Uncle John was back.’
‘Yes,’ said John. ‘Do! For I have some rough drawings for the rebuilding of the hall with me and I can hardly wait to show them to you all. And that’s not all!’ he said, turning to my mama. ‘We have an estate manager! I dropped him off at the village before coming here. You may meet him as you walk through, Julia. His name is Mr Megson, Ralph Megson.’
There was a noise in my head like a crystal glass splitting, and then I heard a sweet high humming, which seemed to come from the very trees of Wideacre Park as they leaned towards the house. The mist seemed to be singing to me, the hills hidden in the greyness seemed to be calling. I shook my head to clear my ears, but I could still hear the sound. A sweet high singing like a thousand leaves budding.
‘That’s very quick!’ said my mama, impressed. ‘However have you managed so well?’
‘Skill and efficiency,’ Uncle John said promptly; and Mama laughed. ‘Pure luck, actually,’ he confessed. ‘I had placed an advertisement and I had two replies, but the bad reputation of Wideacre is still very much alive, I am afraid, and no suitable agent seemed likely to appear. I had just decided on the one who seemed the least likely to cause difficulties when a message was sent up to my room that another man had come for the job.
‘In he came,’ Uncle John said, smiling, ‘and proceeded to interview me as to my plans for Wideacre. When I had passed what seemed to be a series of tests by assuring him that I was not looking for a swift sale and profit and that, on the contrary, I was interested in farming it as a model estate with a profit-sharing scheme, he was gracious enough to tell me he would take the post. When I said that I was not sure if he was the man for me, he gave a little chuckle and said, “Dr MacAndrew, I am the only man for you.”’
‘How odd!’ said Mama, diverted. ‘Whatever did he mean?’
‘It emerged that he is of old Acre stock, though he left the village when he was a lad,’ John explained. ‘He seems to think he has friends in Acre still and he claims – I must say I believe him – that he can talk the village round to working for the Laceys again. But he prides himself on being a man of some principles, and that was why I suffered the inquisition. He would not get them back to work if there were any chance of us becoming absentee landlords, or selling the estate to a profiteer.’
Mama nodded, but she hesitated. ‘When did he leave?’ she asked diffidently.
Uncle John heard the uneasiness in her voice and smiled. ‘I asked him that, my dear,’ he said gently. ‘He is about our age, and he left when he was but a lad. He was gone before the old squire was killed in his riding accident. He was not working in Acre when Beatrice was running the estate. He was far away when the riot took place.
‘Besides,’ he added, ‘he’s certainly a radical, but not a hell-raiser by any means. He has strong ideas against property and against landlords, but they are nothing more than sensible people have been thinking for some time. He’s not a firebrand. He’s travelled. He’s a man of experience. I get the feeling he is anxious to come home to his roots and live in a prosperous village. We have much in common.’
‘Where will he live?’ I asked, visualizing Acre in my mind.
‘Is there a family called the Tyackes?’ John asked.
‘Yes!’ I replied.
‘He asked most particularly after their cottage,’ Uncle John said. ‘I think, when he was a lad, it may have been the best cottage in the village, and he has had his heart on it all these years. Julia, do you know them? Would they move?’
I nodded. ‘There’s only Ted Tyacke and his mother now,’ I said. ‘The cottage is too big for them. Ted’s father was hurt in an accident, felling trees, and he died last year. Since then they’ve been struggling. If we could offer them a smaller property-perhaps that little cottage by the church which is empty – and a little present of some money, they’d be glad enough to go, I think.’
Uncle John nodded, and he looked at me, somehow measuring me. ‘Whose cottage is it by the church?’ he asked as if he were testing Richard in Greek grammar.
‘It was the Lewes family’s,’ I said. ‘But a year ago they went back to Petworth where his brother has a shop.’
‘All the Acre history,’ John said to Mama, raising his eyebrows.
‘Julia knows the village better than all of us,’ she confirmed.
‘Well, if you see Mr Megson, you may tell him what you have told me about the Tyackes,’ John said. ‘And if he can arrange it to everyone’s satisfaction, he may have their cottage.’
‘May I go now, Mama?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But wear your cloak with the hood up against the mist, my dear. Who would believe we were in spring with this weather!’
I fetched my hat and my winter coat and went outside into the greyness. It had seemed dark and forbidding from the parlour window, but to walk in the mist was a strange pleasure. I could not hear my footsteps, they were so muffled by the fog. The beech leaves which had been so rustling and noisy only yesterday were now damp and silent. In the distance I could just hear the Fenny as it slithered over grey stones, but the loudest sound in the sheltered overhung lane was the steady drip, drip, drip as the beech trees collected mist on their clinging fresh leaves and distilled it into drops which fell with cold explosions on the hood of my cloak. I could not see the old fields on either side of the track. I could only sense the grey space of them and see the mist rolling off their damp sides to coil through the roots of the hawthorn hedge. I could not see the outline of the downs at all. There was not even a trace of the darker forehead of the land against the sky. It was all a universal greyness like a pale blanket held up before my eyes. There was nothing in the whole world but me, and the dripping trees, and the paler sticky streak of the chalk lane leading me towards Acre, taking me, so confidently and surely, to where I wanted to go on my homeland.
The walk was like a little excursion into dreamland, into the loneliness which everyone dreads. A world in which you are the only living thing and a cry would not be heard. But it was not a fearful walk for me. I am never afraid alone on Wideacre. However much of a silly girl I sometimes seem to my mama, however much I irritate Richard, when I am alone on Wideacre I am sure-footed.
It is not a place for words, and I am so clumsy with words. It is a place for sensing whether or not the land is easy. And self-seeded and running wild though Wideacre is, it is an easy land for the Laceys. When I am alone on Wideacre, I am a Lacey through and through.
I was almost sorry when the mist thinned, broken up by the little shanties at the start of the village. Then a shape came at me out of the fog and made me gasp with fright.
‘’Sme,’ said Clary Dench. Her speech was muffled by a great square of oatmeal cake which she was cramming into her mouth. ‘Hello, Julia.’ Her eyes were shining with excitement over her fist. ‘’Ve you come to see him?’ she demanded. ‘He’s gone to Midhurst to buy some things at the market.’
‘See who?’ I asked, but I had already guessed the answer.
‘Ralph,’ she said. ‘Ralph’s back, and he brought a great box of food with him, but he says we can’t eat it all at once or we’ll be sick. He gave everyone oatmeal cakes, and then he went to Midhurst to buy milk and bacon and cheese, and ale, and all sorts. We’re going to have a party when the food is ready. My pa says it’s all
