Wideacre

  ‘And at some sort of peace at last?’ Her eyes scanned my face, trying to understand the puzzle that was her daughter.

  ‘Yes, Mama,’ I said. ‘I feel as if something I have waited for has finally come to me.’

  She nodded then, satisfied. She had seen the key to all sorts of puzzles in the dim awareness of her mind. The smell of milk on me when Celia and the baby and I returned from France, my nightmares after my father’s death, the disappearance of my childhood playmate, the gamekeeper. She had never dared to grasp the thread and let it lead her through the maze to the monstrous truth. So now she was well pleased to have thread, maze, monster and all safely buried as if they had never been.

  ‘He is a good man,’ she said, looking at John who had one arm around Celia’s waist, and was laughing with Harry.

  ‘I think so, indeed,’ I said, following her gaze. John, ever watchful of me, caught my look upon him and released Celia with exaggerated suddenness.

  ‘I must remember I am an affianced man!’ he said, teasing. ‘Celia, you must forgive me. I forgot my new state.’

  ‘But when will you be a married man?’ she asked gently. ‘Beatrice, do you plan a long engagement?’

  ‘Indeed not,’ I said without reflection. Then I paused and looked at John. ‘We have not discussed it, but I should certainly like to be married before Christmas and before lambing.’

  ‘Oh, well, if the sheep are to be the arbiters of my married life I suppose it should be whenever is convenient to them,’ John said, ironically.

  ‘You will call the banns and have a full Wideacre wedding,’ begged Mama, visualizing the dress and the attendants and the party and the feasting on the estate.

  ‘No,’ I said firmly and with an assured glance at John. ‘No, however it is done it should be quiet. I could not stand a fullblown affair. I should like it to be quiet and simple and soon.’

  John nodded, a silent gesture of absolute agreement.

  ‘It should be as you wish, of course,’ said Celia diplomatically, glancing from Mama to me. ‘But perhaps a very small party, Beatrice? With just a few of your family, and John’s and your best friends.’

  ‘No,’ I said inexorably. ‘I know the fashion is changing but I stick to the old ways. I should like to wake up in the morning, put on a pretty gown, drive to church, marry John, come home for breakfast, and be out in the afternoon checking fences. I do not want one of these fashionable fusses made over what should be a private affair.’

  ‘And neither do I,’ said John, coming to my support when I needed it.

  ‘They’re right,’ said Harry with traditional loyalty. ‘Mama, Celia, you need say no more. Beatrice is famous for her love of the old ways; it would be an absolute blasphemy for her to have a modern wedding. Let it be as Beatrice says — a quiet, private affair — and we can have our party at Christmas as a joint celebration.’

  ‘Very well then,’ said Mama. ‘It shall be as you wish. I should have enjoyed a party, but as Harry says we can make it a special Wideacre Christmas instead.’

  She earned a smile from me for that compromise. And her son-in-law-to-be kissed her hands with an elegant air.

  ‘Now,’ said Celia, turning to the most interesting question. ‘We shall have to redecorate the west wing for the two of you. How would you like it done?’

  I surrendered then.

  ‘Any way, any way at all,’ I said, throwing my hands up. ‘Any way you and Mama think is the best. All I specify is that there shall be no pagodas and no dragons.’

  ‘Stuff,’ said Celia. ‘The Chinese fashion is quite démodé now. For you, Beatrice, I shall create a Turkish palace!’

  So, between teasing and good decisions, John and I had our way of a private wedding and his removal, with the minimum of fuss, into a broad fine bedroom adjoining mine, a dressing room leading off it, a study downstairs facing over the kitchen garden for his books and his medicines, and an extra loosebox in the stables for his precious Sea Fern.

  But we decided to have a wedding trip: just a few days. John had an aunt living at Pagham and she lent us her house. It was an easy afternoon’s drive — an elegant small manor house with a welcoming wide-open door.

  ‘There’s no land attached to it,’ said John, noting my raking glance out of the parlour windows. ‘She owns it merely as a house and garden. There is no farm land. So you need not plan your improvements here.’

