Wideacre

  ‘Well, what if they are?’ I demanded, suddenly hard; weary of shielding Harry from the consequences of our joint choice. ‘You wanted to use the roundsman labour gangs. We both agreed there would be no more casual labour for the villagers of Acre. We both agreed we would keep no hedgers and ditchers and helpers with the sheep on the wage books to be paid in good and bad weather and to be paid if they work or no. We agreed to that. Did you think they worked for the love of it? Of course they are hungry. They are receiving no pay; they are trying to last out on their savings until spring. They think that we will go back to the old ways and that every man in the village will be able to do a day’s ploughing, and every lad will be able to earn a penny sowing seed. When spring comes they will find that it is not so. That we shall still use the gang labourers. And if they want work they will have to go to the parish and join the gang and accept the pittance they are offered.

  ‘Are you saying now that you don’t want to continue with our plans?’ I asked tightly. ‘We are saving hundreds of pounds a month, and we are fanning as you have always wanted to. Did you think no one paid for your fancy farming ideas, Harry? The poor pay. The poor always pay. But they can do nothing against us. And if you don’t like the look of what you are doing then turn your head away and look out of the other window like Celia.’

  I spun on my heel and turned my back to him to stare into the fire and regain my temper. I was panting with anger and close to tears. Harry’s wilful ignorance about what we were doing to the land enraged me. But also I was boiling with rage at the trap I was in. For the decision to farm for profit and consider only profit had led us to this point and might yet take us farther. The poorer people would have to leave Acre; the estate could not support so many, farming in this new way. And many, many of them would be stubborn and not leave. Then, I supposed, the old people, and perhaps the frailer children, might die. And Giles would be only the first death on the road to make Richard the heir. With the picture of Richard as Master in my mind I would not retract, I would not relent. But I could see, and no one but I would see, the long, slow, painful path the poor of Wideacre would tread barefoot so that my son could be called Squire.

  Harry’s hand fell on my shoulder and I tensed, but controlled myself not to shake it off. ‘This is a bitter time for us both,’ said Harry sadly, forgetting the hungry faces and thinking only of himself. ‘Of course I agree we should go on. Every landowner has precisely these problems. It is a time of change. Nothing we can do could stop that process of change. The people will just have to adapt, that is all. They will just have to learn to live the way things are. It would be folly for you and me to try to farm in the old ways, Beatrice.’

  I nodded. Harry had found a way to still his own conscience, and I had my way to silence mine. I could comfort myself with the thought that all that I now did brought my lovely son closer and closer to owning Wideacre. And Harry could tell himself the convenient lie that he was equally trapped by the changes as the people he had dismissed from their work. Harry had Pontius Pilate’s answer that it was really nothing to do with him. He saw himself as part of a process of historical change and he could neither be blamed nor held responsible for what would happen.

  ‘There is just no alternative,’ he said quietly. And he even sounded sad that there was nothing he could do.

  So when Celia came downstairs with the two nurses and the two children dressed in their best and hungry for roast goose we could all exchange smiles and go into the dining room to eat at a table heaped with main courses and side dishes, as if, five miles away, there were no hungry children picking crumbs from the frozen grass of the vicar’s garden.

  It was a hard winter in Acre that year. I went less to the village than I had ever done, for it was no pleasure to me to be greeted with surly faces. Once or twice a woman had burst from a cottage with tears in her eyes and put her hand on the side of my gig and said, ‘Miss Beatrice, do take my William to do some hedging for you. You know there’s no one like him for hedging in the whole county. I can’t keep the children on the wages we get from the parish. They’re hungry, Miss Beatrice. Do give my man work.’

  Then I would have to hold the picture of my own child, my Richard, and his future very clear before my eyes. I would stare hard at the horse’s ears and not look the woman in the face and say in an even tone, ‘I am sorry, Bessy, but there’s nothing I can do. We only use the roundsman on Wideacre now. If your man wants other work he had best go and seek it.’

