Wideacre

by Philippa Gregory

  I smiled and nodded, trying to keep the satisfaction out of my face. Not only had Harry fallen in with my ideas to the letter, but noticeably he had not even glanced in Celia’s direction for her opinion. She was to go home or stay in France as I pleased.

  ‘What about the servants?’ said Harry. ‘I shall take my valet home, of course, but that leaves you with the maids and the two travelling coaches.’

  ‘Oh, spare me!’ I said in laughing consternation. ‘We shall be following you in a few days! Celia and I are not so nice that we cannot manage with a French maid for a few days. Harry, pray do not leave me with a couple of servants and two carriages to transport home!’

  Harry grinned. ‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘I can arrange for the carriages and all the heavy trunks to come with me, and if you wish it your maids can come with me too.’

  ‘Yes please,’ I said and turned to Celia. ‘You do not mind being without a maid for that little while, do you, Celia?’

  She kept her head down to her work, a poor liar and she knew it.

  ‘Of course not,’ she said, her voice steady.

  ‘Very well then,’ said Harry. ‘It is decided. I shall see the landlord.’ He paused at the door. ‘I hope this is agreeable to you, Celia?’ he asked politely.

  ‘Of course,’ she said generously. ‘Whatever you and Beatrice wish.’

  Harry went out and Celia held her tongue until the door had firmly shut behind him. Then she regarded me with awe.

  ‘Beatrice, you did almost nothing, and yet everything came out as you wanted it,’ she said.

  I smiled and tried to keep the smugness from my voice.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It always does.’

  *

  Harry sailed, but our last night together was one of lingering sweetness. He was ready to be sentimental at our parting. We had not spent one night apart since we landed in France, and we had slept every night under the same roof since we had become lovers. Now he was off to take responsibility for the running of a great estate, a full-grown man and a husband. I felt a glow of pride in him as I lay beside him, and smiled on him.

  ‘My God, Beatrice. You grow lovelier every day,’ he said, with pride of ownership in his voice. He leaned over me and buried his face in the warm valley between my newly plump breasts. ‘I adore you, this bit fatter,’ he said, his voice muffled as he kissed up one smooth slope and took a nipple in his mouth. I rumpled his hair and pushed his head down. Further down over the rounding curve of my newly hard belly so his tongue could trail a hot wet path lower, and lower and lower.

  This was just playing at love — teasing each other’s satisfied bodies after a long night of lovemaking. I sighed with pleasure, not only at the delightful little darts of sensation trailing hotly under my skin, but also at the knowledge that we had all this early morning alone, secure from interruption.

  ‘When I come home,’ I said idly, ‘let’s make sure that we spend afternoons and nights together like this. I shan’t want to hide out on the downs or creep round the house like we did before.’

  ‘No,’ said Harry absently, rearing up to lay his head beside me on the pillow again. ‘I have ordered them to open up the adjoining door from my dressing room into the west wing so I can be in your side of the house without anyone knowing it — and without having to cross the hall. I will be able to come while the others are asleep.’

  ‘And at tea time,’ I said smiling.

  ‘And’ breakfast,’ he said.

  He rolled over and checked his watch lying on the bedside table.

  ‘I must get dressed,’ he said. ‘Celia will soon be back from buying provisions for the voyage and I have to make sure she packs all my papers.’

  I nodded but did not move.

  ‘Write to me as soon as you get home,’ I said. ‘I shall want to hear about Wideacre. Remember to tell me which cows are in calf and how the winter wheat is looking, and if the hay will last.’

  ‘And about Mama,’ said Harry.

  ‘Oh, yes, and about Mama,’ I concurred.

  ‘And you take care of yourself,’ said Harry tenderly, reaching for a clean shirt. ‘I wish you would come home with me now, Beatrice. I do hate the thought of leaving you all alone here.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ I said gently, and slid out of bed. ‘Celia and I will be perfectly all right. We will enjoy a leisurely journey home and we can travel with Lady Davey and her daughters as soon as they arrive in town. Then you can come and meet us at Portsmouth, or even if you wish come over to France.’

