Wideacre (Wideacre Trilogy) (60 page)

If I could have seen my way to it I would rather have won Wideacre as my Norman forefathers did: with a straight challenge and a fight to the death to own the land. But we are civilized now, and so women are serfs without hope of recompense. No landed Squire even considers the rights of his wife or his daughters. The only chance I have ever had to own the land that I loved and deserved was by being indispensable to the men who owned it: indispensable to them in the field, like Papa, or — in the case of Harry — in field, office, and bed.

But my son and my daughter would not have to plot and contrive and lie and give their bodies to buy themselves into their rights. They would inherit legally, through men’s law, by an act of the men’s Parliament, with the blessing of male lawyers and male delegates. And I would smile and smile with my green eyes lidded to hide the gleam of triumph on the day that Richard and Julia were solemnly contracted as equal partners and named as the joint heirs of Wideacre.

The London lawyers’ letter outlined how it could be done. The process was as costly as we had feared; it had to be agreed up to the very House of Lords. And then we had to compensate the cousin, Charles Lacey, who would be disinherited. While his hopes could not be high at the moment, for no word of Celia’s barrenness had gone beyond the walls of the private rooms of Wideacre, he would guess soon enough when Harry wanted to settle the estate on his daughter and his nephew that Harry knew he would never have a son. Then we might expect a claim of more than a hundred thousand pounds — and we had to meet that claim before the entail could be changed.

‘I don’t know how we will ever raise that sort of money, Beatrice,’ said Harry, the letter in his hand, seated at the rent table. ‘We cannot raise it by mortgaging Wideacre for that would be a poor inheritance to pass on to the two of them. And we will never be able to save that sort of money from our revenues.’

‘It has to be the MacAndrew fortune,’ I said decisively. ‘If we could use that to pay Charles Lacey, then I think we could mortgage some land to pay for the legal fees — and pay it off over
time. With good management, and high-profit farming, we could probably free the estate from debt in ten or twenty years — certainly before the two children inherit.’

‘Yes, but old Mr MacAndrew is hardly likely to buy his grandson into Wideacre at that price,’ Harry objected. ‘Besides he settled nearly that sum on John only a year ago.’

‘It is John’s fortune I’m thinking of,’ I said musingly. ‘If we could get power of attorney over that we could use it however we wished.’

‘But on what grounds?’ Harry asked, getting up from the table and looking out of the window. The Michaelmas daisies were still blooming beneath my window and their purple smell and the peppery perfume of the chrysanthemums were drifting into the room.

‘Because of his drunkenness,’ I said crisply. ‘It might be possible to have him certified.’

Harry recoiled as if he had been stung by a bee.

‘Certified!’ he choked. ‘Beatrice, it is you who are mad! I know that John is drinking steadily, drinking every day. But he seldom shows it. He is hardly insane!’

‘I think his drinking is increasing,’ I said, suppressing a fleeting sense of regret. ‘I think he will drink more rather than less. And if he drinks much more he will either become incompetent, in which case you can have power of attorney, or he will drink himself to death, in which case I inherit his fortune with you and old Mr MacAndrew as trustees. Either way, his money is ours.’

‘Yes, but Beatrice,’ — Harry turned back into the rom and his face was serious — ‘if this was to come about it would be a tragedy. John is a young man; he has all his life ahead of him. If he were to recover you might still be happy together, and he might well be happy to invest in such a good scheme for his son’s future. I know you are angry and distressed with him now, so soon after Mama’s death, but I am sure the two of you will be happy again, when John is his old self once more.’

I gave Harry my brightest, most angelic smile.

‘It is what I pray for, every night,’ I said. ‘You heard me then, planning as a business woman. Now you see me as a wife. Of course I hope and believe that this shadow will pass from John.
But if it does not, I will be responsible for my son’s future, so naturally I have to plan ahead.’

Harry’s smile was relieved.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I knew you were thinking aloud and planning for Richard and Julia. And I knew you were not really thinking that John should be certified.’

‘Of course not,’ I said lightly, then turned the subject away from my dangerous husband’s future, and led Harry to think of other things.

