Wideacre

by Philippa Gregory

  ‘Harry,’ I said, and I let my voice linger on his name.

  ‘It is over, Beatrice,’ he said jerkily. ‘I have sinned, God knows, with you and led you into sin. But it is over now and we will never be together in that way again. In time, I know, you will come to love elsewhere.’

  A silence fell. My brain was racing like a ferret in a cage to find the spring on the trap of Harry’s desire, but there was none at hand. I let the silence ride and watched him. He lifted his head. His face was set and determined. I could see he had set his heart on becoming the loving father, the good husband, the powerful Squire of some maudlin fantasy, and the sly, secret pleasures of our love were not part of this daydream of a virtuous new life.

  My eyes on his face were as inscrutable as an emerald snake’s, while my mind turned over the problem of this new, moralistic Harry. This time and this place were not the way to come at Harry. He had prepared for an offer of love on this ride; he had armed himself against me. He had his lust on as tight a rein as his horse, which sidled and backed against the merciless bit. The way to Harry was not to let him prepare and consider and reject me in advance. The way to capture Harry was to surprise his lust before his conscience was awake. This little wood, this warm secluded morning would all have to go to waste. Harry would not be taken here.

  I smiled with a sweet and open smile, and saw the answering beam of relief on Harry’s face.

  ‘Oh, Harry, I am so glad,’ I said. ‘You know it was never my wish, it was something that happened against my will, against both of our wills, and it always troubled me so. Thank God we think alike on this. I have been in agonies over how I could tell you of my resolve that we should end.’

  The godly fool’s face lit up. ‘Beatrice! I should have known … I am so glad it is like this for you. Oh, Beatrice, I am so glad,’ he said. Saladin stretched his neck in relief at the suddenly loosened rein. And I smiled tenderly at Harry.

  ‘Thank God we are now both free of sin,’ I said piously. ‘Now at last we can love each other and be together as we should.’

  The horses moved forward and we rode companionably, side by side. We came from the gloom of the wood into God’s own sunlight and Harry looked around him at the sweet rolling sunny turf as if he thought the New Jerusalem had dawned on him, with the golden light of a sinless paradise all around us.

  ‘Now let us plan this race,’ I said sweetly, and we cantered forward to a shoulder of the downs to overlook the track that rises from the valley floor. From here we could see most of the route I planned for Tobermory and Dr MacAndrew’s Arab, and a punishing ride it would be. The race would start and end at the Hall and make the shape of a great figure of eight. The first loop was north from the Hall up the steep sandy tracks of the common land. The ground is soft as sugar there because it is deep sand on clay, and while neither horse would be fast on that going, I thought the shifting ground would tire the Arab. The common is used by the village people for their sheep, for the odd goat or two, for ill-fed cows and, of course, for game: birds, foxes, deer. It is mostly heather with bracken in the sunny, sheltered dips of the ground, and thick solid woods, mainly beech, of course, on the west slopes. The loop across the top of the common took in the open ground where the Arab’s quickness of turning would be of little use, and where Tobermory’s strong legs might set the fastest pace.

  When we dropped down from the common there was a steep track downhill, which I thought could be taken no faster than a slithering canter — and I could trust Tobermory to handle that, for he had hunted over this land for four seasons — then there were two stiffish jumps into the parkland of Wideacre Hall: one over a wall, which was high, and one over a ditch, which was difficult to judge if you did not know it. Then there would be a good thundering gallop along the grass tracks of the woods until we broke free of the trees facing the south loop of the race, which would take us straight up the track to the top of the downs, a good long testing gallop, climbing steeply all the time. I expected both horses to be blown when they reached the top, but whoever had the lead then was likely to keep it. Ahead lay a smooth grassy track of springy downs turf for a couple of miles and then the descent back to the Hall through the beech coppice, which would be a tiring slither for horses and riders, then a thundering finish along the drive to the Hall.

  Harry and I thought the entire circuit would take about two hours, and that the worst part for horse and rider would be the steep descent home. We gave John MacAndrew fair warning of this while the grooms were tacking up the horses, but he only laughed and said we were trying to scare him off.

