It was not easy to smile and say farewell to the children and promise them that the hired coach would come for them at two o’clock prompt that afternoon, and that I would see them in a few weeks at Acre. I think I deceived them with my smiles. But not Marianne.
‘What’s the matter?’ she said in an undertone as we left the parlour and walked across the wet cobbles.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Julie won’t go home and it upset me. I must get back to Mama. I’ll take a chair.’
I moved towards the waiting chairmen, but James was at my elbow.
‘Julia…’ he said hesitantly.
I waited in silence.
‘I hope you don’t think too badly of me,’ he said awkwardly. ‘It is true that men do go with such women, me among them. You’ve seen well enough how everything in our world goes to the highest bidder. It’s true for this too. Everything in this world is for sale. Even little girls.’ His eyes scanned my face. ‘You are disappointed in me,’ he said evenly.
‘Yes, I am!’ I said in a sudden rush of words. ‘I thought that you were different. I thought that you were not one of those who take and ill-treat the poor. There is no fair price for a woman’s body. There is no fair price for her ruin. You have helped to ruin girls. None of them will ever be able to go home – just like Julie. None of them will be able to marry – like her. I did not know how such things happened. I would not have dreamed that you would be part of it.’
James smiled a wry smile. ‘I am no hero, Julia,’ he said gently. ‘I am an ordinary man, very ordinary, I dare say. You must not think too highly of me – or of anyone. I am no better than times allow.’
‘Well, you should be,’ I said fiercely. ‘I did not think you were a hero, but I did think you were special, very special. And now…’ I stopped. My voice was failing as my throat grew tighter with tears. ‘Everything is spoiled,’ I said like a little child.
James put his arm around my waist and guided me towards the waiting chair. ‘Don’t say that,’ he said gently. ‘I do not believe you mean it, but it cuts me to the quick. I cannot tease you out of words like that, Julia. Don’t say such final things unless you mean them indeed.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what to think. I shall go home now and I shall write you a note this afternoon.’
He bowed as formally to me as if we had been strangers, and then he turned to Marianne and guided her to his phaeton. She was chattering and laughing and I saw him make an effort to smile and guessed she was telling him that she was no longer visiting Dr Phillips. She waved as they went past my chair, but James just looked at me. He looked at me as if I were a ship sailing out of harbour and away from him.
I drew the curtains on the window of the chair and put my head in my hands. I did not cry. I just sighed out my disappointment and my love and my longing into my gloved hands and wondered that the world we gentry had made to suit ourselves should sometimes give us so little joy.
17
I had asked for time to think; but then there was no time at all. When the chair brought me back to Gay Street, our own travelling coach was outside with the boot opened, and Mama’s trunks were being carried out. Inside the house, on the hall table, was Uncle John’s Malacca cane and grey round hat, and in Mama’s bedroom, sitting on her bed, was Uncle John himself.
Mama was upright in bed, her wrapper on, her hair in a plait down her back, looking a thousand times better than when I had left her that morning.
Uncle John had received two letters from me, one telling him that Mama was a little unwell and that I had called the doctor, and then another telling him that she was as yet no better.
Of course I had to come,’ he said reasonably. ‘Do you two have any idea of the cost of a Bath physician? Celia, it is essential that you come home where I can treat you for free.’
Mama chuckled ruefully, her voice a croaky shadow of its usual ripple. ‘We cannot go,’ she said. ‘Julia is in the middle of her season, and she has appointments with Dr Phillips.’
John looked across the room at me. ‘I think she should stay,’ he said. ‘Could you stay with these friends of yours so that you can continue seeing Dr Phillips?’
I rose from the chair at Mama’s bedside and went over to the window and twisted the cord for the curtains in my hand. ‘I have finished with Dr Phillips,’ I said. I shot a quick glance back at my mama. ‘I told him so this morning.’
John stood up very tall at the mantelpiece, looking down at the logs burning in the grate. His face was in profile to me; I could not read it.
