He pointed the poker. On the little round table, drawn temptingly close to his favourite chair, were the two bottles of whisky and the decanter of icy water. A small plate of biscuits, and a trimmed cigar ready for lighting.
‘Who put that there?’ demanded Celia, and she spun round on Stride. She seemed suddenly taller, and she held her head high and her eyes burned with anger. ‘Who put that there?’ she said, and the note of command was clear in her voice.
‘I did, your ladyship,’ said Stride. He faced Celia without shrinking, but he had never before seen her like this. None of us had.
‘Did Dr MacAndrew order it?’ she asked. No lie would have been possible to Celia as she stood there, her eyes blazing and her face icy.
‘No, your ladyship,’ said Stride. He did not volunteer that it was my order. But Celia had, in any case, heard enough.
‘You may go,’ she said abruptly, and nodded him to close the door. Harry, John, Celia and I were left alone in the wreckage of the room.
The poker had dropped to John’s side and he was no longer buoyed up with rage. He was looking hungrily, longingly at the bottles. His shoulders were sagging already with anticipated defeat. Celia strode across the room with fast strides, quite unlike her usual pretty glide, and picked both bottles up by their necks in one hand. With one rapid backward gesture she smashed them against the stone fireplace and threw the broken necks into the grate.
‘You ordered those for him, Beatrice,’ she said, and her voice was full of anger. Her very dress seemed stiff with her rage. ‘You ordered those, just as you have arranged that we should have wine with every meal. You want to force John to drink. You want to keep him drinking.’
Harry’s mouth was gawping like a netted salmon. Events were too fast for him, and Celia in a rage was a sight to shock the coolest of men. I was little better. I watched her curiously, as I might have watched a kitten suddenly turn vicious. And I was afraid of this new strength in her.
‘I am Lady Lacey,’ she said. Her head was up, her breathing fast, her whole face alight with the force of her anger. She had never been angry in her life before, and this explosion of rage was sweeping her along like a spring flood.
‘I am Lady Lacey,’ she said again. ‘This is my house and I order, I order, that there shall be no alcohol available in this house for anyone.’
‘Celia …’ said Harry feebly; and she rounded on him, forgetting her habitual obedience as if it had never been. ‘Harry, I will not have a man destroyed under my very eyes and do nothing to save him,’ she said fiercely. ‘I have never commanded in this house. I have never commanded anywhere, nor felt any desire to do so. But I cannot let this go on.’
Harry gazed wildly at me for help but I could do nothing. I stood as still as a fox in the forest when he hears the horns and the yelps of the dogs. But my eyes ranged from John, unmoving, unspeaking, to Celia, bright with anger.
‘Where are the keys to the cellar?’ she said to Harry.
‘Stride has them,’ he said feebly. ‘And Beatrice.’
Celia walked to the door and tore it open. Predictably Stride and the housekeeper were in the hall and foolish they looked, lingering in earshot.
‘Give me the keys to the cellar,’ Celia said to Stride. ‘All the keys. Miss Beatrice’s set as well.’
Stride glanced at me and I nodded. There was no stopping this torrent; it was like being knocked off your feet by a flash flood. You swim with it until it is spent and only then do you worry how to get home.
Stride fetched his keys, and mine from the hook in my office. We stood in silence until the door from the west wing banged and he returned.
Celia took the two bunches in her firm grip.
‘I shall keep these until we serve wine again, when John is well,’ she said with absolute certainty. ‘Harry, do you agree?’
Harry gulped and said, ‘Yes, my dear,’ like flotsam in the flood.
‘Beatrice?’ she asked, and her voice was as stony as her face.
‘Of course, if you wish it,’ I said, my eyebrows raised in an insolent, easy gesture.
She ignored me and turned to Stride.
‘We will go and lock the cellars now, if you please. But send Dr MacAndrew’s valet to take him to his room. He is not well.’
‘Mr MacAndrew’s valet has the night off,’ Stride started. Celia cut in at once.
‘Dr MacAndrew, you mean,’ she said, and held his gaze. Stride’s eyes fell before her brown bright hardness.
