The carriage stopped outside the Hall and Celia pushed past me, swung open the door and jumped down in a shower of glass. I would have grasped Harry’s hand for a few urgent words but John swept him in after Celia and there was no time to prompt him.
‘We farm Wideacre in the only way there is to produce a good yield,’ said Harry defensively, standing before the empty grate of the parlour. The thunder rumbled outside in a nightmare contradiction, half drowning his words.
‘Then we must content ourselves with less yield,’ said Celia sharply. She was riding the storm of her anger. Her moral force was based on her certainty of being right. Celia never spoke as a stratagem; she only ever spoke out when her stern, unswerving conscience told her she must.
‘Yields are hardly a matter for you, my dear,’ said Harry, with a warning note in his voice.
‘They are when the carriage is stoned with me inside!’ Celia retorted, her colour blazing in her cheeks. ‘They certainly are when I cannot pray in my parish church because behind me there are hungry people, dying people, facing starvation.’
‘Now!’ said Harry, raising his voice. ‘Now, I won’t have this, Celia.’
I nodded at John. ‘Come,’ I said, and turned towards the door.
‘Oh, no,’ said John not moving. ‘This is not a private affair between Harry and Celia that they should settle in privacy. This is an issue that concerns us all. Like Celia I cannot live here while this starvation goes on. Another winter is coming, and the last one took famine within a hair’s breadth of that village. I won’t leave this room until we have decided to restore the common plots for vegetables and you have agreed to open up the common land again.’
‘What do you know about farming?’ I demanded rudely. ‘Either of you! All you have seen, John, have been the Edinburgh drying greens; and all you know, Celia, is the inside of your parlour. If we do not farm in this way we will lose Wideacre!’ I stopped on a shaky half-laugh as a great crack of lightning lit up the room and showed me Harry’s aghast face.
‘I am not exaggerating,’ I said. ‘We are desperately overstretched and we have to keep on this course or we will lose all. No Wideacre for us, no Wideacre for Julia. The poor carry the brunt of it, of course they do. The poor always do. But once the profits of this season come in we will be able to ease the burden a little. And then yearly it will get better.’
‘No,’ said Celia. She was standing by the window, the sky livid behind her, the black clouds underlined with the garish orange light of the setting sun.
‘This is not a time for gradual improvements,’ she said. ‘We must change completely. It is not right that we should eat well at table while people starve on our land so that we can grow rich. It is not Christian, it is not right, that there should be such a great gulf between rich and poor. I will not accept that this is the way it has to be. You are a tyrant on Wideacre, Beatrice; you can decide absolutely how things are to be. But you may not decide that the poor starve — I will not allow it!’
‘I manage Wideacre in the only way there is to increase yields …’ I started but Celia’s voice broke in over mine, clear and sharp with her anger.
‘You do not manage Wideacre, Beatrice,’ she said, and her voice was full of scorn and disdain. ‘You ruin it. You ruin everything you love. You are a wrecker. I have loved you and trusted you and I was mistaken in you. You adored Wideacre but you have destroyed every good thing about it. You loved the meadows and they are gone. You loved the woods and they are sold or uprooted. You loved the downs and your ploughs are going higher and higher. You are a wrecker and you destroy the very things you work for.’ Her eyes flickered from me to John and I knew she was also thinking of how I had tried to wreck him too, the man I loved.
I took a deep breath that sounded like a harsh groan as she held up this hard mirror to my life. And I knew she was right.
‘I will not live with you while you persist in this destruction,’ she said as cool as a judge with a hanging sentence in mind. ‘I will not permit you to destroy the morality of our life by forcing us to be party to this horror. I will not attack the people who look to us to shield them. I will not starve people who have no defence.’
She stopped and in the silence Harry’s eyes went from her flushed face to my white one. But he said nothing. I bit the inside of my cheeks to steady my breathing and then I drew breath to defeat her. I had words, I had power. I could beat her down.
But John’s sharp eyes had been on me all the time, and he spoke first.
