Wideacre (Wideacre Trilogy) (66 page)

‘Locked up?’ said John, his voice harsh with shock. ‘These papers take my fortune from me and commit me to a lunatic asylum! Don’t they?
Don’t they?
’ He rounded, in a panic, on Celia. ‘Did you know of this?’ he asked fiercely. ‘This was your idea; you persuaded me it would save me. Did you plan this?’

‘Well, yes, John,’ said Celia, unable to speak coherently while John became more and more frantic. ‘But it could be no harm, surely?’

‘Who has my estate?’ John demanded. He grabbed at the document and the rest of the papers slid in a sheaf to the floor.

‘Harry Lacey, and Harry Lacey’s lawyers!’ he exclaimed. ‘And we all know who controls Harry Lacey, don’t we?’ He shot a venomous but frightened look at me. Then he dropped the paper from his hand altogether as the realization hit him.

‘My God, Beatrice. You are stealing my fortune and putting me away!’ he said in horror. ‘You are having me locked up, and robbing me.’

Dr Rose gave an inconspicuous nod to Dr Hilary but John saw it at once. Dr Hilary rose ponderously to his feet and John screamed like a terrified child.

‘No!’ he cried. ‘No!’ and he broke for the door, knocking over the little table and Celia’s workbox. Spools of cotton and coffee cups scattered over the carpet and then, moving surprisingly fast for a heavy man, Dr Hilary dived for John’s feet and brought him down to the floor in a crashing tackle. Celia screamed, and I clenched my hands in horror as the heavy man pinned John to the floor.

Dr Rose pulled a strait-jacket from his case and handed it to Dr Hilary. John shrieked in panic and terror, ‘No! No! Celia! Celia, don’t let them!’

Celia snatched at the strait-jacket but I was at her side in an instant. I grabbed her and held her tight. She pushed me away and cried out, ‘Beatrice! Beatrice! You must stop them! There is no need for this! Stop them hurting John! Stop them tying him!’

With deft skilful hands Dr Hilary had slid John’s flailing arms into the jacket and rolled him over as neatly as a trussed chicken with both hands tied around his belly and strapped behind his back. John’s back arched; his eyes bulged in a contortion of terror.

‘You are a devil, Beatrice,’ he moaned. ‘You are the devil itself.’

John’s eyes rolled towards Dr Rose. ‘Don’t do this,’ he said. His voice had gone; his throat was so tight with terror he could only croak. ‘No! I beg of you. Please don’t let this happen to me. It is a plot. I can explain it. My wife wants me put away. She is a whore and a murderess.’

Celia broke from me and swooped down to kneel beside John.

‘No,’ she said urgently. ‘Don’t say such things, John. Don’t be like this. Be calm, and all will be well.’

John’s mouth widened in a soundless scream of horror.

‘And now she has you!’ he said despairingly. ‘You betrayed me to these men, to her henchmen. She set you on to trap me and you did her dirty work for her.
You
…!’ He broke off and gazed wildly at the four of us, seeking help.

‘Beatrice, you are the devil,’ he gasped again. ‘A devil. God save me from you and from this infernal Wideacre.’ He gave a hoarse sob and said no more. I stood in silence. Dr Rose glanced at me curiously. My face was stony, white as milk. Celia had fallen back from John’s side as soon as he turned on her, and was weeping with her hands over her eyes to shut out the sight of her brother-in-law bound on the floor of the pretty parlour of her home.

I was as still as a frozen river. I could not believe this scene before my eyes, even though I had known that something like this could happen. I put one hand behind me until I felt the chair and then I sank on to it, my eyes still on John. I saw his eyelids flutter and close and his chest beneath his crossed arms heaved with a sigh.

Dr Rose stepped towards him and raised his head.

‘Put him straight in the carriage,’ he said to Dr Hilary. ‘He’s fine.’

The big man lifted John as if he were a child and carried him gently from the room. Dr Rose helped Celia to a chair but she neither looked at him nor stopped her heartbroken, gasping sobs.

‘It is very distressing, but not unusual in these cases,’ Dr Rose said gently to me. I nodded with a stiff strained movement. I sat bolt upright in the chair as if I were nailed to it. I ached all over from every tense rigid muscle, and my neck and head were hot with pain.

