Wideacre Read online

  We reached the sea at teatime. He had chosen the stretch of shoreline nearest to Wideacre — almost due south — where there is a tiny fishing village of half-a-dozen shanties and a most villainous-looking public house. We pulled up outside and John MacAndrew’s shout brought the landlord running, very surprised and very certain he had nothing in his house fit for the Quality. So, too, were we. But in the boot of the curricle was a complete tea service with the best tea, sugar and cream.

  ‘I dare say it will be butter by now,’ said John MacAndrew, spreading a rug on the shingle of the beach for me to sit. ‘But a simple country girl like yourself does not expect everything to be perfect when she condescends to leave her estate and visit the peasantry.’

  ‘Indeed not,’ I retorted. ‘And you will not know the difference, for I dare say you tasted neither butter nor cream until you crossed the border.’

  ‘Och, no,’ he said instantly, adopting the broadest Scots accent. ‘All we drink at home is the usquebaugh!’

  ‘Usquebaugh!’ I exclaimed. ‘What is that?’

  His face darkened with some private thought. ‘It’s a drink,’ he said shortly. ‘A spirit, like grog or brandy, but a good deal stronger. It’s a wonderful drink for losing your senses with, and a good many of my countrymen use it to forget their sorrows. But it’s a poor master to have. I’ve known men, one of them very dear to me, ruined by it.’

  ‘Do you ever drink it?’ I asked, intrigued at this serious side to John MacAndrew that I had glimpsed before only in his professional work.

  He grimaced. ‘I drink it in Scotland,’ he said. ‘There’s many places where you can get nothing else. My father serves it at home instead of port in the evening, and I cannot say I refuse it! But I fear it rather.’ He paused and looked at me uncertainly, as if considering whether or not to trust me with a secret. He took a breath and went on. ‘When my mother died I had just started at the university,’ he said quietly. ‘The loss of her hit me hard, very hard indeed. I found that when I drank usquebaugh — whisky — the pain left me. Then I found it good to drink all the time. I think it is possible to be addicted to it — as I warned you some people become addicted to laudanum. I fear addiction for my patients because I’ve had a taste of it in my own life. I’ll take a glass of whisky with my father, but I’ll take no more. It is a weakness of mine I do well to guard against.’

  I nodded, understanding only dimly what he meant, but knowing well that he had trusted me with some sort of confession. Then the landlord came out from the public house carrying, with awestruck concentration, John MacAndrew’s silver tea service, the silver pot filled to the brim with perfectly brewed Indian tea.

  ‘I shall expect to be attacked by highwaymen on the way home, all after your sugar tongs,’ I said lightly. ‘Do you always travel with such vulgar ostentation?’

  ‘Only when I am proposing,’ he said so unexpectedly that I jumped and some of my tea spilled in the saucer and splashed my gown.

  ‘You should be horse-whipped!’ I said, dabbing at the stain.

  ‘No, no,’ he said, teasing me even further. ‘You misunderstand the nature of my proposal. I am even prepared to marry you.’

  I choked on a laugh and he rescued my teacup and put it on the tray behind him.

  ‘Now I will stop,’ he said, suddenly serious. ‘I love you, Beatrice, and I want with all my heart that you should be my wife.’

  The laughter died on my lips. I was ready to say ‘No’ but somehow the word would not come. I simply could not bring myself to spoil this lovely sunny day. The waves splashed and sucked at the shingle; the seagulls called and wheeled in the salty air. The words of refusal seemed a million miles away, even though I knew I could not possibly accept.

  ‘Is it Wideacre?’ he asked as the silence lengthened. I looked up quickly in gratitude at his understanding.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I could live nowhere else. I simply could not.’

  He smiled gently, but his blue eyes showed hurt.

  ‘Not even to make a home with me and be my wife?’ he asked. The silence lengthened, and it seemed that I would indeed be forced to frame some sort of absolute refusal.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I truly am. Wideacre has been my life, all my life. I cannot begin to tell you what it means to me. I cannot go away from it.’

  He reached across the rug and took my hand in both of his. He held it gently, and then turned it palm up and pressed a kiss into the warm, cupped hand, and then he closed my slim fingers over the kiss as if to hold it in.

  ‘Beatrice, know this,’ he said, and his voice was very grave. ‘I have seen you, and watched you for a year now and I knew you would be likely to refuse me and to choose instead to stay at home. But hear this: Wideacre belongs to Harry and after him to his heirs. It will never, it can never, be yours. It is your brother’s home; it is not your home. If you and he should quarrel — I know, I know, how impossible that seems — but if he insisted, he could throw you off tomorrow. You are there only at Harry’s invitation. You have no rights at all. If you refuse marriage for Wideacre then you are refusing your future home for a place that is only a temporary place to stay — it can never be either secure or permanent.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, low. My eyes were on the sea and my face was stony. ‘It is as secure as I can make it,’ I said.

  ‘Beatrice, it is a special place, a wonderful place. But you have seen very little of the rest of the country. There are other places equally lovely where you and I could make a home of our own, that would become as dear to you as Wideacre is now,’ he said.

  I shook my head and glanced at him.

  ‘You do not understand. It could only ever be Wideacre,’ I said. ‘You do not know what I have done to try to win it, to make a place for myself there. I have longed for it all my life.’

  His clever eyes were on my face. ‘What you have done?’ he said, repeating my indiscreet words. ‘What have you done to try to win it that commits you so deeply?’

  I hovered between a collapse into a heart-easing conscience-saving confession to this wise, this gentle, lover and a clever, habitual lie. My instincts and my hungry cleverness warned me away, away from confidence, away from trust, away from love, away from real marriage.

  ‘Beatrice …’ he said. ‘You can tell me.’

  I paused, the words were on my tongue. I was about to tell him. Then I glanced down towards the sea and saw a man, bronzed as a pirate, looking curiously at us.

  ‘It seems I was right about your silver sugar tongs,’ I said lightly. John followed the direction of my gaze and exclaimed and started to his feet. Without hesitation he went towards the fellow, his boots scrunching on the shingle. I saw them exchange a few words, and then John glanced uncertainly back at me, and came back towards me with the man following a few steps behind.

  ‘He recognizes you as Miss Lacey of Wideacre,’ John said, rather bewildered. ‘And he wants to speak with you about something, but he will not tell me what it is. Shall I send the fellow about his business?’

  ‘No, of course not!’ I said smiling. ‘He may be about to tell me where to find buried treasure! You count the spoons and repack the tea things and I will see what he wants.’

  I rose to my feet and went towards the man who pulled his forelock as I approached. I could tell he was a sailing man; he had none of the heaviness of a farming labourer. His skin was tanned a deep dirty brown, and his eyes narrowed with staring over bright waters. He had a pair of flapping trousers, wide-bottomed, and shoes — not boots like a farm labourer would. He wore a handkerchief tied over his head with a characteristic little plait of hair poking out behind. A complete villain, I judged, and I had a wary smile for him.

  ‘What d’you want of me?’ I said, certain it was a loan or some favour.

  ‘Business,’ he said, surprisingly. ‘Trade.’

  His accent was not local and I could not place it. West country, I thought. I started to have a glimmer of an idea what his business might be.