‘You are wrong, Celia,’ he said, and I quickly glanced at him, an unexpected ally. ‘You are wrong,’ he said. His eyes were bright, and very sharp on my face. ‘They do have a defender,’ he said slowly, watching me. His emphasis surprised Celia and she was looking at me too. Even Harry was alerted.
‘They do have a defender,’ said John again. ‘The Culler is on Wideacre.’
‘No!’ I said, and I crossed the room with two quick strides and took John’s lapels in a hard grip, scanning his face, wide-eyed.
‘It is not true,’ I said. ‘You are trying to torture me, as I tormented you. It is a lie.’
John’s look at me was empty of any compassion. ‘No, Beatrice,’ he said. ‘The Culler is on Wideacre. I heard them say so tonight. Who is he? And why is he such a terror to you?’
I half closed my eyes and near swooned. John put two ungentle hands under my elbows to support me and scanned my white face with his hard, questioning gaze. I opened my eyes to look past him, to the familiar safe landscape of my home.
And then I saw them.
Two black dogs in the rose garden. They were still, as still as well-trained keeper’s dogs when he has ordered them to stay and has an eye on them from some dark shadow. The spaniel was sitting, ears cocked, eyes bright on the house, black as mourning velvet. The black lurcher was lying, head up like some heraldic monster, watching the house, watching me.
‘He is here,’ I said, and took one staggering step to the chair by the fire before my legs gave way and I sank into it. A hard hand on my shoulder twisted me around and I raised my dazed eyes to see Celia bending over me. But her touch was hard, and her eyes were cold.
‘Who is he?’ she said. I could hear a little insistent echo of the question over and over again, which said ‘Who is he?’ ‘Who is he?’ ‘Who is he?’ in my frightened whirling head.
‘Is he coming for Julia?’ she asked. Her hard little hand on my shoulder tightened and she half shook me in her own fear. ‘Is he coming for Julia?’
I gazed blankly at her. I could scarcely remember who Julia was. In the grip of my own terror all I could see were the two dogs with their eyes fixed on the parlour window, waiting for their master to send them in like a hunting pack.
‘Is he Julia’s father? Is he coming for her?’ Celia’s voice, sharp, with an edge of hysteria, still could not get through to me.
‘Yes,’ I said, neither knowing nor caring what I was saying. ‘Yes, yes.’
Celia gasped as if I had slapped her, and stretched a hand to John.
‘What?’ said Harry, utterly bemused. His secure world was shattering too fast. His life was being undermined from too many sources at once. ‘What are you all talking about? I am Julia’s father.’
‘No,’ said Celia dully, one hand held by John, tears pouring down her cheeks. ‘This is just more of your sister’s wreckage, Harry. Beatrice cheated you, and she cheated me. I am not Julia’s mother. She is Beatrice’s child. And now her father is coming for her.’
Harry’s frightened eyes turned on me.
‘Beatrice?’ he said, as if he meant to call for his mother. ‘Beatrice, tell me, this is none of it true?’
‘It is true,’ I said. I was in my own private hell and I cared not who else plunged into their own nightmares. ‘Julia is my child and the Culler is her father.’
‘And who is the Culler?’ asked John, following the thread through the tortuous maze of lies. ‘Who is this Culler?’
I met Harry??
?s eyes.
‘The gamekeeper’s lad,’ I said. Celia and John looked to Harry for it meant nothing to them. There was a second while Harry’s face was blank and then his pitiful confusion was replaced with a look of pure terror.
‘He is coming for us?’ he said. ‘He is coming for you? He is coming to get Julia?’ The tone of terror in his voice tipped Celia over the border from fear to panic.
‘I am going,’ she said. ‘I am leaving here and taking the children at once.’
I slumped back in the chair. It was all wrecked, as Celia had said it was. The maze was falling in, and the Culler’s dogs waited in my garden.
‘I’ll harness the horses,’ said John and he left the room without another glance at me. Questions were still burning in his mind, but one look at Celia’s aghast face had sent him running to save her from the horror that I knew, and that Harry confirmed.
