Mama held out her arms to me, and I slid to my knees before her and hugged her tight. Oh, my darling, I’m so very glad,’ she said softly. ‘You are a lucky girl indeed.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Oh, yes.’
Mama smoothed my hair. ‘There, there,’ she said vaguely. ‘When did he say he will come back?’
‘He has to stay in London for two days,’ Uncle John said. ‘Then he has to take ship for Belgium. His father’s trade is expanding into Europe, and James has to make something of a tour. I promised that you might receive his letters, but he says he cannot give you an address to reply to. He does say he will be back in this country in eight or nine weeks. Between then and now his papa’s lawyers and mine will draw up your marriage contracts and you can be married whenever you wish.’
I sat bolt upright at once. ‘As soon as possible,’ I said.
‘Not so missish?’ Mama said, smiling to Uncle John.
‘No,’ he replied.
‘You will need at least two months to get your clothes ready, and then there is also the house to be built,’ Mama said. ‘Even if you want a quiet wedding out of this house, there will still be a very great deal to be done. Unless you would want to be married in Bath, Julia? Or in Bristol?’
‘Here,’ I said without a moment’s doubt. ‘Here in our parish church with a party on the green afterwards. Here, where we are going to live and be happy for always.’
I smiled as I spoke, but that odd shiver was cold down my spine. Everything was going to be all right. James would come back from Belgium, would come straight to me here on Wideacre. We would find a good site to build our house – I had half a dozen in mind already! – and we would marry. There was no obstacle, for both families were contented with the match. More than that, it was an ideal match! Bristol money and Sussex land. In James I knew I was giving the village a master who would spend all his time and money on furthering the schemes which Ralph and I had already planned so far into the future. There was nothing to give me unease in this.’
And yet I feared in my heart that it would never happen.
18
‘I am writing a letter to Richard,’ Mama said to me that evening. ‘You’ll want to write him a note to go in it?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. Indeed it was time.
I had written regularly to Richard from Bath, but he had never replied. His work on the hall and in the village was sufficient excuse.
Then, when the rebuilding of the Acre cottages was well under way, he had gone back to university. I knew he would have heard from Uncle John that I had made many friends in Bath, and that he would have heard of James Fortescue. But I did not know whether he would have guessed how far matters had gone between us.
I was in love, and I felt careless. I was happy and I could not believe that anyone could begrudge me such happiness. Richard’s open enmity towards me before I left for Bath seemed part of the past when I had been so frightened and so distressed because the whole world seemed to be conspiring against me. I could forgive him his greed about the estate. We were both grown now, and I was engaged to marry the best man I had ever known. I felt able to be generous with Richard. So I wrote him a light-hearted note which said with certainty that I knew he would be happy to hear the news that I was engaged to marry James Fortescue. And – best news of all, as far as I was concerned-that James had seen and liked Wideacre and wanted us to live on the estate.
I said little more about him. I wanted Richard and James to be friends. I had enough sense – even in my dizzy mood of courtship – to remember that Richard never liked to be anything but first. I thought that if they had a chance to meet without prejudgement on either side, they might be friends. In any case, I could not write at length, for Ralph Megson was waiting for me down at Three Gate Meadow where we had wild garlic growing in the very field we were ploughing for corn.
Ever since my return from Bath, I had been out on the land from morning till dinner-time, checking the crops, checking the animals, organizing hedging teams, ditching teams and bands of women to weed and clear the fields. The roads were too muddy for anything but horseback, and Uncle John wanted to stay indoors to watch over Mama’s convalescence. The work of the estate was left almost entirely to me – and to Ralph Megson.
He taught me. He taught me like a man handing over the reins of a most valuable carriage and pair to a novice. He never once met me in the lane, or at a barn, or just leaning on the bridge and watching the Fenny flow below me, without telling me something about the land, about the northerly movement of the birds, or about the weather we might expect.
