Wideacre (Wideacre Trilogy) (86 page)

‘If you were considering parting with Wideacre …’ Mr Gilby started engagingly.

My head jerked up. ‘Wideacre!’ I said outraged. ‘Wideacre will never be for sale!’

He nodded, an apologetic smile on his face.

‘I am so sorry,’ he said. ‘I must have misunderstood. I thought you were selling the crops and the woods preparatory to selling the estate. If you had been I would have paid a very fair price, very good indeed. You’d not get a better one, I assure you. I had the impression that the estate was rather overcommitted and I thought …’

‘The estate is managing wonderfully,’ I said with a tremor of rage in my voice. ‘And I would be bankrupt before I parted with it. This is the inheritance of the Laceys, Mr Gilby. I have a son and a niece who are to come after me. I would not sell their home. I would not sell my own home.’

‘No, of course, of course,’ he said pacifically. ‘But if you should change your mind. If Mr Llewellyn were to foreclose, for example …’

‘He will not,’ I said with an assurance I did not feel. What talk was there about Wideacre in the money-men’s clubs? Would they form a ring against us and foreclose on the estate to win for
themselves one of the biggest prizes in Sussex? Had my borrowings not been discreetly spread around London at all, but had played straight into the hands of a ring of cronies who even now calculated the months before I should be ruined? And what did Mr Gilby, a corn merchant, know of Mr Llewellyn, a dealer in land and wood from the other side of the City?

‘Even if he did, I have sufficient funds. I am a MacAndrew,’ I said.

‘Of course,’ said Mr Gilby, his black eyes betraying his secret knowledge that the MacAndrew money was closed to me. He might even know that the MacAndrew fortune was working against me.

‘I’ll bid you good day then,’ he said, and he took himself off without another word.

He left me still. He left me silent. He left me cold with dread. It was bad enough to know that the Culler and all the lawless men of his rank might be planning against me, waiting to come to me. But if my own people — those who slept between linen sheets and ate off silver plate — were plotting against me, then I was lost indeed. If the hard-faced money-men knew of me, knew of the mounting pile of debts and the empty cash box, then Wideacre and I were both in jeopardy. I had not thought that they might all know each other. I had forgotten that men like to make little clubs, like to be in packs, like to bully as a gang. Alone and isolated from the outside world I had not realized that there might be eyes watching me, ears listening for the first note of hesitation, and smiles exchanged as they heard of one heavy debt after another, and no sign of my getting clear.

I could fight them with the easy productive wealth of Wideacre at my back, and a village full of people who loved me and would work for free rather than I should lose a battle against strangers. Or I could fight an angry village, a bitter workforce. But I could not fight the lower orders and the people of my own rank at once, and hope to win. And while I was undermining and attacking the poor, the wealthy were undermining and attacking me. With a sullen, silent village on one hand and a secretive ring of creditors on the other I was surrounded by peril. And in the middle of it all — like a bone between two dogs — was Wideacre. And I could no longer feel for Wideacre.

I gave a little moan of sorrow and exhaustion and laid my face on my hands on my hard desk and stayed still until the summer evening grew grey outside my tall windows and bats criss-crossed the evening sky. Somewhere, from the wood, a nightingale started singing. I longed only for rest.

I had not reckoned with Celia. I began to think I had never properly reckoned with Celia. She came into my office as soon as the carriage returned. She came in, taking off her bonnet, and never even glanced at the mirror over the mantelpiece to see if her fair hair was smooth.

‘We passed a post-chaise on the drive with a gentleman in it,’ she said. ‘Who was he, Beatrice?’

I glanced at the papers on my desk and looked at her with raised eyebrows as if to imply that I found her curiosity impertinent. She met my eyes look for look. And her pretty mouth was not smiling.

‘Who was he?’ she asked again.

‘It was someone come to see a horse,’ I said blandly. ‘Tobermory’s foal out of Bella. It seems that the fame of the Wideacre hunters is spreading.’

‘No, it wasn’t,’ Celia contradicted me, her voice even. ‘It was a Mr Gilby, the London corn merchant. I stopped the carriage and spoke to him.’

