If the land was not right, I thought, I should go away. Not as they hoped, not a ladylike organized departure, telling people that I did not like the country, that I preferred to live in a little town. If the land was not right I should run off tonight. I would hack my hair into a bob, I would steal the silver and the pretty miniature portraits on the small tables in the parlour, and anything else light enough to carry in my pockets. I should ride until I found a hiring fair and hire myself out as a groom to a good stud farm where I could work with young horses. I was fit for nothing. I did not know the ways of the Rom – and besides, as the old woman in Salisbury had seen, I was no Rom. I was not one of those special people.

I could not go back to work with a show. I would never work again in a ring. I could not have smelled the woodshavings and the horse sweat without freezing with horror. And I did not belong here. Not in the Hall with this difficult mannered life, not in those rooms where you could scream at someone and then they would pour you tea, not in this mad village with these peculiar people who let squatters settle and paid them wages, and who paid a pension to people too old to work

If the land was wrong I would go away and try and find somewhere that I could be myself. Another place.

Another place to search for again.

Sea put his head down and cantered towards the circle of light at the head of the track and we scrambled up the last slope. Will had stayed behind, letting me ride alone. The light dazzled me, the sudden piercing sound of a lark singing up high was as sharp in my ears as the swelling singing which had come to me on this land. The spring grass was a bright mouth-watering green, the sky a pale pale blue streamered with white slight clouds. Sea breathed deep and blew out. I turned his head towards the valley and looked over Wideacre.

I could just see the house. Its pale sandstone yellow colour was like good butter, a little pat among the green of the park. I could see the round turret of the parlour and the wedge of the terrace in front of it. The heads of the trees were thick, like a sheep’s winter fleece, the pines standing out dark against the light spring green.