I was in training as an apprentice squire, and Ralph was a stringent master. He took me for long punishing rides all around the estate, teaching me the name of every field, showing me every sort of fungus or disease in the woods, naming the weeds which seemed to be shooting up even as we watched and arguing with me, constantly arguing, about who should own the land and the rights they had on it.
We argued about poachers, we argued about gleaners, we argued about payment in kind, about house servants, about the rights of tenants. Every imposition a landlord legally makes on his workers to gain a little extra from them, Ralph opposed. He would have resisted every claim of a landlord, until in impatience one day I accused him of not being our farm manager at all, but owing all his loyalty to the village.
Oh, yes,’ he said, quite unperturbed. ‘I am working for the good of Acre. I care nothing for the benefit of the Laceys.’
I gaped at him. We were riding around the back of the cornfields on the common, checking that they had been properly fenced, for the common was overrun with deer that not even the appetite of Acre could keep down.
‘We pay your wages,’ I retorted. I should have been more sensible than to use such an argument with Ralph – it was simply giving him the victory.
‘Don’t be silly, Miss Julia,’ he said gently. ‘There aren’t wages minted that could buy my loyalty against my own people. You know that.’
‘But why did you agree to work for my Uncle John?’ I demanded. ‘He employed you as the Lacey manager.’
‘And I work as the Lacey manager,’ Ralph said. ‘The Laceys’ future depends on giving the land to the people who live on it and work it.’
We turned our horses away from the field and trotted down the broad sweep of sand which cuts across the common. It was overgrown with bracken, and heather was encroaching on the edges.
‘This must be cut back,’ Ralph said, indicating the dead-looking heather clumps and the brown bracken. ‘It will soon be spreading over, and if you have a heather fire, it will blaze out of control. I’ll have a couple of men out on it before the end of the week.’
I nodded. ‘Don’t turn the talk, Mr Megson,’ I said. ‘You know that Uncle John’s plan was profit-sharing. There was never any suggestion that there should be outright gifts from the estate. You cannot imagine that my uncle is going to give the Wideacre estate to Acre village.’
Ralph smiled his dark slow smile. ‘Hardly,’ he said. ‘He’s a good man, but he was born to wealth and he knows the value of his land. He won’t be giving anything away.’
‘What are your hopes, then?’ I demanded.
‘I think you will give it,’ said Ralph as if it were the simplest thing in the world.
He turned his horse’s head down the track towards the park and set it at a canter towards the little jump over the newly repaired wall. I gaped at him and nearly lost my balance as Misty followed his lead and popped over the wall without a touch of command from me.
‘I will?’ I asked, coming up alongside him. ‘Why should you think that I would give Wideacre away? After all you have said about Lacey women loving the land!’
‘Aye,’ said Ralph calmly, and then he chuckled to see my rising colour. ‘Don’t be so vexed, Miss Julia,’ he said comfortably. ‘I thought you were no true Lacey when I saw you trying to throw away your share of the estate and make yourself into something you are not. But the ideas I have for you and Wideacre
are not the worries of a young girl. They are the way that I think the whole country will have to go if it is to avoid cruelty and great sorrow.’
We turned the horses for home down the bridle-way under the great smooth beech branches, their hooves squelching in the mire.
‘Now, look,’ he said, suddenly serious, ‘we live in a cruel world. You saw the poverty in Acre, you don’t need me to tell you of the harshness of this world. That whole village could have died of starvation and no one would have cared. There were numberless unnecessary deaths – young babies and old people, dying in cold weather, dying of little ailments because their bodies were too frail to take the burden of illness. You know that. You saw it.’
I nodded. I had seen it in Acre. It was true.
‘It is not just Acre,’ Ralph said, his voice low. ‘There are whole parts of this country where the same thing is happening. Sometimes it is an accident – a crop fails and there is no food, an incompetent squire and no charity. Sometimes it is worse. There are places north of the border where the landlords have decided they want their estates cleared of people – and they have done just that.’
