The Favoured Child

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He looked at me closely, taking my measure, and then he beamed at me as if he were telling me the lightest most inconsequential secret. ‘I was here the night of the fire,’ he said confidingly. ‘I led them up to the hall, to burn it down, and to murder Beatrice. I’m Ralph Megson, her lover from the old days, and her killer. In those days they called me the Culler.’

My eyes flew to his face and I gasped aloud, but Ralph Megson’s confident easy smile never wavered. He turned away from me as if he had told me only the slightest of trivialities and then he went towards the head of the table where they were waiting for him to take his place.

I stood where he had left me, in stunned silence. Uncle John had to speak to me twice and touch my elbow before I came out of my shock and was able to smile absently at him and start to walk home.

Mr Megson watched me go. I could see his glance in our direction, and his casual, friendly wave to Uncle John. But I knew his eyes were on me. And that rueful almost apologetic smile was for me, and me alone. In the mist, with the weak sun trying to break through, I shuddered as if it were full night and I was caught in the cold rain of a thunderstorm.

I knew that smile. I had seen it before. He smiled like that in the dream, though I had never seen his face. And I knew that the next time I dreamed it I would look up over the great horse’s shoulder and see Ralph Megson bending down to scoop me up to him and to knife me under the ribs as carefully and as tenderly as he might perform an act of love. And, though the girl in the bed in the grip of the nightmare would be screaming with fright, I knew that the woman in the dream was not afraid. I knew she would see Ralph’s smile as he came for her and she would be smiling too.

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‘So what is he like?’ asked Mama with polite interest. Stride was setting the decanter of port before Uncle John, but Mama and I were lingering with the informality of a happy family, with ratafia to drink and comfits to eat. ‘Your new manager,’ she said, ‘what is he like? Is he going to be of any use to you?’

Uncle John was at the head of the table and he poured himself a glass of the tawny-coloured port. ‘I do indeed think so,’ he said. ‘In a London hotel room he was impressive, but in the Acre street he was magnificent! I think you will like him, Celia. He’s very much his own man. I would trust him entirely with money and with responsibility.’

Mama smiled. ‘Good,’ she said, ‘for I am counting on having all three of you at home a good deal. If we have a proper manager on the land, then you, John, can concentrate on getting well and I can take Julia to Bath with a clear conscience.’

‘He was rude to me,’ Richard said abruptly. His head was turned away from his papa towards the foot of the table, to my mama, who always attended to his needs. ‘He knocked me with a sack of meal off the cart and into the road before all Acre.’

Mama gasped and looked to John.

‘Forget it,’ John advised briefly. He raised his glass and looked at Richard over the rim. Richard turned at once to my mama again. ‘In front of all of Acre,’ he said.

My mama opened her mouth to say something, but she hesitated.

John leaned forward. ‘Forget it,’ he said, his voice stronger. ‘You and Mr Megson had some difference. No one in Acre even noticed. I have been down there and I asked specifically if there was any trouble. No one even saw.’

I had to dip my head down to look at my hands clasped on my lap at that. No one ever saw anything in Acre which looked like trouble.

‘Ralph Megson is a man of the world and his judgement is good,’ Uncle John said gently. ‘He will not refer to whatever took place. I advise you to forget it, Richard. You will need to be on good terms with him.’

Richard shot a swift burning look at his father, then he turned his shoulder towards him and addressed my mama. ‘I don’t like him,’ he said. ‘He insulted me and he should not work here if he cannot be civil.’

Mama looked at Richard and her face was infinitely tender. ‘I know you are thinking of us,’ she said gently. Then her gaze slid away from his young cross face to Uncle John, calm at the head of the table. ‘Richard has had responsibilities beyond his years,’ she said, speaking to him directly. ‘He is only thinking of what would be the best for us.’

John nodded. ‘It is a good sign that Richard is so responsible,’ he said kindly, ‘but I shall be the judge of this.’

Mama nodded and smiled at Richard. He gave her one long level look, and I knew that he felt betrayed. Mama, who had relied so much on him, now had the man she loved at her side, and she would prefer his advice. She sipped at her glass. ‘Does he know enough about farming?’ she asked. ‘What is his background?’

‘He was a tenant farmer in Kent and was bought out by an improving landlord at a considerable loss to himself,’ Uncle John said. He answered her as if the matter of Richard’s opinion was of small moment. ‘Losing his land like that would have made a lesser man bitter. It made him think about the rights of the landlord, and the rights of the tenants and workers. He’s a radical, of course, but I don’t mind that at all! I’m glad to have a manager who thinks of the good of the people, rather than simply the profits of the estate. And I don’t think a grasping man would last long in Acre anyway!’