  ‘I may well do so,’ said Harry, brightening. ‘But only if I get my sea legs this time. I do dread the voyage, I must admit. You are well out of it, you little coward.’

  ‘Chicken-hearted,’ I agreed, smiling. I turned my back to him and swept up my long hair so he could fasten the little buttons I could not manage at the nape of my neck. His fingers fiddled with the little fastenings, and when he had done he bent his head to kiss me on the hairline, and tenderly grazed the strong muscles of my neck with his teeth. I leaned against him, enjoying the shivers that ran down my spine at the touch of his mouth. On the tip of my tongue was the confession that we were expecting a child. I thought for a moment that if only we were as we seemed to be — a mutually adoring married couple — how blissfully happy Harry would be at the news.

  But my caution and my keen cool brain held me back from a confession grown out of the sweetness of love in the early morning. Harry’s loyalties were already divided. I could not risk him protecting Celia from the injury that was coming to her. She might be too naive and silly to realize that in accepting my son as her own she would displace her own children for ever — but Harry was not. He would never consent to have my bastard son (even though fathered by himself) as his heir, when his wife could have other legitimate boys of her own.

  My mood of relaxed love and trusting confidence passed. I would never trust anyone with all my secrets, not even my darling Harry. We had grown close and relaxed on this long easy journey, but there was a cutting edge in me, a sharpness of wit that Harry lacked. Harry was my lover, my desire, but he did not make me shudder as Ralph could, with one sideways glance. And I could not imagine Harry wading through sin and crime to come with bloody hands to me. With Harry I was the master; with Ralph we were sensual, passionate equals; equally sharp, equally wise. Good hard lust I had for Ralph; Harry gave me worship and kisses and cuddles like some lovesick youth.

  I had two hanging crimes locked in my heart, and passing off a bastard was no light offence either. No one would ever again see fully into my heart as Ralph had done in the early days. No one ever again would hear a straight answer from me. Ralph was not the only one crippled in that dreadful trap — my honour, my honesty, was broken there, too. And I was right to be cautious with Harry. His next words proved it.

  ‘Take care of Celia, Beatrice,’ he said, tying a fresh cravat and eyeing it critically in the mirror. ‘She has been such a little darling on this trip. I would not want her to miss me too much. Look after her and remind me to give you some spending money before I go, to buy whatever little things she wants.’

  I nodded, and said not a word as he frittered away money from Wideacre, needed at Wideacre, on French trifles for a woman who already had enough.

  ‘I shall miss you,’ he said, turning from the mirror to hold me again. I slid into his arms and pressed my face against his clean starched shirt, sniffling with pleasure the clean smell of the linen and the warm smell of Harry underneath.

  ‘Do you know,’ he said in sudden surprise, ‘I shall miss you both! Come home as quickly as you can, won’t you, Beatrice?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  9

  Of course I lied.

  The circumstances made it easy for me to lie. But first I waited, waited a month in the old Bordeaux hotel until I heard from Harry in England. I smiled when I opened the letter because it was as I had expected. Our loving mama had her boy home again and she was not going to let him go. Harry
— in a boyish anxious scrawl — wrote me that there were problems with the land, much poaching of the coverts, a field we had wanted to lie fallow had been mistakenly ploughed, and one of the tenants had had a fire in his barn and needed a loan.

  ‘Mama seems quite overwhelmed by the work necessary to run the estate,’ Harry wrote. ‘I arrived to discover that she is suffering from very serious spells of breathlessness, which leave her quite weak. She had even concealed how bad they are from Dr MacAndrew. I think it impossible that I should leave her alone in charge again, so I beg you, poor darling Beatrice, to hire a courier and get your dear selves home either cross-country or sail.’

  I nodded. I had known the estate would be too much for Mama. It was a full-time job for someone who knows and loves the land and a weak incompetent like Mama could be destroyed by the responsibility and the things that, naturally, are always going wrong. That was the risk I took when I could not bear to let Harry and Celia travel alone. Then I took another risk with Wideacre — leaving the estate in Mama’s feeble hands. Now I had to trust to luck that Harry would wreak no great damage before I came home. For Harry had to stay in England, and I had to stay in France until our son was born.

