Wideacre (Wideacre Trilogy) (93 page)

‘What do you know about farming?’ I demanded rudely. ‘Either of you! All you have seen, John, have been the Edinburgh drying greens; and all you know, Celia, is the inside of your parlour. If we do not farm in this way we will lose Wideacre!’ I stopped on a shaky half-laugh as a great crack of lightning lit up the room and showed me Harry’s aghast face.

‘I am not exaggerating,’ I said. ‘We are desperately overstretched and we have to keep on this course or we will lose all. No Wideacre for us, no Wideacre for Julia. The poor carry the brunt of it, of course they do. The poor always do. But once the profits of this season come in we will be able to ease the burden a little. And then yearly it will get better.’

‘No,’ said Celia. She was standing by the window, the sky livid behind her, the black clouds underlined with the garish orange light of the setting sun.

‘This is not a time for gradual improvements,’ she said. ‘We must change completely. It is not right that we should eat well at table while people starve on our land so that we can grow rich. It is not Christian, it is not right, that there should be such a great gulf between rich and poor. I will not accept that this is the way it has to be. You are a tyrant on Wideacre, Beatrice; you can decide absolutely how things are to be. But you may not decide that the poor starve — I will not allow it!’

‘I manage Wideacre in the only way there is to increase yields …’ I started but Celia’s voice broke in over mine, clear and sharp with her anger.

‘You do not manage Wideacre, Beatrice,’ she said, and her voice was full of scorn and disdain. ‘You ruin it. You ruin everything you love. You are a wrecker. I have loved you and trusted you and I was mistaken in you. You adored Wideacre but you have destroyed every good thing about it. You loved the meadows and they are gone. You loved the woods and they are sold or uprooted. You loved the downs and your ploughs are
going higher and higher. You are a wrecker and you destroy the very things you work for.’ Her eyes flickered from me to John and I knew she was also thinking of how I had tried to wreck him too, the man I loved.

I took a deep breath that sounded like a harsh groan as she held up this hard mirror to my life. And I knew she was right.

‘I will not live with you while you persist in this destruction,’ she said as cool as a judge with a hanging sentence in mind. ‘I will not permit you to destroy the morality of our life by forcing us to be party to this horror. I will not attack the people who look to us to shield them. I will not starve people who have no defence.’

She stopped and in the silence Harry’s eyes went from her flushed face to my white one. But he said nothing. I bit the inside of my cheeks to steady my breathing and then I drew breath to defeat her. I had words, I had power. I could beat her down.

But John’s sharp eyes had been on me all the time, and he spoke first.

‘You are wrong, Celia,’ he said, and I quickly glanced at him, an unexpected ally. ‘You are wrong,’ he said. His eyes were bright, and very sharp on my face. ‘They do have a defender,’ he said slowly, watching me. His emphasis surprised Celia and she was looking at me too. Even Harry was alerted.

‘They do have a defender,’ said John again. ‘The Culler is on Wideacre.’

‘No!’ I said, and I crossed the room with two quick strides and took John’s lapels in a hard grip, scanning his face, wide-eyed.

‘It is not true,’ I said. ‘You are trying to torture me, as I tormented you. It is a lie.’

John’s look at me was empty of any compassion. ‘No, Beatrice,’ he said. ‘The Culler is on Wideacre. I heard them say so tonight. Who is he? And why is he such a terror to you?’

I half closed my eyes and near swooned. John put two ungentle hands under my elbows to support me and scanned my white face with his hard, questioning gaze. I opened my eyes to look past him, to the familiar safe landscape of my home.

And then I saw them.

Two black dogs in the rose garden. They were still, as still as
well-trained keeper’s dogs when he has ordered them to stay and has an eye on them from some dark shadow. The spaniel was sitting, ears cocked, eyes bright on the house, black as mourning velvet. The black lurcher was lying, head up like some heraldic monster, watching the house, watching me.

