Wideacre

by Philippa Gregory

  The bracken still glowed bronze under a silvering of white frost. The few trees I would have to fell were my beloved silver birches, their trunks paper-white and their twigs a deep purple-brown in a shape as graceful as a Sèvres vase. The heather still held pale grey flowers under the coating of hoar frost, so every plant masqueraded as lucky white heather. The ground beneath the wheels of the gig was hard as a rock where the wet peat had frozen, but in the little valleys the white sand was as crunchy as sugar and looked as pale and as sweet.

  ‘You can enclose this?’ Mr Llewellyn looked at me, his face quizzical.

  ‘There are no legal problems,’ I said. ‘The land belongs outright to the Wideacre estate. It has always been used as common land and there is only a tradition of access and use. Our people have always taken the lesser game here; they have always grazed animals here; they have always collected firewood or kindling here. But there is nothing in writing. In the old days it used to be agreed annually by the Squire and the village, but there are no records. There is no written agreement to stop us.’

  I smiled but my eyes were cold.

  ‘And even if there were records,’ I said ironically. ‘They are kept in my office, and there are few of our people who can read. There is certainly no reason why we should not enclose this.’

  ‘You misunderstand me.’ Mr Llewellyn spoke softly, but his eyes no longer twinkled. ‘I meant to ask whether you felt you could bear to rip up this land with a plough, level the valleys, fill in the stream beds and plant acres of corn here.’

  ‘That is my intention,’ I said, my face as grave as his.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said, and he said no more.

  ‘You are interested in a mortgage on this land?’ I asked neutrally, and I turned the trap back the way we had come.

  ‘Indeed, yes,’ he said coolly. ‘It promises to be a most profitable venture for the estate. Would you wish to have the money paid directly to you, or to your London bankers?’

  ‘To our London lawyers, if you please,’ I said. ‘You have their address.’

  We sat in silence then, and the trap rattled home in the yellow winter sunshine, which brightened but could not warm the icy day.

  ‘A pleasure to do business with you, Mrs MacAndrew,’ he said formally, as we drove into the stable yard. ‘I’ll not come in again. I’ll be off now as soon as my horses are put to.’

  He went to his chaise and brought the two contracts out to me. I took them, standing beside Sorrel’s head, her soft lips gently nipping at my fingers, cold inside the leather gloves. I tapped her russet nose and held my hand out to him in farewell.

  ‘Thank you for calling,’ I said politely. ‘Good day, and safe journey.’

  He got into his chaise and the footman folded up the steps, slammed the door and swung himself up into his seat behind. A cold ride he would have of it, I thought, all the way to London in his livery. I raised a hand in farewell as the carriage moved off.

  The day was cold, but I was chilled inside at the change in Mr Llewellyn’s manner towards me. A total stranger, he despised me for my attitude to the common land, for reneging on the informal contract between me and the poorest of the poor, for my willingness to destroy the easy fertile beauty of Wideacre. I shivered. Then the carriage was no longer between me and the Hall, and I could see the door to the west wing. Celia was standing there, watching me. She was dressed in the usual black, and she looked thin, and slight, and scared.

  ‘Who was that gentleman?’ she asked. ‘Why did you not invite him in?’

  ‘Just a merchant,’ I said easily, handing the reins of Sorrel to one of the stable lads. I swept Celia in with an arm around her waist. ‘It’s freezing again,’ I said briskly. ‘Let’s go and warm up beside your parlour fire.’

  ‘What did he want?’ she persisted as I stripped off my gloves and cape and rang for hot coffee.

  ‘To buy the timber from the new plantation,’ I said with a convincing half-truth. ‘I had to drive him up there and it was terribly cold.’

  ‘Selling the timber already?’ said Celia surprised. ‘But the plantation isn’t ready for cutting yet, surely?’

  ‘No, not yet, Celia,’ I said. ‘He’s a timber specialist. He offers you a guaranteed price long before the cutting. Actually it is growing well and will be ready for felling soon. You haven’t been up there for years, Celia. You don’t know what it is like.’