  I took up a pen and cut absently at the nib until I thought of the things I needed to say. I started my letter to Harry and confined myself entirely to business. The field should be planted with clover since it had already been ploughed. The tenant should be granted a loan at 2 per cent interest to be paid in cash or in produce from his farm, with his stock as security. The gamekeeper must either be made to work harder, more effectively, or dismissed. Lord Havering would know where Harry could find another. But then my tone grew more intimate. I told him I missed him badly — which was true — and that France gave me little pleasure without him — which was half true — and that I was longing to return home — which was not true at all. Then I nibbled the top of the pen and wondered how to break the news to him that Celia was carrying his child.

  ‘However much I would wish it, my wishes come secondary for once!’ I wrote with a sweet little jest. ‘For Celia cannot travel, and the argument against her making the attempt is the only one that could stop me coming to you.’ Sufficiently winsome for anyone this, I thought, well aware that Harry might read it aloud to Mama, or Lady Havering. ‘I am deeply happy to be able to tell you that Celia is with child.’

  I paused again. Celia’s health had to be sufficiently difficult as to prevent her travelling entirely, and yet not so frail that Harry felt her needs more pressing than Mama’s. I thought I could trust to Mama to keep Harry safe at home, but you never knew with my mama. She might be overwhelmed with tenderness for Celia and her unborn grandson and send Harry post-haste back to France in a spirit of inconvenient selflessness.

  ‘She is extremely well,’ I wrote, ‘happy in her mind and fit. However, she finds any motion of carriage or boat brings on severe nausea. The local accoucheuse — who speaks excellent English and is most attentive and helpful — advises us that Celia should not attempt any journey until she is past the third month of her time, when she anticipates the symptoms will have abated and we can come home.’

  I filled another page with assurances that I was caring for Celia and that Harry need have no concern whatsoever, and that we would be setting out on our journey home within two months. I threw in a caution that he should not think of coming to meet us or coming back to France without writing to me first: ‘How unfortunate if our ships were to cross at sea, us coming home, you coming out!’ I wrote, and thought that should keep him fixed at home.

  I envisaged that at the end of the time I had allotted Celia’s symptoms of nausea might improve, but then there would be the trouble of getting a ship. Then there would be the winter storms, and then we would be too near her time for us to consider a bumpy land journey or a slow sea voyage. I thought that if every letter sounded as if we were just about to set off, Harry would be happy to wait for us, and attract no blame from any friends and neighbours for lying snug at Wideacre while his wife and sister were in France. I knew I should have to do some clever lying in the letters — but I knew also that I could do it.

  And all the time my body grew rounder and rounder until I scarce could believe the shape of it, as fat as a tulip on a slender stem. We had left the hotel as soon as Harry was safely away and had taken furnished rooms on the outskirts of Bordeaux, south of the Gironde river. Every day I woke to the sight of reflected ripples dancing on my ceiling and the noise of fishermen and boatmen calling across the water.

  The widow who owned the house believed me to be a young married Englishwoman and Celia my sister-in-law. So any later gossip might be confused by the nearness to the truth of the lies we told.

  The rhythm of the early winter days exactly suited my lazy mood in the middle of my pregnancy. And when I got heavier and tired, I was glad to draw up the sofa to a good wood fire and sit with my feet up, while Celia sewed and sewed an exquisite layette complete for a prince, for the heir to Wideacre.

  Her face lit up when I said graciously, one day, ‘He’s kicking. You may feel him if you want.’

  ‘Oh! May I?’ she said eagerly, and rested her gentle hand on the curve of my belly and tensed with anticipation. Then a tender smile passed over her face as she felt the hard knobbly movements.

  ‘Oh,’ she sighed in delight, ‘what a strong child she will be.’ A shadow crossed her face. Silly fool that she was, she had taken this long to think of Wideacre. ‘What if it is a boy?’ she asked. ‘An heir?’

