The wood-pigeons in the trees above my head cooed of love and mating and the thrushes in the lower branches warbled a long lovely liquid song which went on and on, like someone playing on a flute without a tune or pattern. The brown leaf-mould soft under my feet was starred with wood anemones in a carpet of white, and at the base of each broad grey tree-trunk there was a mass of spiky green leaves, promising a rich crop of bluebells later in the month. The land, supposedly wrecked and derelict, was thick with life. The woods, which had not been clipped or pruned or cropped in fourteen years, were rich with growth. I touched a beech tree and felt the bark warm under my palm. Then I followed the little path to the pool, to Richard’s pool, to my pool, where no one else ever came.

Ralph was there.

Of course he was there.

Without my knowing it, my feet had brought me here to be with him. Without an idea in my head, I had been seeking him ever since I had left the garden. Ralph was here.

He was seated on the ground, leaning back against a great fir tree which stretched even higher than the others, like a great tall pillar up to the blue sky, beyond the thick criss-crossing branches which were the roof of the wood, the ceiling of this private shadowy world. He was wearing a felt hat, pulled down to shade his eyes, like a common man. I stood silently, watching him, thinking that he might be asleep. He had laid aside his wooden legs and his body looked oddly short, stopping thus at the knees, as if in some jest he had buried himself in the leaves.

I realized, with a shock, that he was no younger than Uncle John, whom I had sent on his way with an anxious reminder not to get too tired. But John was worn with longing and duty, and Ralph – for all the pain he had suffered and the danger he had run – had never gone against his own inclination once in his life.

He tipped back his hat and his eyes were open. ‘Miss Julia,’ he said sleepily. ‘I give you good day.’

‘Mr Megson,’ I said, equally formal, but my voice shook and gave me away.

He looked up at me with a smile, his eyes warm. ‘Do sit down,’ he said, as courteous as he would have been in a drawing-room. ‘The ground is not damp.’

I gathered my pale skirts under me and sat beside him, within reach, but not too close. I had a feeling that he measured the distance I had chosen with eyes of some experience.

‘I am here poaching,’ Ralph said. ‘Would you like to watch me tickle for trout? Was there anyone to teach you when you and Richard were little?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘No one. There was only Mama, and the servants, of course.’


‘There was a whole village of poachers down the lane who could have shown you,’ Ralph said, ‘But, of course, they would not count.’

‘We hardly ever went there when we were small,’ I said, half apologetic. ‘It was only when I made friends with Clary that I started to know the people in Acre at all. It is still unusual for Mama to go to the village, except for church on Sunday.’

‘Because of the fire?’ Ralph asked as if it were an historical event of no great interest.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She was afraid of the village after that.’

He nodded, his face non-committal. ‘No need,’ he said. ‘Everyone in Acre respected your mama. They knew what she tried to do for them. The firing of the hall was to break the power of the Laceys – Beatrice and Harry – no attack upon your mama or your Uncle John.’

‘Perhaps it was a little hard for her to make the distinction,’ I said waspishly. ‘That night left her a widow with a bankrupt estate and two children to rear alone. If Acre did not mean to harm her, then it botched the job pretty thoroughly.’

Ralph beamed down at me, not at all put out by my suddenly sharp tone. ‘Oh, the gentry!’ he said, amused. ‘The Quality voice!’

Then he swung around and shuffled to the side of the pool. I was ready to retract everything I had said, but Ralph had forgotten it already.

‘The way to do it is to make the trout think that your hand is part of the water,’ he said as he leaned over the lip of the pool. ‘They have very sensitive skins, and I think they can smell the water too. So one of the first tricks is to make your hands clean and cold. Before you even start to feel for him, you leave your hand in the water for a while.’

Ralph stripped off his jacket and spread it out for me to lie on. Then he rolled up his sleeves and washed his hands carefully in the water of the pool, and rubbed a little mud from the side into his palms. I pushed my lacy cuffs up above my elbows and copied him exactly, and then we lay, faces staring into the pool, hands in the water, for silent minutes.


