‘Really, Celia, this is hardly the business you were brought up to,’ I said. ‘The business of managing Wideacre is a complex task and one in which you have previously shown little interest. It is too late now to start meddling with the way I run the estate.’
‘You are right to reproach me for knowing little,’ she said. Her breath was fast and as she spoke one of her easy blushes coloured her face and neck. ‘I think it is a great fault that ladies are taught to know nothing of the lives of the poor. I have lived all my life in the country and you are right when you say I am ignorant.’
I tried to interrupt her, but she talked over me.
‘I have lived in a fool’s paradise,’ she said. ‘I have spent money without ever thinking from whence it came or who had earned it.’
She paused. I moved to the bell push as if to order tea.
‘I was brought up to think like a child,’ she said, speaking half to herself. ‘I was brought up like a baby who eats food but does not realize someone has had to cook it, and mash it, and serve it in a bowl. I have spent and spent Wideacre money without ever realizing that the money came from the labour of the poor.’
‘Not entirely,’ I contradicted her. ‘You should speak with Harry on the theories of political economy, but we are farmers, remember, not merchants or manufacturers. Our wealth comes from the land, from the natural fertility, from nature.’
Celia waved away the argument with an impatient gesture and put her palm flat down on my rent table.
‘You know that is not true, Beatrice,’ she said. ‘You take the money here every month. People pay us because we own the land. Left to itself the land would grow weeds and meadow flowers. We invest in it as surely as a merchant, and we pay people to work it for us as surely as a mine owner pays miners.’
I stood silent. Celia had changed so much from the shy girl who had watched the reapers and blushed when Harry looked at her. I said nothing, but I felt a growing unease.
‘The mine owner pays them a fraction of what they earn,’ she said slowly as if she was working out her ideas aloud. ‘Then he sells what they have dug, at a profit. He keeps all of that profit. That is why he is rich and they are poor.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘You do not understand business. He has to buy equipment and he has to pay back loans. Also, he has to have a return on his investment. If it did not profit him to mine, then he would invest his money elsewhere, and his workforce would have no wage at all.’
Celia’s honest gaze was on my face and, surprisingly, she smiled as if I was jesting with her.
‘Oh, Beatrice, that is such nonsense!’ she said with a ripple of laughter. ‘That is what Harry says! That is what Harry’s books say! I would have thought you of all people would have known what nonsense that is! All the people who write about the need for a man to have profit are rich people. All they wish to prove is that their profits are justified. That is why there are hundreds of men writing thousands of books trying to explain why some people go hungry and others get richer and richer. They have to write all those books because they will not accept the answer which is there before their eyes: that there is no justification.’
I moved restlessly, but she was looking out of the window past me.
‘Why should the man who invests his money have his profit guaranteed, while the man who invests his labour, even his life, has no guaranteed wage?’ she said. ‘And why should the man who has money to invest earn so very much more with his capital than a man could earn working at the very top of his strength, all day? If they were both to be rewarded equally then after the debts had been paid and the new equipment bought, miners would live in houses and eat the food of the mine owners. And they clearly do not. They live like animals in dirt and squalor and they starve while the mine owners live like princes in houses far away from the ugly mines.’
I nodded emphatically. ‘The conditions are dreadful I am told. And the moral danger!’
Celia’s brown eyes gleamed at my shift of ground.
‘It is as bad here,’ she said baldly. ‘The labourers work all day and earn less than a shilling. I do not work at all and yet I have an allowance of two hundred pounds a quarter. I have taken no risks with capital. I replace no machinery. I am paid simply because I am a member of the Quality and we are all wealthy. There is no justice in that, Beatrice. There is no logic. It is not even a very pleasant way to live.’
I plumped down in my chair, the Squire’s chair, and I drew my papers towards me. I had forgotten that I had ever thought the world should change. I had forgotten that a landless man had ever persuaded me that the people who know and love the land are those who should make the decisions about it.