I flushed with irritation but I kept my voice steady. ‘Oh, him!’ I said. ‘I thought you meant another gentleman. I have had two visitors this afternoon. Mr Gilby was the last.’

‘He told me he had bought the wheat as it stands in the fields,’ said Celia, ignoring my lie. ‘He told me you are indeed going to forestall the market.’

I rose from my desk and smiled at her. I knew there was no warmth in my eyes, and her face was like stone.

‘Really, Celia, this is hardly the business you were brought up to,’ I said. ‘The business of managing Wideacre is a complex task and one in which you have previously shown little interest. It is too late now to start meddling with the way I run the estate.’

‘You are right to reproach me for knowing little,’ she said. Her breath was fast and as she spoke one of her easy blushes coloured her face and neck. ‘I think it is a great fault that ladies are taught
to know nothing of the lives of the poor. I have lived all my life in the country and you are right when you say I am ignorant.’

I tried to interrupt her, but she talked over me.

‘I have lived in a fool’s paradise,’ she said. ‘I have spent money without ever thinking from whence it came or who had earned it.’

She paused. I moved to the bell push as if to order tea.

‘I was brought up to think like a child,’ she said, speaking half to herself. ‘I was brought up like a baby who eats food but does not realize someone has had to cook it, and mash it, and serve it in a bowl. I have spent and spent Wideacre money without ever realizing that the money came from the labour of the poor.’

‘Not entirely,’ I contradicted her. ‘You should speak with Harry on the theories of political economy, but we are farmers, remember, not merchants or manufacturers. Our wealth comes from the land, from the natural fertility, from nature.’

Celia waved away the argument with an impatient gesture and put her palm flat down on my rent table.

‘You know that is not true, Beatrice,’ she said. ‘You take the money here every month. People pay us because we own the land. Left to itself the land would grow weeds and meadow flowers. We invest in it as surely as a merchant, and we pay people to work it for us as surely as a mine owner pays miners.’

I stood silent. Celia had changed so much from the shy girl who had watched the reapers and blushed when Harry looked at her. I said nothing, but I felt a growing unease.

‘The mine owner pays them a fraction of what they earn,’ she said slowly as if she was working out her ideas aloud. ‘Then he sells what they have dug, at a profit. He keeps all of that profit. That is why he is rich and they are poor.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘You do not understand business. He has to buy equipment and he has to pay back loans. Also, he has to have a return on his investment. If it did not profit him to mine, then he would invest his money elsewhere, and his workforce would have no wage at all.’

Celia’s honest gaze was on my face and, surprisingly, she smiled as if I was jesting with her.

‘Oh, Beatrice, that is such nonsense!’ she said with a ripple of laughter. ‘That is what Harry says! That is what Harry’s books
say! I would have thought you of all people would have known what nonsense that is! All the people who write about the need for a man to have profit are rich people. All they wish to prove is that their profits are justified. That is why there are hundreds of men writing thousands of books trying to explain why some people go hungry and others get richer and richer. They have to write all those books because they will not accept the answer which is there before their eyes: that there is no justification.’

I moved restlessly, but she was looking out of the window past me.

‘Why should the man who invests his money have his profit guaranteed, while the man who invests his labour, even his life, has no guaranteed wage?’ she said. ‘And why should the man who has money to invest earn so very much more with his capital than a man could earn working at the very top of his strength, all day? If they were both to be rewarded equally then after the debts had been paid and the new equipment bought, miners would live in houses and eat the food of the mine owners. And they clearly do not. They live like animals in dirt and squalor and they starve while the mine owners live like princes in houses far away from the ugly mines.’

I nodded emphatically. ‘The conditions are dreadful I am told. And the moral danger!’

Celia’s brown eyes gleamed at my shift of ground.

‘It is as bad here,’ she said baldly. ‘The labourers work all day and earn less than a shilling. I do not work at all and yet I have an allowance of two hundred pounds a quarter. I have taken no risks with capital. I replace no machinery. I am paid simply because I am a member of the Quality and we are all wealthy. There is no justice in that, Beatrice. There is no logic. It is not even a very pleasant way to live.’

