Wideacre (Wideacre Trilogy) (70 page)

‘Very well, Beatrice,’ Harry said. ‘You know best how it should be done. But really, the people should understand that they have been living in the old ways for too long. I don’t know another estate in the county that held to the traditional ways as long as we did. Free firewood, free snaring, free grazing, free gleaning; we have been
robbing
ourselves for all these years, Beatrice. You would think they would be grateful.’

‘Odd, isn’t it?’ I said drily. ‘But they are not.’

Indeed they were not. As the winter went on I heard no more appeals from the village women. When I trotted my gig through the village there were no smiling faces or deep curtsys. There was no open rudeness; I would have dismissed anyone from the land if I had seen so much as a flicker of overt insolence. But I was not loved as I had been. And I missed it. The men would doff their caps or pull a forelock and the women make their little bob, but they did not call out ‘Good day’ to me, and the children were not held up to see pretty Miss Beatrice and her fine horse. It was just another price that had to be paid.

They disliked Harry too, of course. But in the fickle way of ignorant people they did not blame him as they blamed me. They knew he had always been crazy for change, but they had trusted me to hold out against him. Now I was farming for profit
they blamed me far worse than they did Harry. They even blamed me for influencing Harry, although if they had consulted their own conveniently short memories they would have known that Harry had always been a fool on the land and I was not responsible for that.

The weather matched the angry desolate mood of Wideacre and the winter dragged on with snowstorms and wet freezing fogs, then high winds and storms of rain all through lambing. We lost more lambs that year than we had done for seasons. Partly it was the weather but also I think it was because the men would not stay out all hours to earn a smile from me and a slap on their shoulders at the end of a long cold evening. While I was there watching over them they did their job helping the sheep in difficulties, checking the nibbled-off cord, ensuring the lambs were accepted by their mothers. But when I was not there I knew that they were away down the hill to Acre with a spit on the ground at the mention of the flock.

So we stood to make less of a profit on the sheep that year than I had calculated. And the prospect of losing that money made me firmer to hold to the plans I had, whatever it cost me in smiles and goodwill.

We had to keep more beasts indoors and there was not enough hay or winter feed. Faced with the choice of killing good stock or buying in feed, I chose to buy. But the hay prices were outrageous and there was no way I could get the money back. We would be lucky to break even on the beasts this year.

I spent one cold dark afternoon after another at my desk. And when Stride brought in the candles in the early twilight my head was aching. We did not seem to be making enough money. And Mr Llewellyn’s loans were costing more than I had thought they would. The interest rates were high but the profits were rock-bottom and I was actually paying out more than came in. At this rate I would not be able to buy top quality seedcorn. I would have to borrow to buy seed.

I rested my head in my hands and I knew real fear. Not fear like when you jump too high a gate, hunting, nor even my steady, constant fear of violence, of men coming for me. But business fear. The black figures on white were so uncompromising. And even the feel of the heavy cashbox under the desk did not comfort
me. It looked like a lot of money. But I needed more. Wideacre needed more. And I was afraid of the clever London business men. I was afraid to borrow again. But I would have to do so.

Harry was shielded by me from the worry of business. I did not want to frighten him off the plan to change the entail. And I was too proud to admit I was afraid. But Harry could not escape the hatred of the village that grew and grew all the cold winter.

Of the three of us only Celia, the newcomer, seemed to keep their respect. In their prejudiced ignorant way they did not blame her for the empty soup pots and the thin gruel. Like fools they managed not to see Celia’s fine woollen cloaks and fashionable bonnets, and saw only that her face underneath the silk trimming was pale and anxious, and that her purse was always open to tide a family over especial difficulties, or to buy a child a blanket for the cold nights. As the weather worsened in January and the ground froze hard, Celia had the carriage out every day to send steaming bowls of stew from the Wideacre kitchens down to families in the village who otherwise would have eaten no meat that week. And I noted, sourly, that they blessed her for it.

She came to know Acre village, my village, and she started to know the people, my people. She started to learn the detail of the kinship and friendship ties. Who was married to whose sister. Which man drank, which father was too rough with his children. Which women were pregnant. And she was the first to know when Daisy Sower’s baby died.

