The Favoured Child (33 page)

‘It’s not improvident,’ I said, defending Ralph at once. ‘It’s sound sense. If the girls can marry in Acre, then they do not have to go away into service. We keep families together and there are more reliable people to work the land.’

‘I know,’ John said, smiling across the table at me. ‘I do know
that, Julia. And I know that if this estate cannot make young people happy, then we have all been wasting our time.’

Mama nodded. ‘I have to go soon,’ she said. ‘I want to have my materials laid ready for the girls to start. What are you doing today, Julia?’

I glanced at John. ‘Taking some of the day as a holiday, if I may?’ I said. ‘I want to try Misty’s paces up on the downs and see the new sheep Mr Megson has bought. And I shall look at some pamphlets on fruit farming first; there are some horrible diseases the trees can get, and I really don’t understand enough about them.’

‘Can’t you doctor Julia’s trees, sir?’ Richard asked his father. ‘Dose them, feed them up?’

‘One ought to be able to do so, certainly,’ John said, ‘but today I am off into Acre. If you need a prescription for your apple trees, Julia, you must let me know.’

We rose from the table and I followed Mama out into the hall. The front door stood open to the warm air. The mist and rain had cleared and Wideacre was new washed, well watered, alive with growth. I blinked at the brightness of the fresh leaves of the trees of the park.

‘How green it is today,’ I said.

Mama nodded, packing balls of wool into her reticule. ? good day today at last,’ she said. ‘But please be careful on your new horse. Only as far as the sheep field on the downs, and promise me you won’t try to canter,’ she cautioned. ‘Richard can ride home with you for dinner.’

I promised and then kissed her farewell and watched her down the garden path and into the carriage where it waited by the gate. Then I told Richard I should be at the barn at two, and watched him trot slowly up the drive on Prince, whose rolling stride seemed to eat up yards without effort. Then I put my feet up on a footstool and drew up the table with pamphlets and set to reading.

No! Not pamphlets! Alas for my good resolutions! Among the pamphlets were Mama’s novels from the Chichester circulating
library. I just glanced at the title page to see if it was of any interest, and the next thing I knew Stride had tapped on the door to bring me my coffee and it was after one o’clock!

Oh, no!’ I exlaimed. ‘I promised Richard I should be on the downs at two. Stride, ask Jem to saddle Misty for me at once, will you? I shall be there as soon as I am changed.’

I carried my cup upstairs with me, and drank it as I pulled on my new riding habit. Mama had held to her promise to buy me a habit against the time when I would have a horse, and this was the first time I had been able to wear it. It was a deep cream colour, almost yellow, the colour of the mildest of butter sauces. It went over my head in a ripple of stiff velvet, and I smoothed it down over the curves of my breasts and the swell of my hips with a purr of pleasure at the feel of it, and the smell of it, and the look of it. It had a pretty little hat to match, with a feather dyed to the same colour, and at John’s insistence Mama had bought me riding boots with little yellow tassels, which I thought were the last word in elegance. I could have preened for hours before the little spotted mirror, but I remembered that Richard would be waiting for me and – almost more important – that Misty would be ready in the stable yard.

The sheen on her coat was so bright it made her look white instead of dappled. Jem had washed her tail and her mane as soon as Ralph Megson had left her in our loose box, and she looked like a unicorn out of a fairy story, not a horse at all. He grinned at my face and held out his cupped hand for my foot to toss me up into the saddle.

‘Take ’er slowly, mind,’ he said seriously, and I was reminded of his uncle, John Dench, who had given me my first ride. ‘Don’t canter her at all this first day,’ he said. ‘You takes your time with her, Miss Julia. We want you coming home on top of her, not on a hurdle.’

I nodded, only half hearing him, sweeping the white locks of her mane over to the right of her shining neck. ‘I’ll be careful,’ I promised, and I turned her lovely head for the drive. I saw her ears prick; I felt her mince lightly across the paving stones of the
yard and sensed the spring come into her step as she reached the drive.

