Wideacre (Wideacre Trilogy) (69 page)

‘No,’ I murmured. I could say no more. Somewhere in the
very depths of me there was a sad little cry at the end of something. Deep in my heart I was mourning for some good thing about Wideacre that seemed to have broken, that seemed to have died. That had been poisoned as surely and painfully as dead Giles. And with as little a dose.

‘What’s the matter with everyone?’ cried Harry, reliably oafish at the worst possible moment. ‘I’ve never seen so many solemn faces. Come along now, it’s Christmas morning! Christmas morning!’

The closed resentful looks were turned on him and then the people, my people, looked down at the ground and shuffled their boots in the frozen gravel. Before Harry could make the situation any worse the door of the vicarage opened and the servants came out with the children’s dinner.

‘Giles is dead,’ I said quietly to Harry. ‘It seems he killed himself when his savings ran out rather than go on the parish. He was found this morning. You can see that everyone blames us. I think we should wait till they have drunk our healths and then go home.’

Harry’s red cheeks went pale. ‘My word, that’s very bad, Beatrice,’ he said. ‘Giles had no cause to do a thing like that. He should have known we would never have let him starve.’

‘Perhaps he didn’t,’ I said harshly. ‘What he wanted was work, not charity. But anyway he’s dead. Let’s finish here and get away before some gossip blabs it to Celia. There is no need for her to be upset.’

‘Indeed not,’ said Harry, glancing quickly around for her. She was holding one of the newborn Acre babies in her arms and smiling at it. The child’s mother stood beside, watching the two of them and her eyes on Celia were warm, not cold as the looks I had met.

‘We will not stay long,’ Harry called in his clear tenor. ‘We just came to wish you the compliments of the season, and to hope you enjoy the party we and Dr Pearce have given you.’

Then he turned and touched Celia’s arm. Together they walked back to the chaise and I followed a step behind. I could feel the eyes scanning my back and I had the odd fleeting fear that if the Culler or one like him were on my borders now I could not be sure of being safe. But I reassured myself swiftly. It
was mid-winter miseries — everyone who works on the land gets tired of the cold weather and the dark days. It was the shock of Giles’s death — everyone who is poor is in dread of going on the parish, and even worse, of being forced into the poorhouse. Once spring came life would be easier. And Giles would be forgotten.

In the carriage I leaned forward to look out of the window to reassure myself that nothing had really changed. That the Christmas party was the same as ever. That Giles’s death had upset his family and friends but that the rest of the village would soon forget. That once the children had eaten their fill there would be games and dancing and joy at Wideacre as there were at every Christmas time. That nothing on Wideacre could ever change so badly or so fast.

The pretty garden was a shambles. Our move to the carriage had been the signal for a free-for-all. The children were crawling all over the tables grabbing food and stuffing it into their mouths, and their parents were squeezing between them to snatch at food and stuff it into their pockets. It was a small-scale riot; no party. From the doorway Miss Green and the servants watched in horror. At his study window I caught a glimpse of Dr Pearce’s white face as his parishioners thumped and pushed and jostled to pull hunks of bread to pieces and to hack and claw at legs of ham. The little sweetmeats I had brought from the Hall fell to the ground unnoticed by anyone except the smallest children who crawled between adult kicking legs to get them. Above their heads on the table their mothers and fathers made desperate lunges for the food as if they were starving.

‘Drive on!’ I said sharply, with an edge of terror in my voice, and pulled the cord for the coachman. He had been still with amazement at the sight of such a frenzy in the very heart of Wideacre, but jumped at my signal, and the horses leaped in the harness to sweep us away from the scene.

‘What is happening?’ asked Celia. She could see almost nothing on the far side of the carriage with Harry’s bulk between her and my window. I leaned forward to block the view completely.

‘Rough party games,’ I said quickly, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice. ‘And some grabbing by the children.’ I glanced
at Harry. His cheeks were white, but at my hard look he nodded in support.

‘Good heavens, what a noise they make,’ he said, trying to sound casual.

Then, mercifully, we were out of earshot and I could sit back in my seat and breathe steadily and quietly to try to control my trembling.