I plumped down in my chair, the Squire’s chair, and I drew my papers towards me. I had forgotten that I had ever thought the world should change. I had forgotten that a landless man had ever persuaded me that the people who know and love the land are those who should make the decisions about it.

‘It is a wicked world, Celia,’ I said, smiling. ‘We are agreed on that. But it would do little good if you were paid a labourer’s wage. It would make no difference if we were a Leveller’s
commonwealth. The Commonwealth of Wideacre would still have to pay its way in the outside world.’ I tapped the drawer, which held the sheaf of bills due for settling this month. The wood no longer sounded hollow: it was packed tight. ‘It is the outside world that is massing against Wideacre,’ I said. ‘It is the outside world that sets the pace of change.’

‘Sell land,’ said Celia abruptly.

I gazed at her, open-mouthed.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Harry tells me that you two have borrowed so heavily to buy the entail and pay the lawyers’ fees that you have no choice but to profiteer and farm in this new way. Clear the debts by selling land, and then you need farm no longer in a way that starves Acre, and has wrecked the life of Wideacre.’

‘You do not understand, Celia!’ I burst out. ‘We will never, never sell Wideacre land while I manage the estate! No landowner ever parts with land unless he has to. And I, of all people, would never sell a Wideacre field.’

Celia rose from the table and went to stand behind the bureau, looking down on me. She leaned her arms along the top.

‘Wideacre has two great strengths,’ she said fiercely. ‘The land, which is fertile, and the people, who will work their hearts out for the Laceys. One of these assets will have to be wrung dry to pay for this mad scheme to which you are committed. Let it be the land. Sell some land — however much is needed, and then you will be free once again to treat the people in the old ways. Not with justice, but at least with tenderness.’

‘Celia,’ I said again, ‘you simply do not understand. This year we are desperate to make a profit. But even if we were not, we would be starting to farm in the new ways. The less we pay the labourers the more profit we make. Every landowner wants to make as much profit as possible. Every landowner, every merchant, every business man, tries to pay as little as possible to his workers.’

She nodded then slowly, as she finally understood. But the colour had gone from her face. She turned and went with a slow step towards the door.

‘What of your allowance?’ I said, taunting her. ‘And your dowry lands? Shall I pay your allowance to the parish poor rates,
and do you wish your couple of fields to be declared a commonwealth?’

She turned back to me, and I saw with surprise that there were tears in her eyes. ‘I spend all my allowance on food and clothes for the village,’ she said sadly. ‘John matches it with what his father sends him, and Dr Pearce pays in the same amount. We have been buying food to give the women, and clothes for the children, and fuel for the old people. I have spent every penny you pay me, and John and Dr Pearce have matched it.’ Her shoulders drooped. ‘We might as well not bother,’ she said dully. ‘It is like the dam of Harry’s that broke when the spring floods came. It is all very well giving a little charity when the men are in work and the village is prosperous, but when the landlords are against the tenants, as you are, Beatrice, and when the employers have decided to pay the least they can, charity has no chance. All we are doing is prolonging the pain of people who are dying of want. At best we are rearing children for the next Master of Wideacre to work and to pay as little as he can. Their mothers tell me they cannot see why their children are born. And neither can I. It is an ugly world you and your political economists defend, Beatrice. We all know it should be different and yet you will not do it. You and all the rich people. It is an ugly world you are building.’

She waited to see if I had an answer to that sad-voiced condemnation and then she went out to her room. I pursed my lips as if I had a sour taste in my mouth. And then I opened that bursting drawer and took out the bills to look at them again.

The news of the forestalled corn went fast around Wideacre and Celia’s was merely the first of three visits I had to endure. She was in some ways the hardest to answer because she feared me now not at all, and her honest brown eyes had a certain knack of looking at me as if she could not believe what she saw.

My second visitor was easier to manage. It was Dr Pearce, the Acre Vicar, who entered with apologies for disturbing me, but would I make allowances for a worried man?

He knew who paid his tithes and he was anxious not to offend me. But he was driven, like Celia, by the poverty that met his eyes every day in Acre. He could not, like Harry and me, simply
avoid the village. He lived there, and his high-walled garden was no refuge when children cried for hunger in the lane that ran before his house.