‘And I was not always afraid of Acre,’ she said honestly. ‘There was a season, two seasons, when I was very much, involved in the lives of the village people. Now I have something to offer them, something more than mere sympathy. I want to go back into the village and set things to rights, as I should have done earlier if we had had the money to do it.’


I looked at her with new respect. This was a side to Mama that I had not seen before when I had thought of her as the frightened widow in the Dower House, dependent on her step-papa’s charity for her food and on her brother-in-law’s gifts for her money. Something of that must have shown in my eyes, for she gave a little chuckle of amusement.

‘I am well aware, Julia, that you think that no one knows the land but you and Richard! But I do assure you that I am not entirely incompetent!’

‘Not at all, Mama!’ I said hastily and untruthfully. ‘But what does Uncle John want me to do? And when do I start?’

‘You may as well start at once,’ Mama said calmly. ‘And so may I. Mr Megson is coming this evening, and if he agrees to the new proposals, then I shall go down to the village tomorrow and speak to Dr Pearce about opening the village school again. You and Richard and Mr Megson will have to decide about priorities on the land. I suppose you’ll start ploughing and sowing?’

‘Too late this season,’ I said. ‘But if Uncle John plans to use turnips, and also wants to try some new crops of fruit, we could get them in ready for them to be productive next year.’

Mama looked at me shrewdly. She had supervised my education, taught me my letters and the names of the birds and flowers. She had seen me learn Latin and Greek at Richard’s shoulder. She knew full well that no one had ever taught me the times when the land should be readied and crops sown, and that I had never seen a ploughing team on Wideacre. ‘How do you know?’ she asked softly.

I met her wary look with absolute honesty. ‘I don’t know,’ I said truthfully. ‘I just do.’

She nodded as if it confirmed something she had already heard from John. ‘It would be possible to make a great deal of fuss about that,’ she said levelly, ‘and about the slight resemblance you bear to your Aunt Beatrice in your looks. But it is essential, Julia, that you do not concern yourself with it. Your Uncle John believes that you have inherited the Lacey ability to farm. All well and good. But do not start worrying that you are therefore like your Aunt Beatrice. You are my daughter, and as such you can be a farmer, just as I shall have to be a village schoolteacher for this next year. We are all going to have to work for the good of Wideacre.’

I beamed at her. I had a wonderful sense of home-coming, of growth, of at last seeing my way before me. And if I could feel unafraid of the dream and unafraid of Beatrice, and work and live on Wideacre then I should have an enviable life indeed.

9

It was as well that I welcomed the work like a sheepdog come late to training, for that day of idleness in garden, wood and parlour was the last lazy day I had. From that evening – when Uncle John and Ralph Megson shook hands over the deal which was to share the profits between masters and men – none of us ever had an empty hour again.

Richard’s life changed the least, for Uncle John insisted that his education be kept up, and every morning he still went to Dr Pearce.

‘You may want to go to university,’ Uncle John had said firmly when Richard remonstrated with him, ‘and, in any case, no youth under my guardianship is going to be a dunce.’

So every morning Richard jogged off down the lane to Acre with his books and was not home until dinner-time. Sometimes he was late. The old antipathy between him and my friends the village children seemed to have gone. Richard basked in the glory of being the young squire-to-be. The village girls blushed scarlet when he strode down the lane and bobbed curtsies with their faces tilted downwards, but their eyes smiling up. Muddy-faced friends of my childhood were now young women preening themselves in their new dresses, and always with some business which kept them outside the vicarage gate when Richard was due to arrive or at the time when he left.

Whenever Richard drove the gig to Midhurst, there was always a couple of girls with pressing business in the village that day. And whenever he went to Chichester, he always brought back a handful of ribbons as presents for them. The village lads liked him too. The old sour resentments had been blown away from Acre as if Ralph’s coming were a spring wind. And though Richard was a demigod to the girls, the boys were not jealous. Richard was unobtainable and he seemed uninterested. I fancied that it was because he loved me, because he considered himself betrothed, but Uncle John was perhaps nearer the mark when he told my mama that Richard was too young for village girls.

‘He is not arrogant in the village?’ Mama asked.

Uncle John shook his head, but turned to me for confirmation.

Oh, no,’ I said. ‘He is trying very hard to be liked. Besides, he can do no wrong, for he is Uncle John’s son!’