  Tobermory came out of the arched sandstone stable doorway like a bolt of copper. He was well rested and anxious to go, and Harry whispered to me to rein in hard or I should find myself halfway to London. Then he tossed me up into the saddle and held the reins while I shook out the crimson skirts of my habit and settled my hat more firmly on my head.

  Then I saw Sea Fern.

  Dr MacAndrew had told me he was a grey, but his coat was almost silver white with silky, sleek shadows on the powerful legs and shoulders. My eyes gleamed in appreciation and John MacAndrew laughed.

  ‘I think I can tell what I shall lose if you finish first, Miss Lacey,’ he said teasingly. ‘You would never make a gambler.’

  ‘I should think anyone would be glad to take that horse off you,’ I said longingly. My eyes took in the perfect sharp-featured face and the bright intelligent eyes. His neck was a perfect sickle held in by the groom, yet as strong as a bent bow. A lovely, lovely animal. John MacAndrew mounted without using the block in a stylish spring to the saddle. We measured each other and smiled.

  Celia, Mama, the baby and Nurse were all on the terrace to see us stand shoulder to shoulder as we waited for Harry’s signal. Tobermory pranced at the bit and Sea Fern sidled with excitement. Harry stood still on the terrace, a handkerchief in his raised hand. Then he dropped his arm and I felt Tobermory jump as I let him go and he felt the spur.

  We thundered through the woods at a tightly controlled canter. Sea Fern’s white forelegs were first over the park wall and I had expected that. But I had not thought he would hold his pace so well up the punishing slope to the common, nor that he would seem so little tired at the top. At the crest of the hill he snorted at the sand and then took the track at a gallop. It is a long river of sand, widened as a firebreak, and although Tobermory put his head down and thundered at it, Sea Fern held off our challenge, his hoofs throwing silver sand into my face for the two, maybe three miles of it. Both he and Tobermory were blowing, but Tobermory did not pass him until the ground started to slope downwards towards the park.

  Some of our people were cutting firewood and at the sudden glimpse of them Sea Fern shied, and then reared. Tobermory, steady as a rock, did not check, and I heard them cheer as I thundered downhill, well in the lead, and Tobermory reared up to leap the wall into the pale of the park. He held the advantage in a long hard gallop through the park and when we started up the hill to the downs. I was sure, with a laugh caught in my throat, that the race was over for Sea Fern. Then we reached the top and the smooth ride was before us. Tobermory was panting but he felt the downs turf under his hoofs and his head went up. We thundered along the track, but I could hear hoofs behind us, and they were gaining on us. Sea Fern was blowing foam and John MacAndrew was leaning forward like a jockey to get every inch of speed from him, urging him harder and harder on our heels. The noise of the chase reached Tobermory and he shook his mane at the challenge and plunged into his fast hunting stride — the top speed of a staying gallop. It was not enough. By the time the track started to slope downwards to the woods, Sea Fern was at Tobermory’s shoulder.

  As we plunged into the gloom of the woods I tightened my hold on Tobermory, keeping a careful watch under his hoofs for dangerous roots and treacherous patches of mud. I watched on my own account for low branches that might sweep me from the saddle or slap in my face. But John MacAndrew took no care. He took the lead in a mad downward da
sh and fixing his priceless horse at that slippery track as if he no longer cared for it. The beautiful animal slithered and stumbled, held to a relentless pace, and I could not, dared not, match that breakneck speed. Among the jumbling pictures in my mind of splashy puddles and low head-chopping branches, some corner of my mind said swiftly and precisely, ‘Why? Why is John MacAndrew riding this playful race so hard?’

  By the time we were through the lodge gates with Sarah Hodgett calling, ‘Go on, Miss Beatrice!’ as I thundered past, the lead was too big to close. Sea Fern’s powerful galloping hindquarters gleamed like white silk in the flickering sun and shadows of the drive as we dashed towards the house, and the doctor on his Arab was reining in at the terrace a clear couple of lengths before me.