  ‘No, it is Harry who is the one for the new methods,’ I said, returning without apology to the table where John sipped his port and I was toying with candied fruit. ‘I was thinking only that if the fields were planted longways instead of in patches as they are, it would make a better run for the plough.’

  ‘Does that make much difference?’ asked John, an ignorant town dweller, and a Scot.

  ‘Oh, heavens, yes!’ I said. ‘Hours in the day. The longest, worst part of ploughing is turning the horses. If I had my way we would farm only in strips. Lovely long reaches so the horses could go on and on without stopping. Straight, straight, straight.’

  John laughed outright at my bright face.

  ‘All the way to London, I suppose,’ he said.

  ‘Ah, no,’ I disclaimed. ‘That is Harry again. It is he who wants lots more land. All I want is the Wideacre estate properly rounded off and enclosed, and properly yielding. Extra land is a pleasure to own, but it is new people to know and new fields to learn. Harry would buy it as if it were yards of homespun. But it is different to me.’

  ‘How is it?’ he prompted. ‘How is the land different from all other goods, Beatrice?’

  I twisted the slender stem of my wine glass and looked down at the tawny liquid in the bowl.

  ‘I cannot really explain,’ I said slowly. ‘It is like some sort of magic. As if everyone secretly belonged somewhere. As if everyone had a horizon, a view, that perhaps they may never see, but if they did, they would recognize it as if they had waited all their lives for it. They would see it, and they would say, “Here I am at last.” It’s like that for me with Wideacre,’ I said, conscious that I felt far more than I could say. ‘As soon as I fully saw it — one day, years ago, when my papa took me up on his horse and showed me the land — in that second I recognized my home. For Harry it would be any land, anywhere. But for me it is Wideacre, Wideacre, Wideacre. The only place in the world where I can put my head to the earth and hear a heart beating.’

  I fell silent. I had said more than I had meant to. I felt at once foolish, and perilously exposed. My fingers still twirled the glass and I kept my eyes down on them. Then they were stilled, as John put his pale-skinned hand over them.

  ‘I will never take you away, Beatrice,’ he said tenderly. ‘I do indeed understand how your life is here. It is a tragedy for you, I think, not to have been born the heir to the land. But I do see how you are indispensable on the estate. I hear on all sides how well you manage it, how you change Harry’s plans so that they work in practice as well as in theory. How you never give charity, but always give help. How the land and the people who work the land benefit over and over again from your passion. And so I pity you.’ My head jerked up in instinctive contradiction, but my protest was stilled by his gentle smile. ‘Because you can never possess your beloved Wideacre. I will never come between you and your control of the land, but I am unable, no one is able, to make the land you love absolutely yours.’

  I nodded. A few pieces of the puzzle of my new husband had fallen into place. His understanding of what Wideacre meant to me had prompted his agreement to our living in the west wing. His understanding of my obsession had led him to disregard my first refusal. He knew we could be lovers. He knew we could be married. He knew that one of the greatest things in his favour was that he owned no land, no house of his own where I would have had to go. He knew also, for he was so good, this serious, quizzical, desirable husband of mine, that his smile set my pulse thudding, and when he touched me, I melted.

  I had never slept all night with a lover in one bed without
fear of morning, and that was good for me. But best was his desire, which drew him to me for more times than I could remember in a hazy night of pleasure and wine and talk and laughter.

  ‘Ah, Beatrice,’ said John MacAndrew, pulling my head on to his shoulder with tender roughness. ‘It’s a long while I’ve been waiting for you.’

  And so we slept.

  And in the morning, over the fresh-baked rolls and the strong coffee, he said, ‘Beatrice, I think I may like being married to you.’ I found then that my smile was as warm and spontaneous as his own, and that the warmth on my face was a blush.