‘He is here,’ I said, and took one staggering step to the chair by the fire before my legs gave way and I sank into it. A hard hand on my shoulder twisted me around and I raised my dazed eyes to see Celia bending over me. But her touch was hard, and her eyes were cold.

‘Who is he?’ she said. I could hear a little insistent echo of the question over and over again, which said ‘Who is he?’ ‘Who is he?’ ‘Who is he?’ in my frightened whirling head.

‘Is he coming for Julia?’ she asked. Her hard little hand on my shoulder tightened and she half shook me in her own fear. ‘Is he coming for Julia?’

I gazed blankly at her. I could scarcely remember who Julia was. In the grip of my own terror all I could see were the two dogs with their eyes fixed on the parlour window, waiting for their master to send them in like a hunting pack.

‘Is he Julia’s father? Is he coming for her?’ Celia’s voice, sharp, with an edge of hysteria, still could not get through to me.

‘Yes,’ I said, neither knowing nor caring what I was saying. ‘Yes, yes.’

Celia gasped as if I had slapped her, and stretched a hand to John.

‘What?’ said Harry, utterly bemused. His secure world was shattering too fast. His life was being undermined from too many sources at once. ‘What are you all talking about? I am Julia’s father.’

‘No,’ said Celia dully, one hand held by John, tears pouring down her cheeks. ‘This is just more of your sister’s wreckage, Harry. Beatrice cheated you, and she cheated me. I am not Julia’s mother. She is Beatrice’s child. And now her father is coming for her.’

Harry’s frightened eyes turned on me.

‘Beatrice?’ he said, as if he meant to call for his mother. ‘Beatrice, tell me, this is none of it true?’

‘It is true,’ I said. I was in my own private hell and I cared not
who else plunged into their own nightmares. ‘Julia is my child and the Culler is her father.’

‘And who is the Culler?’ asked John, following the thread through the tortuous maze of lies. ‘Who is this Culler?’

I met Harry’s eyes.

‘The gamekeeper’s lad,’ I said. Celia and John looked to Harry for it meant nothing to them. There was a second while Harry’s face was blank and then his pitiful confusion was replaced with a look of pure terror.

‘He is coming for us?’ he said. ‘He is coming for you? He is coming to get Julia?’ The tone of terror in his voice tipped Celia over the border from fear to panic.

‘I am going,’ she said. ‘I am leaving here and taking the children at once.’

I slumped back in the chair. It was all wrecked, as Celia had said it was. The maze was falling in, and the Culler’s dogs waited in my garden.

‘I’ll harness the horses,’ said John and he left the room without another glance at me. Questions were still burning in his mind, but one look at Celia’s aghast face had sent him running to save her from the horror that I knew, and that Harry confirmed.

John had been waiting for this moment, when the maze would be wrecked and he would pull Celia and the children she loved out into safety. He thought I lied about Julia’s father. He thought I lied when I confirmed Celia’s long secret fear that one day the mysterious father would come to snatch Julia from her. But he knew the sound of terror in my voice, and he knew the world of Wideacre was crumbling around us. And all he cared for was that the innocent should be out of the wreckage when the world caved in.

Harry had turned his head into the stone mantelpiece and was weeping in silence. He was like a child left alone among a ruin.

Celia left the room without another word. I heard her run up the stairs to Julia’s nursery, and then come down slowly, carefully, carrying the sleeping child. Then I heard the door of the west wing bang as she went for Richard. I went into the hall like a sleepwalker.

Harry shambled after me, still weeping.

John came in from the stables; he took Richard from Celia and
she turned to pick up Julia from the sofa. My son had not even stirred. He slept wrapped in a blanket, his dark lashes on his pink cheeks, one thumb firmly embedded in his sweet pursed mouth. Now and then he sucked noisily and settled into sleep again. I put my nose to his sweet-smelling forehead and felt the soft tickle of the baby hair. But I felt nothing, nothing, nothing, in my icy private well of fear.

