Meridon (Wideacre Trilogy 3) (36 page)

‘I’ll have you off the land in a twelvemonth,’ I shrieked back at him, all my grief and anger and frustration boiling over at once like a pot with a lid forced on too tight. ‘I’m marrying Lord Peregrine as soon as the deeds are drawn and the Season over! Then he and I will own all the land from Midhurst to Cocking and we’ll see then who gives orders and who takes them, and whether you can ever find work in west Sussex again.’

He leaped down the bank in one fluid movement, faster than I would have thought he could move. He was in the water and at my side in an instant and Sea shied sideways with a snort of fright. He laid hold of my knee and my waist and then my arm and pulled me off Sea’s back and down so that I tumbled into the stream beside him and my best new riding boots were knee-high in water. He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me so that my head rocked on my neck.

‘What?’ he shouted. ‘What are you saying? What are you saying?’

I blazed back at him, angry and unafraid of his violence. ‘That I’m marrying Lord Peregrine,’ I said. ‘His mother knows. It’s to be announced. It’s true.’

His brown eyes burned at me for one moment longer then he flung me away from him so that I stumbled backwards against Sea. He waded downstream to the shallow part of the bank and stumbled up it, his boots heavy with water. I turned and vaulted on to Sea’s back as easy as if I were in the ring and I wheeled him around like a triumphant cavalryman.

The look on Will’s face wiped the smile off my face with the shock. He looked as if I had stabbed him in the heart. I gasped when his eyes met mine, his gaze was so intent.

‘You will marry him?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said low. All the anger had gone, there was nothing in the world except his brown eyes, dark and narrowed as if he was hurting inside.

‘You’ve told James Fortescue?’

‘I will write today.’

‘This is your wish, Sarah?’

‘Yes,’ I said. I wanted so much to tell him that it was my wish
because I did not know who I was nor where I should go. Because I had to have some family, some place where I belonged. Because Perry and I were two of a kind: both lost, both unloved, both unlovable.

‘I’ll leave on your wedding day,’ he said coldly. ‘And I’ll warn the village that everything – all our hopes and plans for the future, all the promises made by the Laceys – everything is all over for us.’

He turned and walked away from the stream. Sea and I looked after him. His waterlogged boots squelched at every step. His shoulders were bowed. I tried to laugh at the picture he presented, but I could not laugh. I sat very still on Sea’s back and watched him walk away from me. I let him go. Then I turned Sea’s head and rode back to Havering Hall.

I did as I had said I would, and everything followed on from that almost without my choosing. I wrote and told Mr Fortescue of my decision and I waited and read his reply without emotion. He was concerned and unhappy but there was nothing that he could do. His honest, anxious, stumbling reply made me feel that I was running very fast in the wrong direction, but Lady Clara insisted on seeing it, and read passages aloud, and rocked with laughter.

She composed for me a cold-hearted rejoinder which thanked him for his advice but said that my mind was made up. It referred him to the Havering lawyers if he had any queries.

‘You had best remind him that he is a little late in the day breaking his heart over your happiness. He never made much effort to find you in all the sixteen years when you were lost, by all accounts. Too busy re-creating Eden at Wideacre, I daresay.’

That made me angry and resentful, and the letter I sent to Mr Fortescue was cold and ungenerous. I did not hear from him again.

I heard no more from Will, either. I often seemed to see his face looking at me with that especial sharp anger. Once I dreamed of him trudging away from me, heavy-footed with wet boots. In my dream I called out to him and when he turned around he was
smiling in a way I had never seen him look. But when I woke I knew that I had not called out to him, that I never would call out to him. That a gulf had opened between us which was too deep for mere liking and sympathy to bridge.

Perry and I grew closer, he was my only comfort in the late summer days while Lady Clara taught me how to pour tea and how to deal cards like a lady and not like a card-sharper. Perry would sit with me now during my lessons and when his mama praised me for doing well he would beam at me like a generous incapable student watching some bright friend do better.

