The Favoured Child

‘It was never music for Richard,’ she said sadly. ‘He just wanted to be exceptional.’ I said nothing. ‘Poor boy,’ Mama said with a great deal of pity in her voice. ‘Poor boy.’

Richard did sing again in public. There was an experimental service with harvest hymns at Chichester Cathedral. Grandmama Havering took the two of us, and Richard joined in with a clear light tenor. An unexceptional voice. We both remembered the times when he had sung with a voice as bright as a choirboy and people in the pews all around us had craned their necks to see Richard, with his eyes on the altar, singing like the angel Gabriel. No one turned their heads at Richard’s pleasant tones now. Only I looked at him with a little glance which I was careful to keep neutral. If he had thought I pitied him, he would have been most angry.

I said nothing at all until we were home and Mama had gone upstairs to take off her hat. Richard was idling in the parlour. I went to the pianoforte and opened the lid.

‘Let’s sing something!’ I said as lightly as I could manage it. I brought my hands down in a ringing chord and for a mercy hit all the right notes. But when I looked up, Richard’s face was sombre.

‘No,’ he said softly, ‘I shall never sing again. Oh, I may groan on a little in church like I did today. But I shall never sing in the parlour, or in the kitchen, or even in my bathtub. I had the voice I liked, but now it has gone. And I’ll never get it back.’

‘Your voice now is very nice, Richard …’ I offered hesitantly.

‘Nice!’ he shouted. But then at once he had himself under control. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is very nice, isn’t it? Before it broke I had a voice which was probably as good as anyone’s in Europe. But they would not let me use it, or train it, or even see good music teachers. Now it is gone, and all I have instead is a powerless tenor which you tell me is very nice. Well, as far as I am concerned, that is the same as having no voice at all.’

‘What will you do, Richard?’ I asked. I found my lips were trembling as if Richard were telling me of some mortal wound. In a way, I suppose, he was.

‘I shall do nothing,’ he said quietly. ‘I shall forget the voice I had, and very soon so will everyone else. I shall forget that I wanted to be a musician. I shall forget the plans I had to fill Wideacre Hall with music. I shall concentrate instead on learning to be the squire. The squire of Wideacre. Now it is all I have left. It is the only thing special about me now.’

Richard said no more, and I never asked him to sing with me again. My pianoforte lessons from my mama continued with even less motive or effect, and Richard seemed to think of nothing but his last route to being, as he said, ‘special’ – being the heir to Wideacre. So while I was kept indoors as much as ever, Richard rode out every day, trying to conquer his fear of the horse and trying to learn his way round the land. The land, his land, the only thing he had left which made him anything other than an ill-educated lad growing out of his clothes.

He might never be truly easy with Scheherazade; but she was a beautifully mannered mare, and once Richard had gained enough confidence to give her clear instructions, she obeyed him. Dench’s young nephew, Jem, was in charge of our one-horse stables and he advised that Scheherazade be exercised every day so that she did not become too frisky. Each afternoon that autumn was frosty and inviting, so Richard went out early and stayed out late.

Sometimes Mama and I would sit in the parlour and I would read to her while she sewed. Outside, the leaves on the copper-beech tree turned a lovely purple and the fronded chestnut leaves went as yellow as summer silks. I read two volumes of poetry from cover to cover in those afternoons, while Mama sewed for the poor-box, and I sat with my back to the window to catch the light on the page in that gloomy parlour; and so that the sight of those burning colours would not make my heart ache to be out.

Sometimes we went over to Havering Hall in a little gig we borrowed with a pony, with Jem driving. The frosty air whipped our faces pink, and the sound of hooves on the hard road made my heart leap as if I expected some great treat. But at the end of the drive there was only Grandmama Havering – left alone at the hall now the London season had begun, splendid in her solitary state, creating some kind of stark beauty out of the emptiness of her days.