‘Dr MacAndrew,’ he said.
‘Then send a footman,’ she said briskly. ‘Dr MacAndrew will be tired and needs his sleep. And send someone to clear up in here.’ She turned to me and Harry, standing mumchance on the scorched carpet with the smell of expensive smoke around us. I was as nervous as a horse on burned land.
‘When I have locked the cellar I shall go to bed,’ she said. ‘We will discuss this, if you wish it, in the morning.’
And she turned and left us.
And there was nothing I could do to stop her.
15
In the morning she was the same. In the afternoon she received some callers and while I worked in the office I wondered if the babble of high voices and the tinkle of laughter would tire and undermine her. When I came down to dinner in the evening, my silk skirts rustling, my own head held high, she met me look for look. She was unbending. She was mistress of the house.
I claimed Harry’s hand and we went in for dinner with John squiring Celia to her place. He had now been a full day without a drink and his hands were shaking and there was a nervous tremor around his mouth. But with Celia on his arm his head was up and his walk was straight. I glanced covertly at them and they looked like a pair of heroes who had survived the worst of their adventure. They both looked tired: John was in bad shape physically, and Celia had violet shadows under her brown eyes to bear witness that her anger had made her sleepless for another night, but they looked ready to follow any thread into any maze and face any bull-like monster that might be lurking in the darkness there.
There was no wine at dinner. John drank water, Celia sipped at a glass of lemonade, and Harry had a pint mug full of water at his plate. Harry looked sour, as well he might, and I took my lemonade in mutinous silence. None of us made any attempt to maintain the appearance of a normal meal. I would normally set a conversation going and include Harry and Celia, but tonight I was sulky and unprepared for this defeat. The meal was brief and when Celia and I rose to withdraw I was relieved to see that the gentlemen were coming with us. I had not relished the prospect of private time alone with Celia before the parlour fire.
We ordered the tea table early and sat in silence, like suspicious strangers. When I had drunk my tea I put the cup down in the saucer with a decisive click and said to Harry, ‘Would you come to my office, Harry, if there is nothing you would rather do? I have had a letter about water rights on the Fenny and I want you to see the problem with a map.’
Celia’s eyes were on me, and I saw that she was testing my words for the truth.
‘That is, if Celia permits,’ I said sharply, and watched her quick rise of colour and her eyes drop in what looked like shame.
‘Of course,’ she said, softly. ‘I shall be going to the library to read in a few moments.’
I did not bother to maintain the pretence once I had shut my office door, but I spun round on it, leaned against the panels and said imperiously to Harry, ‘You must stop Celia with this madness. She will drive us all crazy.’
Harry threw himself into the armchair by the fire like a sulky schoolboy.
‘There’s nothing I can do!’ he said with irritation. ‘I spoke to her this morning for she would hear nothing about it last night, and she just said again, “I am Lady Lacey and John will not have drink in my house.’”
‘She’s your wife,’ I said crudely. ‘She has to obey you, and she used to be frightened of you. Threaten her, raise your voice to her. Break some china near her, hit her. Anything, Harry. For
we cannot go on like this.’
Harry raised his eyes to me. He looked aghast.
‘Beatrice, you forget,’ he stumbled. ‘We are talking about Celia! I could no more shout at her than I could fly to the moon. She is not the sort of woman one shouts at. I could not possibly try to frighten her. I could not begin to do it. I could never wish to do it.’
I chewed the inside of my lip to control my rising temper.
‘Well, as you like, Harry. But we will have a pretty miserable Christmas on Wideacre if Celia keeps the wine locked away. You cannot even have a glass of port after dinner. How will we entertain our guests? What can we offer callers at noon or dinner? This plan of Celia’s simply won’t work and you must tell her so.’
‘I have tried,’ Harry said feebly. ‘But she just keeps on about John. She is really determined to stop him drinking, you know, Beatrice. She will not hear of any other course.’
His face softened. ‘And she is right when she says how happy we were before Mama died. If he did stop drinking, Beatrice, and you and he were happy together again, that is worth any amount of sacrifice, is it not?’