‘Cleared?’ I asked, challenging that odd, ambiguous word.
‘They want sheep-runs,’ Ralph said. ‘Or deer for game. Or, nearer to Wideacre, they want a pretty view from the parlour windows. If there is a village in the way, they simply pull it down, or burn it.’
‘And the villagers?’ I asked.
‘Some of them leave when they are asked,’ Ralph said. ‘They became vagrants then, for no parish will take them in. Some of them refuse to go and try to take the great landlords to court.’ He smiled mirthlessly. ‘That’s a painful process,’ he said. ‘The law is drafted by landlords, the courts are ordered by landlords and the judges are landlords. It’s likely they’d hand down a judgement against themselves.’
I said nothing. I had heard Grandpapa Havering crowing at sentencing a man to death for stealing to feed his starving family. I knew what Ralph meant. And I had seen some of the consequences of the way we chose to live in the streets behind the Fish Quay.
‘Some of them refuse to go altogether,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard of people dying in their homes, burned alive when the villages are fired. And of ugly pitched battles between starving people and armed bailiffs. It happens, Julia. It is the power of the landlord. That is why I wanted guarantees from you and Richard.’
‘I would never let it happen on Wideacre!’ I said fiercely.
‘You’re not perfect,’ Ralph said simply. ‘Your young man, James Fortescue, might suddenly want to try his hand at modern farming, or picturesque landscaping. Or you might find yourself short of money and decide to sell off in packages, or break your agreements with Acre and make them work for day wages again. You cannot tell what you would do when you have the power to do as you please.’
I waited. Ralph was leading me somewhere, and I could not yet see where he was taking me.
‘You must rid yourself of the power,’ he said solemnly. ‘You must not be satisfied with John’s scheme of sharing the profits, and perhaps the tenants becoming wealthy enough to buy long leases. That would take years and years and years, and perhaps be unworkable at the last. It only needs a change of heart by one Lacey, and then the whole thing is lost. I want to see changes made at once. I want to see it done in my lifetime. I want you to be the Lacey who does it. You will return the land to Acre, and everyone in the village will have a right to decide what crops are grown and what plans are made. No one will take a wage, they will all share in the profit. And your only fortune will be the share you take in the profits. The whole of the estate will be given back to the people who had it before the Laceys, to run as they know how, for their own security.’
I looked at Ralph blankly. ‘Is that what you want me to do?’ I asked incredulously.
Ralph beamed at me. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Mad scheme, ain’t it?’
And he clicked his horse into a trot, as though he had not a care in the world, and slumped in his saddle as he does since he cannot rise to the pace because of his legs. I cantered behind him and caught him up.
‘It would never work,’ I said.
Ralph grinned at me.
‘They would farm the land out,’ I said. ‘They would forget to rest it. They would plant only vegetable crops for themselves. They would not have the capital to buy good seed-corn, to buy new animals for stock.’
‘Aye,’ said Ralph. ‘You’d have to put up the capital to make it work.’
‘Why should I?’ I demanded. ‘Why should anyone choose to chance their money for a scheme which might not even work?’
Ralph wheeled his horse around suddenly so that it blocked my path. He looked down on me from its high back and his face was very dark and very stern. ‘Because there are things which matter more than two per cent on Consols,’ he said. ‘Because you have been a privileged person in a country where there are people going hungry and you know there can be no peace for you. Because you know that to be one of the lucky ones when there is poverty all around is not to be lucky at all. It is to be miserable without even seeing your own misery. For it leaves you with a choice either to rejoice that you are doing well, when you know there are others who are doing badly, most badly, or to harden your heart. There are those who learn to harden their hearts so well that they can actually forget what has happened. They teach themselves to believe that they are rich through their own cleverness, or as a just reward for their virtues. They force themselves to think that the poor are thus because they are stupid, and deserve their poverty. And when that has happened, you have a country divided into two. And both sides are most ugly.’
