Wideacre (Wideacre Trilogy) (24 page)

‘My love,’ I said. Perverse. Wordy. Pompous. He was still the Squire of Wideacre and I wanted him inside me.

‘My love,’ I said.

I slept in my own bed, the first sweet sleep I had had since the death of my father and the crippling of Ralph. My darling Harry had taken from me the dreadful tension and I felt I could rest. Not once in the night did I hear the snap then the thud of a closing mantrap and the sharp crack of breaking bones. Not once did I jerk into wakefulness, thinking I heard a clank outside my door as some hideous cripple clawed into my room, dragging his legs in the mouth of a monstrous trap behind him. Harry had set me free. The golden boy had released me from my darkness, and I no longer ached with pain and fear, nor with longing for those I had loved whom I would never see again.

And their loss now seemed to me to be part of the natural order of things. In farming you have to break the earth and drain ditches to make the land flower and fruit. I had done some breaking; I had ordered a culling. But now the new life was in the earth; there was a new young master, and the proof that I had done right was that the future was very bright and sunny, and that I was safe on the land where I belonged.

I stood before the little mirror on my dressing table and tilted it to see how I must look to Harry. I saw a bruise mouth-shaped on my left breast and I touched it with wondering fingers that I should have been bitten so hard, and yet remembered no pain. In the morning sunshine my skin had the bloom of a ripe peach, ready for picking. From my feet, so white with such high-arched insteps, to the copper curls that framed my face and warmed and
tickled the curve of my bare back, I was made for loving. I fell back on the bed, my hair fanned out on the pillow, and craned my neck to see in the mirror how I had appeared to Harry when he took me on grass or on wooden floor, wide-eyed and wide-legged. Watching myself I became luxuriously certain that Harry would soon come to me. It was early; my maid would not call me for an hour; my mother was still safe in her drugged sleep. Harry and I could lie together now and steal off to a hollow in the downs or in the woods after breakfast.

I did not move when I heard the step outside my door but simply turned a lazy head to the opening door and smiled my welcome to Harry. Instead — I jumped as if I had been scalded — there was my mother!

‘Good heavens, child,’ Mama said calmly. ‘You’ll catch your death of cold. Whatever are you doing?’

I held my tongue and blinked lazily at her. The only thing I could do.

‘Have you just woken?’ she asked. I yawned and carelessly reached for my shift.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I must have thrown off my clothes in the night as it was so hot.’ I felt better with my shift on, but underneath my relief I was prickly with irritation — at myself for that guilty start, and at my mother who walked so calmly into my room as if she owned it.

‘How lovely to see you up and about again,’ I said smiling. ‘Are you sure you are well enough? Hadn’t you better go back to your room after breakfast?’

‘Oh, no,’ said Mama as if she never had a day’s illness in her life. She crossed the room, her morning dress rustling, and made herself at home on the window seat.

‘I am feeling so much better! You know how it is with me after these attacks. Once they are over I feel as if I should never be ill again. But you, Beatrice,’ — she narrowed her gaze and looked at me closely as I sat up in bed — ‘you are looking so well, so glowing! Has something pleasant happened?’

I smiled and shrugged my shoulders.

‘Oh, nothing really,’ I said dismissively. ‘Harry took me for a ride on the downs yesterday, and I felt so happy again to be out and about in the lovely weather.’

Mama nodded.

‘You must go out more,’ she said. ‘If we could only spare a lad from the stables it would be all right for him to ride behind you and then you could go out more. But I doubt if there is one to spare with the horses wanted out on the land. Still once Harry is married you will have Celia for company. You can teach her to ride and take her out.’

‘Lovely,’ I said absently and turned the subject. Mama spoke about clothes and said how glad she was to be out of the heavy mourning black we had been wearing.

‘You can have something pretty for Harry’s wedding, but not too bright,’ she said. ‘And while they are away we can plan for a little party to welcome them home and that can be your coming-out party, Beatrice. That way you will be able to make more calls with Celia, and if the Haverings take her to London, you will be able to go too.’

I stopped stock-still in the act of pouring water from my ewer into the basin. ‘Going away?’ I said blankly.