‘It is a wicked world, Celia,’ I said, smiling. ‘We are agreed on that. But it would do little good if you were paid a labourer’s wage. It would make no difference if we were a Leveller’s commonwealth. The Commonwealth of Wideacre would still have to pay its way in the outside world.’ I tapped the drawer, which held the sheaf of bills due for settling this month. The wood no longer sounded hollow: it was packed tight. ‘It is the outside world that is massing against Wideacre,’ I said. ‘It is the outside world that sets the pace of change.’
‘Sell land,’ said Celia abruptly.
I gazed at her, open-mouthed.
‘What?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Harry tells me that you two have borrowed so heavily to buy the entail and pay the lawyers’ fees that you have no choice but to profiteer and farm in this new way. Clear the debts by selling land, and then you need farm no longer in a way that starves Acre, and has wrecked the life of Wideacre.’
‘You do not understand, Celia!’ I burst out. ‘We will never, never sell Wideacre land while I manage the estate! No landowner ever parts with land unless he has to. And I, of all people, would never sell a Wideacre field.’
Celia rose from the table and went to stand behind the bureau, looking down on me. She leaned her arms along the top.
‘Wideacre has two great strengths,’ she said fiercely. ‘The land, which is fertile, and the people, who will work their hearts out for the Laceys. One of these assets will have to be wrung dry to pay for this mad scheme to which you are committed. Let it be the land. Sell some land — however much is needed, and then you will be free once again to treat the people in the old ways. Not with justice, but at least with tenderness.’
‘Celia,’ I said again, ‘you simply do not understand. This year we are desperate to make a profit. But even if we were not, we would be starting to farm in the new ways. The less we pay the labourers the more profit we make. Every landowner wants to make as much profit as possible. Every landowner, every merchant, every business man, tries to pay as little as possible to his workers.’
She nodded then slowly, as she finally understood. But the colour had gone from her face. She turned and went with a slow step towards the door.
‘What of your allowance?’ I said, taunting her. ‘And your dowry lands? Shall I pay your allowance to the parish poor rates, and do you wish your couple of fields to be declared a commonwealth?’
She turned back to me, and I saw with surprise that there were tears in her eyes. ‘I spend all my allowance on food and clothes for the village,’ she said sadly. ‘John matches it with what his father sends him, and Dr Pearce pays in the same amount. We have been buying food to give the women, and clothes for the children, and fuel for the old people. I have spent every penny you pay me, and John and Dr Pearce have matched it.’ Her shoulders drooped. ‘We might as well not bother,’ she said dully. ‘It is like the dam of Harry’s that broke when the spring floods came. It is all very well giving a little charity when the men are in work and the village is prosperous, but when the landlords are against the tenants, as you are, Beatrice, and when the employers have decided to pay the least they can, charity has no chance. All we are doing is prolonging the pain of people who are dying of want. At best we are rearing children for the next Master of Wideacre to work and t
o pay as little as he can. Their mothers tell me they cannot see why their children are born. And neither can I. It is an ugly world you and your political economists defend, Beatrice. We all know it should be different and yet you will not do it. You and all the rich people. It is an ugly world you are building.’
She waited to see if I had an answer to that sad-voiced condemnation and then she went out to her room. I pursed my lips as if I had a sour taste in my mouth. And then I opened that bursting drawer and took out the bills to look at them again.
The news of the forestalled corn went fast around Wideacre and Celia’s was merely the first of three visits I had to endure. She was in some ways the hardest to answer because she feared me now not at all, and her honest brown eyes had a certain knack of looking at me as if she could not believe what she saw.
My second visitor was easier to manage. It was Dr Pearce, the Acre Vicar, who entered with apologies for disturbing me, but would I make allowances for a worried man?
He knew who paid his tithes and he was anxious not to offend me. But he was driven, like Celia, by the poverty that met his eyes every day in Acre. He could not, like Harry and me, simply avoid the village. He lived there, and his high-walled garden was no refuge when children cried for hunger in the lane that ran before his house.