‘Beatrice, we must do something,’ Celia said, walking without so much as a knock into my office. She had come into the house straight from the stables, by the west-wing door, still wearing her driving cape and dress and as she moved to the fire she stripped off her black leather gloves. I was suddenly struck how much she had changed since Mama’s death. Her pace was faster, her voice clearer, her whole bearing more purposeful. Now she stood with her back to my fire, warming herself at my hearth and preparing herself to lecture me about my people.

‘Do what?’ I said sharply.

‘Something about the hardship in Acre,’ she said passionately. ‘It cannot be right, Beatrice. There are families there in want. Now poor Daisy Sower’s little baby has died and I am sure that it was because she never had enough milk for it. There was so
little food in the house I am certain that she was feeding her husband and the other children first and only then eating. Her baby just got thinner and thinner and now it has died, Beatrice. It is such a wicked waste. It was such a lovely baby!’ Celia’s voice quavered on a sob, and she turned to the fireplace and brushed her hand across her eyes.

‘Surely we can employ more people on the estate?’ she said. ‘Or at the very least we could give some of the grain to the village. Wideacre seems so wealthy, I do not see how there could be hardship in Acre.’

‘Would you like to see the figures?’ I said, my voice hard. ‘Wideacre seems wealthy to you because up until now you have spent your life indoors where no expense has been spared. The housekeeping is partly your responsibility, Celia, and you know I have never challenged a bill from the kitchen.’

She nodded. The first sign of my anger was enough to unbalance Celia. She remembered too well her horror of Lord Havering when he used to bellow at her in one of his drunken rages. She could not tolerate a raised voice, or even a sharp tone. I used both.

‘It is all very well for you queening it in the village with your bowls of soup and blankets, but we have mortgages to meet and debts to be paid. It is no Garden of Eden. This year we have lost dozens of lambs, and the calving is going badly too. If we have a wet spring we will have problems with the corn. It is no good asking me to take on half of the men in Acre village. The estate cannot afford it. In any case I have signed a contract with the parish roundsman and we get our labourers from him. They are generally the very men from Acre anyway, so they are working here, but at proper rates.’

Celia nodded. ‘They tell me the parish rates of pay are not sufficient to keep a family,’ she said softly.

‘That may be so,’ I said impatiently. ‘It is hardly my fault if the women cannot make the money stretch. It is hardly my job to encourage improvidence. The rates are set by the Justices of the Peace, or the churchwardens. I am not able to pay higher, and I would be foolish indeed to do so.’

Celia looked dashed. But Daisy Sower’s baby was still on her conscience and in her barren mind. ‘It was just that poor baby …” she said.

‘How many children has Daisy Sower?’ I interrupted harshly. ‘Five? Six? Of course there is not enough money to go round. She should stop having children and then she would see she could manage perfectly well. You do the poor a great disservice to encourage them as you do, Celia!’

Celia flushed scarlet and then pale at the tone in my voice. ‘I am sorry to have disturbed you,’ she said, gathering her scraps of dignity and turning to leave.

I stopped her at the door.

‘Celia!’ I called, and my tone was kind. She turned at once, and I smiled at her. ‘It is I who should apologize to you,’ I said tenderly. ‘I am a miserable cross sister to you and I beg your pardon.’

She came from the door slowly, and there was distrust in her face.

‘You need not say that, Beatrice,’ she said. ‘I know how much you have to worry you. The sheep and the cows and the worry there always is, I know, in your mind about John. I apologize for troubling you further.’

‘Ah, don’t!’ I said, reaching out a hand to her. ‘It is just that I have been worried about money matters, my dear, and it does make me short-tempered.’

Celia’s knowledge of money matters extended so far as generally knowing within a pound or so how much she had in her purse, but she nodded as if she understood perfectly.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said earnestly. ‘And your worry about John. Have you had a report from Dr Rose this month?’

‘Yes,’ I said, making my voice sad. ‘He says that John is still far from well but is struggling bravely against the temptation.’

‘No word from John himself?’ asked Celia tentatively.

‘No,’ I said, and managed a brave smile. ‘I write and write. But Dr Rose said that John is not ready to reply yet, not to any letters. So I am not concerned not to have heard from him personally.’

‘Should you like to go for a visit, Beatrice?’ Celia asked. ‘The roads will surely clear soon and then you could see for yourself how he is.’

