Wideacre

  From my office window I saw them both and could hear Celia’s clear voice.

  ‘Do you think she is too young to start walking?’ she asked, straightening up from the back-breaking exercise of following the infant prodigy’s footsteps.

  ‘No,’ said John. He stood beside Celia and detached first one, then another of Julia’s little grasping hands from her mama. Celia stood back and put both hands on the small of her back while Julia, welcoming the arrival of a new supporter, set off on one of her little expeditions with John bent over her, keeping her steady.

  ‘If she was in swaddling she would not be walking till she was three or even four,’ Celia said, watching their erratic progress.

  ‘Bairns are the same as any young animal,’ John said lightly. ‘They know their own business best. Tied up in swaddling you can keep them still. But if they can kick and grow strong they are ready to walk at this early age.’

  ‘But she won’t hurt her legs, will she? She won’t strain them?’

  John turned his head and smiled at Celia. ‘No,’ he said reassuringly. ‘She’ll go at her own pace and soon be nimble and strong.’

  Celia nodded.

  ‘It is so good to see you outside on such a lovely day,’ she said. ‘And so nice to be able to ask you about Julia. You will start practising medicine again soon, won’t you, John? It has been more than three months, you know.’

  A shadow passed over his face and he looked back down at Julia again.

  ‘No,’ he said softly. ‘I dare say I’ll never practise again. I have lost my reputation; I have lost the occupation that was very dear to me; Wideacre has cost us all, in different ways.’

  I froze, standing by the window. If this conversation grew any more revealing I should tap on the window to interrupt it. John was treading a very narrow line. I would not permit hints and indiscretions to Celia. They both, separately, knew too much. They must never put that picture together.

  ‘But you will stop your drinking now,’ said Celia tenderly, persuasively. ‘You know how bad it is for you, and how unhappy you are making dear Beatrice. You will try to stop, won’t you?’

  John straightened up abruptly as Julia sat down, and reached for the golden head of a chrysanthemum.

  ‘I will try,’ he said uncertainly. ‘These past months seem like a dream, not like reality at all. I keep thinking that one morning I will wake in bed beside Beatrice and she will be expecting our child and that none of this nightmare — my absence, the birth, our mama-in-law’s death — will have happened. Then I take a drink because I cannot believe what is happening to me. And when I am drinking I know that it is all unreal, and that my real life is as happy as it was only a few months ago.’

  Celia, the odious flirt, put out her hand to him. ‘You will try to stop drinking,’ she said persuasively. ‘Dear, dear, brother John, you will try?’

  And my broken drunk of a husband took her hand and kissed it. ‘I will try,’ he promised. And then he stooped over Julia and set her on her feet, and toddled her round to the stable yard.

  And I knew, then, that I had him.

  He was in my hand, like a hand-reared foal, because he was half in love with Celia and her child and the whole sentimental nonsense of Celia’s life. Repelled by me, appalled by me, he was clinging on to Celia as a devout kisses the hem of a statue of the Virgin. Celia’s love of her child, her clear-eyed honesty, her decent warmth, all held John to life when he feared he was going mad, when he longed for death. When he despaired of a world dominated by me, he could always see Celia’s clear, lovely gaze and warm himself at the bright clear flame of her purity.

  And that gave me a key to manage him. While he stayed on Wideacre through love of Celia, he could not harm me. While he kept his mouth shut to spare her, his discretion benefited me. While he gently, tenderly kissed her hand, he would not harass me. He loved and so he was vulnerable. And I was a little bit safer for that.

  I was a little bit more dangerous for that as well. I am not a cold woman and I am not one who easily shares anything she loves, or even has loved once in the past. I never forgot that Celia had once threatened to take Harry from me. That when he could have been my lover he spent time and trouble to bring her willingly to his bed. That in order to keep the two of them permanently estranged I had to don all kinds of disguises and dance to all sorts of tunes to make myself Harry’s addiction. If he had not been fatally flawed, early corrupted by the brutality of that school, I should never have been able to keep him from Celia. I knew I was a hundred times more beautiful than she, a hundred times stronger. But I could not always remember that, when I saw the quiet strength she drew on when she believed she was morally right. And I could not be certain that every man would prefer me, when I remembered how Harry had looked at her with such love when we came back from France.