‘I hope you do not think I am exceeding my position,’ he said nervously. ‘I hold no brief for improvidence. No one who knows me or my connections could ever doubt for a moment my proper feeling on the treatment and discipline of the poor. But I must speak to you about this wheat crop, Mrs MacAndrew.’
I smiled then, conscious of my power.
‘Speak then, Vicar,’ I said. ‘And I will do what I can.’
‘They are saying in the village that the crop is sold already,’ he said, his eyes on my nod of assent. ‘They are saying in the village that the whole of the crop, every wagonload, will be sent away to London.’ I nodded again. ‘They are saying in the village that they do not know where they will buy their corn to grind for flour to make bread.’
‘At Midhurst market, I assume,’ I answered coolly.
‘Mrs MacAndrew, there will be a riot!’ exclaimed the Vicar. ‘Of the three major suppliers of corn, two of you — Wideacre and the Havering estate — are sending grain out of the county. Only the little Tithering estate is selling locally. There will be hundreds of families needing corn and only one farm selling at Midhurst. The corn will simply run out.’
I shrugged, and made a little grimace. ‘Then they will have to go to Petworth, or Chichester,’ I said.
‘Can you not stop this?’ Dr Pearce’s tone was suddenly ragged with fear, his urbane smiling face suddenly naked with concern. ‘The whole village has changed almost overnight, it seems. The fences went up and the heart went out of it. Can you not take the fences down and restore the land? When I first arrived here, I heard from everyone that no one knew the land like you. No one loved the land like you. That you were the heart of Wideacre. Now all I hear is that you have forgotten your skills, forgotten that these people are your people. Can’t all this be restored?’
I looked coldly at him through the wall of glass that now separated me from everyone.
‘No,’ I said. ‘It is too late. They will have to pay dear for corn this year or do without. You may tell them that next year it will be better, but this year Wideacre has to sell to the London market. If Wideacre does not prosper, no one prospers. They know that. I am ensuring their ultimate prosperity. The way of the world is that the poor survive only if the rich prosper. If the poor want to eat, the rich have to be enriched. That is the way the world is. And Wideacre is not nearly wealthy enough to be safe.’
Dr Pearce nodded. The opulent dinners at Oxford, his landed friends and family, the shooting parties, the dances, the balls, had been his world. He was one of those who do indeed believe the world is a better place for the rich becoming wealthier. And he had read a hundred clever books written solely to prove that point. He himself longed to increase his tithes on the back of our bumper crop. He belonged, like me, to the rich. And his eyes glistened, despite his concern, at my picture of an inevitable process whereby we gained and gained and gained, and no one could blame us or gainsay us.
‘It is the children,’ he said weakly.
‘I know,’ I said. I reached into a drawer in my desk and found a guinea. ‘Here,’ I said. ‘Buy the children some toys, or sweetmeats, or food.’
‘The coffins are so very tiny,’ he said, more to himself than to me. ‘The father generally carries it in his arms. It is so light, you see. They do not need pallbearers. For the children who are dying are so small, and when they die of hunger they are as light as babies by the time they die — little arms and legs like dry sticks. When they lower it into the grave it is such a little hole.’
I tapped the bundle of papers on my desk with a sharp click to recall him to his surroundings. He was gazing out of the window, but not seeing the budding tea-roses and the fat boughs of white sweet lilac.
‘Was there anything else?’ I asked abruptly. He jumped, and reached for his hat.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I apologize for troubling you.’ Then he kissed my hand without a shadow of reproach, and he was gone.