But I could not turn Celia so easily. She had been walking Julia in the rose garden when John had seen her from the summerhouse and come out to take a turn. Julia’s little bandy legs were eager to take wobbly steps, and she loved holding on to adult hands while she toddled, uncertainly, with many changes of direction and sudden plumpings to the ground on her well-padded bottom.

From my office window I saw them both and could hear Celia’s clear voice.

‘Do you think she is too young to start walking?’ she asked, straightening up from the back-breaking exercise of following the infant prodigy’s footsteps.

‘No,’ said John. He stood beside Celia and detached first one, then another of Julia’s little grasping hands from her mama. Celia stood back and put both hands on the small of her back while Julia, welcoming the arrival of a new supporter, set off on one of her little expeditions with John bent over her, keeping her steady.

‘If she was in swaddling she would not be walking till she was three or even four,’ Celia said, watching their erratic progress.

‘Bairns are the same as any young animal,’ John said lightly. ‘They know their own business best. Tied up in swaddling you can keep them still. But if they can kick and grow strong they are ready to walk at this early age.’

‘But she won’t hurt her legs, will she? She won’t strain them?’

John turned his head and smiled at Celia. ‘No,’ he said reassuringly. ‘She’ll go at her own pace and soon be nimble and strong.’

Celia nodded.

‘It is so good to see you outside on such a lovely day,’ she said. ‘And so nice to be able to ask you about Julia. You will start
practising medicine again soon, won’t you, John? It has been more than three months, you know.’

A shadow passed over his face and he looked back down at Julia again.

‘No,’ he said softly. ‘I dare say I’ll never practise again. I have lost my reputation; I have lost the occupation that was very dear to me; Wideacre has cost us all, in different ways.’

I froze, standing by the window. If this conversation grew any more revealing I should tap on the window to interrupt it. John was treading a very narrow line. I would not permit hints and indiscretions to Celia. They both, separately, knew too much. They must never put that picture together.

‘But you will stop your drinking now,’ said Celia tenderly, persuasively. ‘You know how bad it is for you, and how unhappy you are making dear Beatrice. You will try to stop, won’t you?’

John straightened up abruptly as Julia sat down, and reached for the golden head of a chrysanthemum.

‘I will try,’ he said uncertainly. ‘These past months seem like a dream, not like reality at all. I keep thinking that one morning I will wake in bed beside Beatrice and she will be expecting our child and that none of this nightmare — my absence, the birth, our mama-in-law’s death — will have happened. Then I take a drink because I cannot believe what is happening to me. And when I am drinking I know that it is all unreal, and that my real life is as happy as it was only a few months ago.’

Celia, the odious flirt, put out her hand to him. ‘You will try to stop drinking,’ she said persuasively. ‘Dear, dear, brother John, you will try?’

And my broken drunk of a husband took her hand and kissed it. ‘I will try,’ he promised. And then he stooped over Julia and set her on her feet, and toddled her round to the stable yard.

And I knew, then, that I had him.

He was in my hand, like a hand-reared foal, because he was half in love with Celia and her child and the whole sentimental nonsense of Celia’s life. Repelled by me, appalled by me, he was clinging on to Celia as a devout kisses the hem of a statue of the Virgin. Celia’s love of her child, her clear-eyed honesty, her decent warmth, all held John to life when he feared he was going mad, when he longed for death. When he despaired of a world
dominated by me, he could always see Celia’s clear, lovely gaze and warm himself at the bright clear flame of her purity.

And that gave me a key to manage him. While he stayed on Wideacre through love of Celia, he could not harm me. While he kept his mouth shut to spare her, his discretion benefited me. While he gently, tenderly kissed her hand, he would not harass me. He loved and so he was vulnerable. And I was a little bit safer for that.

I was a little bit more dangerous for that as well. I am not a cold woman and I am not one who easily shares anything she loves, or even has loved once in the past. I never forgot that Celia had once threatened to take Harry from me. That when he could have been my lover he spent time and trouble to bring her willingly to his bed. That in order to keep the two of them permanently estranged I had to don all kinds of disguises and dance to all sorts of tunes to make myself Harry’s addiction. If he had not been fatally flawed, early corrupted by the brutality of that school, I should never have been able to keep him from Celia. I knew I was a hundred times more beautiful than she, a hundred times stronger. But I could not always remember that, when I saw the quiet strength she drew on when she believed she was morally right. And I could not be certain that every man would prefer me, when I remembered how Harry had looked at her with such love when we came back from France.