  I would never forgive Celia for that summer. Even though it was the summer when I cared nothing for Harry but rode and danced day and night with John, I would not forget that Celia had taken my lover from me without even making an effort at conquest.

  And now my husband bent to kiss her hand as if she were a queen in a romance and he some plighted knight. I might give a little puff of irritation at this scene played out before my very window. Or I might measure the weakness in John and think how I could use it. But use it I would. Even if I had felt nothing else for John I should have punished him for turning his eyes to Celia. Whether I wanted him or not was irrelevant. I did not want my husband loving anyone else.

  For dinner that afternoon I dressed with extra care. I had remodelled the black velvet gown that I had worn for the winter after Papa’s death. The Chichester modiste knew her job and the deep plush folds fitted around my breasts and waist like a tight sheath, flaring out in lovely rumpled folds over the panniers at my hips. The underskirt was of black silk and whispered against the thick velvet as I walked. I made sure Lucy powdered my hair well, and set in it some black ribbon. Finally, I took off my pearl necklace and tied a black ribbon around my throat. With the coming of winter, my golden skin colour was fading to cream, and against the black of the gown I looked pale and lovely. But my eyes glowed green, dark-lashed and heavy-lidded, and I nipped my lips to make them red as I opened the parlour door.

  Harry and John were standing by the fireplace. John was as far away from Harry as he could be and still feel the fire. Harry was warming his plump buttocks with his jacket caught up, and drinking sherry. John, I saw in my first sharp glance, was sipping at lemonade. I had been right. Celia was trying to save my husband. And he was hoping to get his unsteady feet back on the road to health. Harry gaped openly when he saw me, and John put a hand on the mantelpiece as if one smile from me might destroy him.

  ‘My word, Beatrice, you’re looking very lovely tonight,’ said Harry, coming forward and setting me a chair before the two of them.

  ‘Thank you, Harry,’ I said, as sickly sweet as John’s lemonade. ‘Good evening, John.’ The look I gave him was warm and sensual. I saw his knuckles whiten on the mantelpiece.

  The parlour door opened and Celia came in. The blacks of mourning that set off my skin and eyes and hair merely drowned Celia’s pale gold prettiness. She never looked her best in dark colours and I foresaw two years when I would shine her down without the least effort. Tonight, while I glowed with health and loveliness and the black velvet was like a jeweller’s cloth to show off a warm cameo, Celia seemed aged and worn in her black gown.

  Her brown eyes went to John’s glass and her cheeks coloured, making her suddenly a pretty girl again.

  ‘Oh! Well done!’ she said encouragingly. And when Harry offered her a glass of sherry she chose to take lemonade in some feeble gesture of support. I smiled, my eyes more green and veiled than ever, and accepted the large sherry Harry poured for me, and drank it before John with obvious relish.

  Stride called us in to dinner and nodded to me that he wished to speak with me. I let Harry lead me into the dining room and to my chair, then I smiled my ex
cuses and went back out into the hall where Stride hovered.

  ‘Miss Beatrice, I thought I should confirm with you,’ he said in an undertone. ‘Lady Lacey has ordered that there shall be no wine served this evening, nor any port for the gentlemen after dinner. She has ordered lemonade for the table, and water jugs.’

  I gave an irrepressible chuckle.

  ‘Don’t be foolish, Stride,’ I said. ‘Are there wine glasses on the table?’

  He nodded. ‘The table was laid when she gave me this order and so I did nothing until I had confirmed it with you,’ he said.

  ‘Of course,’ I said smoothly. ‘You did rightly. We will certainly drink wine this evening and Sir Harry will, of course, wish to have his port. You must pour wine for my husband, and if he wishes to continue drinking lemonade he can do so.’

  Stride nodded, and I returned to the dining room with a smile on my lips.

  ‘Everything all right?’ Harry asked. I nodded, and leaned towards Celia.

  ‘I will explain about the wine later,’ I said to her quietly.