  I laughed in unfeigned delight. I was dirty; I could feel wet mud caking in spots all over my face. My hat had tumbled off somewhere and a stable lad would have to search for it tomorrow. My hair had come unpinned during the wild ride and was a tangle of chestnut curls over my shoulders. Tobermory was creamy with sweat, his bright coat bathed in it. Sea Fern was shuddering with panting breaths. Dr MacAndrew’s fair skin was scarlet with heat and excitement and his eyes — winner’s eyes — were sparkling blue.

  ‘What is your forfeit, then?’ I gasped, as soon as I could draw breath. ‘You rode like a demon for it. What is it that you want so badly?’

  He slid from his saddle and reached up to me to lift me down. I slid into his arms and felt my face crimson, fuelled by the breathless excitement of the race and the smell of our hot trembly bodies, and the pleasure of a man’s arms around me again.

  ‘I claim your glove,’ he said. But he said it with an emphasis that stopped my incredulous laughter and made me look at him intently.

  ‘First the glove,’ he said, stripping the scarlet kid gauntlet from my hand, ‘and later, Miss Lacey, your hand in marriage.’

  I caught my breath on a cry of outrage but he coolly pocketed the forfeit as if men proposed to ladies in this way every day of the year. And before I could say anything, Harry and the whole pack of them were tumbling into earshot and I could say nothing.

  There was nothing, in any case, that I wanted to say. While I retired to change my gown, wash my face and pin my hair, I wasted no time in planning a reply. His cool tone made it clear that none was required. I stood in no danger of breaking my heart over a man who owned no land, least of all someone who would neither inherit nor buy Wideacre. If this young, enchanting doctor ever proposed he would find himself gently, kindly refused. But in the meantime … I twisted the hair nearest my face into ringlets around my fingers and chuckled with unrestrained laughter … in the meantime, it was all delightful, and I must hurry or I would be late for tea.

  It might have meant nothing more to me than a light-hearted jest but the race made the young doctor an accepted member of our family circle. Although Mama never spoke, I knew she regarded him as her future son-in-law and his presence in the house freed her from her persistent, unacknowledged fears. So it was a happy summer for all of us. Harry’s worries about the land were lifted once he saw it back under my confident control and knew he could rely on me to protect him from errors of ignorance with either the precious fields or the people. The vines were doing well despite the strange English soil, and it was a triumph of Harry’s experimental enthusiasm over my love for the old ways that I was happy to concede. Whether we would have enough sun to turn the little buds of grapes into fat, sweet, green fruit was something not even Harry’s confidence could guarantee. But it was a fair chance and one worth taking, which might produce a new crop and even a new product for Wideacre.

  Mama was happy in Harry’s smiles and in my settled contentment. But her main role was that of doting grandmother. I realized only now how much her tenderness must have been constrained by my hurtful independence, and by the convention of leaving children out of reach in the nursery. Under the loving, indulgent regime of Celia, the little angel was never banished, except for meals and bedtime. She was never left to cry alone in the darkness of the nursery. She was never abandoned to the absent-minded care of servants. Little Julia’s life was one long banquet of cuddles and kisses and games and songs from either her adoring papa, her loving mama, or her equally besotted grandmama. And seeing the glow of happiness in my mother’s face and the gurgles of delight that came from the cradle, one would need a heart of stone not to see that the love that flowed between them all was a blessing indeed.

  I missed her. I was not one of those women whose hip is empty unless they have a child astride it, God knows, but little Julia seemed to me to be a special child. No, more than that. She was the bone of my bone in a way I could not fathom. I could see the glint of my russet in her hair; I could see my easy happy delight in Wideacre in her gurgles when she was left outside in the cradle. She was my child through and through and I missed her when I knew that Celia’s eyes were sharp upon me, and that I was not allowed either to raise her from her cradle or play with her, and not — emphatically not — to take her out on the land and give her a little taste, the smallest of tastes, of a proper Wideacre childhood.