‘Yes,’ said Mama lightly. ‘Celia and Harry are to have one of these new-fangled wedding tours. They are planning to go all the way to France and Italy — did no one mention it to you? Celia wants to sketch and Harry wants to visit some farms he has read about. I should hate such a marathon and, I dare say, so would you. But if the two of them wish to go they may enjoy it. You and I can keep each other company here, my dear. You will be busy overseeing the winter sowing for Harry, I suppose.’

I bent my head over the basin and splashed the cold water in my face, keeping my head down so that Mama could not see me. I reached blindly for a towel. Mama would not be able to tell I could not control a grimace of pain and fear. I buried my face in the towel and held its softness to my eyes where tears of anger and fear were stinging hot. I did not feel unhappy; I felt murderous. I wanted to strike Celia, to smash her pretty face and scratch her soft brown eyes. I wanted Harry to suffer the torments of the damned and crawl to me for forgiveness. I simply could not bear the thought of those two alone together, travelling in a post-chaise and staying at hotels. Dining together without family or friends around them, able to slip away for kisses and caresses any time they wished, while I ached with desire and
loneliness and waited for Harry’s return like an old spinster, unwanted at home.

And I was angry, for it had only been last night that I had drawn such pleasure from the knowledge that never again would I be the one whose life was planned for her, whose days were made to revolve around another’s. I was certain that with Harry’s heart in my hands and my secret key to Harry’s sensuality, I should have Wideacre. Now, mere hours after I had lain with Harry on the hard wooden floor, my mama was telling me news as if I was of no more importance than the young daughter of any house.

‘Is this Harry’s idea?’ I asked, coming out of the towel and dressing with my back to Mama in the window seat.

‘He and Celia dreamed it up together when they were always singing Italian songs,’ she said complacently. ‘He thought she would like to hear them sung by Italians or some such nonsense. They won’t be gone long, only two or three months. They will be home for Christmas.’

I gasped, but she did not hear me, and as I turned to brush my hair at the mirror she did not notice that my face was white. All my old pain of longing for a safe arm to hold me and a promise of love I could trust was flooding back over me. It was even worse now I had lain with Harry and knew what it was to be loved by him. I could perhaps live without his loving. Or I could live without being the first person on Wideacre. But I could not live with neither. And I could not bear the prospect of another woman having both the love and the power. If Celia was a beloved wife there was nothing to stand between me and the dominance of my mama. Nothing to save me from the emptiness of dutiful daughter days. Nothing to prevent me from being married off to the first likely suitor who chanced our way. If I lost Harry now, I would lose everything I had ever wanted — my pleasure and land. Just as Ralph had said.

This trip had to be prevented. I knew, because I knew Harry, that if he were all alone with Celia for two months he would come to love her. And who could resist him? I had seen him with a frightened foal or an injured hound, and I knew how he prided himself on his gentle understanding, on winning a shy creature’s confidence. He would see Celia’s coldness as a result of her cruel
treatment at home and set himself the task of becoming her friend. Once he came to know her he would realize she was indeed the best bride he could have found.

Under her shy and cool defences, Celia was warm and loving. She even had a little bud of humour, and Harry would learn to make those brown eyes twinkle and he would hear her girl’s ripple of laughter. It would be inevitable that they would warm to each other, and equally inevitable that one night, after the opera or the theatre, or some peaceful dinner for two, Celia would be smiling with wine and new confidence. Harry would turn to her for a kiss and she would give him one. He would touch her breast and she would not push his hand away. He would stroke her narrow pliant back and whisper endearments, and she would smile and twine her arms around his neck. And I? I would be forgotten.

Nothing of these panicky thoughts showed in my face as Mama and I went downstairs, but when we entered the breakfast parlour some hours later I had a second shock of pain at Harry’s delighted greeting to Mama and his warm smile to me was as sunny and open as his delight in seeing her. I drank tea and ate a little toast, while Harry wolfed down cold ham, cold beef, some new bread and honey, some toast and butter and finally a peach. Mama ate heartily too and laughed and joked with Harry as if she had never been ill. Only I sat silent. I was back in my old place at the side of the table rather than at the end. The outsider again.