  My face was clear, my smile assured. I was ready for her. ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I may have said “he” but I know it is a girl.’ I was utterly certain in my lie, as I was utterly certain in my private conviction that I carried the heir to Wideacre in my belly. ‘It is a girl,’ I said again. ‘I promise you, Celia, a mother always knows what her child will be.’

  The cold wind that had blown all winter so strongly off the sea died down, and there was an easy, early spring. I pined for Wideacre like an exiled convict and could barely acknowledge the beauty of this warm French season. It seemed too hot too suddenly; there were no long days of anticipation. But then my heart leaped when I looked at the calendar and realized that, all being well and the new heir being prompt, I might yet get to home in time to see our wild daffodils still blooming under the trees in the wood.

  Madame had arranged for a midwife well known to her who had a good record of successful births and was called often to attend ladies of Quality. We also had the name of a surgeon in case of complications. To my surprise, I found I had a secret longing for the cool, straightforward competence of Dr MacAndrew, and smiled at the thought of what his response would be if he knew that the lovely Miss Lacey was preparing for her confinement in France. But when the old midwife rubbed oils into my swelling belly, and Celia hung dried flowers and herbs over the door, and tossed special dust on the fire, I found myself heartily impatient with these superstitions. I would much have preferred Dr MacAndrew to look at me in that clear, honest way and tell me if it was to be an easy labour or not. In his absence, I had to rest on the belief that the stupidest women I know have packs of brats, so surely I could manage just one.

  When the time came, it was surprisingly easy — a tribute, the midwife said, to my early hoydenish galloping about on horses — so unlike a good French girl. I woke in the night all wet and said drowsily, ‘Good heavens, he’s coming.’ No more, but Celia had heard me even through the bedroom wall and was awake and with me in a second. She sent Madame for the midwife and got the little cradle and the swaddling bands ready, a pot boiling on the hearth and then sat calmly and helpfully at my head.

  It was like heaving bales of hay, or pushing a great cart-horse round a stable. Hard work, and you know you are working, but for me there was no great pain. I screamed a few times, I think, but some part of my alert mind reminded me to keep any name off my lips.

  Celia clung to my hand with a face as white as the baby’s layette as I sat up in
the bed, curved over my belly where the muscles stood up as square as a box. I could actually see the outline of my son, my darling son, the heir to Wideacre, pushing his way bravely and rightly down the long journey of my body, ready to be born.

  ‘Poussez, madame!’ yelled the midwife.

  ‘Poussez!’ shouted the widow.

  ‘They say “push”,’ breathed Celia, overcome by all this noise and healthy physical activity. I choked on a laugh, then forgot the comedy of it as a great driving wave of feeling swept my body and the darling boy another inch downwards.

  ‘Arrêtez! Arrêtez!’ shouted the midwife, and she bent down with a corner of a dirty apron and wiped something that was no longer me. Celia’s eyes filled with tears as we heard a tiny gurgling cry. My son, my heir, greeted the world with a yelp as with one last push and a wriggle and even a scrabble with his tiny feet, he swam free, and the midwife landed him like a beached fish on the bank of my suddenly flaccid belly.

  I gazed at his eyes, so deep blue that even the whites of them were as blue as the early morning skies over Wideacre. I touched his wet head, dark but perhaps already with signs of a chestnut gleam from me. I looked at his tiny fingers, each one crowned with a perfect minute shell of a fingernail.

  ‘Vous avez une jolie fille,’ the midwife said approvingly, and busied herself with the sheets.

  I gazed blankly from my tiny son to Celia’s concerned face.

  ‘She is a girl,’ said Celia gently, in awe.

  I could hear the words neither in English nor in French. The baby that I had carried so carefully and so long, this baby, for whom I had laboured all night, was my son, was Wideacre’s heir. He was the end and triumph of my sinning and striving. This was my child, who would inherit by unquestioned right. This was my son, my son, my son.

  ‘A lovely girl,’ repeated Celia.

  I turned on my side so roughly that the baby nearly fell but Celia’s hands were quick to catch her and hold her safe. The child set up a shriek as I jerked away and cried and cried in Celia’s arms.