It was true. To the village which had become accustomed to four deaths for every child safely raised, Dr MacAndrew was a heaven-sent angel. Uncle John held a free doctor’s surgery in the village every week, when the thin-faced women brought their crying babies to see him and Uncle John stripped off the lice-ridden clothes and probed the skinny bodies, which looked as they twisted themselves up in pain from hunger and from years of bad nourishment.

‘Will ‘e live?’ whispered Margery Sharp to Uncle John while I waited for his orders one morning in the sunlit vestry of the church where he had set up an impromptu consulting room.

‘Aye,’ Uncle John said kindly.

Her hard eyes filled with tears as though John himself had taught her how to cry. ‘I thought he would die,’ she said bleakly. ‘All the others did.’

‘How many?’ John asked gently, flexing the little hands and feet. The baby was tiny, about eight months old, and skinny, with his ribs showing. His flesh was speckled with the scars of old flea-bites and bug-bites, spotted with a rash. He smelled. He was fouled with old excrement and urine. Uncle John handled him as if his skin were silk, his hands full of love.

‘Four,’ she said. ‘No, five!’

I said nothing, but I flinched a little, amazed that a woman could be brought so low as to forget how many babies she had buried.


‘The last one only lived a day,’ she explained. ‘I never had time to name her, nor nothing.’

‘No christening?’ John asked, knowing what that would mean to a superstitious village woman.

She nodded. ‘Dr Pearce done it,’ she said. ‘Dr Pearce done it for me, because he knew I couldn’t have borne to see her in hell. He christened her although she was dead. Now, there’s another good man.’

‘A good man indeed,’ John agreed. ‘Now, Mistress Sharp, I’ll tell you what you must do. You must get this little lad here into some clean clothes. Go to the school room and see Lady Lacey. She’ll give you what you need. He’s not to have swaddling clothes, and he’s not to be wrapped too tight.’

She raised her head to protest, and I saw Uncle John’s weary smile.

‘I know you like to swaddle them,’ he said kindly, ‘and I know it stills their crying. But that is because when they are swaddled really tight, they cannot get breath to cry. It’s like being bound too tight would be for us. You’ve done well to keep this child alive, Mistress Sharp. Let’s not take any chances with the little lad now.’

She nodded at that, responding to the affection in his voice.

‘He’s to be washed,’ said Uncle John. She gave a gasp of protest, but Uncle John ignored her and carried on. ‘He’s to be washed every time he soils himself,’ he said firmly. ‘Washed and put into a clean clout. And he’s to be taken out into the sunshine all this summer. Have one of the village children watch him.’

Margery Sharp nodded, her eyes wide at this string of ridiculous instructions.

‘Have the big child carry the little one outside,’ Uncle John said. ‘If he stays indoors all the time, he won’t eat. The fresh air will give him an appetite and help him to sleep at night and stay awake during the day.’

‘But washing…’ the woman protested.

‘Miss Julia here is organizing a fuel store for the whole village so you can always have a fire,’ Uncle John said steadily. ‘You can keep a kettle by the hearth so you can have warm water to wash him. When he has soiled his clout, you can wash it out and dry it by the fire. Then you’ll have a clean one to put on him next time.’

‘He’d need changing time after time all day!’ Mrs Sharp protested.

‘I know,’ John said kindly. ‘I’ve cared for a baby too, you know. But if you keep them clean, they don’t get sores and they cry less, and they don’t get ill. I promise you it will work, Margery. Will you try it?’

Still she hesitated, her face full of doubt.

John’s tone became warmer and more charming. Will you try it for me, Margery?’ he asked, his voice very low.

She blushed scarlet and shot an embarrassed look at me. ‘Oh, Doctor!’ she said, and I saw that beneath the defeated, exhausted woman there had once been a flighty amorous village girl. ‘All right, then,’ she said unwillingly. ‘If you’re sure it will work. But if he gets ill from all that washing, I’ll stop it, mind!’

‘Agreed,’ said John, and bundled the little child into his rags again. ‘Now, you go over to the village school, and Lady Lacey will find some clothes for him, and some clouts, and a towel as well. And she’ll show you how to wash him all over, I’ll be bound. You know what her ladyship is like with babies!’