‘Yes, of course,’ I said sweetly. ‘But in the meantime, Harry, it grieves me to see Celia, who used to care for your comfort so well, forbidding you the smallest of innocent pleasures: like a glass of sherry before your dinner, and a glass of port with a friend. You will be the laughing-stock of the county if this gets out. How people will joke about Wideacre gone teetotal, and a Squire so much under the cat’s paw that he is not even allowed a glass of his own wine.’
Harry’s rosebud mouth turned down still further.
‘It’s bad, I know,’ he said. ‘But Celia is determined.’
‘But we agree with her!’ I said beguilingly. ‘We too think John should stop his drinking. It is just that we know that here we cannot ensure that he has no access to drink. The only way to do it is to send him to a doctor who can cure him. I have looked into this and there is a Dr Rose at Bristol who specializes in precisely this problem. Why do we not send John there? He can stay till he is cured, and when he comes home he will be well and we can all be happy again.’
Harry’s eyes brightened. ‘Yes, and while he is away everything can be as normal again here,’ he said, visibly cheered.
‘Well, put the scheme to Celia now,’ I said. ‘Suggest it straight away and then we can have John out of the house within the week.’
Harry bounced from his chair with new energy and left the office. I waited. I reread the letter about the water rights, which is every landowner’s nightmare, and checked the claims against a map. It was a farmer further down the valley of the Fenny who was following a new-fangled plan of irrigation to grow some moisture-loving crop on his land. He had dug some fancy channels and was all ready to open the sluice gates from the Fenny when suddenly the water level had dropped. It was our millpond filling up after a period of milling, and if the man had been farming with an eye on the river rather than his nose in a book he would have seen the changing levels of the Fenny before he put his expensive gates in place.
Now his work would have to be redone, and he was blaming us and insisting on a guaranteed flow as if I could manage the rainfall. I became absorbed in drafting the reply, and barely glanced up when the door clicked.
I had been expecting Harry to return and tell me all was well, but it was Celia. I thought I saw a gleam of tears in her eyes and assumed that Harry had won the argument. But then I saw the purpose in her face, and the look she gave me was not that of a beaten woman.
‘Beatrice, Harry came to talk to me, but I think everything he said was what you had told him,’ she said firmly. I detected, to my amazement, a slight tone of disdain in her voice.
‘I am sure we know each other well enough for you to speak to me directly,’ she said. I was right, her tone was scornful. ‘Perhaps you will tell me now what is in your mind regarding your husband?’
I pushed the letters to one side, and folded the map carefully while keeping my eyes on this brave child who had left her ladylike pursuits to come so dauntlessly into my office.
‘Please sit down, Celia,’ I said politely. She pulled one of the hard-backed chairs from around the rent table and sat in it, straight-backed. I moved from my desk to sit beside her; I tried to put a warm compassionate look in my eyes but I found her direct candid gaze too disconcerting.
‘We cannot go on as we are,’ I said, my voice concerned. ‘You saw how uncomfortable it was at dinner today. We cannot possibly have evening after evening like this, Celia.’
She nodded. My reasonable tone was undermining her anger. I was making her see the problem of John as a trouble we all shared. I was detaching her from the idea that he was her responsibility in a world that cared nothing for him, perhaps even with a wife who was happy to do him harm.
‘I think we could manage for a short time,’ she said consideringly. ‘I do not think John’s problem is so deep-seated that he needs longer than perhaps a few weeks’ freedom from temptation.’
‘Celia,’ I said earnestly. ‘He is my husband. I do think about what is best for him. His health and happiness are my concern.’
Her eyes came up at the tone of tenderness in my voice and she stared curiously at me.
‘Do you mean that?’ she asked baldly. ‘Or is it something you are saying?’
‘Celia!’ I said. But my reproachful remonstrance had not maintained its power.
‘I am sorry if I sound impolite,’ she said evenly. ‘But I simply cannot understand your behaviour. If you do care for John you should be desperate for him to be well. Yet I do not see that.’
