming out so early and with your hand still sore.’

‘I am,’ I said briefly. Indeed I was. I was so tired and disappointed I could have wept. All night, all week I had been readying myself to beg James to love me despite everything, and trying to prepare myself for his refusal. But nothing could have been worse than not seeing him.

Richard threw me a sideways glance which was as warm and as sympathetic as if he had known and cared for my despair. ‘Why don’t you take your hat off and let the wind blow in your face?’ he suggested kindly. ‘You’re looking so pale, little Julia.’

I did as he bid me and held the hat in my lap as we climbed the short hill out of Midhurst. Misty shied at a blowing piece of paper and her hooves clattered on the stones.

‘Better have a rest when you get home,’ Richard said sweetly. ‘You have shadows under your eyes, my darling. You look tired out.’

I tipped my head back so the sun fell on my face and made rosy patterns on my closed eyelids. ‘I am tired, for I could not sleep last night,’ I said.

‘You should have woken me,’ he said, making it seem the most reasonable thing in the world. ‘You know I would not want you to be wakeful on your own. It is horrible being the only person awake in a house, isn’t it? Poor Julia. Did you feel very lonely?’

I did not answer him. I looked down at my wrist and at Uncle John’s meticulous strapping, and at the blue bruise which showed above the bandage. I thought of the man he was and the playmate he had been. I thought of his warm friendly tones now, and of his demented hiss of a voice in the summer-house. And I felt so much that I wanted to be safe from his anger, safe from his hatred. No one could keep me safe from Richard, not Mama, not Uncle John, not even Ralph. And now James was gone. I had loved and feared Richard for all my childhood and girlhood.

Now that James was gone, the brief period when I hardly noticed Richard at all seemed an interruption of the normal feelings: my base, cowardly, fearful affection.

‘You should not have hurt me,’ I said.

It was the only protest I ever made.

Richard chuckled and made no reply at all.

I was bundled into my bed on my return. Mama exclaimed at my paleness and wanted to know what wildness had got into me to make me ride out all day, only days after a bad fall. I submitted without protest. I had nothing to say. I stayed in bed for the afternoon, but after dinner I walked for a little in the front garden to see the flowers. The primroses were as mild a yellow as little butter-pats all along the path, and the pansies were as dark as velvet. I heard hoofbeats, but I did not run to the gate thinking of James. I knew that James would never come. It was Ralph.

He pulled his horse up at the garden wall and I went down the path towards him. He touched his hat to me, but his face was unsmiling. ‘I’ve come to tell you that I’ve given orders to bring Matthew Merry’s body home from Chichester gaol to be buried here. They’ve released the body at last.’

I nodded, as formal as he. ‘Can he be buried in the churchyard?’ I asked.

‘Nay, he’s a suicide,’ Ralph said. ‘It will have to be Miss Beatrice’s Corner for him.’

‘What d’you mean?’ I asked swiftly. The corner of grass by the church gate was called Miss Beatrice’s Corner, but no one had ever told me why, of all the land which my aunt had made her own, that little patch had been named for her.

‘It’s the corner of the ground nearest to the graveyard, on t’other side of the church wall,’ Ralph said. ‘When Miss Beatrice ruled here, there were two suicides. They buried them there in unsanctified ground but as close to the church as they could get. They called it Miss Beatrice’s Corner in a tribute to the last Lacey squire who brought death to the village. Now there will
be another grave there. It’s a new generation of Laceys and Acre is still dying for them.’

I gasped and the ready tears came to my eyes. I looked up at Ralph. High on his black horse, he was an inexorable judge, but there was something more than anger in his face. There was also despair.

‘I am so sorry,’ I said feebly. I could feel my eyes filling with tears and I was afraid they would start rolling down my cheeks.

‘Come out on the land, Julia,’ Ralph said urgently. ‘It’s going wrong, but you could catch it, even now, if you came out on the land with your sight and your skills. I can hold Acre together, but I cannot hold them to this trial of sharing with the squires if you and your family stay inside your great house and behave as if you think the village too lowly for you.’

‘It’s not that,’ I said instantly.

‘What is it, then?’ he demanded. ‘Why are you not in Acre these past few days? Why does Richard do all the work that you used to do? We would all rather work with you. No one likes Richard, and everyone blames him for what happened to Matthew. Ted Tyacke will not even speak to him.’

‘It was not his fault Matthew died,’ I said.

‘Matthew died by his own hand, I know,’ Ralph said steadily, ‘but no one in the village thinks he killed Clary. There are two Acre deaths and no murderer taken, and they all believe that you know who the murderer is.’ Ralph’s black look at me was intent. ‘They all swear that you can see him with the sight.’

‘I can’t,’ I said rapidly. I could feel my heart fluttering with anxiety.

‘They all say you would be sure to be able to see her killer,’ Ralph said, ‘as a Lacey girl with the sight, as her best friend. They all swear that if you looked with the sight, then you would see him, whoever he is. Then we could have him taken up, and hanged, and Clary and Matthew would be avenged and would sleep quiet in their graves. And you would be restored to the village.’

‘I can’t, Ralph,’ I said piteously. ‘I have a dream when I think he is coming nearer, but I dare not see his face.’

Ralph’s horse shifted impatiently as his grip on the reins tightened. ‘For God’s sake, Julia,’ he said roughly. ‘This is not a question of what you wish or what you dare. All our work here is falling apart and you must save it. Go into your dream, take the courage you inherited from Beatrice. Look Death in the face and come back and tell me his name and I will do the rest. Then you’ll be the squire in very truth. Then Acre can grow and trust again.’

‘I
can’t,’
I said, my voice wavering higher. ‘I’ve told you already. I cannot do it! They may say I can, but they are wrong. I cannot do it, Ralph. You should not ask it of me.’

‘Then you are a coward and a traitor to Acre,’ he said harshly, ‘and I am ashamed of you.’

His horse wheeled on its hind legs as he whirled it around, the reins so tight that its mouth gaped, and then it leaped forward and threw up its head as it felt the whip. It took three wide paces of a canter, then jinked and shied in sudden fright at some weed blowing bright on the top of our garden wall. Ralph jerked it to a standstill and looked back at me, standing alone in my pretty garden.

‘You are bad blood, you Laceys!’ he shouted. And behind the anger in his voice I heard a bitter despair that he had trusted us and had again been betrayed, and that because of the mistake of his trust Clary was dead, and young Matthew too. ‘You are bad cursed blood, and I hate the whole race of you!’ he yelled, as angry as a rebellious youth. Then he was gone, round the bend in the track and hidden by the trees.

But I stayed as if I could still see him, staring at the track as if he were still there. I stayed without moving, without making a sound. My heartbeat was thudding in my ears and I was damp with sweat under my gown. I knew it had all gone wrong. It was my fault, and all I could say, over and over, was, ‘Oh, I am so sorry. I am so very, very sorry.’

They buried Matthew the next day, and Mrs Merry seemed to become yet older as they stamped the earth down on the little
grave. It could have no headstone, but the carpenter made a little board with Matthew’s name and age on it, and the date. Dr Pearce said nothing when it appeared at the head of the fresh earth, nor did Uncle John.