‘Beatrice looks so well and so happy I think she should have some more riding,’ Mama remarked as Harry carved himself one more slice of meat. He picked at the white fat with his fingers and ate it first. ‘Perhaps you could make a point of seeing she goes out daily,’ Mama said, as if I were a lapdog that needed walking.

‘Rather,’ said Harry unhelpfully.

‘Could she ride today in the morning or in the afternoon?’ she asked. I looked up from my plate and my eyes sent an urgent message to Harry. ‘Now! Now! Say now, and let us race up to the downs and tumble into our little hollow and I will forget this jealousy and pain and give you such pleasure that you will never want to come home and never want another woman in your life.’

Harry smiled at me, his open, brotherly smile.

‘If you don’t mind, Beatrice, I will see to it tomorrow. I promised Lord Havering I would look at his coverts with him today and I dare not be late.’

He took out his watch and pushed back his chair to go.

‘I’ll not be back till late tonight, Mama. I shall stay to dinner if I’m asked. I have not been there for three days and I shall have to make my apologies!’

He bent and kissed her hand and smiled at me in farewell and strolled out of the room as if he had not a care in the world. I heard his footsteps cross the hall, then the front door open and close. In the silence I could hear the clatter of his horse as the groom led it round from the stable and then the clip-clop as he rode away. He rode away as if love and passion meant nothing. He rode away because he was a fool. I had put my heart in the keeping of a fool.

My mama looked at me.

‘You must not mind, Beatrice,’ she said. ‘A young man is bound to be thoughtless of his family when he is engaged to be married. You cannot blame him for preferring Celia’s company to ours. We will all be more settled when this time of waiting is over. I am sure he will find time to ride with you tomorrow.’

I nodded and moved my face muscles into a semblance of a smile.

I held that smile all the long day.

In the afternoon Mama was going calling, but she had enough sympathy with my forlorn state not to force me to go with her. As soon as her carriage had vanished, I took my horse out and rode down to the River Fenny — not near the old cottage where Ralph used to live — but upstream to a deep, clear pool where Harry sometimes tried to catch fish. I tied the horse to a bush and lay face down on the ground.

I did not weep or sob. I lay silent and let the great waves of jealousy and misery wash over me. Harry did not love me as I loved him. Sensuality for him was an occasional pleasure — necessary in that second of desire, but swiftly enjoyed and forgotten. To me it was a way of life, the very kernel of myself. Harry had his outside life: his newspapers, his journals, his books, his men friends, his engagement to Celia and his visits to
the Haverings. All I had to dream of, to fill my life, to keep me alive and glowing, was Wideacre. Wideacre and Harry.

And at this moment I had only Wideacre. My cheek lay on the damp, dark leafmould of the forest floor, and when I opened my eyes I could see small, spindly plants with heart-shaped leaves pushing their narrow stems up through the dark peat. Beyond their bowed little heads was the sheen of the Fenny, gleaming like pewter. It flows almost silently here between deep banks, overhung with maidenhair fern and lit by brilliant lanterns of kingcups — as bright above the water as their reflections on the shiny surface.

In the centre of the river one can see two worlds. The reflected world of air and winds, the tossing trees and cloudy sky, and the underworld of the riverbed, a mixture of pure white sand and stones as yellow as gold. In the dark curves of the river where ponds have formed the filtered scraps of peat make the hollows black and ominous, but in the main stream the riverbed glows like sunshine. The bright green weed tossing in the current hides young trout, baby eels and a few salmon. The green ferns at the bank mask the holes of water shrews and otters.

I lay in silence until the thud of my own angry and resentful heart had stilled and until I could hear the safe steady beat of the heart of Wideacre. Deep, deep in the earth, so deep most people never hear it, beats the great heart, steady and true. It spoke to me of endurance and courage. Of setting my heart on the land and staying with the land. Of being full of sin and blood to get thus far, and of other sins which would take me steadily further.

I saw them pass before me without blinking. The death’s head of my father’s agonized face; the scream from Ralph; even the fluttering fall from my window of the owl we had called Canny. Wideacre spoke to me in my loneliness and my longing for love and the beat of its heart said, ‘Trust no one. There is only the land.’ And I remembered Ralph’s advice — which he himself had fatally forgotten — to be the one who is loved. Never to make the mistake of being the one who does the loving.