  Then I would click to the horse and drive off before she shamed herself and her man by weeping before me in the village lane. And my face was set and cold, for I knew no other way to do it.

  Harry would do nothing at all. When he met someone in the lane and heard the tale of the bad wages the roundsman gave the gang, of the meanness of the parish and of the fear of the workhouse, he would shrug at the man and say, ‘What can I do? I am no freer to choose how the world is than you, my good fellow.’ And he would put a hand in his pocket for a shilling as if that would help a man with four children and a sickly wife at home, and a long cold winter to get through.

  They thought I had turned against them. But that was only partly true. I had to think of other things, of the claim of Richard, and of my desperate need to establish the entail and Richard’s and Julia’s partnership in the breathing space I had won by John’s absence using John’s fortune. Even so, I did not enclose the common until spring, so they had a winter’s supply of firewood, which they gathered for free, and peat, which they cut for nothing, before I had the fences made that would straddle the footpaths, and ban the whole village from the land they had thought was their own to use.

  All winter the fences stood at the back of the stables and I delayed ordering them set in place.

  ‘We really should get on with enclosing the common,’ Harry would say to me, leaning over the map. ‘Mr Llewellyn’s loans are costing us a good deal. We shall be planting wheat this spring, and there will be much work to do to make the ground ready.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, glancing up from writing letters at my desk. ‘I have it in mind, Harry. I have the fences ready and I have told the roundsman that I shall need at least twenty men for the work. But I wish to wait until the snow is gone. The people are used to getting their firewood for free, and also snaring rabbits there. There may be trouble when the fences first go up. It is bound to be easier for us if we do it when the weather is milder.’

  ‘Very well, Beatrice,’ Harry said. ‘You know best how it should be done. But really, the people should understand that they have been living in the old ways for too long. I don’t know another estate in the county that held to the traditional ways as long as we did. Free firewood, free snaring, free grazing, free gleaning; we have been robbing ourselves for all these years, Beatrice. You would think they would be grateful.’

  ‘Odd, isn’t it?’ I said drily. ‘But they are not.’

  Indeed they were not. As the winter went on I heard no more appeals from the village women. When I trotted my gig through the village there were no smiling faces or deep curtsys. There was no open rudeness; I would have dismissed anyone from the land if I had seen so much as a flicker of overt insolence. But I was not loved as I had been. And I missed it. The men would doff their caps or pull a forelock and the women make their little bob, but they did not call out ‘Good day’ to me, and the children were not held up to see pretty Miss Beatrice and her fine horse. It was just another price that had to be paid.

  They disliked Harry too, of course. But in the fickle way of ignorant people they did not blame him as they blamed me. They knew he had always been crazy for change, but they had trusted me to hold out against him. Now I was farming for profit they blamed me far worse than they did Harry. They even blamed me for influencing Harry, although if they had consulted their own conveniently short memories they would have known that Harry had always been a fool on the land and I was not responsible for that.

  The weather matched the angry desolate m
ood of Wideacre and the winter dragged on with snowstorms and wet freezing fogs, then high winds and storms of rain all through lambing. We lost more lambs that year than we had done for seasons. Partly it was the weather but also I think it was because the men would not stay out all hours to earn a smile from me and a slap on their shoulders at the end of a long cold evening. While I was there watching over them they did their job helping the sheep in difficulties, checking the nibbled-off cord, ensuring the lambs were accepted by their mothers. But when I was not there I knew that they were away down the hill to Acre with a spit on the ground at the mention of the flock.

  So we stood to make less of a profit on the sheep that year than I had calculated. And the prospect of losing that money made me firmer to hold to the plans I had, whatever it cost me in smiles and goodwill.

  We had to keep more beasts indoors and there was not enough hay or winter feed. Faced with the choice of killing good stock or buying in feed, I chose to buy. But the hay prices were outrageous and there was no way I could get the money back. We would be lucky to break even on the beasts this year.

