‘Good day, Miss Julia,’ he said with the mocking courtesy I had dreamed of this morning. Then he bent his proud greying head and kissed my hand. At the touch of his lips on my fingers I shivered like a birch tree in a breeze. He stepped back into his patch of garden and waved farewell to us.

8

The news we brought of Ralph Megson’s reaction made Uncle John look anxious at supper and sent him into the library to look at the provisional leases he had drawn up. The next day he ordered the carriage for Chichester to see the Wideacre lawyers to ask them what they thought about a contract which would bind both the workers and the squires.

He paused as he came down the steps. I was in the front garden, the very picture of a demure young lady in a high-waisted white gown and a sun-bonnet to shield my face. But my fingers were suspiciously muddy, and when Uncle John came down the path, I was not quick enough to tuck the little spade out of sight.

‘Gardening, Julia?’ Uncle John said. He sounded appropriately scandalized, but there was an undercurrent of laughter in his voice. ‘Julia! My niece Julia! What are we going to do with you! What does your mama say about you gardening?’

‘She tries not to know,’ I said, shamefaced. ‘Uncle John, I know it is not proper, but someone had to do it. And Stride is too old, and all Jem’s plants died. And there was no one else. And you know how Mama loves flowers,’ I said, striking the very note which would persuade him.

‘Mama and I agreed that I might do it providing that no one of the Quality sees me. And that is all right, Uncle John, because no one ever comes down the drive in a carriage in the morning. And I never do it in the afternoon.’

Uncle John tried to look severe, but he cracked into a laugh of irrepressible merriment. ‘Miss Julia! You are having a clandestine affair with Nature!’ he said. ‘But how do you know anything at all about gardening?’


‘I just know,’ I said vaguely. ‘I knew of Mama’s favourite flowers from Wideacre Hall, and when I was very little, I collected the seed pods to give her. I planted them in little pots in my bedroom and when they grew, I planted them here so Mama should have her favourite flowers around her, so she should not be homesick for the hall, and the gardens.’

Uncle John nodded, his face understanding. ‘That was well done indeed,’ he said. ‘But who told you where the plants should go? Whether they like light or shade?’

I shrugged. I could not have explained. ‘I suppose I looked where they were growing and doing well in the old garden,’ I said, trying to remember. ‘But also, when I have a little bulb or a handful of seeds in my hand, I can somehow feel where they want to go. Whether they like the soil moist or dry.’ I broke off. ‘It makes no sense when I speak of it,’ I said. ‘But I seem to have been born knowing how to grow things.’

Uncle John looked at me hard, and the laughter was gone from his eyes. ‘Do they always grow for you?’ he asked suddenly. ‘No diseased plants, no sudden disappointments? No seedlings all shrivelled when you thought they were doing well?’

‘No,’ I said, surprised. ‘But the earth is so good here, Uncle John. And the weather just right. And I am only planting things which are accustomed to Wideacre, which have already done well here.’ I took a few steps towards him and put out a rather grubby hand. ‘Why do you look like that?’ I asked shyly. ‘I can stop gardening now you are home. Now you are home, you can hire a gardener. I should miss it, but if you dislike it so much, I can stop doing it.’

Uncle John shook his head, as if to clear a whirl of thoughts. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It is I who am in the wrong. I was a little shocked to find you resembling your Aunt Beatrice in this skill with the land. That was a talent she had. By the time she was dead, they had made it into some fairytale black art in the village, but that need not concern you. All it ever was, which you have inherited, was a very valuable skill. And it strikes me that if you are a good gardener, you might make a good farmer. We will need all the skills we can to teach Acre how to make the land yield again. Would you work on the land, Julia? If your mama agreed?’

I gasped. ‘Uncle John, I should love to farm!’ I exclaimed. ‘You mean help getting the hayfields back to hay and planting wheat? Uncle John! I should love it!’

Uncle John smiled at my bright face and patted my cheek. ‘Lacey girls!’ he said with much love. ‘Land-crazed, all of them. But I shall do my best to make sure that this one does not go wrong. If your mama permits, I shall be glad to see you taking this talent of yours to the fields and getting them growing. And in return, you will remember that people matter more than crops; the village of Acre matters more than the wealth of Wideacre.’