I had not realized, had not thought, that the loss of casual labouring jobs would have hit Acre village so hard so soon. For it was not just our winter chores on Wideacre; we set the pattern for the rest of the neighbours. When Wideacre Hall employed the low-paid gangs of parish workers, recruited by the roundsman from the poorest families who had to live on parish charity, then that practice was sanctioned for the hundred square miles of our influence. Havering Hall had long been paying the lowest possible rates to the parish roundsman’s labouring gang and using them for a handful of days a month. Now with Wideacre going over to the parish labourers the last reliable employer in this part of Sussex had been lost.

Giles’s shameful death was, of course, the sign of a crazy old man’s inability to adapt to a new world. But his belief — that if there was no work to be had on Wideacre, then there was nothing for him but the workhouse — was probably right. The roundsman would take only the fittest of the destitute workers — Giles could never have been employed in the gang. For him it would have been the workhouse — worse than Chichester prison — and the sure road to death. He was a mad old man to take his own life, of course. His death was not a sensible reaction to our attempts to farm Wideacre rationally and profitably. The last thing I needed was a pang of conscience about such an old fool. And I would be mad myself if I even considered that his death should be laid at my door, that I had made his world — Wideacre — unbearable.

So I told myself during the drive home, and when we were inside the Hall with the front door bolted I was ready for Harry’s urgent need for reassurance. We stood by the parlour fire while Celia went upstairs to take her hat and coat off, and fetch the children for their Christmas dinner.

‘My God, Beatrice, that was terrible,’ said Harry. He crossed to the decanter of sherry in two swift strides and poured himself
a glass and tossed it off before handing me one. ‘They were like animals! Savages!’

I shrugged, deliberately careless. ‘Oh come, Harry,’ I said. ‘You are too nice. There is always a little pushing and shoving at the Christmas party. It is just that we usually do not see it. They generally wait for us to leave first!’

‘I have never seen anything like it before!’ Harry said firmly. ‘And neither, I am sure, have you, Beatrice. They were near rioting. I cannot understand it!’

I wager you cannot, you fool, I thought to myself and sipped at my sherry.

‘They are anxious,’ I said evenly. ‘They are anxious because many of them have lost their winter wages. And Giles’s death upset them all too. They think at the moment that they are near starvation, but when spring comes they will realize that there has been little real change.’

‘But they behaved as if they had not seen food for a sennight!’ Harry objected. ‘Beatrice, you saw them! You cannot tell me that those were families who find themselves a little short of cash. They looked as if they were starving.’

‘Well, what if they are?’ I demanded, suddenly hard; weary of shielding Harry from the consequences of our joint choice. ‘You wanted to use the roundsman labour gangs. We both agreed there would be no more casual labour for the villagers of Acre. We both agreed we would keep no hedgers and ditchers and helpers with the sheep on the wage books to be paid in good and bad weather and to be paid if they work or no. We agreed to that. Did you think they worked for the love of it? Of course they are hungry. They are receiving no pay; they are trying to last out on their savings until spring. They think that we will go back to the old ways and that every man in the village will be able to do a day’s ploughing, and every lad will be able to earn a penny sowing seed. When spring comes they will find that it is not so. That we shall still use the gang labourers. And if they want work they will have to go to the parish and join the gang and accept the pittance they are offered.

‘Are you saying now that you don’t want to continue with our plans?’ I asked tightly. ‘We are saving hundreds of pounds a month, and we are fanning as you have always wanted to. Did
you think no one paid for your fancy farming ideas, Harry? The poor pay. The poor always pay. But they can do nothing against us. And if you don’t like the look of what you are doing then turn your head away and look out of the other window like Celia.’