The branches over my head glowed green in the sunlight; the fresh new leaves were vibrant with growth. In the hedges on either side of the driveway were patches of cream from dogroses, and the banks were dancing with Lady’s smock. Deeper in the woods the ground was hazy with a mist of late bluebells and sharp with the smell of wild garlic. Above the canopy of the summertime leaves the skies were criss-crossed with frantic parent birds, and the wood was alive with the insistent calls of courting wood-pigeons. Above their dreamy call I heard the flutelike two-tone lilt of the cuckoo, calling for a mate away up on the downs.

At the lodge gates Jenny’s sister and her two small children were planting potatoes in their garden. They waved as I rode by, and the two little girls, Nell and Molly, came running down to their garden gate.

Oh, Miss Julia! What a lovely horse!’ they called, their faces peeping through the splintery bars.

They were through the gate at once, at my smile, and stood in the driveway, twisting their ragged short dresses in their dirty hands.

‘I cannot give you a ride today,’ I said, answering the unspoken question. ‘I am not nearly safe enough yet on this horse. She is new to me and I have to learn how to ride before I take anyone else up! But as soon as I feel safe enough, I shall come down and have each of you up in front of me.’

The children beamed and I waved at them and turned Misty left down the lane towards Acre. I did not go into the village itself but turned up the bridle-track which runs past the field which used to be farmed jointly by the village. Ralph Megson had insisted that the little strips of land – one for each cottage-be restored at once, so that the men and their wives could start growing their own food again and planting at once. But it had been my advice that one of the new fields enclosed by Beatrice would be better. It had only been sown the once, and left to
fallow the rest of the time. It was nearer the village, and nearer the Fenny – an advantage if someone chose to plant a crop which needed watering.

‘And it was common land enclosed by Beatrice and now restored by you to the village as farmland,’ Ralph Megson had said sharply. ‘Miss Julia, I would hate to have you as an enemy. That is a clever move.’

I had smiled then. ‘Mr Megson, I hope you never will have me as an enemy,’ I had said smugly. ‘While my interests, and yours, and Acre’s all run the same way, there could be no cause for disagreement, let alone enmity!’

And Ralph had thrown back his grey head and laughed. ‘No cause at all!’ he said, chuckling. ‘And total unity between masters and managers and men for ever.’

‘Well, amen to that!’ John had said, looking from one to another of us.

‘Amen?’ Ralph had said, still smiling. ‘More like alleluia! Because the kingdom of heaven has come at once! Here as well as in France!’

We had laughed at that, but they had agreed that the field by the bridle-way should be planted with clover this year to put some strength back into the soil. Later we might use it for wheat or for vegetables, or even fruit.

You could still see the indentations in the grass where the division between one strip and another had been dug; and the older men of the village could still point to a nettle-strewn corner of the field and say, ‘That was once mine, and I grew carrots and parsnips and potatoes there.’ Although there were no deeds, and no entails, they could trace back the ownership of one strip or another for more than two centuries, naming not just the owners but the crops they planted.

Sea Mist put her ears forward at the sight of the smooth grassy track curving up the hill, and I forgot my promise to Mama and my promise to Jem as she altered her stride and broke into a smooth canter, which was an easier pace for me than her trot. I leaned towards her undulating neck to put my weight further
forward and urged her faster and faster until we were thundering up the slope in a mud-slinging, wind-whistling gallop and the only noise was the drumming of her hooves and the rushing of the air and my calling, ‘Go on! Go on!’ to her as she went faster and faster and faster as if we were riding a race.

She checked of her own accord at the entrance to the field where the path narrowed; it was as well, for I had not thought how I would stop her if she had chosen to run off with me. But she was a lovely horse, a truly sweet-mannered mare, and I believe the thought of taking off up the path to the top of the downs was less in her head than it was in mine. I felt only too ready to play truant and ride away for the day, but I had promised Richard, and my conscience pricked me when I saw Prince tied outside the new barn. I took Misty over beside him and slid from the saddle, hitched her to one of the struts and went to the open doorway.

My eyes were dazzled by the bright sunlight, and for a moment I could not see what was happening inside. And then I blinked again, for I could not
believe
what was happening inside.

Richard was pressed flat against the wall at the far end of the barn. His hat had fallen off and in the gloom he appeared as white as a ghost; his eyes, huge in his pale face, were black with terror.