‘No,’ Mama said. ‘As long as they will do as they’re bid …’

Uncle John smiled down the table at me. ‘They were falling over themselves to please him when we left,’ he said. ‘If he remains that popular I should think they’ll plough up their kitchen gardens for Lacey wheat at his request. He seemed an absolute hero, didn’t he, Julia?’

‘Yes,’ I agreed, and I said no more.

‘Odd I never heard of him,’ Mama said. ‘He must have left Acre many years ago, for I never met him. I wonder how he can be so popular since he left when he was just a lad.’

I shifted uneasily in my chair and Richard came out of his brown study and shot a swift hard look at me. The very question I had feared had been raised on this first afternoon of Mr Megson’s return home. I had his life in my hands. All I had to do was to repeat what he had told me and he would be taken to Chichester and hanged. It would hardly matter that the fire had taken place fourteen years ago. Ralph Megson was a fire-raiser roaming free on Wideacre, and only I knew it. It should be me who gave the warning.

He had told me a secret which would hang him, and many of the villagers as well. And he had told it me in utter freedom and in jest and daring, and he had known, he must have known, that it would place me in the position I was in now: I had to choose between the claims of my family, my Quality family, and the preferences of Acre.

Before the whole village he had told me that he was an arsonist and a murderer, and I had not cried out against him then. I had not rushed to Uncle John and told him. I had not taken Uncle John to one side before we reached home and told him the appalling news. Mr Megson’s warm smile, his dazzling defiance of the law and the outside world and his matchless confidence had won me into complete complicity. Now I had to decide whether to lie outright to my mama or to betray Mr Megson, a stranger and a murderer.

I never lied to my mama.

I had hoped I never would lie to my mama.

I had hoped there would never be a single thing I could not tell her.

‘I’ve heard he left when he was quite young,’ I said. ‘The reason that he is so popular is that he used to send money back to people in the village during the bad years. Prize money,’ I said, improvising wildly. ‘From when he was at sea.’

Richard looked at me, his face impassive. He knew from my paleness, and from the way the tablecloth twitched before me as I pleated and twisted it under the cover of the table, that I was lying. And lying not at all well. And he knew I was lying to protect Mr Megson. Mr Megson – whom Richard had named as his enemy.

‘How very creditable,’ said Mama lightly. She took her shawl from the back of her chair and draped it around her shoulders.

‘Yes, and most unlikely,’ Uncle John said.

I had risen, and I whirled around to face him, my face suddenly white. ‘What do you mean?’ I demanded, and I knew my eyes were blazing.

‘My dear Julia,’ Uncle John said in faint surprise, ‘I mean only that I suspect that it is a respectable version of the man’s life history. I should imagine that an early apprenticeship with smugglers would be more like it. And the favours he could do Acre as a local smuggler would certainly be worth remembering.’ He smiled at my scared face. ‘No need to look so shocked,’ he said gently. ‘It makes little odds. Smuggling will always take place while we have absurd excise laws, and if he can command a gang of smugglers, he can certainly organize a ploughing team, I should think!’

‘Oh!’ I said. ‘I was only repeating what I heard in the village. But if he was a smuggler and now he has stopped smuggling, there could be nothing against him, could there?’

Uncle John held the door open for Mama and me. ‘I don’t think the law gives much credit to people who retire from a life of crime to a life of comfort,’ he said with a smile. ‘But there is obviously no one who would betray him in Acre. And I do not hold it against him. What I will do is have a quiet word with Lord Havering and one or two other Justices of the Peace locally, and see if there is anyone of Mr Megson’s description wanted. I don’t mind having a retired smuggler on my land, but I would object to an ex-privateer or a retired highwayman.’

‘Good gracious, yes!’ said Mama, settling herself in her chair in the parlour. ‘Why can Acre never be normal! Surely John, you could have found a manager who was not a criminal? Even if he is a retired one?’

‘A poacher turned gamekeeper is the best man to guard the game,’ Uncle John quoted with a smile. ‘Acre has always been an eccentric sort of village, my dear. I fear it will continue that way. And when it is set to rights, it may be that some of its finer sons come home again. There was an exile back today, wasn’t there, Julia? The man who had come all the way from Petersfield for the dinner.’

The guilty look on my face was as clear as a bell to Richard. I knew it as soon as our eyes met. But I was sitting at Mama’s feet at the fireside and I could not hide my face.

‘Who from Petersfield?’ he asked, seeming to care very little.

‘I don’t recall the name,’ Uncle John said. But then he remembered. ‘Tayler, Dan Tayler, was it not, Julia?’

‘Yes,’ I said, monosyllabic, my eyes on the fire.

‘Who is he?’ Richard asked blankly.