John had been waiting for this moment, when the maze would be wrecked and he would pull Celia and the children she loved out into safety. He thought I lied about Julia’s father. He thought I lied when I confirmed Celia’s long secret fear that one day the mysterious father would come to snatch Julia from her. But he knew the sound of terror in my voice, and he knew the world of Wideacre was crumbling around us. And all he cared for was that the innocent should be out of the wreckage when the world caved in.
Harry had turned his head into the stone mantelpiece and was weeping in silence. He was like a child left alone among a ruin.
Celia left the room without another word. I heard her run up the stairs to Julia’s nursery, and then come down slowly, carefully, carrying the sleeping child. Then I heard the door of the west wing bang as she went for Richard. I went into the hall like a sleepwalker.
Harry shambled after me, still weeping.
John came in from the stables; he took Richard from Celia and she turned to pick up Julia from the sofa. My son had not even stirred. He slept wrapped in a blanket, his dark lashes on his pink cheeks, one thumb firmly embedded in his sweet pursed mouth. Now and then he sucked noisily and settled into sleep again. I put my nose to his sweet-smelling forehead and felt the soft tickle of the baby hair. But I felt nothing, nothing, nothing, in my icy private well of fear.
John’s eyes on my face were curious.
‘No,’ he said, as if agreeing with something I had said. ‘There is nothing left for you, is there, Beatrice? It is all gone.’
I straightened and looked coldly at him. Nothing could touch me now. I was lost.
Celia walked past me without a word, without even a backward glance, and Harry followed her like a good foal his dam. He was blind and deaf and dumb with shock, all he could do was follow in Celia’s small determined footsteps until his own haze of horror lifted. Then my husband walked past me without a word. The door to the west wing clicked; I heard them go down the corridor to the stable door. Then the stable door banged in the keening wind. I was alone.
The hall was almost as black as nighttime in the gloom from the storm, but I feared no shadows. The terror I had hidden in my mind for year after year after year was here. It no longer threatened me as some horror for the future. It was here and I could face it. Half blind, half dazed with shock, I at least was free of a fear of ghosts, of shadows that moved, of dreams that could terrorize me. My worst fears, my utter terror, were all coming for me. I need fear the unknown no more.
And the house, my lovely Wideacre, was at last mine. Mine alone. Never before had I been utterly alone in the house like an insect in the heart of a deep sweet-smelling rose. Never before had there been silence from the kitchen quarters, silence from the bedrooms, silence from the parlour. Not a sound. Nothing. No one was here but me. I was the only person in the Hall, the only person on the land. And my ownership was undisputed.
I walked around the Hall like a woman in a trance. I touched the carved newel post of the staircase, fingered the intricate carvings, which showed corn, a bag of fleeces, a cow in calf, all the great easy fertile wealth of Wideacre. I crossed to smooth the polished top of a straddle-legged table with the flat of my hand. The wood was warm and gentle, good to stroke. A silver bowl of flowers stood on the table, the drooped heads of the roses gazing at their own pale reflection in the polished top. I touched them gently with one fingertip and the soft petals showered off the flower heads leaving the cluster of dusty stamens. I thought of what Celia had said: ‘You are a wrecker, Beatrice.’ And I smiled without humour, and turned away.
The parlour doorknob was a little miracle of round warmth under my cupped palm. The panels smooth and cool to my forehead. I ran my fingers along the stone mantelpiece and felt the sweet rough texture of Wideacre sandstone. I touched the delicate pretty china Celia had brought back from France, and the rose-pink pebble I had once found in the Fenny that I had insisted should be displayed on the mantelpiece. Some conscientious parlourmaid had put the little china owl on the mantelpiece with the other porcelain. I touched it now without fear. He was coming for me. He would be here soon. I need fear no more secret messages.
I rubbed the back of my hand along the smooth brocade of the winged chair, the one I like to sit in to watch the fire. And I tinkled the keys of the piano — a ghostly sound in the silent house. Then I left the parlour and went through the hall, trailing my fingers in the bowl of pot-pourri and catching up a handful of dried flower petals as I passed. I went to my office. To my own special safe room. The fire was laid but not lit and the room was dark. I walked in, as if it were an ordinary day, with a steady heart and a light step. I was just moving a little more slowly than normal. I was thinking a little more slowly. And I could see nothing clearly. There was a mist around the periphery of my vision that meant I could see nothing except what was immediately before me. I was in a long, long tunnel. And I did not know where it was taking me.