I shook my head sadly and leaned my cheek in my hand.

‘No,’ I said. ‘It would do no good. Dr Rose told me quite
specifically that John was not ready to receive visitors and that a surprise visit would almost certainly cause a relapse. We will just have to be patient.’

‘Oh yes,’ Celia said earnestly. ‘Poor John, and poor you too, Beatrice.’ She put her arm around my shoulders and gave me a hug. ‘Now I will leave you for I know you are busy,’ she said softly. ‘But don’t work too hard, and stop soon and change for dinner.’

I nodded with another of my courageous smiles, and Celia took herself off. I waited until the door closed behind her and I heard her footsteps echo down the corridor to the main part of the Hall, then I opened one of the secret drawers of the desk and took out Dr Rose’s reports, and a bundle of letters. They were addressed to my husband. They were from Celia.

Dr Rose had faithfully forwarded every one to me unopened with his monthly reports. These were clear and had done much to increase my tension. If the lawyers did not hurry, if John continued to improve, I should have him back at Wideacre before I had given his fortune away to my cousin in return for the entail. Dr Rose’s first report had been gloomy. John had completed the journey in a drugged state but when he woke to find himself in a room with a barred window he had gone crazy with fear. He had sworn that he was imprisoned by a witch, by the Wideacre witch, who had her whole family under some spell and would keep him imprisoned until he was dead.

All this sounded sufficiently lunatic to keep him inside and safely away from Wideacre for years. But Dr Rose’s later reports were more doubtful. John was making progress. He still had a craving for drink, but for the rest of his time he was lucid and calm. He was using laudanum in controlled amounts and was taking no alcohol. ‘I think we may begin to hope,’ Dr Rose wrote in his last report.

I was not beginning to hope. I was beginning to fear. Events were taking place outside the estate where my word was law, beyond my influence. I could not make the lawyers go faster; I could not speed the negotiations with my cousin. I could not set back John’s recovery. All I could do was to write letter after letter to the lawyers pressing them to move on with their slow processes, and the occasional sad reply to Dr Rose, assuring him
that I would rather my husband stayed with him for a year than prejudice his health by bringing him home too early. I had also a hard task to keep John’s father safely away in Edinburgh. As soon as John was committed and power of attorney vested in me I wrote to him to tell him of his son’s illness and to assure him that John was receiving the best of care. Using Dr Rose’s authority I explained that no one was allowed to visit John, but as soon as he was well enough I would contact old Mr MacAndrew at once so that he could visit his once best talented son. The old man, in a storm of grief and concern, never thought to ask how John’s fortune was managed while he was inside the asylum, and I never offered information. If he had asked me I would have said that Harry held the MacAndrew shares in trust for John. But I had been holding to the hope that by the time John was released and ready to reclaim his fortune, it would all be gone. Spent to put the bastard who bore his name into the Squire’s chair in the house he hated.

All had to happen at the right time. If only the lawyers would hurry. If only my cousin would sign the contract, surrendering his inheritance. And all I could do was wait. And Celia could only write letters. Eleven letters I had in my drawer in the desk, one for each week that John had been away. Every Monday Celia wrote on one side of one sheet of notepaper, judging perhaps that a long letter might disturb him. Uncertain yet, whether he forgave her for what he had called her betrayal of him. Tender letters they were. They were full of a love so sweet and innocent, the love that two children might share. She started each letter, ‘My dearest brother’, and she ended each one with the words, ‘You are daily in my thoughts and nightly in my prayers’, and signed herself, ‘Your loving sister, Celia’.

And all the body of the letter was news of the children, a word about the weather, and always the assurance that I was well. ‘Beatrice is well and grows lovelier every day,’ she wrote in one. ‘You will be glad to know that Beatrice is well and, as usual, most beautiful,’ she wrote in another. ‘Beatrice is well but I know she misses you,’ wrote Celia. I smiled a bitter smile when I read them. Then I tied them together and stuffed them at the back of the secret drawer, locked it, hid the key behind a book in the bookcase and went to change for dinner with a light step and my eyes shining.
I held to my private pledge not to enclose the common before the worst of the bad weather was over, and I waited until March before two days of settled clear cloudless days tipped my impatience to have done.