  ‘No,’ she admitted, accepting the rebuke. ‘I do not get out on the land like you, Beatrice. I do not understand it like you.’

  ‘No reason why you should,’ I said briskly, and smiled at Stride as he brought in the coffee. I gestured to him to pour and took my cup to the fireplace to drink it before the blaze. ‘Your control over the kitchen is flawless. What’s for dinner?’

  ‘Game soup and venison, and some other dishes,’ said Celia vaguely. ‘Beatrice, when will John come home?’

  The suddenness of her question took me by surprise and I jerked my head up to look at her. She was sitting in the window seat with neither darning nor embroidery in her hands, but her eyes were not idle — she was scanning my face — and her brain was not idle. I could feel her trying to think her way out of the incomprehensible situation that seemed to be before her.

  ‘When he is completely well,’ I said firmly. ‘I could not bear to have to go through that scene again.’

  She paled as I had thought she would.

  ‘God forbid,’ she said, and her eyes dropped to the floor where John had lain screaming for her to rescue him. ‘If I had known they would have treated him like that I should never have supported your idea of sending for them,’ she said.

  ‘Certainly not,’ I said, matching her fervent tone. ‘But once they had him and he was sleeping peacefully it was obvious that the only thing to do was to let them go on with the treatment. After all, it was John’s own wish to go.’

  Celia nodded. I could see a host of reservations behind her eyes, and I wanted to hear none of them.

  ‘I shall go and change for dinner,’ I said, tossing my tricorn hat into the chair. ‘It is too cold to go out this afternoon. Let us take the children into the gallery and play shuttlecock with them.’

  Celia’s face lightened with her quick affection for the children. But her eyes stayed shadowed.

  ‘Yes, lovely!’ she said, but there was no joy in her voice.

  So at the cheap price of an afternoon of unmitigated tedium playing at shuttlecock with Celia, two doting nurses and with children too small to understand the game, and too little to play it if they did, I won freedom from any questions about Mr Llewellyn, and entails, and my sudden need for capital. And freedom from questions about John, and John’s proposed return.

  Celia assumed John would come home for Christmas. But Christmas came and went and John was not well enough to return. We could not have a great Wideacre Christmas party for we were still in mourning. But Dr Pearce suggested a smaller party for the village children at the vicarage, which Harry and Celia and I could attend.

  I thought we could do better than that; I thought we had better supply it too. Miss Green — the Vicar’s housekeeper, the miller’s sister — had a spinster’s notion of what Acre children should eat, and the sort of amounts that were suitable. So on Christmas Day I drove to church with a bootful of meat and bread and jellies and sweetmeats and lemonade. The party was to be immediately after the church service and Harry and Celia and I walked from the church, saying ‘Good morning’ and ‘Happy Christmas’ to the wealthier tenants who had stopped in the churchyard to greet us.

  The poorer tenants, and the Acre villagers, and even the cottager children were in the vicarage garden, dourly supervised by Miss Green and by the two curates.

  ‘Happy Christmas, good morning,’ I said generally as we entered the garden gate and was surprised at the response. There were no smiles. The men bared their heads or pulled a forelock as Harry and Celia and I walked up the path and the women dipped a curtsy. But the warmth of a Wideacre we
lcome was missing. I looked around, surprised, but nobody met my eyes, and there were no loving voices calling ‘Good day’ to me, or muttering with satisfaction how pretty Miss Beatrice was looking today.

  I was so accustomed to being the darling of Wideacre that I could not understand the feeling of coldness in that pretty garden. The children were seated on long benches along a trestle table, their parents standing behind them. In a few moments the Wideacre servants would help Miss Green serve them a hearty dinner. It was the Christmas party — one of the jolliest and noisiest events of the year. Yet it was silent, and no face smiled at me. I spotted the midwife Mrs Merry and beckoned her to me with a crook of my finger.

  ‘What is the matter with everyone?’ I asked. ‘They’re all very quiet.’

  ‘It’s the death of Giles that has upset everyone,’ she said to me, her voice low. ‘Had you not heard, Miss Beatrice?’