The sheep were around him in a great semicircle, standing shoulder to shoulder in a big wedge of a flock, impenetrable. I looked wildly around the barn for the shepherd, for his dog, for I had never seen sheep go so close, except when driven or perhaps protecting a ewe with a new-born lamb from some danger. But there was no one there except Richard and this arch of sheep some twenty feet away from him, packed as tight as if they were in a cart.

And they were getting closer to him.

As I watched, incredulous, the tup, a heavy-shouldered animal, stamped his cloven hoof down once, twice, and dropped his head. In a half-visible surge they moved forwards, their fleeces pressed a little tighter, their mad yellow eyes a little
brighter and their white rounded faces with the dark slits of noses a little closer, just a little closer, to where Richard was backed up to the wall of the barn.

They were mobbing him, in the way that an angry upset flock will mob a little dog. But these sheep were mobbing a human.

For a moment I felt the terror which had pinned Richard to the back wall. That deep primeval terror of something one does not understand, something which is against nature or, at the least, against everything one has ever seen and known before. If I had been a superstitious woman, I should have thought them possessed by the devil, and when the ram stamped his pointy little hoof – as he did again – I should have fled in fright.

As it was I sniffed in abruptly – as if the very air of Wideacre could give me courage – and said, ‘No!’ – as if you could command sheep as you would a dog. ‘No!’ I said, and Richard’s head snapped around towards the door and he squinted against the bright square of it and me standing in the doorway.

‘Julia!’ he said, and his voice was a hoarse whisper of utter terror. ‘Julia! Get help! The sheep have gone mad!’

‘No!’ I said again, and I took a fistful of my riding habit in my hand to give me courage and walked straight towards them in my new boots with the yellow tassels.

They parted as I came. Of course they did. Sheep always do. They flurried out of the way and left my way clear right through the flock to Richard. The tup lowered his head at me and presented his horns, but I heard my voice say, ‘No!’ and he backed away on his dainty cloven hooves to the other side of the barn.

Richard did not move until I was beside him, and then he reached out his arms and clung to me as though he were drowning and going under for the third time.

I held him tight and we walked together, Richard half stumbling, towards the doorway. As he swung a leg over the hurdle, the tup and a couple of the ewes beside him came a little closer, their blank yellow eyes fixed on Richard. I said, ‘Shoo!’ like a farmgirl to her hens, and they stopped. I glanced around the barn. Richard
had not fed them. There was a bucket of meal left beside the door. I picked it up and poured it into their trough and they went to it eagerly enough and paid me no more mind. I pushed through them towards the door and slid the hurdle aside so I could get out.

Richard was sitting outside in the sunlight, his eyes shut, his face turned up to the light and the heat. I went and sat down beside him on the springy turf of the downs, saying nothing. I did not know what had taken place in that dark barn.

But what I had seen was impossible.

‘They came for me,’ Richard said very low. ‘I went in to feed them and water them, and they made a ring around me. I put the buckets of feed down, thinking they were going for the pails, but they were not. They came for me.’

‘Where’s the shepherd?’ I asked.

‘He sent his child up to say he was ill,’ Richard said, shaking his head, for he could not believe what had happened. ‘I said it didn’t matter. I knew I could feed them and water them on my own. I was going to give them some hay too. But as soon as I was inside the barn, over the hurdle, they made a ring around me, and they started coming towards me. I stepped backwards, and still they kept coming. I went backwards and backwards and backwards, and still there were more of them between me and the door. And then I was back against the wall and they started coming closer.’ He gave a shudder and put his head down on to his knees. ‘Sheep don’t
do
that,’ he said.

I said nothing. I put an arm around Richard’s shoulder, and my fingers slipped under the collar of his jacket. His linen shirt underneath was damp with sweat. He had been terrified. In a sudden moment of clear memory I had a picture of Richard in the stable yard the day he first saw Scheherazade, and remembered how she had shied and put her ears back when Richard had come close to her.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said softly. There was nothing I could say. The scene in that darkened barn had been a nightmare, one of those insane nightmares where the most normal objects become infinitely menacing.