She invited me to stay with her, and, weary with the quiet Dower House, I consented, and then enjoyed myself more than I had thought possible. It was pleasant to be the only child in the house. It was pleasant to live without having to consider Richard’s preferences. My grandmama had created an air of disciplined peace at Havering Hall, which a woman can do if she has the courage to live by her own standards. I learned a lot from her that autumn. I learned that it is possible to look at a bleak past without reproach and at a joyless future without complaint. And the way to do that, without failing and without an inner plaint, is to keep one little part of oneself untouched, and free, and brave.

In the morning we spoke to the housekeeper or the butler, and then we took our walk in the garden. The grounds were horribly dilapidated, as bad as the ruined garden of Wideacre, but Grandmama walked among them like a queen at Versailles. With one hand on my shoulder and the other holding a basket for the flowers she hoped to find among the weeds, she paced down the gravel paths, oblivious to the nettles blowing around us, the ungainly grass scattering seeds over the paths and the burrs catching the flounces of our walking dresses. The flowers which had managed to survive years of neglect in this enclosed wilderness were to be cut and taken indoors, where Grandmama taught me about the elegance of a single bloom or two in a vase against a sparse background of leaves.

‘The art of happiness is in being content with what you have,’ she would say, looking with apparent satisfaction out of the dusty windows at the garden, yellowing like an uncut hayfield in the October sunshine. ‘And good manners depend entirely on appearing content with what you have.’

And I, innately polite and content (for what child of my gentle mama’s could be other?), would nod sagely and split a chrysanthemum stem for Grandmama to place precisely in a crystal vase.

My grandmama taught me more than the outward show of ladylike behaviour that autumn. She taught me an inner quietness which comes from knowing your strengths and your weaknesses – and the job you have to do. She taught me – without possibility of contradiction – that I was no longer a wild child. I would be a young lady. And it was I, and no one else, who would have to learn the self-control I would need to fulfil that role. So I learned to discipline myself, while Richard learned to ride.

And I think I had the better bargain of the two of us.

For Richard was afraid. He had learned that now, learned what I had seen when his face had gone white in the stable yard and Scheherazade had sidled away at his approach. She was not an old hack to tease in the meadow with a handful of stones thrown at her back hooves. She was not a bow-backed carriage horse that would strain for a carrot hung out of reach. She was a high-bred hunter, and when Richard and she were out alone on the common or the downs, he feared her. He was afraid of falling, he was afraid of being kicked. But more than that, he was afraid of all of her – of her bright colour, her brown eyes, her wide nostrils.

I spent three weeks at Grandmama’s and came home only when Grandpapa was expected again. Neither Grandmama nor Mama wanted me at Havering Hall when Grandpapa and his cronies from the London clubs fell out of their chaises swearing at the roads and lugging their cases of port.

Grandmama helped me pack, and sent me home with a bolt of muslin for a brand new gown as a farewell present.

‘You may be a Lacey,’ my grandmama said as she stood at the front door with me, watching Dench put my little box under the seat of the gig, ‘but you are also my granddaughter.’ She made it sound as though being a Lacey and a granddaughter of hers were positions of equal importance, of vast significance in an admiring world. ‘Lacey, or Havering, or married to someone with no name at all, I trust you will always remember you are first and foremost a lady.’

I nodded. I tried to concentrate, but I was only a twelve-year-old child and all I could think was that I was returning home to Richard and my mama, and maybe Richard would allow me to ride Scheherazade. I hardly heard my grandmama telling me that there was more to life than a name and an estate, more to life than the man one might marry. More to life, even, than love. More important than all these things was the retention of one’s pride, of a tenacious little scrap of dignity, whatever one’s name, whoever one’s relations.

‘You are anxious to go home to your mama,’ she said gently.

‘Yes, Grandmama,’ I said.

‘And Richard?’ she queried. Under her searching look, I coloured and my eyes fell.

‘That is quite suitable,’ she said equably. ‘You are joint heirs of Wideacre, and cousins. I can imagine no easier way of reconciling the problem of joint shares than to make the estate one again under Richard’s ownership. And he is a charming boy. Does he treat you kindly?’

I beamed, our childhood squabbles forgotten. Oh, yes!’ I said emphatically. ‘And he has said ever since we were little children that we should marry and rebuild Wideacre together.’