‘You will be the toast of the Season,’ he said to me idly, as he watched his mama and me take a hand of picquet.

‘I don’t know about that, but she will be the gambler of the Season,’ Lady Clara said, discarding cards and finally conceding the game to me. ‘Sarah, whatever hell you learned to play in must sorely miss you.’

I smiled and said nothing, thinking for a moment of Da and his seductive pack of greasy cards on an upturned beer-keg outside a country inn.

‘Anyone fancy a game?’ he would offer. ‘Playing for beer only, I don’t want to be taken for a ride, I just want a fair game, a bit of sport.’ One after another they would come. Plump farmers with rents in their pocket. Middling tenants with their wives’ butter money burning a hole in their jackets. One after another Da would pluck them. Drunk or sober it was one of the things, perhaps the only thing, that he did quite well.

‘Sarah will restore the family fortunes in cash as well as in land,’ Peregrine said lazily with a smile at me. He did not see the sharp look his mama shot at him. I did. It warned him to be silent about the Havering debts.

She was wrong to fear me knowing, I was no fool. I would tell my lawyers to ascertain how much the Haverings owed before I honoured my promise to marry. Mr Fortescue was a careful man and would make sure that the capital of the land was entailed upon my children in such a way that no husband, however spendthrift, could waste it on gambling. Perry and I smiled at each other with easy knowledge. We needed each other, we liked each other, we trusted each other. We neither of us wanted very much more.

We walked that evening in the garden. It was getting colder at nightfall and he put his silk embroidered evening jacket around my shoulders and offered me his arm. I took it. We must have made a pretty sight, the two of us, my auburn ringlets brushing his shoulder and my head held high. My green gown hushing the grass and Perry as golden and as lovely as an angel. We walked together in the twilit garden and we talked of money and friendship. We did not talk of love. It never entered our heads. When Perry saw me to my bedroom door at night he stooped and kissed me on the lips and his touch was as cool as his mama’s social pecks.

I stopped him as he turned to leave. ‘Will you never feel desire, Perry?’ I asked.

He looked frankly alarmed. ‘I doubt it, Sarah,’ he said uncomfortably. ‘Would you ever want me to?’

I paused. It was as if there were two people inside me: one the girl who could not bear to be touched except by one other person, the girl who had seen too much and heard too much at too young an age to ever think that love could have anything to do with a heaving bunk and a rocking wagon. The other was a girl growing into womanhood who had seen a man look at her as if she had murdered him by leaving him. A man who looked at her with passion and love and then turned and walked away.

‘No Perry,’ I said honestly. ‘I would never want desire from you.’

He smiled at that, his blue eyes a little blurred for he was a little drunk as usual. ‘That’s fine,’ he said encouragingly. ‘For I do like you awfully, you know.’

I smiled wryly. ‘I know,’ I said. ‘It is all I want from you.’

I opened the heavy panelled door and slipped inside. I paused and heard his footsteps go waveringly down the long corridor. There was a sudden clash and clatter as he stumbled into the suit of armour which stood at the corner and his owlish, ‘I beg your pardon,’ to it. Then I heard his feet scrabble on the stairs and step one after another, until he reached the top and was gone to his room.

I went over to the window to draw back the curtains. It was still early and the moon was coming up. As I stood, looking out towards the moonlit Common, I saw a horseman come riding down the silvery track towards the back garden of Havering Hall. I saw him ride under the lee of the wall and then I lost sight of him. He must have left his horse tied up, because in a few moments the figure appeared on the top of the wall, swung a leg over and dropped down into the informal garden at the back of the house. I watched in silence. I would have known Will Tyacke from fifty miles away.

He walked across the lawn as if he did not care who saw him trespassing in darkness, and then he stopped before the house, scantling the windows as if he owned the place. A low laugh escaped me and I leaned forward and pulled up the sash window and stuck my head out. He raised a hand in greeting and came unhurriedly to the flower bed beneath my window and for a moment I thought of some other Lacey girl, and some other young man, who had whispered together on the night air and known they were talking of love.