‘How is that?’ he asked softly. ‘Your mama wrote to me that he was doing you so much good.’
I shook my head. ‘He was not,’ I said positively. ‘He could show me that there was no sense in what I see and hear – no sense at all. But he could not prove that it does not happen.’
Uncle John nodded. ‘He could not prove that you do not experience it,’ he said fairly. ‘But, Julia, if you know that such a thing cannot happen, you have to accept that it is a delusion if you think it does happen.’
‘It is my mind!’ I said in a sudden spurt of defiance. ‘If I see things and hear things, I don’t see why I should permit anyone else to tell me different!’
John’s face was grim. ‘You must not resist this, Julia,’ he said severely. ‘Your mama and I are agreed that if you cannot be cured of these delusions during this visit, then it would be better for you not to return to Wideacre but to stay in Dr Phillips’s house on your own, until you can improve your understanding.’
I gasped and looked at my mama for help. She was sitting forward, her face as white as the lace trim on her sheets, but she met my eyes. ‘No, John,’ she said, her voice thin. ‘I know I said that on Wideacre, the day after the storm when I thought Julia quite overset. But I have seen her in Bath and seen her with people her own age now. She has told me how she found the missing children of Acre, and we saw how she cleared the cottages which would have been crushed or fired. I trust her. And I believe in her too. If she thinks Dr Phillips is doing her no good, then she need not see him.’
‘You feared that she inherited the Lacey oddness,’ John said in a low voice. ‘You feared Beatrice.’
There was a sudden stillness in the room, as if the mere mention of her name would conjure her up, the witch of Wideacre, even to a Bath lodging-house.
‘Julia is my daughter, raised by me,’ Mama said steadily. The white colour of her face had changed and now she was ashen. ‘She is to come home with us.’
‘But your friend Miss Fortescue goes to him as well, does she not?’ John turned to me. ‘You can see that he is doing her good.’
‘He was not doing her good,’ I said. ‘And she has left him too. He made her feel that she was in the wrong. He made me feel I was wrong. He could cure me of the dreams and of the sight, but he could only do it by destroying me, changing me from my very self.’
John was about to reply, but my mama raised herself a little in her bed. ‘I’ve never gone against your advice, John,’ she said, ‘but I do so now. I am sorry.’
In two strides John was across the room and at her bedside, his arm around her shoulders to lower her back to her pillows. ‘It is I who should be sorry,’ he said. ‘I am quite wrong to tire you out with talking. I know well enough what it is to be sent away from one’s home with an accusation of madness. Forgive me, Celia. She is your daughter indeed and you have the final word on her upbringing.’ He looked over at me. ‘And you forgive me, Julia,’ he said. ‘I was only trying to do the best for you. Do you wish to come home with us? Or stay perhaps with your Bath friends?’
‘I’ll come home,’ I answered. I did not want to be thrust into the Denshams’ cheerful, noisy household, and I was uncertain about James now.
‘Well, we’ll leave it at that, then,’ Uncle John said pacifically. ‘Let us get your mama safe home and see how things are when you are there.’
He put the disagreement behind him and smiled at me. ‘I ca
nnot deny that I shall be glad enough to have you to help on the estate. Richard went back to university three weeks ago, and Mr Megson needs another pair of eyes on the land. I do not know enough about it. If you are happy and well, Julia, then that is all your mama and I ever wanted. No one wanted to make you into anything different.’
I nodded. ‘That night when the spire fell,’ I began. Uncle John stiffened and looked at me. ‘It was a true seeing,’ I said. ‘I have the sight.’
He shrugged his shoulders with a little smile. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I suppose I have to accept it. Until there is a more reasonable explanation.’
‘And you have to accept me,’ I pressed. ‘Whether I look like Beatrice or whether I seem to have the sight, or whether I am just an ordinary girl or no.’
John nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said simply, ‘I will.’
And it was on that easy basis that I went home to Wideacre.