My grandmama nodded. ‘If John MacAndrew returns home wealthy, it would indeed be a most suitable match,’ she said. But then she looked at me more closely and her face softened. ‘He’s not going to grow into a man who will stomach petticoat rule,’ she said gently. ‘He has been indulged by your mama and he is used to ruling you. He will be the master in his house, and you will have to obey him, Julia.’

I nodded. I could have told her, but I did not, that I had already served a hard apprenticeship in giving way to Richard. It had been my choice to obey him since we had been small children. I could envisage no change. I did not even want a change.

‘It is not always easy, obeying one’s husband,’ my grandmama said, her words stilted. She gave a little sigh which should have told me of a lifetime of self-discipline, of temper bitten back and never expressed. Of complaints, and slights, and accidental cruelties. ‘They will tell you in church that marriage is a sacrament. But it is also a binding legal contract, Julia.’

Dench had stowed my box and was standing at the horse’s head, waiting out of earshot, patient.

Grandmama tutted under her breath. ‘You may marry for love, my dear; but I would want you to remember that marriage is a business contract, and after the love has gone you are still forced to keep your side of the bargain.’

I looked at her uncomprehendingly, my child’s eyes wide.

‘When love has gone, when liking has gone, you are still married,’ she said sternly. ‘There is no escaping that. And the services you performed out of love, you have still to do out of duty. That is when you are glad you can say, “I am a lady,” or “I am a Lacey”, or anything which reminds you in your heart that you are a person in your own right, even if you lead the life of a bondsman.’

I shivered although the sunlight was bright. It sounded ominous, a bleak prophecy. But I knew in my loving, trusting heart that she was wrong. She had married fifty years ago in obedience to her father and, when widowed, married again to win a home for herself and her child. Of course marriage seemed to her a contract – and one which carried severe penalties. But Richard and I were quite different. Our marriage would be a natural extension of our childhood love. When the dream of a rebuilt Wideacre became finally true, I knew I would never have to search my heart for a sense of my own individual pride to bear me up through shame and pain. All I ever needed to define myself was the knowledge that I loved Richard and that I was Richard’s love. I would never need anything more.

Something of this certainty must have shown in my face, for my grandmama gave a harsh laugh and bent and kissed me once more. ‘There’s no telling anyone,’ she said, resigned. ‘Everyone has to learn their own way. Goodbye, my darling, and don’t forget to give those receipts to your mama.’

I nodded, and hugged her, and jumped up the step to the seat of the gig while Dench swung himself in beside me. Then I waved to her and smiled at her with love. I knew that she was a fine woman, a brave woman. But I had no thought that I would ever wonder where her courage came from; that I would ever need that courage for myself.

‘Home, then?’ Dench said.

‘Yes,’ I said. Sitting high in the gig beside Dench was comfortable. I could see over the hedges to where the self-seeded fields of Wideacre blew in a rippling autumn wind. I liked Dench, I liked the drawl of his downs accent and the way his face stayed still so that if you did not know him you might think he was cross, but then his eyes twinkled. And I knew, in the way that children always know, that he liked me.

‘Glad to be going back to your mama?’ he asked kindly.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And my cousin Richard too. Is he riding much, do you know, Dench?’

‘Aye,’ he said. He gathered the reins in one hand as we turned left down the lane towards Acre. ‘But Jem tells me his hands are as heavy as ever. He’ll ruin that mare’s mouth. I don’t know what m’lord was thinking of.’

‘She’s his horse!’ I said, instantly on the defence.

‘Aye,’ Dench said, wilfully misunderstanding me. ‘You don’t get a chance, do you, Miss Julia?’

‘Ladies often don’t learn to ride until they are married and their husbands teach them,’ I said, quoting the wisdom of my mama without much conviction.

‘Ever sat on her back at all?’ Dench asked me with a swift sideways glance. ‘Not sneaked into her stable and climbed on from the door?’

‘Yes,’ I said, incurably truthful. ‘But Richard caught me.’

‘Oh, aye?’ Dench said invitingly, and waited for me to go on. But I did not.