  So the first days of married life passed as easily, as tenderly, and as full of delight, as the first months, aided by our mutual desire. John had had other lovers (and, God knows, so had I), but together we found something special. A mixture of tenderness and sensuality made our nights sweet. But our days were special because of his quick wits and his utter refusal to cease laughing: at me, with me, because of me. He could set me laughing at the most inappropriate moments: when faced with a rambling complaint from old Tyacke, or when listening to some mad scheme of Harry’s. Then I would glance past Tyacke to see John pulling his forelock to me in burlesque imitation of respect, or see him nodding enthusiastically behind Harry’s back while Harry outlined an insane plan to build massive glass-houses to grow pineapples for London.

  At times like that, and they came every sweet cold wintry day, I would feel that we had been married and happy for years, and that the future stretched before us like easy stepping stones across a slow river.

  Christmas came round and the tenants were bidden to the traditional party. The biggest houses in the land let the tenants and labourers watch the Quality feasting and dancing, but the Wideacre tradition is that of a manor farm. We set up great trestle tables and benches in the stable yard, and we build a great bonfire and roast whole oxen. After everyone has eaten well, and drunk deep of Wideacre-brewed ale, we push the tables back, throw off the winter wraps and dance in the pale winter sunshine.

  This party, the first since Papa’s death, was held under the clear blue sky of a good winter’s day, and we danced all afternoon with sunshine warm on our cheeks. As the bride, it fell to me to lead the set and with a half-apologetic smile at John I claimed Harry’s hand for the dance. Behind us the set formed, mimicking our handclasp. Behind us, as well, formed the traditions I had meant to set: that the Squire and his beautiful sister always led the Christmas dance in the stable yard. The next couple was Celia, looking breathtakingly pretty in royal blue velvet trimmed with white swan’s down, and my darling John, ready with a gentle word for Celia and a private smile for my eyes alone.

  They started the music. Nothing special: a fiddle and a bass viol, but it was a fast merry tune and my crimson skirts swirled and swayed as I twirled one way, then another, and then clasped Harry’s two firm hands and romped down the avenue of faces. Harry and I stood at the bottom making an archway with our arms and the rest of the set danced through. Then we became part of the smiling, clapping corridor for Celia and John.

  ‘Are you happy, Beatrice? You look it,’ called Harry to me, watching my smiling face.

  ‘Yes, Harry, I am,’ I said emphatically. ‘Wideacre is doing well, and we are both well married. Mama is content. I have nothing left to wish for.’

  When Harry’s smile widened, his face, increasingly plump from the offerings of Celia’s cook, became even more complacent.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘How well everything has turned out for us all.’

  I smiled, but did not reply. I knew he was reminding me of my early opposition to the idea of marriage with John. Harry had never understood why my utter refusal had turned into smiling consent. But I knew he was also thinking of my promise and threat that I would be on Wideacre, at his side, for ever. Harry both dreaded and longed for time alone with me in the locked room at the top of the west-wing stairs. However loving he found Celia, however full his life, he would always long for that secret perverse pleasure waiting for him beyond the light of the chandeliers, beyond the usual halls and corridors of the house. Since my marriage I had met Harry in secret there perhaps two or three times. John accepted easily my excuse of late work, and he himself sometimes stayed overnight with patients if he anticipated a painful birth or a difficult death. During those times, while he waited and watched with the birthing and the dying, I strapped my brother to the wall and ill-treated him in every way I could imagine.

  ‘Yes, it is good,’ I agreed.

  It was our turn to gallop down the set. We had risen to the head again while we were talking, and again we clasped hands and danced down the line. As we reached the end the musicians rippled a chord signifying the end of that dance and Harry spun me round and around so that my crimson brocade skirts flew out in a blaze of colour. I was unlucky — the dizziness tipped me from elation to nausea, and I broke from him white-faced.

  John was at my side in an instant. Celia, attentive, beside him.

  ‘It is nothing, nothing,’ I gasped. ‘I should like a glass of water.’

  John snapped his fingers peremptorily to a footman and the icy water in a green wine glass washed down the taste of rising bile, and I cooled my forehead on the glass. I managed a cheeky smile at John.

  ‘Another miracle cure for the brilliant young doctor,’ I said.

  ‘It’s as well I have the cure, since I think I provided the cause,’ he said in a low warm voice. ‘There’s been enough dancing for you for one day. Come and sit with me in the dining room. You can see everything there, but you may dance no more.’