‘What is it?’ I said peremptorily.

Will’s face was in shadow. ‘It’s this,’ he said. He had something white in his hand. I could not see what it was. He stooped to the path at his feet, and straightened up, wrapping the paper around a stone.

‘I thought you would want to know,’ he said. He was almost apologetic. ‘From something you once said, earlier this summer, when we were friends.’

He made as if to throw it, and I stepped back before I could ask if we might still be friends. His aim was sure, the stone came sailing through the window wrapped in the white paper. By the
time I picked it up and was at the window again he was walking across the lawn and scaling the wall. I watched him go. I did not call him back.

Instead I unwrapped the stone he had thrown for me and smoothed out the paper. The white was the wrong side, the blank side. On the inside, very creased as if half a dozen people had pored over it, spelling out the words, was a bright scarlet picture with a white horse in the middle and two trapeze flyers going over the top: a man and two girls. In curly letters of gold it said: Robert Gower’s Amazing Equestrian and Aerial Show.

It was them. Their tour had brought them here. I should have expected them earlier if I’d had my wits about me. Selsey to Wideacre was just a little way, they must have gone on down the coast, or perhaps they stopped for a while after burying her. Somewhere they must have found another fool for the trapeze. They were going on as if nothing had happened.

For a moment there was a rage so hot and so burning that I could see nothing, not even the garish poster, for the red mist which was in my head and behind my eyes. It had made no difference to them…the thing which had happened. Robert was still working and planning, Jack was still standing on the catcher frame, still smiling his lazy nervous smile. Katie was as vapid and as pretty as ever. They were still touring, they were still taking good gates. It had made no difference to them. It had killed her, it had killed me. It had made no difference to them at all.

I dropped the handbill and walked to the window and threw it open again to breathe in the cold night air to try to slow the rapid thudding of my heart. I was so angry. If I could have killed every one of them I would. I wanted to punish them. They were feeling nothing; although her life was over, and mine was an empty shell. I stood there for a long time in the cold but then I steadied and I turned back to the room, picked up the paper, smoothed it out again and looked to see where they were working.

They were playing outside Midhurst. They were doing three shows, the last one a late, lantern-lit show in an empty barn just
a little way down the road. If I had wanted I could have gone and seen them tonight.

I gave a deep shuddering sigh. I could let them go. I could let them work my neighbouring village. I could let Rea poach the odd rabbit from my Common. I could let them pass within four miles of me. They did not know I was here. I had no need to tell them. They could go on into the high roads and byways of travellers, of gypsies. These people were my people no longer. Their ways were not my ways. We would never meet. I would never have to see them. They were a life I had left behind. I could cut myself in two and say, ‘That was the old life, the old life with her; it is gone now, all gone.’

I smoothed out the handbill and put my finger under the words, spelling them out, looking at the pictures again. There were the clues which had made Will bring it to me. ‘Robert Gower’ it said in curly letters. I had told him I worked for a man called ‘Robert’ and beside the picture of the white stallion it said ‘Snow the Amazing Arithmetical Horse’. I had told him of a horse called Snow which could do tricks. I knew that he remembered things I said to him, even light, silly things. He perhaps thought that these friends, these old friends from another life might help me look at the Haverings and at Perry with new eyes. He knew that he had lost me, that Wideacre had lost me, that I belonged nowhere now. Perhaps he had thought that the old life might call me back, might help me to find myself again.

He did not know that to think of the old life made me more careless about myself, more feckless about my future than anything else could have done. For they, and I, were still alive. But she was dead.