I spun on my heel and turned my back to him to stare into the fire and regain my temper. I was panting with anger and close to tears. Harry’s wilful ignorance about what we were doing to the land enraged me. But also I was boiling with rage at the trap I was in. For the decision to farm for profit and consider only profit had led us to this point and might yet take us farther. The poorer people would have to leave Acre; the estate could not support so many, farming in this new way. And many, many of them would be stubborn and not leave. Then, I supposed, the old people, and perhaps the frailer children, might die. And Giles would be only the first death on the road to make Richard the heir. With the picture of Richard as Master in my mind I would not retract, I would not relent. But I could see, and no one but I would see, the long, slow, painful path the poor of Wideacre would tread barefoot so that my son could be called Squire.

Harry’s hand fell on my shoulder and I tensed, but controlled myself not to shake it off. ‘This is a bitter time for us both,’ said Harry sadly, forgetting the hungry faces and thinking only of himself. ‘Of course I agree we should go on. Every landowner has precisely these problems. It is a time of change. Nothing we can do could stop that process of change. The people will just have to adapt, that is all. They will just have to learn to live the way things are. It would be folly for you and me to try to farm in the old ways, Beatrice.’

I nodded. Harry had found a way to still his own conscience, and I had my way to silence mine. I could comfort myself with the thought that all that I now did brought my lovely son closer and closer to owning Wideacre. And Harry could tell himself the convenient lie that he was equally trapped by the changes as the people he had dismissed from their work. Harry had Pontius Pilate’s answer that it was really nothing to do with him. He saw himself as part of a process of historical change and he could neither be blamed nor held responsible for what would happen.

‘There is just no alternative,’ he said quietly. And he even sounded sad that there was nothing he could do.

So when Celia came downstairs with the two nurses and the two children dressed in their best and hungry for roast goose we could all exchange smiles and go into the dining room to eat at a table heaped with main courses and side dishes, as if, five miles away, there were no hungry children picking crumbs from the frozen grass of the vicar’s garden.

It was a hard winter in Acre that year. I went less to the village than I had ever done, for it was no pleasure to me to be greeted with surly faces. Once or twice a woman had burst from a cottage with tears in her eyes and put her hand on the side of my gig and said, ‘Miss Beatrice, do take my William to do some hedging for you. You know there’s no one like him for hedging in the whole county. I can’t keep the children on the wages we get from the parish. They’re hungry, Miss Beatrice.
Do
give my man work.’

Then I would have to hold the picture of my own child, my Richard, and his future very clear before my eyes. I would stare hard at the horse’s ears and not look the woman in the face and say in an even tone, ‘I am sorry, Bessy, but there’s nothing I can do. We only use the roundsman on Wideacre now. If your man wants other work he had best go and seek it.’

Then I would click to the horse and drive off before she shamed herself and her man by weeping before me in the village lane. And my face was set and cold, for I knew no other way to do it.

Harry would do nothing at all. When he met someone in the lane and heard the tale of the bad wages the roundsman gave the gang, of the meanness of the parish and of the fear of the workhouse, he would shrug at the man and say, ‘What can I do? I am no freer to choose how the world is than you, my good fellow.’ And he would put a hand in his pocket for a shilling as if that would help a man with four children and a sickly wife at home, and a long cold winter to get through.

They thought I had turned against them. But that was only partly true. I had to think of other things, of the claim of Richard, and of my desperate need to establish the entail and Richard’s and Julia’s partnership in the breathing space I had won by John’s absence using John’s fortune. Even so, I did not enclose the common until spring, so they had a winter’s supply of
firewood, which they gathered for free, and peat, which they cut for nothing, before I had the fences made that would straddle the footpaths, and ban the whole village from the land they had thought was their own to use.

All winter the fences stood at the back of the stables and I delayed ordering them set in place.

‘We really should get on with enclosing the common,’ Harry would say to me, leaning over the map. ‘Mr Llewellyn’s loans are costing us a good deal. We shall be planting wheat this spring, and there will be much work to do to make the ground ready.’

‘I know,’ I said, glancing up from writing letters at my desk. ‘I have it in mind, Harry. I have the fences ready and I have told the roundsman that I shall need at least twenty men for the work. But I wish to wait until the snow is gone. The people are used to getting their firewood for free, and also snaring rabbits there. There may be trouble when the fences first go up. It is bound to be easier for us if we do it when the weather is milder.’