  I nodded, and took his arm into the house, leaving Celia and Harry to head the next set. John said not a word until we were seated by the window that overlooked the yard, with a pot of good strong coffee beside us.

  ‘Now, my pretty tease,’ he said, handing me a cup just as I liked it, without milk and with lots of brown treacly sugar. ‘When are you going to condescend to break the good news to your husband?’

  ‘What can you mean?’ I asked, widening my eyes at him in mock naivety.

  ‘It won’t do, Beatrice,’ he said. ‘You forget you are talking to a brilliant diagnostician. I have seen you refuse breakfast morning after morning. I have seen your breasts swelling and growing firm. Don’t you think that it’s about time you yourself told me what your body has already said?’

  I shrugged negligently, but beamed at him over my cup.

  ‘You’re the expert,’ I said. ‘You tell me.’

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I think it well we married speedily! I anticipate a son. I think he will arrive at the end of June.’

  I bowed my head to hide the relief in my eyes that he had no doubt that I had conceived on that one occasion before our marriage, and no idea that the child was due in May. Then I looked up to smile at him. He was not Ralph. Nor was he the Squire. But he was very, very dear to me.

  ‘You are happy?’ I asked. He moved from his chair to kneel beside mine and slide his arms around my waist. His face nuzzled into my warm perfumed neck and into the fullness of my breasts — pushed up by the unbearably tight lacing of my stays.

  ‘Very happy,’ he said. ‘Another MacAndrew for the MacAndrew Line.’

  ‘A boy for Wideacre,’ I corrected him gently.

  ‘Money and land then,’ he said. ‘That’s a strong combination. And beauty and brains as well. What a paragon he will be!’

  ‘And a month early for the conventions!’ I said carelessly.

  ‘I believe in the old ways,’ said John easily. ‘You only ever buy a cow in calf.’

  I had worried about telling him, but no shadow ever came into his mind, not in that first tender moment, nor at any later time. When he discovered how tight I was laced and insisted that I came out of my stays, he merely teased me for my size — he never dreamed that I was five weeks further on in my pregnancy than our lovemaking before the fire would have allowed. All through the icy cold winter when my body was burning at night and so firmly round
ed, he merely enjoyed my happiness, and my confident, daring sensuality without question.

  No one questioned me. Not even Celia. I announced that the baby would be born in June, and we booked the midwife as if she would be needed then. Even when the long icy winter turned green I remembered to hide my rising fatigue and pretend I was blooming with mid-pregnancy health. And a few weeks after the first secret movement I clapped my hand to my belly to say, in an awed whisper, ‘John, he moved.’

  I was aided in the deception by John’s own ignorance. He might have been qualified at the first university in the country, but there were no women of Quality who would allow a young gentleman near them at such a time. Those who preferred a male accoucheur would choose an old, experienced man, not the dashing young Dr MacAndrew. But the majority of ladies and women of the middling sort held to the old ways and used the midwives of the district.

  So the only pregnancies John had supervised were those of the poorer tenant farmers and working women, and those only by chance. They would not call him in, fearing the cost of professional fees, but if he was in a Quality house visiting a sick child, the Lady of the house might mention that one of the labourers’ wives was having a difficult birth, or that one of the parlourmaids was pregnant. So John saw births only where there were grave dangers, and only those of poor women. And while he looked at me with his tender sandy-lashed gaze I was able to lie, with all my experience, with all my skill, and with a silly hope of keeping our happiness safe: to keep things as tender and as loving as they were.

  Love him I did, and if I wanted to keep his love he would have to be out of the way when the child he thought was his was born, supposedly five weeks premature.

  ‘I should so like to see your papa here again,’ I said conversationally one evening, while the four of us were seated around the fire in the parlour. Although the blossom glowed in the trees and the hawthorn was white in the hedges, it was still cold after sunset.

  ‘He might come for a visit,’ said John dubiously. ‘But it’s the devil’s own job detaching him from his business. I nearly had to go and drag him away by the coat-tails in time for the wedding.’