Wideacre (Wideacre Trilogy) (68 page)

I had not discussed the matter; I had not even got down from the gig. I had met them under the chestnut tree on the green and, as I had told them, it started to snow. They had to have their grumble beside their own fireplaces, not at me. And, in any case, the potatoes had already been lifted, the green vegetables cut. They would not feel the loss of the common strips until next winter.

Even then, Acre villagers might count themselves lucky, for almost every cottage had a little garden. The gardens were filled with flowers, often the pride and joy of the house. They would have to go, and the little grass patches where children played would be dug over for vegetables, and planted in straight rows. All this, so that the Wideacre estate might be increased by twenty acres. But all this so that my son Richard would be a week closer to the Master’s chair with the extra small profit.

I pulled Sorrel up, and tied her to a fence post and then led the way on a little path along the brow of the downs until we reached the new plantation with the sheep-proof withy fence protecting the young trees.

‘How old is it?’ asked Mr Llewellyn, the smile gone from his eyes and a hard shrewd look ranging over the tall trees, now standing twenty, thirty feet.

‘I planted it with my papa,’ I said, smiling at the memory. ‘I was five. These woods are fourteen years old. He promised I should have a stool from these trees when I was an old lady.’ I shrugged away my sadness.

‘Times change,’ said Mr Llewellyn, his quick mind following
my grief. ‘No one can predict the way things change these days. All we can do is to try to follow our consciences — and to chase profit with a care to others!’ He gave me a rueful smile and turned back to the trees.

‘Growing well,’ he commented approvingly. ‘How many trees?’

‘About five hundred,’ I said. I opened the little gate in the fence for him, and he strode down the straight rows looking carefully at the needles for signs of disease, pulling at the branches to see their healthy spring back into place. Then he walked in a carefully paced square, his lips moving as he counted how many trees to a ten yard square.

‘Good,’ he said finally. ‘I’ll certainly lend money on this plantation. I have a contract you may look at in my chaise. Was there some common land as well?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But it’s in the opposite direction. We’ll drive there.’

We walked back to the gig and with clever courtesy he did not offer to help me as I took Sorrel’s reins at the bit and backed him up the narrow path to turn the gig. Only when I had Sorrel facing downhill with the brake on, did he swing into the gig and smile at me.

We drove downhill and then along the lane towards Acre. Before we reached the village we turned left into the park woodland again, along the little track that leads to the new mill. Mrs Green was feeding hens from her front door and I waved at her as we went past and saw her eyes scanning Mr Llewellyn, wondering who he was. She would know soon enough. There are no secrets on Wideacre. I never expect to keep my business quiet.

The track wound through the woods, thickly silent under the grip of the frost, and then broke out into clearer ground as we neared the common. Softly on the air I heard the creaky sound of strong wings and above our heads was a V of geese flying westwards, looking for melted water and feed.

‘This is the land,’ I said, nodding at the common. ‘I showed you the area on the map. It is all as you see here. A little hilly, mainly bracken and heather, a few trees which will have to be felled and two little streams.’

I kept my voice even, but my love for the common, gold and brass under this cold winter light, crept into my tone despite myself. One of the streams was near by and we could hear the trickle of its clear waters as it dripped off icicle waterfalls on its way to the Fenny.

The bracken still glowed bronze under a silvering of white frost. The few trees I would have to fell were my beloved silver birches, their trunks paper-white and their twigs a deep purple-brown in a shape as graceful as a Sèvres vase. The heather still held pale grey flowers under the coating of hoar frost, so every plant masqueraded as lucky white heather. The ground beneath the wheels of the gig was hard as a rock where the wet peat had frozen, but in the little valleys the white sand was as crunchy as sugar and looked as pale and as sweet.

‘You can enclose this?’ Mr Llewellyn looked at me, his face quizzical.

‘There are no legal problems,’ I said. ‘The land belongs outright to the Wideacre estate. It has always been used as common land and there is only a tradition of access and use. Our people have always taken the lesser game here; they have always grazed animals here; they have always collected firewood or kindling here. But there is nothing in writing. In the old days it used to be agreed annually by the Squire and the village, but there are no records. There is no written agreement to stop us.’

I smiled but my eyes were cold.