I gasped. I could not keep up with Ralph. I had heard the complacency in the voices of the wealthy, I had heard the desperation in the voices of the poor. I wanted to belong to neither. ‘It would never work,’ I said uncertainly.
Ralph gave a little ‘Pfui!’ of disdain and turned his horse for home again. It was growing darker with the speed of a spring evening and the wood-pigeons were cooing lovingly, longingly. The rooks were flying late, crossing the grey sky with beakfuls of twigs. The blackbird sang as clear as a flute.
‘It would never work,’ I said again.
‘It’s not working now, is it?’ Ralph said lightly, as if the statement hardly merited an answer. ‘Thousands dying of want in the countryside, hundreds dying of dirt and drink and hunger in the towns. You can hardly call that “working,” can you?’
We came on to the drive while I was still puzzling for a reply, and minutes later we had reined in at the garden gate of the Dower House. Ralph would not come in but sat on his horse while Jem came out into the lane and helped me down.
‘You are not…angry, Mr Megson?’ I asked tentatively, watching the darkness of his face under his tricorne hat.
At once his face cleared and he smiled at me. ‘Lord love you for a fool, Julia Lacey,’ he said easily. ‘So full of your own importance that you think you are responsible for the Norman Conquest and for the abuse of the lords of the land ever since. Nay, I’m not angry, Miss Vanity. And if I was, it would not be with you.’ He paused and scrutinized me, his head on one side. ‘And furthermore, if I was, you would be quite able to tell me to keep my ill humour to myself, wouldn’t you?’
I hesitated at that. I had gone to Bath as a girl who was used to watching Richard’s face for the warning signs of his displeasure.
But I had come back a woman with confidence in herself and in her gifts. I looked at Ralph and I smiled at him and narrowed my eyes. ‘I think I could,’ I said.
‘You surely could,’ Ralph said, and grinned at me in his democratic, disrespectful fashion. Then he leaned down low and pulled me to his horse’s side, and before the parlour window of the Dower House he gave me a kiss on the cheeks as if I were a serving maid to be kissed in the lane. Then he straightened up, tipped his hat to me and trotted off down the drive.
I took one horror-struck survey of the Dower House windows,
to check that Mama had indeed not seen, made one fearful scowling face at Jem to wipe the grin from his face at my discomfort, then I picked up the trailing hem of my riding habit and ran indoors with a ripple of laughter caught inside me at Ralph Megson’s impertinence.
I was so very busy that spring that if I had wanted to mope around, missing James, I would not have been able to do so. Uncle John and the Chichester lawyers had drawn up a set of contracts between the workers, the tenant farmers and the Wideacre estate. But I wanted to be there when they signed the contracts. It should be clear to them that I was giving my word as they were giving theirs. I spent many hours in the library with John, making sure that I understood the agreements we were making, the length of the individual leases, the proportion of the wages which were to be paid into the common fund, the time for repayment of loans for seed and equipment to tenant farmers and the interest we decided to charge. Often it was I who checked the lease through and exclaimed, ‘But, Uncle John! In addition to his debt to us, this tenant has to pay the poor rate and tithes. He has too costly a burden; we must make the debt run longer or he will not make enough to keep himself and a family in the first few years!’ Then John would recheck the figures and nod and say, ‘You are right, Julia. But it cuts back Wideacre profits.’
Uncle John and Ralph and I also had long planning sessions in the library with the maps of Wideacre spread before us. Ralph understood the land and could say what crops would grow and what would not take to the chalky Sussex earth. But John had read much about modern agricultural experiments and had lived on Wideacre during its prime and could speak about crops. I stayed quiet, but I kept my eyes and ears open, and I learned all I could during those friendly, easy talks.
Ralph and I were the ones out on the land, up on the downs checking the sheep, through the village checking for hardship as the cold weather grew damp and the frosts melted and became slushy and chill, riding around the lanes checking the hedges and the ditches. Sheep-proof and flood-proof, we wanted the land to be, and everything in readiness for the ploughing.