Uncle John had not run his papa’s company in India for nothing. The news that I wished to travel in convoy with a hired carriage of Acre paupers he took as the most reasonable thing in the world. Apart from reminding me to send a message down to them to delay their departure until we called for them, he left my arrangements for the hire of their carriage as they were. He had had Mama’s boxes packed and loaded, and Meg was packing mine when I got to my bedroom. He wanted us to start at once and dine and sleep that night in Salisbury. The next night we would stop at Winchester, and the third night would see us home.
I checked that Meg had remembered my laces, which were with the washerwoman, and then went down to the parlour to write my note to James. There was very little to say, for I still did not know my own mind. In the end I just dashed off a line to say that my Uncle John had come to take Mama and me home, and that I would write to him during the journey, or from home. If I could have thought of some reason for us to stay another day, so that I might have spoken to him again, I would have done so. But Uncle John came into the parlour while I was writing my note and said that he could not be easy about Mama’s health; he wanted her safe back at Wideacre with her own things around her, and servants who would nurse her, and himself to watch over her.
I could hardly argue with that, so I nodded in agreement and sent the footman around to the Denshams’ house with the note for James.
I should have known him better. As I came down the front steps to the carriage, my arm around my mama’s waist to help her walk, James was at the carriage door talking to Uncle John. He turned when he saw me and, as soon as we saw Mama was safe inside with a rug around her, he put a peremptory hand under my elbow and drew me to one side.
‘Forgive me for coming without an invitation,’ he said. The tension in his voice made him sound formal.
I nodded, my eyes wide, waiting for what would follow.
‘She is right,’ he said awkwardly. ‘All men have desires, women too. A girl brought up to be a lady is not permitted to satisfy those desires. I think we both know that they are none the less there.’
I made a little contradictory gesture with my hand. ‘Not like that!’ I said.
James caught the hand and held it firmly. ‘I won’t say that it is different for men,’ he said, ‘but I will say that the world makes it easy for men if they desire a woman.’
My face was shut; I looked away from him. ‘I cannot bear to think how she has been treated,’ I said. ‘I cannot understand how anyone could justify treating another human being – and her such a young girl – in such a way.’
He nodded, his head bowed. ‘I’ve been much at fault,’ he said. ‘Forgive me if I insist on trying to explain myself to you. It is nothing like the emotion I feel for you. I have been taught – I think many men are taught – to treat it like an appetite which has to be satisfied, to deal with lust as they would deal with hunger.’
I tried to pull my hand away, but James held it firmly. ‘Hear me out,’ he said urgently. ‘I think now that is wrong. I shall try to be more like a woman – if that makes any sense at all. I shall make my heart and my desires follow the one course. I shall not love one thing and lust for another. If you will forgive me this one time, this one discovery, it will be the last.’
I looked at him hard, though my eyes were filled with tears. ‘And if you had found that I had been unchaste, would you have thus easily forgiven me?’ I asked bitterly. ‘If I told you that I had made a mistake but I would not do it again?’
James hesitated, his innate honesty warring with the temptation to lie and win the argument. He smiled ruefully. ‘I hope I would have the good sense to realize that it is not your past but your future which concerns me,’ he said. ‘I am sure I would find the thought of you being with another man almost unbearable. I am sure I would try to understand. Will you try to understand me?’
I paused. The old sad wisdom from Wideacre spoke silently to me, and I knew, whatever the outcome of this conversation, that my idle laughing loving days with James were over. ‘Yes,’ I said. But I knew this promise would make no difference. Our courting time was over.
His face lightened at once. He bent his head and kissed my gloved hands and then pulled down the glove so that he could kiss the warm skin at the inside of my wrists where the pulse beat a little faster at his touch. ‘I thank you,’ he said. ‘I will not forget this.’
We stood still, without speaking, for a few moments. James’s hands were trembling. He gave a little laugh. ‘I could fall at your feet and weep,’ he said. ‘I have been in such terror that you would cast me off.’