‘And even if there were records,’ I said ironically. ‘They are kept in my office, and there are few of our people who can read. There is certainly no reason why we should not enclose this.’

‘You misunderstand me.’ Mr Llewellyn spoke softly, but his eyes no longer twinkled. ‘I meant to ask whether you felt you could bear to rip up this land with a plough, level the valleys, fill in the stream beds and plant acres of corn here.’

‘That is my intention,’ I said, my face as grave as his.

‘Well, well,’ he said, and he said no more.

‘You are interested in a mortgage on this land?’ I asked neutrally, and I turned the trap back the way we had come.

‘Indeed, yes,’ he said coolly. ‘It promises to be a most profitable venture for the estate. Would you wish to have the money paid directly to you, or to your London bankers?’

‘To our London lawyers, if you please,’ I said. ‘You have their address.’

We sat in silence then, and the trap rattled home in the yellow winter sunshine, which brightened but could not warm the icy day.

‘A pleasure to do business with you, Mrs MacAndrew,’ he said formally, as we drove into the stable yard. ‘I’ll not come in again. I’ll be off now as soon as my horses are put to.’

He went to his chaise and brought the two contracts out to me. I took them, standing beside Sorrel’s head, her soft lips gently nipping at my fingers, cold inside the leather gloves. I tapped her russet nose and held my hand out to him in farewell.

‘Thank you for calling,’ I said politely. ‘Good day, and safe journey.’

He got into his chaise and the footman folded up the steps, slammed the door and swung himself up into his seat behind. A cold ride he would have of it, I thought, all the way to London in his livery. I raised a hand in farewell as the carriage moved off.

The day was cold, but I was chilled inside at the change in Mr Llewellyn’s manner towards me. A total stranger, he despised me for my attitude to the common land, for reneging on the informal contract between me and the poorest of the poor, for my willingness to destroy the easy fertile beauty of Wideacre. I shivered. Then the carriage was no longer between me and the Hall, and I could see the door to the west wing. Celia was standing there, watching me. She was dressed in the usual black, and she looked thin, and slight, and scared.

‘Who was that gentleman?’ she asked. ‘Why did you not invite him in?’

‘Just a merchant,’ I said easily, handing the reins of Sorrel to one of the stable lads. I swept Celia in with an arm around her waist. ‘It’s freezing again,’ I said briskly. ‘Let’s go and warm up beside your parlour fire.’

‘What did he want?’ she persisted as I stripped off my gloves and cape and rang for hot coffee.

‘To buy the timber from the new plantation,’ I said with a convincing half-truth. ‘I had to drive him up there and it was terribly cold.’

‘Selling the timber already?’ said Celia surprised. ‘But the plantation isn’t ready for cutting yet, surely?’

‘No, not yet, Celia,’ I said. ‘He’s a timber specialist. He offers you a guaranteed price long before the cutting. Actually it is growing well and will be ready for felling soon. You haven’t been up there for years, Celia. You don’t know what it is like.’

‘No,’ she admitted, accepting the rebuke. ‘I do not get out on the land like you, Beatrice. I do not understand it like you.’

‘No reason why you should,’ I said briskly, and smiled at Stride as he brought in the coffee. I gestured to him to pour and took my cup to the fireplace to drink it before the blaze. ‘Your control over the kitchen is flawless. What’s for dinner?’

‘Game soup and venison, and some other dishes,’ said Celia vaguely. ‘Beatrice, when will John come home?’

The suddenness of her question took me by surprise and I jerked my head up to look at her. She was sitting in the window seat with neither darning nor embroidery in her hands, but her eyes were not idle — she was scanning my face — and her brain was not idle. I could feel her trying to think her way out of the incomprehensible situation that seemed to be before her.

‘When he is completely well,’ I said firmly. ‘I could not bear to have to go through that scene again.’

She paled as I had thought she would.

‘God forbid,’ she said, and her eyes dropped to the floor where John had lain screaming for her to rescue him. ‘If I had known they would have treated him like that I should never have supported your idea of sending for them,’ she said.

‘Certainly not,’ I said, matching her fervent tone. ‘But once they had him and he was sleeping peacefully it was obvious that the only thing to do was to let them go on with the treatment. After all, it was John’s own wish to go.’

