We had nodded at that, and ceased our game to please her. Richard climbed into her lap and demanded kisses and cuddles as he was dried. ‘And dry my special mark,’ he commanded, and Mama took the towel and softly patted the little circular scar at his throat. ‘And tell me the story about it,’ he said, snuggling into her lap. I wrapped the warm towel around my skinny little body and sat at my mama’s feet and put my head against her knees. Richard’s bare feet kicked me gently away, matching the rhythm of Mama’s voice.
‘It was when you were a little tiny one, new born,’ she said softly, using the same words as always. ‘Your papa and I were with Dr Pearce at the vicarage. It was during the hard times in Acre, and your papa and the vicar and I were trying to find some way to feed the people. Your mama, Beatrice, was driving you in the sunshine. You were held by your nurse. Suddenly your mama saw that you had swallowed the bell of your little silver rattle!’
‘Yes!’ Richard said, his face intent.
‘As fast as she could, she drove towards the village to find your papa! And your mama was a very good horsewoman. She certainly drove fast!’
‘Yes,’ Richard said. We both knew this story as well as Mama.
‘She snatched you up and ran into the vicar’s parlour. And there, on the desk, your papa took a sharp knife and cut open your little throat, and took my crochet hook and pulled out the bell so that you could breathe!’
Richard and I sighed with satisfaction at the end of the story. But my mama was not looking at us. She was looking over Richard’s mop of damp curls into the red embers of the fire as if she could see the vicar’s parlour in the red caverns of the logs, and the man with steady hands who had the courage to cut open a baby’s throat to save his life. ‘It was the most wonderful thing I had ever seen,’ she said. ‘Even more of a miracle than birth – in a way.’
‘And did you feed the poor?’ I asked.
The closed look came over her face at once, and I could have bitten off my tongue in vexation at having interrupted her when she was, so rarely, telling us of how things had been.
‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘Not very well. It was a hard year for Acre that year.’
‘And was that the year of the riot and the fire?’ I pressed her. ‘Because they were poor?’
‘Yes,’ she said shortly. ‘But that was all long ago, and besides, you two should be getting ready for bed.’
‘I don’t care about the bad past,’ Richard said, butting his head into her shoulder. ‘Will you tell me about the day I was born?’
‘In bed I will,’ Mama said firmly, and pulled his nightgown over his head. ‘But I’ll put Julia to bed first.’
I smiled at her. I loved Richard so well I did not even have to make an effort to put him first. ‘I’ll wait,’ I said.
My love for him served us all well. It kept the peace in that cramped little household. I watched his love for my mama, and hers for him, and I never worried if she had a preference. Her love warmed us both equally – she could have had ten children and we would all have felt equally precious. I don’t think I was envious for any moment in our childhood up till the time when he was eleven and started lessons with Dr Pearce in his well-stocked library. I had asked Mama if I could go too, and when she said there was not enough money to teach us both, I remember that I scowled.
‘It is not possible, Julia,’ she said. ‘I know how much you love learning, and indeed, my dear, you are so bright and clever that I wish I had learned Latin so that I could have helped you to teach yourself. But it is just an amusement for ladies. For gentlemen, for Richard, it is essential.’
‘He doesn’t even want an education, Mama! All he wants is a music master and to be taught how to sing!’ I started, but the sight of her frown silenced me.
‘All the more credit to him for being prepared to go,’ she said gently. ‘And if he is prepared to go over his work with you in the evening, you may well learn a lot that way. But you must not tease him to teach you, Julia. John is sending money from his salary for Richard’s education, not yours.’
In the event I did very well. Richard was generous with his homework and shared it with me. When he came home with his books – old primers once used by Dr Pearce – he let me stand at his elbow in respectful silence while he tried to puzzle out the verbs and declensions.
‘What a bother it is,’ he would say impatiently and push the book towards me. ‘Here, Julia, see if you can make head or tail of this. I have to translate it somehow and I cannot make out what they’re saying.’
Trembling with excitement I would take the book and turn to the back for the translated words and scribble them down in any order.
‘Here, let me see,’ Richard would say, repossessing his goods with brutal suddenness. ‘I think I know what to do now.’ And then he would complete the sentence in triumph and we would beam at each other with mutual congratulation.
Mama was glad to see us content, to see the different treatment of us so well resolved. She tried very hard to treat us fairly, to treat us alike. But she could not help favouring Richard, because he needed so much more. He took the best cuts of meat and the largest helpings, because he was growing so fast and was always hungry. He had new clothes; Mama could always cut down and turn her gowns for me, but she could not tailor jackets, so Richard’s clothes were made new. He had new boots more often as he grew quicker, and then he had proper schooling. If I had loved him any less, if I had not tried to be as good as a sister to him, I think I would have envied him. But I only ever begrudged him one thing for more than a moment, the only thing he ever had which I desired, which I could not help desiring: Scheherazade.
She was Richard’s horse – the horse we had both been promised off and on since we were children by my Grandpapa Havering, that feckless charming rogue who breezed into the county half a dozen times a year on a repairing lease from London. On one of his visits, in June, when I was twelve and Richard eleven, he finally got around to honouring his promise. I first learned of it when he sent a message to my mama. She opened it in the parlour while I sat at her feet, my head leaning against her knees, idly gazing out of the window at the tossing trees which crowd so close around the little sandstone box of a house, waiting for Richard to come home from his lessons. Mama broke the seal on the note and then paused. ‘What is that singing?’ she asked Stride.
He cleared his throat, embarrassed. ‘It’s Master Richard,’ he said. ‘He came in by the kitchen door, and Mrs Gough stopped him and asked him for a song. She loves to hear him sing.’
Mama nodded and listened in silence. The clear pure arc of sound swept unstoppably through the house. Richard was singing an Italian song – one he had despaired of teaching me to play aright – but I had guessed at an English version of the words for him, and he was singing them. His high sweet voice had a more tremulous tone than usual: ‘If there is ever a favourite – then let it be me,’ came the chorus. And then more quietly, more entreatingly, to the cruel gods who are never just to needy mortals: ‘If there is ever a favourite – oh, let it be me!’
Stride, Mama and I were as still as statues until the last echo of the last note had died, then Stride recollected the dinner table not yet laid and left the room, closing the door behind him.
‘It is a great gift,’ Mama said. ‘Richard is fortunate.’
‘Does Uncle John realize how good Richard is?’ I asked. ‘If he really understood, surely he would find the money from somewhere for Richard to have a music master?’
Mama shook her head and spread out the note on her knee. ‘Music is a luxury we cannot afford, my darling.