I sat in the window-seat and watched the moon for a while, but I was uneasy and could not settle. I looked at the little ormolu clock on the mantelpiece, there was still time. If I wished, I could ride and see the show, see how it was for them without her, without me. I could go and be concealed by the crowd, watch them in silence and secrecy, satisfy my curiosity. I could watch them and learn how it was for them, now we two
were gone. Then leave among the crowd, and come slowly home.

Or I could go and be among them like an avenging fury, my eyes black with unsatisfied anger. This was my land here, I was the squire. I could name Jack as a killer, call Rea as a witness and no one could gainsay me. With my word against his, I could get Jack hanged. Not even Robert could stand against the squire of Wideacre on Wideacre land. I could confiscate the horses, send Katie back to the Warminster poorhouse, Rea back to the Winchester Guardians, send Robert to Warminster to die of shame. I was gentry now, I could settle my scores as gentry do – with the law and the power of the law. I could break them all with my squire’s law.

Or I could run now, from the power and from the boredom of the Quality life. I could put on my old clothes – their clothes, which they had given me – and tuck up my hair under my cap and go back to them. I knew how they would receive me, they would welcome me as a long-lost daughter, the ponies would whinny to see me. They would hug me and weep with me – easy, feckless tears. Then they would teach me how the acts had changed now she was gone, and where I could fit in the new work. I could walk away from my life here and leave the special loneliness and emptiness of Quality life. I could leave here with pockets as light as when I had arrived; and the man who hated gin traps and Mr Fortescue could run the land as they wished, and need never trouble themselves about me again.

I did not know what I wanted to see, what I wanted to feel. It seemed like a lifetime since I had walked away from them and said to myself that I was never going back. But I had not known then what it was to be lost.

After half an hour I could stand it no longer. I trod softly over to the wardrobe and pulled out my riding habit. Perry would be drinking alone in his room, perhaps humming quietly to himself, deaf to the rest of the house. Lady Clara would be writing letters in the parlour or perhaps reading in the library. Neither of them would hear my steps on the servants’ stairs. No housemaid that I might chance to meet would have the courage to interrupt Lady
Clara to tell her that Miss Lacey had ridden out into the twilight. I could come and go as I wished in secret.

I dressed quickly, familiar now with the intricate buttons at the back, with the way to quickly smooth my gloves and pin the grey hat. It had a veil of net which I had never used but now I pulled it down. I glanced at myself in the mirror. My eyes glowed green behind the veil, but my betraying copper hair was hidden by the hat. I had eaten well all summer and my face was plumper. I was no longer a half-starved gypsy brat with a bruised face. If someone did not know who I really was, if someone thought I was gentry, they would have called me beautiful. My mouth pulled down at the thought. In my head I saw her dark glossy hair and her rosy smiling face, I thought how she would have looked in these clothes and there was no pleasure for me in them. I turned from the mirror and crept down the servants’ stairs which led straight down to the stable yard.

Sea had been brought in now that nights were getting colder and I went first to the tack room and then to his loose-box. Both were unlocked, they would water-up at twilight and lock up then. The light was only fading now. I humped his saddle myself and he lowered his head so that I could put on his bridle. As I tightened his girth and led him out, a stable lad came out of the hay loft and looked warily at me.

‘I’m going for a ride,’ I said, and my voice was no longer the muted tones of the young lady. I was Meridon again, Meridon who had ordered Rea, who could shout down a drunken father. ‘I’m going alone and I don’t want them told. Them, up at the house. D’you understand me?’

He nodded, his eyes round, saying nothing.

‘When they come to feed and water the horses and they find Sea gone you can tell them that it is all right. That I have taken him out and that I will bring him back later,’ I said.

He nodded again, boggle-eyed.

‘All right?’ I asked, and I smiled at him.

As if my smile had made the sun come out he beamed at me.