  She looked surprised at me, and then she glanced instinctively at John. His mouth was white where his lips were pressed together. He had himself in check but one could see the strain. Then Stride came back to the room and the two footmen served the meal while he poured the wine in every glass, as I had ordered.

  Celia’s gaze came up to me again in an unspoken challenge, but I was looking at Harry and asking him about the newly appointed Master of the Hunt.

  ‘We’ll still keep the dogs here, of course,’ Harry confirmed. ‘And Mr Haller can come over and see them often. I would rather, in any case, see a good deal of him during this year of mourning because although he knows the runs he does not know the Wideacre woods as we do, Beatrice. And I want to make sure the foxes are kept down this year.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. Mr Haller was leasing the Dower House, a handsome square-built sandstone house like a half-size Wideacre, which was standing empty, halfway down the drive. He had rented the house for the sport and was delighted to find that the Wideacre Hunt was without a Master while Harry was in mourning.

  ‘How much I shall miss hunting,’ I said with longing in my voice. The tone made John’s shoulders tense. His wine glass was filled and ruby red before him; he could smell the bouquet.

  ‘Yes,’ said Harry. ‘And of all people Mama would have wished us to enjoy ourselves.’

  I gave a gurgle of laughter. ‘Not me, Harry,’ I said ruefully. ‘She would have broken every convention in the book to please you, but she always wanted to keep me off horses, and indoors.’

  Harry smiled and nodded. ‘That’s true,’ he said comfortably. ‘And I would not wish to be disrespectful to her memory. But it seems very hard to miss another season.’

  He turned his attention to his plate and nodded at Celia.

  ‘This is excellent, my dear,’ he said.

  She smiled and glowed a little at his praise.

  ‘It is a recipe Papa brought back from one of his London clubs,’ she said. ‘I thought you would like it.’

  John’s shoulders had relaxed slightly and he was eating.

  ‘I am so glad to see you eating, John,’ I said sweetly to him. ‘I was so distressed when you were unable to eat.’

  John’s fork fell back on his plate, untasted. Harry’s eyes on me were tender and sympathetic, but Celia looked slightly puzzled, and was watching my face. I smiled warmly at her and reached for my wine glass. John’s eyes were on the claret and I licked my lips in anticipation.

  ‘What shall you do tomorrow, Harry?’ I asked lightly, to turn the attention away from me again. ‘I had thought of going to Chichester to order a trap or some sort of curricle for me to drive while I may not ride in public’

  ‘I shall come too then,’ said Harry. ‘I don’t want you thundering home in a high-perch phaeton!’

  I laughed, a confident, seductive ripple. John’s fork clattered in his plate and he pushed his food away.

  ‘Oh, yes!’ I said. ‘Something sporty and racy and a pair of matched greys to pull it!’

  ‘I should like to come too, if I may,’ said Celia softly. ‘Julia needs some new shoes and I don’t want to take her to the Acre cobbler; he does not have soft enough kid.’

  The servants cleared the plates and Harry stood to carve a brace of pheasants. Celia and I had breast meat and John a couple of legs with rich savoury gravy to pour over the large chunks of meat. He was looking down at his plate, and I guessed he was feeling nauseous, and probably longing for a drink. I waited until he had been served with vegetables, and had a bread roll on his plate beside him, and then I leaned forward.

  ‘Do try and eat,’ I said tenderly. ‘Don’t leave the table and go to your study, John.’

  It tipped the scales. He pushed his chair back as if the seat was burning him and took two hasty steps towards the door. He turned and bobbed a bow at Celia.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said briefly, and the footman sprang to open the door and closed it with a click behind him. I nodded; John’s plate and cutlery vanished smoothly, and Harry and Celia and I were alone.

  ‘It is a shame,’ Harry said compassionately. ‘You do your best, Beatrice. But, my God, it is a shame.’

  I dipped my head as if I were hiding tears.

  ‘I am sure it will get better,’ I said in half a whisper. ‘I am sure he will learn to conquer it.’

  I had thought I might escape a little talk with Celia by sitting with Harry over his port and then going straight to bed. But before breakfast the following day she tapped on my office door and asked if she might come in. In her morning gown of black she looked weary and far older than her twenty-six years. There were shadows under her eyes — she had clearly not slept — and her forehead was creased in a permanent frown of worry. Fresh-faced, smooth-skinned, and as sunny as the crisp blue-skied winter morning, I smiled at her and invited her to take a seat.