  As for Celia, she seemed in a haze of happiness. The baby consumed her time and attention and she had developed almost miraculous powers of sensitivity where Julia was concerned. She would excuse herself from the table to go to the nursery when no one but her had heard the faintest cry. The whole upper floor of the house seemed to murmur with lullabies that summer as Celia sang to the baby, and moved around the baby’s room in a continual hum of melodic half-laughter. Under Celia’s tentative and diffident prompting, one room after another was redecorated and cleaned and the heavy old furniture of my father and grandfather was replaced with the light fragile styles of the fashion. More profit to me, who snapped up the rejected wooden chests and tables for the increasingly cluttered west wing, but no damage to the house, which gleamed with a new lightness.

  Celia delighted Mama with her enthusiasm for ladylike pursuits. They worked like scullery maids over a new altar cloth for the church, first designing, then drawing, then stitching. I did a few odd running stitches in the evening in the sections where mistakes would not show, but every day Mama and Celia had the great swathe of material stretched between them and had their heads bent in pious bondage.

  When they were not stitching they were reading aloud as if addicted to their own voices, or ordering the carriage to give Baby a little airing, or paying calls, or picking the flowers, or practising songs, or all the old time-wasting, energy-consuming, pretty little activities that compose a lady’s life. Why should I complain? They were happy tripping around on the little treadwheel of meaningless duties, and Celia’s devotion to her sewing, to her house and to her mama-in-law freed me from many a weary hour in the small parlour.

  Celia’s girlish diffidence and her ready acceptance of second, nay, fourth place in the household, meant that she never clashed with Mama. She had already learned in France that her wishes and wants would always come second to mine and Harry’s, and indeed she never seemed to expect anything else. Now, far from being a confident young wife in her first home, she was more like a courteous guest, or a poor relation allowed to live with the family in return for unremitting civility and little chores. On no area of my power — not the keys and the accounts of the cellar, nor the kitchen, the store rooms and the servants’ wages — did she ever encroach. No area of power of Mama’s — the selection and training of the indoor staff, the planning of the menus, the decisions about cleaning and care of the house — did she ever threaten. She had been trained hard, Celia. She would never forget the unwelcoming neglect she had met at Havering Hall, and she expected little better of her new home.

  With such poor expectations, she was agreeably surprised. Mama was ready to defend her rights against the interloper, but she found that Celia asked for nothing, took nothing, expected nothing. The only time she ever whispered so much as a tentative suggestion was when Harry’s convenience and comfort would benefit,
and then she had a ready ally in Harry’s doting mama, who welcomed any information about her darling boy’s preferences.

  And Stride, who was an experienced butler and knew Quality when he saw it, would nod his head and advise her. The other servants followed his lead and showed her proper respect. No one would ever fear Celia. But everyone loved her. Her willingness to accept whatever standards or behaviour Harry, Mama or I saw fit made all our lives easier for her sunny presence in the house.

  And I, too, was happy. In the morning I generally rode out to see the fields or check the fences, or up to the downs to see the sheep. In the afternoon I did the accounts, wrote letters of business and saw whoever had waited patiently in the lobby room by the side entrance. Before I dressed for dinner I would stroll out with Harry in the rose garden, in the growing shrubbery, or perhaps as far as the Fenny, talking business and gossip. In the evening I would sit opposite Celia on Harry’s right hand and dine like a princess on the wonderful food that had come to Wideacre with the new cook.

  After dinner, Celia would play and sing to us, or Harry would read, or Harry and I would talk low-voiced in the window seat while Celia and Mama played duets on the piano or tackled another section of stitchery.

  All that sweet warm summer we were on a pinnacle of domestic happiness, without conflict, without sin. Anyone watching us, as young Dr MacAndrew did, with a warm steady look in his pale eyes, would have thought we had found some secret of love that we could live so tenderly and easily together. Even my desires were quiescent in that golden time. The warmth of John MacAndrew’s smiles to me, the tender tone in his voice when he spoke to me, the respectable excitement of a twilit walk in the garden with him, all seemed enough in that lovely late summer. I was not in love, of course not. But his way of making me laugh, the way his eyes met mine, the way his riding coat sat on his shoulders, all tiny trivial things, added up to some sensation that made me smile when I saw him riding up the drive to dine with us. And his smile on parting, the slight pressure of his fingers and the gentle touch of his lips on my hand, were all part of a stage of courtship too delightful to be hurried.