But then I took in a great gulp of the morning air and felt my spirits, as mercurial as a morning lark, lift at the very sight of the head of the downs, and the streaky sky above them. The smell of the morning air, warm with the promise of summer, and the sight of the leaves, so fresh and green and washed after the rain, set my heart singing and my pulse beating. I could almost hear Wideacre growing around me – a sweet humming noise – as gentle as a standing harp vibrating with a draught of air on the strings.

I did not know where to go for my walk. I wanted to be prompt for breakfast to earn a smile from Mama, and to seek my return to Uncle John’s favour. So I wanted a walk which would give me time to rid my feet of the fidgets, and to give me some time on the heart of the land to feel the wind blowing my resentment away and to hear the water running.

In my head was the low sweet humming which told me that Wideacre magic was all around me, and the dream of Beatrice was very close. I drifted down the garden path to the drive, drifted as if there were some magic thread pulling me in the direction I should walk. The garden gate did not squeak when I opened it as it usually did; a bramble caught at my dress but it did not tear. I walked like a ghost and the air did not stir at my passing.

I could hear the clear humming in my head that I heard when the dream was there, and I knew my eyes were hazy and fey. There was a ghost walking on Wideacre, and she and I were one this wind-blown morning. She and I were walking on the sweet land with the cool wind blowing. And my footsteps were as light as a goddess’s.

I turned right up the drive and walked up towards the ruin of the hall. The sunlight was dappled on my face from the overhanging trees of the drive, and the hawthorn hedge on my right was coming into flower and smelling sweet. A few bees bumbled among the flowers, and their noise and the noise in my head were as loud as a hundred voices singing low. In my mind there was nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing but this gentle whisper of sound which seemed to be drawing me onwards. It was the only clear sweet thing on a day when there were too many people and too many things I had to do. There was only one clear voice in the babble of the world and that was the voice of Wideacre which had called me from the house and was calling me to the hall.

There was a great chestnut tree at the bend of the drive, and a squirrel had nipped a spray of the fresh finger-shaped leaves and dropped it down. I bent and picked it up and waved it before my face like a fan. The air it wafted to my face smelled sweet with flowers blooming, and a hint of rain at the back of the wind warned me that the storm of the night had not gone but simply turned around, and we would have more rain before the end of the morning.

The stones of the Wideacre drive crunched beneath my boots and I remembered how in the dream there was the sound of the hundreds of feet on the drive when they walked barefoot up to the hall, lit by torches, lit by lightning, with Ralph Megson riding high at their head.

I was half in the dream, half out of it. The air was so sweet it was like the cool rooms in the dream when the woman prowls around the empty hall. I glanced up at the clearing sky, half expecting to feel raindrops on my upturned face as Beatrice had done when she went out into the storm to meet him.


It was not raining yet. Today was a different day. It was not the dream. It was just me, walking aimlessly up to the hall before I settled down to a morning’s work for my mama, or looked at the plans of the hall with Uncle John. Why I should be walking up here risking a wetting I did not really know. Why I should feel I was being pulled, I did not know. Why I should have this singing humming noise in my head and this ache which felt almost like heartache under my ribs, I did not know.

So, knowing nothing, I walked on. I walked like a sleep-walker, tranced and unknowing, walked up the drive and turned to my left into the rose garden where the weeds grew as high as the rose trees and all you could see of the roses was the fresh crimson-leaved growth and the first tiny buds with little splits of colour: scarlet, and white and cream and pink, half hidden among the green of self-seeded ash trees and elder bushes and tall pink campion. I paused and broke off one of the wands of campion and looked at the flowers, as sweetly shaped as shells, each one a perfect structure. Then I raised my eyes from the bloom and walked up the steps to the broken-down white wooden summer-house.

He was there.

At my step on the path he came to the doorway and stood there waiting for me. I raised my eyes to his dark face and smiled in such welcome and such joy to see him. The ache beneath my ribs eased at once at the sight of him. The singing in my head was cut off in silence as if someone had laid a gentle hand on the strings of the lonely harp. The sun came out, suddenly strong, and smiled in my eyes with rays of gold which made the garden suddenly too bright and hazy. I went lightly up the treacherous steps, as lightly as a ghost, a dancing ghost. He opened his arms to me and held me close to him and I lifted my face for his kiss.