  ‘It is about John,’ she began. I smiled. Celia diving into a conversation, Celia seeking me out, Celia anxious about my husband, was a novelty indeed.

  ‘Yes?’ I said. I had remained seated at my desk and I let my eyes drift to the papers before me.

  ‘Beatrice, he went to his study last night, and he started drinking again, although he promised me he would try to stop,’ Celia said in an earnest rush.

  ‘Yes,’ I said sorrowfully. The papers were a comparison of yields on Wideacre since I had started keeping records. I thought that they might show the sort of profits we could expect if we followed Harry’s idea of farming Wideacre as a business and not as a home.

  ‘Beatrice, I am sorry to intrude,’ said Celia. But she did not sound sorry. I was reminded suddenly of her barging into my bedroom in France with words of apology on her lips, but with a hungry baby in her arms and an absolute determination that I should feed the child. There was not one ounce of selfish strength in Celia, but give her someone to mother and she became in an instant a heroine. I should have been wary, but I was only amused.

  ‘You are not intruding, Celia,’ I said politely, and let her see that she was. ‘Please go on.’

  ‘When John went to his study last night there were two open bottles of whisky on the table. He drank them both,’ she said. I showed her a shocked face.

  ‘How did they get there?’ asked Celia baldly.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘John probably ordered his valet to bring him some. He has been drinking like this for four months, remember, Celia. The servants have just got into the routine of bringing him what he wants.’

  ‘Then we must tell them not to,’ Celia said energetically. She leaned forward on the table, her brown eyes bright and her tiredness gone. ‘You must tell Stride that on no account is John to be supplied with drink, and we must not have wine on the table, or drink in the house, until he is cured.’

  I nodded. ‘You may be right, Celia,’ I said. ‘And John’s health must come first. We must find some way to help cure him. Perhaps we shou
ld send him away. There are some wonderful doctors who specialize in cases such as this.’

  ‘Are there?’ asked Celia. ‘I didn’t know. But would he agree?’

  ‘We could insist that he goes. We could legally bind him to take treatment,’ I said, deliberately vague.

  Celia sighed. ‘It may come to that, I suppose. But it sounds dreadful. We could start to help him by not having drink here.’

  I nodded. ‘If you’re sure that’s the way, Celia,’ I said uncertainly. ‘I only ordered wine served last night because I thought John should get used to drinking lemonade while other people around him drink wine. When he dines out, there will always be wine at table, and port, you know.’

  ‘Yes,’ Celia said. ‘I had not thought of that. But I feel sure we should keep drink completely away from him for the first few days. Will you order that, Beatrice?’

  I smiled at her. ‘Of course I will, Celia. Anything. Anything, to make my husband well again.’

  She looked carefully at me, scanning my face. The little, loving Celia, who thought the world as gentle as herself, was learning fast. And the silly child who thought everyone was like herself, spoke like her, thought like her, loved like her, had the pit of otherness opening beneath her feet. She was coming to learn that I was different from her. But she could not begin to understand me.

  She returned to her usual good manners. ‘I should beg your pardon,’ she said. ‘I had no right to give an order without your knowledge. It was my concern for John that made me thoughtless. I just wanted to clear the table of wine.’

  I blew her a kiss with an airy wave.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Celia!’ I said lightly. ‘And you were probably right. We will clear the house of drink and that may help John, as you say.’

  ‘I’ll go and tell him then,’ she said, and slipped from the room with a whisper of black silk.

  I returned, with interest, to the yields. I did not need to eavesdrop on the conversation, for I knew, as clearly as if I had been there, how it would be. Celia would beg John to drink no more; John in pain from the whisky he had had last night, in pain at his own loss of manhood, of pride, of control, would miserably agree. Celia, her face glowing with hope and tenderness, would tell him that she had managed to make it easy for him. That the house would be free of drink. That if he came to dinner tonight there would be no sherry scenting the air of the parlour, and no ruby glow of wine cast over his plate at dinner.