I smiled, but my eyes were still sad. I was so sure that I would not see him again.
‘I will see if something can be done for Julie,’ he said. ‘When you are gone, I will ask my Aunt Densham to see if she can be helped. She is young yet, there could be a future for her.’ I nodded. ‘You take care of the children you have safe,’ he said. ‘Write to me as soon as you get home, and be very sure to send for me if you need me at all. If you need me for anything.’
I was about to nod again and say yes. I was about to say, loverlike, that he should send for me if he needed me, that nothing should ever keep us apart. But I paused. The light around me grew grey, James’s voice seemed to come from a long way away, and I felt a sudden pang of such loneliness, as if I were all alone in the world, as if no one cared for me, or ever would care for me again. I was utterly certain that James would not come for me, could not come for me, however great my need.
‘What is it?’ he asked, his voice very low. ‘Do you see something, Julia?’
I blinked. ‘No,’ I said. The clear impression I had was fading, going from me like a lantern on the back of a jolting wagon. Nothing I could see for sure.
‘You will send for me if you need me?’ he repeated.
‘Yes,’ I said, but I knew I would not be able to send.
‘And you know that I will come.’
‘Yes,’ I said again. But I knew he would not come.
John called from the coach. ‘Excuse me, Julia, excuse me, Mr Fortescue, but we must leave.’
We turned and went back to the coach. James handed me in without another word. ‘I won’t say goodbye,’ he said to me through the window. ‘I shall say God bless you until I see you again.’
I smiled at him, smiled as though I were not close to tears. And I waited until the coach had moved off and I could see him no more before I said, very sadly, very softly, ‘Goodbye, James, goodbye, my darling. Goodbye.’
We had an easy journey that afternoon. The children were in the hired carriage waiting for us outside the door of the Fish Quay Inn and we did not even stop to greet them. I waved from the window and they waved back – three beaming faces – and their coach fell in behind ours and we took the road east. It was comfortable travelling with my Uncle John. The carriage was warm, with wraps and blankets, and Mama and I had hot bricks under our feet. When we stopped to change horses, we were served with hot drinks in the carriage, and on the two overnight halts we had a private parlour with a bright fire bu
rning, and even Mama laughed to see the children’s faces at the size of their dinners and the comfort of their rooms.
On the last morning, while Uncle John settled the bill, I went outside to order the carriage for the final leg of the journey. Jem Dench was very full of his own importance, cussing the ostlers and complaining of the looks of the pair. I glanced at them, but they seemed all right to me. The sun was overhead in a clear blue sky, but there were wisps of cloud on the horizon in that palest sparkling white which meant snow.
Above the noise of the stable yard and the clatter of wheels as another coach came in, I could hear a singing so high that it seemed sweeter and higher than the cry of bats, as if it were the music of the spheres which no one believes in any more, and so cannot hear. It sounded like a noise the snow-clouds might make on the eastward horizon where my home lay. It sounded like a noise which sunbeams might make as they slid down to warm me in the dirty little yard. I dug my hands deeper in my fur muff and leaned back against the inn’s door. Wideacre was calling me.
A lady in the coach looked at me curiously with the attentive stare I had met in Bath. I had filled out since I had left Wideacre. I had grown a little, and the Bath pastries had put some weight on me. I was as tall as Mama now. I wore heels as high as hers, and I had learned the knack of walking on them too! More than that, I had learned some poise and elegance from my long weeks in the town, and that sense which Mama called ‘the Lacey arrogance’ had put a tilt to my head and a way of walking as though I owned the land for a hundred miles in all directions, wherever I happened to be.
I gave a polite smile to the lady, and called to Jem that we were ready to go. He drew the carriage up beside me, and Mama and John came out into the yard.
‘Wonderful weather,’ Mama said as the coach rolled out of the yard and on to the high road again, followed by the hired carriage.
‘It may snow tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Or it may be snowing on Wideacre even now.’