  I spent one cold dark afternoon after another at my desk. And when Stride brought in the candles in the early twilight my head was aching. We did not seem to be making enough money. And Mr Llewellyn’s loans were costing more than I had thought they would. The interest rates were high but the profits were rock-bottom and I was actually paying out more than came in. At this rate I would not be able to buy top quality seedcorn. I would have to borrow to buy seed.

  I rested my head in my hands and I knew real fear. Not fear like when you jump too high a gate, hunting, nor even my steady, constant fear of violence, of men coming for me. But business fear. The black figures on white were so uncompromising. And even the feel of the heavy cashbox under the desk did not comfort me. It looked like a lot of money. But I needed more. Wideacre needed more. And I was afraid of the clever London business men. I was afraid to borrow again. But I would have to do so.

  Harry was shielded by me from the worry of business. I did not want to frighten him off the plan to change the entail. And I was too proud to admit I was afraid. But Harry could not escape the hatred of the village that grew and grew all the cold winter.

  Of the three of us only Celia, the newcomer, seemed to keep their respect. In their prejudiced ignorant way they did not blame her for the empty soup pots and the thin gruel. Like fools they managed not to see Celia’s fine woollen cloaks and fashionable bonnets, and saw only that her face underneath the silk trimming was pale and anxious, and that her purse was always open to tide a family over especial difficulties, or to buy a child a blanket for the cold nights. As the weather worsened in January and the ground froze hard, Celia had the carriage out every day to send steaming bowls of stew from the Wideacre kitchens down to families in the village who otherwise would have eaten no meat that week. And I noted, sourly, that they blessed her for it.

  She came to know Acre village, my village, and she started to know the people, my people. She started to learn the detail of the kinship and friendship ties. Who was married to whose sister. Which man drank, which father was too rough with his children. Which women were pregnant. And she was the first to know when Daisy Sower’s baby died.

  ‘Beatrice, we must do something,’ Celia said, walking without so much as a knock into my office. She had come into the house straight from the stables, by the west-wing door, still wearing her driving cape and dress and as she moved to the fire she stripped off her black leather gloves. I was suddenly struck how much she had changed since Mama’s death. Her pace was faster, her voice clearer, her whole bearing more purposeful. Now she stood with her back to my fire, warming herself at my hearth and preparing herself to lecture me about my people.

  ‘Do what?’ I said sharply.

  ‘Something about the hardship in Acre,’ she said passionately. ‘It cannot be right, Beatrice. There are families there in want. Now poor Daisy Sower’s little baby has died and I am sure that it was because she never had enough milk for it. There was so little food in the house I am certain that she was feeding her husband and the other children first and only then eating. Her baby just got thinner and thinner and now it has died, Beatrice. It is such a wicked waste. It was such a lovely baby!’ Celia’s voice quavered on a sob, and she turned to the fireplace and brushed her hand across her eyes.

  ‘Surely we can employ more people on the estate?’ she said. ‘Or at the very least we could give some of the grain to the village. Wideacre seems so wealthy, I do not see how there could be hardship in Acre.’

  ‘Would you like to see the figures?’ I said, my voice hard. ‘Wideacre seems wealthy to you because up until now you have spent your life indoors where no expense has been spared. The housekeeping is partly your responsibility, Celia, and you know I have never challenged a bill from the kitchen.’

  She nodded. The first sign of my anger was enough to unbalance Celia. She remembered too well her horror of Lord Havering when he used to bellow at her in one of his drunken rages. She could not tolerate a raised voice, or even a sharp tone. I used both.

  ‘It is all very well for you queening it in the village with your bowls of soup and blankets, but we have mortgages to meet and debts to be paid. It is no Garden of Eden. This year we have lost dozens of lambs, and the calving is going badly too. If we have a wet spring we will have problems with the corn. It is no good asking me to take on half of the men in Acre village. The estate cannot afford it. In any case I have signed a contract with the parish roundsman and we get our labourers from him. They are generally the very men from Acre anyway, so they are working here, but at proper rates.’