John’s eyes on my face were curious.

‘No,’ he said, as if agreeing with something I had said. ‘There is nothing left for you, is there, Beatrice? It is all gone.’

I straightened and looked coldly at him. Nothing could touch me now. I was lost.

Celia walked past me without a word, without even a backward glance, and Harry followed her like a good foal his dam. He was blind and deaf and dumb with shock, all he could do was follow in Celia’s small determined footsteps until his own haze of horror lifted. Then my husband walked past me without a word. The door to the west wing clicked; I heard them go down the corridor to the stable door. Then the stable door banged in the keening wind. I was alone.

The hall was almost as black as nighttime in the gloom from the storm, but I feared no shadows. The terror I had hidden in my mind for year after year after year was here. It no longer threatened me as some horror for the future. It was here and I could face it. Half blind, half dazed with shock, I at least was free of a fear of ghosts, of shadows that moved, of dreams that could terrorize me. My worst fears, my utter terror, were all coming for me. I need fear the unknown no more.

And the house, my lovely Wideacre, was at last mine. Mine alone. Never before had I been utterly alone in the house like an insect in the heart of a deep sweet-smelling rose. Never before had there been silence from the kitchen quarters, silence from the bedrooms, silence from the parlour. Not a sound. Nothing. No one was here but me. I was the only person in the Hall, the only person on the land. And my ownership was undisputed.

I walked around the Hall like a woman in a trance. I touched the carved newel post of the staircase, fingered the intricate carvings, which showed corn, a bag of fleeces, a cow in calf, all
the great easy fertile wealth of Wideacre. I crossed to smooth the polished top of a straddle-legged table with the flat of my hand. The wood was warm and gentle, good to stroke. A silver bowl of flowers stood on the table, the drooped heads of the roses gazing at their own pale reflection in the polished top. I touched them gently with one fingertip and the soft petals showered off the flower heads leaving the cluster of dusty stamens. I thought of what Celia had said: ‘You are a wrecker, Beatrice.’ And I smiled without humour, and turned away.

The parlour doorknob was a little miracle of round warmth under my cupped palm. The panels smooth and cool to my forehead. I ran my fingers along the stone mantelpiece and felt the sweet rough texture of Wideacre sandstone. I touched the delicate pretty china Celia had brought back from France, and the rose-pink pebble I had once found in the Fenny that I had insisted should be displayed on the mantelpiece. Some conscientious parlourmaid had put the little china owl on the mantelpiece with the other porcelain. I touched it now without fear. He was coming for me. He would be here soon. I need fear no more secret messages.

I rubbed the back of my hand along the smooth brocade of the winged chair, the one I like to sit in to watch the fire. And I tinkled the keys of the piano — a ghostly sound in the silent house. Then I left the parlour and went through the hall, trailing my fingers in the bowl of pot-pourri and catching up a handful of dried flower petals as I passed. I went to my office. To my own special safe room. The fire was laid but not lit and the room was dark. I walked in, as if it were an ordinary day, with a steady heart and a light step. I was just moving a little more slowly than normal. I was thinking a little more slowly. And I could see nothing clearly. There was a mist around the periphery of my vision that meant I could see nothing except what was immediately before me. I was in a long, long tunnel. And I did not know where it was taking me.

Before I lit the candles I went to the window. The storm had rolled along the head of the downs and was no longer close to the house. A fitful light showed through the breaks in the storm-clouds; the rose garden was empty. The Culler’s dogs had gone. He had been here to see the house, perhaps to see who was there
and who had fled. He would know I was here alone. He would know I was awaiting him. He would know that I was aware of his nearness, as he was of mine. I sighed, as if that knowledge made me content, then I turned from the window and lit the candles and set a spill to the fire, for the room felt damp. I pulled down a cushion from one of the chairs and sat myself before it and watched the logs burning. I was in no hurry. My life no longer required planning. Tonight would go according to his plan, and I need, at long last, do nothing.

20