‘All right, Miss Sarah!’ he said, suddenly finding his tongue. ‘Aye! All right! And I won’t tell nobody where you’ve gone an’ all.
Aye! an’ they won’t even know you’ve gone for they all went off to the ‘orses show and left me here on my own. They went this afternoon and they’ll have stopped at the Bull on the way back. Only I know you’re out, Miss Sarah. An’ I won’t tell nobody.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, a little surprised. Then I led Sea to the mounting block, got myself into the side-saddle and walked out of the yard.

I took the main drive to Midhurst, I thought Gower’s show would be on the south side of the town, quite near, and I was right. I could see the lamplight glinting from the half-open barn door from a while away. In the road, tethered, were a handful of horses belonging to farmers and their wives who had ridden over to see the show. There were even a few gigs with the horses tied to the fence to wait.

I checked Sea and looked at the barn. There was no one on the door so they were all working around the back. I thought my fine clothes and my hat with the veil would serve to disguise me, especially if they were all in the ring and I kept to the back of the crowd. I took Sea over to the side of the road and tied him alongside the farmers’ nags in the hedgerow. Then I picked up the swooping extra length of my riding habit skirt and strode up the path to the barn door.

I heard a great ‘oooh!’ as I entered and I slid in along the wall, steadying myself with the wall against my back. I feared I was going to be sick.

Jack was there. Jack the devil, Jack the child, Jack the smiling killer. Jack was standing on the catcher frame where he had been before. And it was as I had feared and as I had dreamed and as I had sworn it could not be. It was the same. It was the same. It was the same as it had always been. As if she had never been there, as slight as an angel on the pedestal board, as trusting as a child flying towards him with her arms out. Smiling her naughty triumphant smile because she had been so certain that she had won a great wager and earned herself safety and happiness for the rest of her life. It was the same as if he had not done it. It was just as if she, and I, had never been.

I shut my eyes. I heard him call, ‘Pret!’ as I had heard him
call it a thousand times, a hundred thousand times. I heard him call, ‘Hup!’ and I heard the horrid nauseous ‘oooh!’ of the crowd and then the slap of firm grip on moving flesh as he caught the flyer, and then the ecstatic explosion of applause.

I should not have come. I turned and pushed my way past a man, heading back towards the door, the back of my hand tight against my mouth, vomit wet against it. As soon as I was outside, I clung to the wall and retched. I was sick as a wet puppy. And between each bout of sickness I heard again, Jack’s gay call of, ‘Pret!’ and then, ‘Hup!’ as if he had never called a girl off the pedestal bar to fling her…to fling her…

‘And so my lords, ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the show tonight. We are here until Tuesday! Please come again and tell your friends that you will always command a warm welcome from Robert Gower’s Amazing Aerial and Equestrian Show!’

The voice from inside the barn was Robert’s. Confident showground bawl. I would have known it anywhere. The braggish joy in his tone hit my belly like neat gin. I wiped my gloved hand around my mouth and went to the doorway and looked in.

People were coming out, well pleased with the show. One woman jostled me and then saw the cut and cloth of my riding habit and bobbed a curtsey and begged my pardon. I did not even see her. My eyes were fixed on the ring, a small circle of white wood shavings inside a circle of hay bales. In the plumb centre was Robert Gower, arms outstretched after his bow, dressed as I had seen him at that first show, in his smart red jacket and his brilliant white breeches, his linen fine, his boots polished. His face red and beaming in the lantern light, as if he had never ordered a girl to be taught to go to her death with a smile on her face and her hair in ribbons.

I pushed through the outgoing crowd and went, blind to their looks, towards the ring fence. I stepped over the bales and went on, right to the centre of the ring where in my own right I had stood and taken a call. Robert turned as I came towards him, his professional smile fading, his face beginning to look wary. He did not recognize me, in my fine riding habit with my long hair piled up under my hat. But he saw the quality of my clothes, and
he gave a half-smile wondering what this lady might want of him. I stopped directly before him, and without warning raised my riding crop and slashed him – right cheek, left cheek – and stepped back. His hands were in fists at once, he was coming for me when he suddenly hesitated and looked more closely.