  Celia nodded. ‘They tell me the parish rates of pay are not sufficient to keep a family,’ she said softly.

  ‘That may be so,’ I said impatiently. ‘It is hardly my fault if the women cannot make the money stretch. It is hardly my job to encourage improvidence. The rates are set by the Justices of the Peace, or the churchwardens. I am not able to pay higher, and I would be foolish indeed to do so.’

  Celia looked dashed. But Daisy Sower’s baby was still on her conscience and in her barren mind. ‘It was just that poor baby …” she said.

  ‘How many children has Daisy Sower?’ I interrupted harshly. ‘Five? Six? Of course there is not enough money to go round. She should stop having children and then she would see she could manage perfectly well. You do the poor a great disservice to encourage them as you do, Celia!’

  Celia flushed scarlet and then pale at the tone in my voice. ‘I am sorry to have disturbed you,’ she said, gathering her scraps of dignity and turning to leave.

  I stopped her at the door.

  ‘Celia!’ I called, and my tone was kind. She turned at once, and I smiled at her. ‘It is I who should apologize to you,’ I said tenderly. ‘I am a miserable cross sister to you and I beg your pardon.’

  She came from the door slowly, and there was distrust in her face.

  ‘You need not say that, Beatrice,’ she said. ‘I know how much you have to worry you. The sheep and the cows and the worry there always is, I know, in your mind about John. I apologize for troubling you further.’

  ‘Ah, don’t!’ I said, reaching out a hand to her. ‘It is just that I have been worried about money matters, my dear, and it does make me short-tempered.’

  Celia’s knowledge of money matters extended so far as generally knowing within a pound or so how much she had in her purse, but she nodded as if she understood perfectly.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said earnestly. ‘And your worry about John. Have you had a report from Dr Rose this month?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, making my voice sad. ‘He says that John is still far from well but is struggling bravely against the temptation.’

  ‘No word from John himself?’ asked Celia tentatively.

  ‘No,’ I said, and managed a brave smile. ‘I write and write. But Dr Rose said that John is not ready to reply yet, not to any letters. So I am not concerned not
to have heard from him personally.’

  ‘Should you like to go for a visit, Beatrice?’ Celia asked. ‘The roads will surely clear soon and then you could see for yourself how he is.’

  I shook my head sadly and leaned my cheek in my hand.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It would do no good. Dr Rose told me quite specifically that John was not ready to receive visitors and that a surprise visit would almost certainly cause a relapse. We will just have to be patient.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Celia said earnestly. ‘Poor John, and poor you too, Beatrice.’ She put her arm around my shoulders and gave me a hug. ‘Now I will leave you for I know you are busy,’ she said softly. ‘But don’t work too hard, and stop soon and change for dinner.’

  I nodded with another of my courageous smiles, and Celia took herself off. I waited until the door closed behind her and I heard her footsteps echo down the corridor to the main part of the Hall, then I opened one of the secret drawers of the desk and took out Dr Rose’s reports, and a bundle of letters. They were addressed to my husband. They were from Celia.

  Dr Rose had faithfully forwarded every one to me unopened with his monthly reports. These were clear and had done much to increase my tension. If the lawyers did not hurry, if John continued to improve, I should have him back at Wideacre before I had given his fortune away to my cousin in return for the entail. Dr Rose’s first report had been gloomy. John had completed the journey in a drugged state but when he woke to find himself in a room with a barred window he had gone crazy with fear. He had sworn that he was imprisoned by a witch, by the Wideacre witch, who had her whole family under some spell and would keep him imprisoned until he was dead.

  All this sounded sufficiently lunatic to keep him inside and safely away from Wideacre for years. But Dr Rose’s later reports were more doubtful. John was making progress. He still had a craving for drink, but for the rest of his time he was lucid and calm. He was using laudanum in controlled amounts and was taking no alcohol. ‘I think we may begin to hope,’ Dr Rose wrote in his last report.