I would never forgive Celia for that summer. Even though it was the summer when I cared nothing for Harry but rode and danced day and night with John, I would not forget that Celia had taken my lover from me without even making an effort at conquest.

And now my husband bent to kiss her hand as if she were a queen in a romance and he some plighted knight. I might give a little puff of irritation at this scene played out before my very window. Or I might measure the weakness in John and think how I could use it. But use it I would. Even if I had felt nothing else for John I should have punished him for turning his eyes to Celia. Whether I wanted him or not was irrelevant. I did not want my husband loving anyone else.

For dinner that afternoon I dressed with extra care. I had remodelled the black velvet gown that I had worn for the winter
after Papa’s death. The Chichester
modiste
knew her job and the deep plush folds fitted around my breasts and waist like a tight sheath, flaring out in lovely rumpled folds over the panniers at my hips. The underskirt was of black silk and whispered against the thick velvet as I walked. I made sure Lucy powdered my hair well, and set in it some black ribbon. Finally, I took off my pearl necklace and tied a black ribbon around my throat. With the coming of winter, my golden skin colour was fading to cream, and against the black of the gown I looked pale and lovely. But my eyes glowed green, dark-lashed and heavy-lidded, and I nipped my lips to make them red as I opened the parlour door.

Harry and John were standing by the fireplace. John was as far away from Harry as he could be and still feel the fire. Harry was warming his plump buttocks with his jacket caught up, and drinking sherry. John, I saw in my first sharp glance, was sipping at lemonade. I had been right. Celia was trying to save my husband. And he was hoping to get his unsteady feet back on the road to health. Harry gaped openly when he saw me, and John put a hand on the mantelpiece as if one smile from me might destroy him.

‘My word, Beatrice, you’re looking very lovely tonight,’ said Harry, coming forward and setting me a chair before the two of them.

‘Thank you, Harry,’ I said, as sickly sweet as John’s lemonade. ‘Good evening, John.’ The look I gave him was warm and sensual. I saw his knuckles whiten on the mantelpiece.

The parlour door opened and Celia came in. The blacks of mourning that set off my skin and eyes and hair merely drowned Celia’s pale gold prettiness. She never looked her best in dark colours and I foresaw two years when I would shine her down without the least effort. Tonight, while I glowed with health and loveliness and the black velvet was like a jeweller’s cloth to show off a warm cameo, Celia seemed aged and worn in her black gown.

Her brown eyes went to John’s glass and her cheeks coloured, making her suddenly a pretty girl again.

‘Oh! Well done!’ she said encouragingly. And when Harry offered her a glass of sherry she chose to take lemonade in some feeble gesture of support. I smiled, my eyes more green and
veiled than ever, and accepted the large sherry Harry poured for me, and drank it before John with obvious relish.

Stride called us in to dinner and nodded to me that he wished to speak with me. I let Harry lead me into the dining room and to my chair, then I smiled my excuses and went back out into the hall where Stride hovered.

‘Miss Beatrice, I thought I should confirm with you,’ he said in an undertone. ‘Lady Lacey has ordered that there shall be no wine served this evening, nor any port for the gentlemen after dinner. She has ordered lemonade for the table, and water jugs.’

I gave an irrepressible chuckle.

‘Don’t be foolish, Stride,’ I said. ‘Are there wine glasses on the table?’

He nodded. ‘The table was laid when she gave me this order and so I did nothing until I had confirmed it with you,’ he said.

‘Of course,’ I said smoothly. ‘You did rightly. We will certainly drink wine this evening and Sir Harry will, of course, wish to have his port. You must pour wine for my husband, and if he wishes to continue drinking lemonade he can do so.’

Stride nodded, and I returned to the dining room with a smile on my lips.

‘Everything all right?’ Harry asked. I nodded, and leaned towards Celia.

‘I will explain about the wine later,’ I said to her quietly.