Celia nodded. I could see a host of reservations behind her eyes, and I wanted to hear none of them.

‘I shall go and change for dinner,’ I said, tossing my tricorn hat into the chair. ‘It is too cold to go out this afternoon. Let us take the children into the gallery and play shuttlecock with them.’

Celia’s face lightened with her quick affection for the children. But her eyes stayed shadowed.

‘Yes, lovely!’ she said, but there was no joy in her voice.

So at the cheap price of an afternoon of unmitigated tedium
playing at shuttlecock with Celia, two doting nurses and with children too small to understand the game, and too little to play it if they did, I won freedom from any questions about Mr Llewellyn, and entails, and my sudden need for capital. And freedom from questions about John, and John’s proposed return.

Celia assumed John would come home for Christmas. But Christmas came and went and John was not well enough to return. We could not have a great Wideacre Christmas party for we were still in mourning. But Dr Pearce suggested a smaller party for the village children at the vicarage, which Harry and Celia and I could attend.

I thought we could do better than that; I thought we had better supply it too. Miss Green — the Vicar’s housekeeper, the miller’s sister — had a spinster’s notion of what Acre children should eat, and the sort of amounts that were suitable. So on Christmas Day I drove to church with a bootful of meat and bread and jellies and sweetmeats and lemonade. The party was to be immediately after the church service and Harry and Celia and I walked from the church, saying ‘Good morning’ and ‘Happy Christmas’ to the wealthier tenants who had stopped in the churchyard to greet us.

The poorer tenants, and the Acre villagers, and even the cottager children were in the vicarage garden, dourly supervised by Miss Green and by the two curates.

‘Happy Christmas, good morning,’ I said generally as we entered the garden gate and was surprised at the response. There were no smiles. The men bared their heads or pulled a forelock as Harry and Celia and I walked up the path and the women dipped a curtsy. But the warmth of a Wideacre welcome was missing. I looked around, surprised, but nobody met my eyes, and there were no loving voices calling ‘Good day’ to me, or muttering with satisfaction how pretty Miss Beatrice was looking today.

I was so accustomed to being the darling of Wideacre that I could not understand the feeling of coldness in that pretty garden. The children were seated on long benches along a trestle table, their parents standing behind them. In a few moments the Wideacre servants would help Miss Green serve them a hearty
dinner. It was the Christmas party — one of the jolliest and noisiest events of the year. Yet it was silent, and no face smiled at me. I spotted the midwife Mrs Merry and beckoned her to me with a crook of my finger.

‘What is the matter with everyone?’ I asked. ‘They’re all very quiet.’

‘It’s the death of Giles that has upset everyone,’ she said to me, her voice low. ‘Had you not heard, Miss Beatrice?’

Giles — my mind went back to the old man who had stooped over his spade to listen to my papa all those years ago when I was a child and thought I owned every inch of Wideacre. Giles, who had seemed so old and frail, had outlived my strong, young papa and had been working right up to the day when I stopped casual labour for the village and called in the parish labour gang instead. Now the old man had died — but that was no good reason to spoil a children’s party.

‘Why are they so upset?’ I asked. ‘He was an old man, bound to die some day.’

Mrs Merry’s eyes were sharp on my face. ‘He did not die from age, Miss Beatrice. He poisoned himself and he will have to be buried outside the churchyard without a service.’

I gasped. ‘Poisoned himself!’ I exclaimed. My shock made my voice too loud and a couple of our tenants glanced curiously at me as if they guessed that Mrs Merry was telling me the dreadful news.

‘There must have been some mistake,’ I said certainly. ‘Why on earth should anyone think he would do such a thing?’

‘Because he said he would,’ said Mrs Merry baldly. ‘When you stopped the casual work, digging ditches and hedging, he had no money. He lived off his savings for two weeks and borrowed from his neighbours for a week. But then he knew he would have to go on the parish. And he always swore he would kill himself first. This morning they found him dead. He had taken the strychnine he borrowed from the mill, saying he had rats in the cottage. It’s a painful death that, Miss Beatrice. His body was bent backwards like a bow and his face black. They were trying to get the body in the coffin as you drove by on your way to church. Didn’t you see them, Miss Beatrice?’