  Giles — my mind went back to the old man who had stooped over his spade to listen to my papa all those years ago when I was a child and thought I owned every inch of Wideacre. Giles, who had seemed so old and frail, had outlived my strong, young papa and had been working right up to the day when I stopped casual labour for the village and called in the parish labour gang instead. Now the old man had died — but that was no good reason to spoil a children’s party.

  ‘Why are they so upset?’ I asked. ‘He was an old man, bound to die some day.’

  Mrs Merry’s eyes were sharp on my face. ‘He did not die from age, Miss Beatrice. He poisoned himself and he will have to be buried outside the churchyard without a service.’

  I gasped. ‘Poisoned himself!’ I exclaimed. My shock made my voice too loud and a couple of our tenants glanced curiously at me as if they guessed that Mrs Merry was telling me the dreadful news.

  ‘There must have been some mistake,’ I said certainly. ‘Why on earth should anyone think he would do such a thing?’

  ‘Because he said he would,’ said Mrs Merry baldly. ‘When you stopped the casual work, digging ditches and hedging, he had no money. He lived off his savings for two weeks and borrowed from his neighbours for a week. But then he knew he would have to go on the parish. And he always swore he would kill himself first. This morning they found him dead. He had taken the strychnine he borrowed from the mill, saying he had rats in the cottage. It’s a painful death that, Miss Beatrice. His body was bent backwards like a bow and his face black. They were trying to get the body in the coffin as you drove by on your way to church. Didn’t you see them, Miss Beatrice?’

  ‘No,’ I murmured. I could say no more. Somewhere in the very depths of me there was a sad little cry at the end of something. Deep in my heart I was mourning for some good thing about Wideacre that seemed to have broken, that seemed to have died. That had been poisoned as surely and painfully as dead Giles. And with as little a dose.

  ‘What’s the matter with everyone?’ cried Harry, reliably oafish at the worst possible moment. ‘I’ve never seen so many solemn faces. Come along now, it’s Christmas morning! Christmas morning!’

  The closed resentful looks were turned on him and then the people, my people, looked down at the ground and shuffled their boots in the frozen gravel. Before Harry could make the situation any worse the door of the vicarage opened and the servants came out with the children’s dinner.

  ‘Giles is dead,’ I said quietly to Harry. ‘It seems he killed himself when his savings ran out rather than go on the parish. He was found this morning. You can see that everyone blames us. I think we should wait till they have drunk our healths and then go home.’

  Harry’s red cheeks went pale. ‘My word, that’s very bad, Beatrice,’ he said. ‘Giles had no cause to do a thing like that. He should have known we would never have let him starve.’

  ‘Perhaps he didn’t,’ I said harshly. ‘What he wanted was work, not charity. But anyway he’s dead. Let’s finish here and get away before some gossip blabs it to Celia. There is no need for her to be upset.’

  ‘Indeed not,’ said Harry, glancing quickly around for her. She was holding one of the newborn Acre babies in her arms and smiling at it. The child’s mother stood beside, watching the two of them and her eyes on Celia were warm, not cold as the looks I had met.

  ‘We will not stay long,’ Harry called in his clear tenor. ‘We just came to wish you the compliments of the season, and to hope you enjoy the party we and Dr Pearce have given you.’

  Then he turned and touched Celia’s arm. Together they walked back to the chaise and I followed a step behind. I could feel the eyes scanning my back and I had the odd fleeting fear that if the Culler or one like him were on my borders now I could not be sure of being safe. But I reassured myself swiftly. It was mid-winter miseries — everyone who works on the land gets tired of the cold weather and the dark days. It was the shock of Giles’s death — everyone who is poor is in dread of going on the parish, and even worse, of being forced into the poorhouse. Once spring came life would be easier. And Giles would be forgotten.

  In the carriage I leaned forward to look out of the window to reassure myself that nothing had really changed. That the Christmas party was the same as ever. That Giles’s death had upset his family and friends but that the rest of the village would soon forget. That once the children had eaten their fill there would be games and dancing and joy at Wideacre as there were at every Christmas time. That nothing on Wideacre could ever change so badly or so fast.