I nodded, only partly understanding what he meant.

‘But we will get nowhere unless I can get an agreement past my stiff-necked farm manager,’ Uncle John said dourly, and went towards the garden gate. ‘Anyone would think that he was employing me and giving me orders instead of vice versa. What he will not understand is that I am no more free than the workers of Acre. I have to find some way to convince the lawyers that I am not cheating you and Richard of your inheritance. And, indeed, I am cheating you! You would make more money if we simply got Acre working and sold it as a going concern.’

I opened the gate for him and stood by it as he went through towards the waiting carriage, with Jem standing by the steps. I heard the sense in Uncle John’s words and my own Quality-trained mind responded at once to the idea of high profits for the landlords. But the dream of Ralph had put me in tune with the land. Since yesterday morning in the summer-house I had seemed to feel the air on my cheek like a caress, the sun on my face more warm; the grass on the Dower House lawn was softer, greener than any summer grass before. The great lush forest that was Wideacre woods took my breath away, and the circles of downs beyond were ripe mountains.

Ralph’s words in the living-room of the cottage which was the best cottage in Acre and yet still a hovel compared with the Dower House had taught me, in a sudden bolt of shame, that we were rich because Acre was poor. And however kindly intentioned we were, or however we planned to make the division of profits more fair, none the less we belonged to the wider world, and we could live as we pleased. We were rich and free in a way that the villagers never would be. And we did not invite them to tea.

‘It is not just ownership of the land,’ I said tentatively to Uncle John. ‘It is power. We can make all the promises we like, and yet, if we wish, we can walk away from Acre tomorrow, and sell to the first comer. They know that.’

Uncle John grinned wryly. ‘You are as bad as Acre,’ he said. ‘They think that the gentry are incapable of sharing their rights. They will not believe a gift when they see it. And so they argue and want guarantees when you and I and Richard and your mama want nothing more than to make the land right again.’

He smiled at me, the swift grin of a man who knows his own mind, and I felt myself smile back. I liked Uncle John, and I knew why my mama loved him. He had no feeling for the land; he was an utter outsider on Wideacre. But he was a man of such honour that he would never leave a debt unpaid. He felt he owed a debt to Acre, and he would work until it was clear. He was a man without deceit, a man one could trust.

‘No one doubts you, Uncle John,’ I said. ‘They only doubt the world you live in.’ He smiled at that. ‘Have a pleasant day,’ I said, almost as a blessing, ‘and do not get too tired.’

Uncle John threw me a mock salute and climbed into the carriage. Jem folded up the steps, shut the door and climbed on to the driving box. He twirled his whip in a salute to me and set the bays going. They were fresh and happy to be out in the spring sunshine and they leaped forward; the carriage was gone in a swirl of white dust.

I glanced back at the house, but there was no one waving from the windows. Mama had some patterns for brocades for curtains, and the morning’s post had brought her details of houses for sale in Bath. She had taken them to the parlour to read, and she was not looking out of the window, not even to wave farewell to Uncle John. Richard had long since gone to his lessons with Dr Pearce.

No one was watching me.

I was alone.

I laid my basket of seedlings down in the shade of a flowering currant bush. An early bee buzzed hopefully around the scarlet buds, looking for pollen and nectar, and the sound reminded me of high summer. There was not a muscle in my body which was not pliable and soft. My skin felt like warm cream, melting in the sunlight. I wandered down to the garden gate without a thought in my head. I wanted to be in a place where I could lie down in the shade and daydream.

I went up the drive as I had done before. But this time I did not want to go to the hall. I half thought the dream might be waiting for me there, but there was no singing which called me onwards in that direction. I wanted to see the Fenny. I wanted to lie beside the river and hear it burble over the stones. I wanted to see it flow and watch the sunshine dance in dappled brilliance on the water. I wanted to lie in shifting sun and shadow and dream of the young man who had held me.

I turned down the little path which leads from the drive to our childhood fishing pool, secret and dark amid the tall trees of the wood. It was a tight fit now that the early summer growth was sprouting, and a bramble caught at my gown as I pushed through. But once I was inside the deep wood I could move easily.