His mouth was very hard on mine and I leaned back, away from the weight of him, but my hands came up behind his head and held him to me. The plume of campion fell from my fingers, to the floor, unnoticed, and I leaned back until I was against the door-frame and Ralph was pressed against me and I could feel the length of his warm body, as sweet and as firm as a young lad’s. He scooped me up into his arms, lifted me as if we were familiar lovers and then he laid me down gently on the floor of the summer-house as if it were a bed for a princess. He lay beside me and I pulled his face down to me so I could kiss his mouth, and his closed smooth eyelids, and his warm smooth forehead, and the little crest of dark hair at the hairline. I rubbed his cropped head with my palms in wordless ecstasy of pleasure at the strangeness of him, and at my love for him, and at the madness of this day.

Then I felt him unbuttoning my gown at the back with clumsy hurrying fingers, and I raised my shoulders off the dirty floor to make the task easier for him and watched his face grow grave with concentration as he meticulously undid each tiny button, and then took two great handfuls of material at the hem and stripped it off me, pulled it over my head. I raised my hips to free it from under me, and then lifted my arms so that it would slide over my head, and lay, naked except for my linen shift, on the floor of the summer-house beside him.

He rolled upon me like a wave breaking and kissed my throat, one hand cupping my breast, and then lowered his head to kiss my breast. He pushed up my shift to kiss my warm belly and then kissed between my legs so that I was sprawled, paralysed and astounded with pleasure. I cried out at that; I said, ‘Ralph!’ and he looked up at me, his dark eyes darker than ever with his desire.

‘My love,’ he said softly, as though I had no other name. And then he dipped his head and licked me with his hard pointy tongue until I clenched his cropped hair in my hands and breathed out little soft cries of pleasure.

He reared up from me with a smile, a mocking rueful smile which suggested we were both fools to be thus infatuated. And he pulled his shirt over his head, and pulled his boots off and pulled his breeches down. He was naked underneath, and I drew breath in simple, shameless lust. Then he fell upon me as if he could stand delay no longer, and I felt his warm naked body and the soft hairs of his chest and his broad throat against my forehead as he lay on me and I tucked my face into his shoulder and breathed out my desire against his sweet-smelling skin.

‘Ralph,’ I said again, and the world, the world of Wideacre, seemed to echo to his name. The summer-house was full of him, so was the garden with the weeds growing, the house which had been burned to the ground by him and the village which worshipped him.

‘Ralph,’ I said again, and then he entered me and it was like the stab of the knife in the dream and when I looked up, I could see him smiling as he smiled in the dream. And when he looked down with eyes so dark and so loving, he could see that I was smiling too.

‘Miss Lacey,’ he said gently, and he kissed my eyelids and the hollows of my temples and the delicate skin beneath my eyes, and he licked one tear from the corner of my eye, and then he moved in me.

He was gentle, as if he were afraid of hurting me. And indeed there were little times when he did hurt me. But each sharp pain was such pleasure, and each dizzying moment was such delight that I clung to him and arched my back to greet his body with mine, like a chevalier’s lady welcoming her lost lord home. Then the pleasure grew more intense and his movements were faster and faster until there was just a blur of pleasure in my mind and I had no knowledge of where I was or who I was or what I was doing. There was just Ralph.

We lay in silence.

After a few moments he sat up and reached for his jacket and my shawl and pulled them over us like a blanket, for the breeze which had blown me up the steps and into his arms was getting stronger.

Ralph leaned on one arm and held me as if I were some precious rare object which had been entrusted to his care. My head leaned against his shoulder, my face to his neck, and I could smell with every indrawn breath the clean animal smell of his skin and a deeper sweeter smell like musk.

I existed nowhere but here. There was no time but this second. There was no sensation but that of the warm well-touched delighted body. All I could see was his profile as he looked away from me out of the open door. All I could feel was his warmth where he had lain on me, and the soreness where he had been, and the strange peace which seemed to go from the centre of my body up to my head and behind my eyes so all I wanted to do was go to sleep in his arms and wake when he wakened me. I closed my eyes and half dozed, his arm around my bare shoulders, his coat covering me, rough and smelling of heather and wood-smoke.