  The pretty garden was a shambles. Our move to the carriage had been the signal for a free-for-all. The children were crawling all over the tables grabbing food and stuffing it into their mouths, and their parents were squeezing between them to snatch at food and stuff it into their pockets. It was a small-scale riot; no party. From the doorway Miss Green and the servants watched in horror. At his study window I caught a glimpse of Dr Pearce’s white face as his parishioners thumped and pushed and jostled to pull hunks of bread to pieces and to hack and claw at legs of ham. The little sweetmeats I had brought from the Hall fell to the ground unnoticed by anyone except the smallest children who crawled between adult kicking legs to get them. Above their heads on the table their mothers and fathers made desperate lunges for the food as if they were starving.

  ‘Drive on!’ I said sharply, with an edge of terror in my voice, and pulled the cord for the coachman. He had been still with amazement at the sight of such a frenzy in the very heart of Wideacre, but jumped at my signal, and the horses leaped in the harness to sweep us away from the scene.

  ‘What is happening?’ asked Celia. She could see almost nothing on the far side of the carriage with Harry’s bulk between her and my window. I leaned forward to block the view completely.

  ‘Rough party games,’ I said quickly, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice. ‘And some grabbing by the children.’ I glanced at Harry. His cheeks were white, but at my hard look he nodded in support.

  ‘Good heavens, what a noise they make,’ he said, trying to sound casual.

  Then, mercifully, we were out of earshot and I could sit back in my seat and breathe steadily and quietly to try to control my trembling.

  I had not realized, had not thought, that the loss of casual labouring jobs would have hit Acre village so hard so soon. For it was not just our winter chores on Wideacre; we set the pattern for the rest of the neighbours. When Wideacre Hall employed the low-paid gangs of parish workers, recruited by the roundsman from the poorest families who had to live on parish charity, then that practice was sanctioned for the hundred square miles of our influence. Havering Hall had long been paying the lowest possible rates to the parish roundsman’s labouring gang and using them for a handful of days a month. Now with Wideacre going over to the parish labourers the last reliable employer in this part of Sussex had been lost.

  Giles’s shameful death was, of course, the sign of a crazy old man’s inability to adapt to a new world. But his belief — that if there was no work to be had on Wideacre, then there was nothing for him but the work
house — was probably right. The roundsman would take only the fittest of the destitute workers — Giles could never have been employed in the gang. For him it would have been the workhouse — worse than Chichester prison — and the sure road to death. He was a mad old man to take his own life, of course. His death was not a sensible reaction to our attempts to farm Wideacre rationally and profitably. The last thing I needed was a pang of conscience about such an old fool. And I would be mad myself if I even considered that his death should be laid at my door, that I had made his world — Wideacre — unbearable.

  So I told myself during the drive home, and when we were inside the Hall with the front door bolted I was ready for Harry’s urgent need for reassurance. We stood by the parlour fire while Celia went upstairs to take her hat and coat off, and fetch the children for their Christmas dinner.

  ‘My God, Beatrice, that was terrible,’ said Harry. He crossed to the decanter of sherry in two swift strides and poured himself a glass and tossed it off before handing me one. ‘They were like animals! Savages!’

  I shrugged, deliberately careless. ‘Oh come, Harry,’ I said. ‘You are too nice. There is always a little pushing and shoving at the Christmas party. It is just that we usually do not see it. They generally wait for us to leave first!’

  ‘I have never seen anything like it before!’ Harry said firmly. ‘And neither, I am sure, have you, Beatrice. They were near rioting. I cannot understand it!’

  I wager you cannot, you fool, I thought to myself and sipped at my sherry.

  ‘They are anxious,’ I said evenly. ‘They are anxious because many of them have lost their winter wages. And Giles’s death upset them all too. They think at the moment that they are near starvation, but when spring comes they will realize that there has been little real change.’

  ‘But they behaved as if they had not seen food for a sennight!’ Harry objected. ‘Beatrice, you saw them! You cannot tell me that those were families who find themselves a little short of cash. They looked as if they were starving.’