The ripples from our touching the water cleared and steadied, and I found I was gazing at the reflection of us, side by side. The dark water was kind to Ralph, and he did not look old enough to be my father. It hid the dark lines drawn by pain on either side of his mouth and the deep parallel furrows between his eyebrows. In the shifting sunlight which filtered through the budding leaves over our heads he looked not old and not young, but timeless; as ageless as one of the trees around us, as the earth they were rooted in.

I thought of the legend about the Culler in the village, that he was one of the dark gods of the earth who had taken Beatrice away to the heart of the land, and I gave a little shudder and felt suddenly icy down my spine as I realized I was alone in the darkest part of the Wideacre woods with a killer.

Ralph turned his head at the almost imperceptible movement and gave me a long unsmiling stare. ‘Look at yourself,’ he said in a whisper, as if he knew what I had been thinking.

I turned my gaze back to the waters and saw my own face. I knew at once why John had turned pale to see me and why Ralph had stared at me that day in the village.

I had never seen Beatrice’s picture, nor heard a description of her, other than that her hair was chestnut red and her eyes hazel, almost green. But I had seen her face in the mirror of the dream and I had seen her smile in my mirror. Robbed of colour by the darkness of the pool, so my light hair and grey eyes were all one shadowy tone, I knew I was as like to her as a daughter. My eyes were not set at such a slant as Beatrice’s and my chin was not as determined as the one of the woman who had ruled this land. But seeing my reflection in that pool, alongside the reflection of her lover, no one could have said whether it was her or me.

‘You have no call to fear me,’ Ralph said, speaking to my reflection in the water, his face gentle. ‘I am not likely to forget that she is dead. I am not likely to forget that you are quite another lovely girl – however much you resemble her. And I am not a man to be haunted by ghosts.’

We were silent for a few minutes.


‘Hands cold?’ he asked. I nodded. ‘Now, without making a ripple, without disturbing the water, you move your hands under the bank. Make your hand straight, like the fish itself.’ Ralph drew his hands in towards the bank and spread out his arms, questing with blind fingertips under the water. ‘I have one,’ he said with quiet satisfaction. ‘Do you stay still now.’

I froze obediently and saw Ralph’s face darken with concentration.

‘You stroke his belly,’ he said, the words hardly louder than a breath. ‘You softly, softly run a finger down his belly. He likes that, it makes him all sleepy, all dreamy, all unawares. Then, when you feel him growing heavier and come into your hand, you snatch him with two ringers under his gills and flick him out!’

As he spoke, Ralph suddenly twitched and flung on to the bank between us a silver, slithering, gasping fish. I flinched back in instinctive fright and Ralph laughed aloud at my face. He took a stone from the bank and knocked the trout on the head, impartially, accurately, and then the thing was still except for a little twitch along the spine.

‘It’s still alive,’ I said uneasily.

‘Nay,’ Ralph said gently. ‘It is twitching from habit. It’s dead right enough.’

I regarded the smooth speckled scales with awe.

‘Next time you will do it,’ Ralph promised. ‘I should have let you try your luck with this one. But it is so long since I last poached that I could not resist the temptation when I felt him hiding under the bank like that.’

I smiled and nodded; but I understood not at all.

‘Would you like to try your luck again?’ Ralph invited. ‘Or should you be home?’

‘I have to be home at three for dinner,’ I said.

Ralph rolled on his back and squinted up at the sun through the criss-crossing branches. ‘You’ve half an hour,’ he said with certainty.

‘Uncle John will be late anyway,’ I said idly. ‘He went to Chichester to see the lawyers again. He really does want to turn over the farmland to Acre, you know.’

‘Aye,’ said Ralph. ‘I know he does. It’s what the future holds that worries me.’

‘I thought you would be pleased,’ I said shyly. ‘I thought you would see this as a great chance for Acre. Not just to get free of the poverty, but to be free of the power of the squires for ever.’

Ralph gave me a quick little smile. ‘But it doesn’t work like that, does it?’ he said gently. ‘Acre is not an island. Acre men and women have to leave the village to earn wages, and have to come home again. I can’t see anyone persuading them that their wages should be paid into a common fund! So the brightest and the best of the young people will try to leave the village and work outside where they earn good rates and keep all their money. Then there’s the gentry…’ He paused.

‘They’re not all bad,’ I said.