So that was the champion of the Acre poor! I watched his glossy bay cob amble down the drive, its plump haunches rolling. Small wonder they dreamed of revenge, of a man to ride like a devil before them to lead them against the people with plump faces who lived on dainties and drank only the very best of wines. While the comfort-loving, biddable, Vicar of Acre stood between them and me, they had scant protection indeed. They must think, indeed by now they should know, that the whole of the world was against them. That for me, and for people like me — the ones who ate four times a day — the poor were there to work. And if there were no work? Then there was no need for them to live.
There was a knock at the door, and Richard’s nurse came into the room. ‘Do you wish to see Master Richard before dinner?’ she asked.
‘No,’ I said wearily. ‘Take him out for a walk in the garden. I can see him through the windows.’
She nodded, and a few minutes later I saw her stooping over my son, helping him to toddle from one bright rose bush to another, and patiently, repeatedly, putting a petal in his hand and then, reprovingly, taking it out of his mouth.
The thick glass of my office window muffled the sound. I could scarcely hear my son’s clear lisping voice. I could not make out at all the words he was struggling to say to express his joy at the gravel beneath his feet and the petal in his hand, and the sunshine on his face. Through the thick glass of the window all the colour seemed drained from the landscape. And the little flaws in the glass made him and his nurse seem a long way away. The window pane was like the lens of a telescope held the wrong way. As I watched him he seemed to recede even further. Further and further away from me. A little boy in the sunshine, too far for me to recognize as my own. And I could not hear his voice.
19
The news Dr Pearce took back to the village only confirmed their fears and when we drove to church, in summer silks and satins, the faces were no more surly than usual. Celia and I led the way, our trains hissing up the aisle to the family pew, followed by Harry and John, and then the two nurses with the children. Julia toddling slowly, and with many an unpredictable swerve, and Richard carried in Mrs Austin’s arms.
As I passed up the aisle, my grey silk rustling around me, my new bonnet of twilled satin tied with a silky fat bow framing my face, I could feel a stir of unease like a wind in the top of the pine trees on a still summer’s day. I slid my eyes to one side and then another and what I saw made me draw in my breath in horror.
On the pew sides, all the way down the church, I could see the callused hands of our workers. As they heard my heels tap on the stones of the aisle, they all clenched into a protective fist, with the index finger crossing the thumb. The sure defence against a witch. The one-handed secret sign of the cross. I walked, sm
oothly, stately, between the avenue of pagan fists. I looked neither to left nor right again. But their hatred and their fear of me followed me like a court train on a ball dress.
Once I was inside the pew, and the door safely closed behind us, all anyone could see of me was the grey silk bow on the top of my bonnet. I dropped my head on my hands then as if in prayer. But I had no prayers. I was just resting my burning forehead against my icy fingers and trying to blot out the sight of all those honest dirty hands making the sign of the cross against me. Trying vainly to ward off the evil they thought I carried with me.
Dr Pearce preached a good sermon. I listened, stony-faced. His theme was that wonderfully ambiguous instruction of rendering unto Caesar, and he made a persuasive case for resting content under the civil authorities — whatever they chose to do to their people. I doubt if any of his parishioners heard a word. There was a continual clatter of the dry coughs that indicate consumption, and a muffled choking from a child with pleurisy. A hungry baby cried unceasingly at the back of the church, a thin despondent wail. Even in the richly panelled, well-cushioned Wideacre pew there was no peace. Even when the Vicar told us, his uncertain eyes on Harry and me, that the word of the Lord said we might always do as we pleased.
After the final psalm I walked down the aisle again. Conscious, at every step, of the dull, resentful eyes on my face, and the rare warm glances directed at Celia, half a step before me. We no longer lingered in the churchyard to say good day to the tenants. That tradition had somehow vanished. But while we walked to the carriage I saw, from the corner of my eyes, the rotund figure of the miller, Bill Green, burst from the church porch and march determinedly towards the carriage.
‘Miss Beatrice!’ he called. ‘Good day, Squire, Lady Lacey, Dr MacAndrew,’ he said in an afterthought, recollecting his manners. Then his anxious eyes were on my face again as I settled myself in the carriage.