‘Dr Hilary and I will certainly sign the committal papers,’ said Dr Rose, gathering them from the floor. ‘I will need also the signature of a male relative.’

‘Certainly,’ I said. My lips were numb.

‘We prefer our patients to commit themselves to our care, and of course to resign their business affairs until they are well again. But when we are certain that a patient is too ill and too confused to seek treatment we can commit him without his consent,’ he said.

‘I am quite convinced that he is suffering from delusions brought on by an excessive consumption of alcohol,’ said Dr Rose, scribbling rapidly on the documents and signing his name with a flourish. He glanced up at me. ‘But do not be too distressed
at what he says, Mrs MacAndrew. It is customary for patients like your husband to have exaggerated fears about the very people who are trying to help them. We hear a lot of strange claims from our patients, and when they are cured they forget all about them.’

I nodded again with rigid muscles.

Dr Rose looked towards Celia. ‘Should Lady Lacey have some laudanum?’ he asked. ‘This has been a dreadful shock for you both.’

Celia raised her head from her hands and took a deep breath in a struggle for control.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I wish to see John again before he goes.’ She was holding in the sobs with a tremendous effort of will, but she could not keep the tears from rolling down her cheeks. Her brown eyes were continually filled and her cheeks wet with them.

‘He will have had some laudanum in the carriage and will be sleeping peacefully,’ said Dr Rose. ‘There is no need for you to trouble yourself, Lady Lacey.’

Celia rose to her feet with the new dignity she had won in these last few days.

‘He thinks I have betrayed him,’ she said. ‘He trusted me and I let him be held down and tied up like a criminal in my own parlour. He thinks I have betrayed him, and that is not so, for I did not mean to work against him. But I have failed him because I could not stop you.’

Dr Rose stood too, and put out a placatory hand to her.

‘Lady Lacey, it was for the best,’ he said. ‘He will be untied as soon as we get to my house. He will be treated with every possible consideration. And if God wills, and if Mr MacAndrew has courage, then he may come home to you all completely cured.’

‘Doctor
MacAndrew,’ said Celia steadily, the tears still streaming down her cheeks.

‘Doctor
MacAndrew,’ he repeated, nodding his acknowledgement of Celia’s correction.

‘I shall write a note and I will put it in his pocket,’ said Celia. ‘Please do not leave until I have seen him.’

Dr Rose bowed his agreement and Celia went from the room,
her head high, her step steady, and the tears still rolling from her eyes.

There was a silence in the parlour. Outside in the frosty garden a robin began to sing its piercing notes, loud on the cold air.

‘And the power of attorney papers?’ I asked.

‘I have signed them as part of the committal procedure,’ said Dr Rose. ‘He is committed to our asylum until I see fit to release him. And his business affairs will be managed by your brother, Sir Harold.’

‘How long do you think he will be with you?’ I asked.

‘It depends on himself,’ said Dr Rose. ‘But I would generally expect some improvement in two or three months.’

I nodded. Time enough. Even that slight movement of my head sent needles of pain up my neck and into the throbbing tight skin of my scalp. Everything I had planned was coming to me, but I could feel no joy.

‘I shall write to you with a report every week,’ said Dr Rose. He handed me a letter describing the hospital and the treatment, and the papers for Harry’s signature. I held them in hands that were as steady as his own. But even my fingers ached.

‘You may wish to visit him, or to write,’ Dr Rose said. ‘You, or any one of your family, would be most welcome to stay, if you wished.’

‘That will not be possible,’ I said. ‘And I think it would be better if he had no letters from home, at least for the first month. Recently, the most innocent events have upset him most dreadfully. Perhaps the safest thing you could do would be to send any letters he receives back to me.’

‘As you wish,’ said Dr Rose neutrally. He picked up his bag and closed it with a snap. I rose from my chair and found that my knees, and even the muscles of my calves, ached as if I had the ague. I walked stiffly towards the door and found Celia waiting in the hall, a sealed envelope in her hand.

‘I have written to John to tell him that I do indeed feel that I have failed him, but that I never ever meant to betray him,’ she said, her voice even. The tears were rolling down her cheeks but she did not seem to notice. ‘I have begged his pardon for failing to protect him from the violence he suffered.’

Dr Rose nodded, his eyes on the letter. As Celia preceded us
to the waiting carriage he raised his eyebrows at me and nodded towards the letter in her hand.

