Wideacre Read online

  I knew also — a woman always knows though she may conceal her knowledge even from herself — that Harry desired me in return. When he knew I was in the room his face was schooled and his voice neutral, but if he came upon me unexpectedly, or if I walked into the library when he had thought I was out, his eyes would light up and his hands would tremble. The long discussions we shared over the planting of next year’s crops and Harry’s new theories on crop rotation were spiced and lightened by this unspoken exchange of excitement, and when my hair brushed his cheek as we both leaned over a column of figures, I felt him stiffen. Disappointingly, he did not move forward, but nor did he draw away.

  All the long autumn and winter I hardly noticed the chill and the dreary rain, I burned so inside. In the early months, when the chrysanthemums and the thick Michaelmas daisies bloomed, I carried them in to fill the house with their peppery smell and shuddered at the flaring colours. The hunting season came and I had to trail around in my heavy black dress on mornings when the sun rose like a red ball over the hoar-frosted fields and I could hear the hysterical yelp of hounds rushing like mad things in the first runs of the year. By some erratic social ruling, Harry was allowed to attend the meet, dressed in dark colours, and follow the hounds over the first few fields, but was not allowed to be in at the kill. The same inflexible social code ruled that I could not ride in company, and was thus banned from hunting for the whole of the frosty bright season. Only my secret rides about the estate were allowed, as long as none of the gentry saw me.

  So there were no wild gallops for me to burn off the energy I felt. There was little work to do on the land, so I was much indoors. As the damp and the rain lifted, and the frost took hold, I longed for Harry with sharper and sharper need. My desire grew so strong that the pleasure curdled into pain on some days. Once, waiting for his return in the stable yard, I broke the ice on the drinking trough and crushed the splinters in my hand to still my impatience. But then, when he came riding in like a warrior high on a steed, and his face lit up to see me, every icy bit of pain melted into joy.

  Christmas and New Year passed quietly for we were in second mourning. When a sudden frost made the roads usable, Harry took the coach to town for a week to transact some business. He came home full of the new fashions and plays of the season.

  His absence gave me an opportunity to note, with ironic self-knowledge, that although I missed him, I relished the absolute power over the land that was mine when he was away. Our tenants, our labourers and the Acre craftsmen knew well enough who was the master, and would always consult me first before taking a plan or request to Harry. But merchants or dealers who did not know the county well sometimes made the mistake, that first year, of asking to see the Squire. I was always piqued when they entertained me with social gossip but then paused, waiting for me to leave the room before they started business talk. And Harry, with one half of my knowledge and experience, would always be flattered and would sometimes say, with a smile to me, ‘Don’t let us detain you, Beatrice, if you have something to do elsewhere. I am sure I can manage this alone and I will discuss it with you later.’ At which I was supposed to take my leave. Sometimes I went. But sometimes I committed the social solecism of smiling back and saying, ‘I have no business elsewhere, Harry. I would rather stay.’

  Then the merchant and Harry would exchange the rueful grin of two men with a recalcitrant female, and discuss the deal for wool or wheat or meat. Wideacre always had the best of it when I was there, but I was unfailingly offended at the assumption that my business could be elsewhere when wealth was on the table.

  While Harry was away, however, the merchants, the traders, the lawyers and the bankers had perforce to recognize my ability to give and honour my word. The law, the eternal male law, did not recognize my signature, any more than if I were a bankrupt, a criminal, or a lunatic. But a business man generally needed only one hard look from me before he realized that if he wanted a contract with Wideacre he had better not suggest awaiting Harry’s return. In Harry’s absence my power on the land shed its concealment and everyone, from the poorest tinker or shanty dweller to the leaders of county society, could see that I ruled the land.

  We had a week of cold, clammy fogs after Christmas but in mid-January the hills shed their grey and became clear and frosty and bright. Every morning I awoke from a night of confused hot dreams and got up from my bed to throw my window open and breathe in the sharp freezing air. A few hard gasps would send me shivering back into the room to wash and dress before my log fire.

  The weather took its toll in Acre. Bill Green, the miller, slipped on some ice in his mill yard and broke a leg and I had to send for the Chichester surgeon to come and set it for him. Mrs Hodgett, the lodge-keeper’s mother, took to her bed when the snow started falling and complained of pains in her chest. They could not root her out. After a week of this nonsense, Hodgett held the gate for me one morning and confessed that he was sure she was in bed only out of pure spite, and that his wife, Sarah, was exhausted with the extra cooking and washing and tired by two walks a day to Acre village to take the old crone her meals.

  I nodded and gave him a smile and the next day took my roan hunter down to Acre village and tied him to old Mrs Hodgett’s wooden gate. I could see no face at the window of the little cottage but I knew the old witch would have been peeping. By the time I had swept up her snowy garden and burst into her house, stamping the snow off my boots and pulling my gauntlets off, she had skipped back into her sick bed, covers up to her chin, her bright healthy eyes shifty with deceit.

  ‘Good day, Mrs Hodgett,’ I sang out. ‘I am sorry to see you abed.’

  ‘Good day, Miss Beatrice,’ she quavered. ‘It is kind of you to visit a poor old lady.’

  ‘I can do better than a visit,’ I said encouragingly. ‘I have come to tell you that I am sending for the new Scottish physician, Dr MacAndrew, to come and see you. I hear he is wonderful with chest complaints.’

  Her eyes were bright with eagerness.

  ‘That would be grand,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard tell on him. They speak well of him indeed.’

  ‘But have you heard of his special treatment?’ I asked. ‘He has a wonderful reducing diet which they say never fails.’

  ‘No. What is that?’ she asked, walking unsuspecting into the trap.

  ‘He calls it starving out the infection,’ I said, lying through my teeth with a candid gaze. ‘The first day you take nothing but hot water, and the second day you have hot water with one spoonful, no more, of gruel. The third day you have plain hot water again and the fourth you have a spoonful of gruel. That goes on until you are cured. They say it never fails.’

  I smiled encouragingly at her and inwardly apologized to the young doctor whose reputation I was traducing so wilfully. I had not yet met him, but I heard he was excellent. His practice was mainly with the Quality families, of course, but he had a growing name for caring for the poor, and in some very hard cases he was giving his services for free. He would survive this faradiddle. No one but a very foolish old lady would believe such nonsense. But Mrs Hodgett was aghast. She stared incredulously at my face and plucked at the bedding with her plump fingers.

  ‘I don’t know, Miss Beatrice, I’m sure,’ she said hesitantly. ‘It can’t be right to eat so little when you’re poorly.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said blithely, and turned as the door opened. It was Sarah Hodgett, who had walked from the gatehouse with an earthenware bowl of stew in her hands and a crusty new-baked loaf of bread wrapped in a spotless towel balancing on the lid. The smell of rich rabbit stew filled the frowsy little room and I saw the old lady’s eyes gleam.

  ‘Miss Beatrice!’ said Sarah with a courteous half-bob and a warm smile for me, her favourite. ‘It’s good of you to call on Mother while she’s poorly.’

  ‘She’ll be better soon,’ I said with certainty. ‘She’s going on Dr MacAndrew’s special reducing diet. You might as well start now, had you not, Mrs Hodgett? So you can take your rab