Before I lit the candles I went to the window. The storm had rolled along the head of the downs and was no longer close to the house. A fitful light showed through the breaks in the storm-clouds; the rose garden was empty. The Culler’s dogs had gone. He had been here to see the house, perhaps to see who was there and who had fled. He would know I was here alone. He would know I was awaiting him. He would know that I was aware of his nearness, as he was of mine. I sighed, as if that knowledge made me content, then I turned from the window and lit the candles and set a spill to the fire, for the room felt damp. I pulled down a cushion from one of the chairs and sat myself before it and watched the logs burning. I was in no hurry. My life no longer required planning. Tonight would go according to his plan, and I need, at long last, do nothing.
20
The dream started at once, I think. I know, I know it was but a dream. But some real days have seemed less real than those moments. Every day of this weary harvest has seemed less real than this dream. As I gazed blank-eyed into the fire I heard a noise unlike the thunder rolling. I heard a window creak. The light from the stormy cloud-chased sky was blocked and the room went utterly black for someone had blocked out the light as he climbed through the window. I turned my head languidly, but I did not call for help. I opened my mouth but I could not scream. I could only freeze, half sitting, half sprawled, and wait for what was coming to me.
He came silent to me and he pushed the chair from behind my shoulders so I lay flat on the floor. I trembled as if his very touch was an icy wind, but I did not move. Only my eyes blinked and gazed in a gleam of moonlight.
He kissed my collarbone in the hollow at the base of my neck. He opened my gown and kissed one breast, the nipple as hard as a blackberry, and then he kissed the other. I found my voice but I only made a soft moan of longing. I found I could move, but my hand did not reach for a weapon but went straight to him, and felt his familiar, his beloved hardness. Hard as bone.
He brushed my hand away like a troublesome fly, and slid his face down my body, over the curve of my smooth, well-fed belly, and then he took me in his mouth.
He was not gentle. He did not kiss. He did not lick. He
sank his teeth into me as if he was starving for meat and he bit deep until his teeth ground on the core of my body and closed on my most private, most secret, flesh.
I screamed then, but there was no sound. And it was not a scream of pain, but of pain and pleasure, shock and delight, and a certain terrified acceptance of my fate. He sucked at me, his cheeks hollowed. He rubbed his face against me, his stubble scratching the inside of my gripping thighs. I tried, with all my will, to lie passive against this outrageous dream-like assault but when his teeth closed on me again and again in little biting thrusts, I moaned as if I were going mad and put both hands down to his head to force his face into me. His tongue slid inside me in a teasing thrust, and I cried out in lust. Then my hands closed on his head and clenched in his hair and I held his cheating, wicked curly head still and rubbed myself against him as hard as if he were the carved newel post on the stairs. He shook his head when he needed to breathe, and I pulled his hair to clamp him closer back to me. Then in one agonizing second after another he closed his jaw and his lower teeth scraped the soaked aching length of me and I shuddered on a deep hoarse cry of pain and said, ‘Ralph.’
Then I opened my eyes and I was alone.
Alone.
Always alone.
It was nearly dawn. The candles had burned out. The storm-torn sky was getting lighter but the storm was still unsated. It had ringed the downs and was coming back towards me. I felt the tension in the air like a bruise on scalded skin. I did not know if I had been dreaming.
The casement window was open. It had been on the latch last night. I knew it. I knew that. But it had been a stormy night; it could have rattled free. Or Ralph could have slid a thin blade beneath the catch and flicked it open. He could have swung a leg over the window sill and stepped down into the room. He could have stepped …?
I cried out. The Ralph of last night had been whole — surely? I could remember his hard thighs when I rubbed my hands against him. But below his knees? I could not remember. I had not thought. Once his hard, sharp, fox’s teeth had closed on me I had thought of nothing except his name tolling in my head like a firebell, and his thick black curls clenched in my grabbing, desperate hands.