‘You may take it from his pocket when you have left, and send it to me,’ I said, low-voiced. ‘It would certainly upset him.’ He nodded and followed Celia out to the carriage.

John was stretched along the length of the forward seat, still strapped in the strait-jacket, wrapped in a plaid travelling rug. Above the garish red and blue of the rug his face seemed deathly pale, but his breath was steady and his face, so strained and anguished before, was now as peaceful as a sleeping child’s. His fair hair had strayed from its tie in the struggle and curled around his head. There was the trace of tears on his cheeks but his mouth was slightly smiling. Celia climbed into the carriage and tucked the letter into his pocket. Her rumblings with the strait-jacket woke him and he opened eyes that were hazy blue with the drug.

‘Celia,’ he said, his voice low and slurred.

‘Please don’t speak, Lady Lacey,’ said Dr Rose firmly. ‘He should not be distressed again.’

Celia obediently dropped a kiss on John’s forehead in silence and stepped out of the carriage. She stayed by the window as Dr Rose got in beside his burly colleague, her eyes fixed on John’s face.

His eyes were still open and he gazed at her as if she were a lighthouse at some distant safe port in the middle of a stormy sea. Then his hazy drugged gaze sharpened, and he looked beyond her to where I stood, stiff as a ramrod on the steps.

‘Celia!’ he said, and his tone was urgent though the words were slurred. ‘Beatrice wants Wideacre for Richard,’ he said.

‘Goodbye,’ I said abruptly to Dr Rose. ‘Drive on,’ I said to the driver.

Celia took three rapid steps to keep up with the window so John could see her white desperate face.

‘Save the children,’ John said in one choking shout. ‘Save the children from Wideacre, Celia.’

Then the horses broke into a trot and the carriage wheels scrunched on the gravel and Celia’s little steps fell behind. And he was gone.

*

We dined in silence that evening. Celia had been crying all afternoon and her eyes were red and swollen. Harry at the head of the table shifted in the great carver chair as if he was sitting on pins. Celia had waited in the stable yard for him all morning and had begged him as soon as he appeared to withhold his signature from the documents committing John to Dr Rose’s care, and to order them to send John home. Harry retained enough sense to refuse to discuss the matter with Celia alone and told her that I had a right to be the judge of the best treatment for my husband. Celia had nothing to say to that, for all she had were vague impressions, frightened suspicions, that somehow, and she did not know how or why, I was not to be trusted about John.

So she kept her red eyes down, watched her plate and ate hardly a thing. I too had lost my appetite. John’s chair stood against the wall, his side of the table seemed curiously bare. I could not clean my ears of the memory of his terrified shrieks when the gaoler doctor had piled on top of him and bound him. The violence that had exploded in that sunny parlour seemed still to be echoing in the house as if a hundred ghosts were alerted by John’s screams.

Celia would not even enter the parlour after dinner but said she wanted to sit with Julia in the nursery. I remembered with a superstitious shudder how John too had sought the nursery as if only the children in the house were free from sin and violence and the lingering smell of corruption. But I smiled at her with all the warmth I could bring into my eyes and kissed her forehead to say goodnight. I thought, I imagined, that she shrank from my touch as if it might somehow mark her, leave some smudge of my ruthlessness on her. But I believed that Celia, like Mama, might hold the thread of detection in her hand and still fail to follow it into the maze.

So Harry and I sat alone in the parlour and when the tea tray came in it was my duty to pour and sweeten Harry’s tea to his liking. When he had sipped, and munched his way through a whole plate of
petits fours
I stretched my satin shoes out to the brass fender and said, casually, ‘Have you signed and posted the documents for Dr Rose, Harry?’

‘I’ve signed them,’ he replied. ‘They are on your desk. But what Celia tells me about Dr Rose, and about John, makes me wonder if we are doing the right thing.’

‘It was a most distressing scene,’ I agreed readily. ‘John was like a madman. If the two doctors had not been so prompt and efficient I do not know what might have happened. Celia thinks she can control John and help him with his drinking but the way he behaved today proves that she has little influence over him,’ I said. ‘It has been nearly two weeks now since she started trying to make him give up drinking and he has been drunk nearly every night. He even turned on Celia today and accused her of betraying him. We really cannot manage him if he is half mad from drink.’

Harry’s round face was downturned with worry.