‘I cannot explain,’ I said, my voice low. ‘I cannot forgive him for Mama’s death. I wish him to be well, but I cannot yet love him as I ought.’
‘But you will, Beatrice!’ said Celia, her face suddenly lightening with sympathy for me. ‘As soon as he is well again, your love will return. I know things will be happy between you once more.’
I smiled, sweet as sugar. ‘But Celia, you have your husband to consider too,’ I said. ‘It is one thing for me to say there shall be no drink served here, but it is hard for you because you will make Harry so uncomfortable.’
Celia’s face hardened, and I guessed she had already faced this argument upstairs.
‘It is not much to ask of a man,’ she said firmly. ‘It is not too much to ask of a man, that he should give up drinking for a few short weeks when the happiness, perhaps even the life, of his sister’s husband depends on it.’
‘No, indeed,’ I said nodding. ‘Providing he does give up. But what if all you succeed in doing is to drive Harry away from his home?’
Celia’s eyes flew anxiously to my face.
‘There are many families round here who would be happy to see Harry for dinner every day of the week,’ I said. ‘They would not trouble him with tragedy-queen scenes when he is tired and wants a quiet drink and a good meal. They would be happy to see him, show him a smiling face, serve him with the best that they have in the house, and make him feel comfortable and beloved. There is young company at some of the houses too,’ I went on, twisting the knife. ‘After dinner Harry may find himself dancing. And some of the prettiest girls in England are to be found in the farmers’ houses around here. And they’d all be more than glad to dance with the Squire.’
When one loves, one gives hostage to the future. Celia, who had once told me that she would have liked Harry to take a mistress, now looked horrified at the thought of him dancing with a pretty girl.
‘Harry would never be unfaithful to you,’ I said reassuringly. ‘I am sure he would not. But you could hardly blame a man for dining away from home when his home is made uncomfortable for him.’
Celia turned her head away and rose from the table in a sudden sharp movement that told me that the picture of Harry away from home on pleasure jaunts alone was more than she could face. I sat still and said nothing. I gave her a good few minutes while she stood beside the fireplace resting her
head on the high mantelpiece and looking down at the burning logs.
‘What do you think we should do, Beatrice?’ she asked. I gave a silent sigh. I was in control once more.
‘I think we should find a good doctor to take John into his own home to cure him,’ I said. ‘This drinking is not weakness, Celia. It is more like an illness. John cannot help himself. What I would like would be for him to go away to a really first-class specialist and for us to keep his home safe and happy for him. Then when he returns we can all be as we were.’
‘And you will love him again, Beatrice?’ Celia’s eyes on me were bright with the challenge. ‘For I know it is the way things are between you which is the worst of all for him.’
I smiled with relish at the thought of the day-long torture I was to John.
‘Yes, indeed,’ I said, my voice tender. ‘I shall never be out of his sight.’
Celia came back to me, seated at the table, and knelt beside my chair.
‘Is that a promise, Beatrice?’ Her honest eyes scanned my face.
I held her gaze, my face as clear as my conscience.
‘On my honour,’ I said solemnly.
Celia, overwrought and anxious, gave a little sob and buried her face in the silk of my skirt. I rested one gentle hand on her bowed head. Poor Celia! She understood so little, and she tried to do so much.
I stroked her hair soothingly. It was soft as warm silk to the touch.
‘Silly Celia,’ I said lovingly. ‘And what a scene you made of it yesterday!’
She turned her face into my lap and then looked up at me smiling.
‘I don’t know what I was thinking of,’ she confessed. ‘Something in my head just broke and I was so angry I did not know what I was saying or doing. I have been so worried for John, and so afraid about what was happening. Nobody seemed to be like themselves any more: you, Harry, John of course. It all seemed so different, so strange, when, before, we were all so happy. There seemed to be something poisoning the whole house.’
My smile hid my sudden shock. I had heard this before. Celia was talking just as Mama had done. They both had a sense of the corruption between Harry and me. It was as if our sin were some rotting thing in the house that stank until anyone close to us could smell it, but not know what it was. I gave a little shudder at the thought and bent down to bury my own face in Celia’s sweet-smelling hair.