Wideacre (Wideacre Trilogy) Read online

  ‘What is it, John?’ she said, her words tumbling out in her distress. ‘Have you gone mad? What is it?’

  He pointed the poker. On the little round table, drawn temptingly close to his favourite chair, were the two bottles of whisky and the decanter of icy water. A small plate of biscuits, and a trimmed cigar ready for lighting.

  ‘Who put that there?’ demanded Celia, and she spun round on Stride. She seemed suddenly taller, and she held her head high and her eyes burned with anger. ‘Who put that there?’ she said, and the note of command was clear in her voice.

  ‘I did, your ladyship,’ said Stride. He faced Celia without shrinking, but he had never before seen her like this. None of us had.

  ‘Did Dr MacAndrew order it?’ she asked. No lie would have been possible to Celia as she stood there, her eyes blazing and her face icy.

  ‘No, your ladyship,’ said Stride. He did not volunteer that it was my order. But Celia had, in any case, heard enough.

  ‘You may go,’ she said abruptly, and nodded him to close the door. Harry, John, Celia and I were left alone in the wreckage of the room.

  The poker had dropped to John’s side and he was no longer buoyed up with rage. He was looking hungrily, longingly at the bottles. His shoulders were sagging already with anticipated defeat. Celia strode across the room with fast strides, quite unlike her usual pretty glide, and picked both bottles up by their necks in one hand. With one rapid backward gesture she smashed them against the stone fireplace and threw the broken necks into the grate.

  ‘You ordered those for him, Beatrice,’ she said, and her voice was full of anger. Her very dress seemed stiff with her rage. ‘You ordered those, just as you have arranged that we should have wine with every meal. You want to force John to drink. You want to keep him drinking.’

  Harry’s mouth was gawping like a netted salmon. Events were too fast for him, and Celia in a rage was a sight to shock the coolest of men. I was little better. I watched her curiously, as I might have watched a kitten suddenly turn vicious. And I was afraid of this new strength in her.

  ‘I am Lady Lacey,’ she said. Her head was up, her breathing fast, her whole face alight with the force of her anger. She had never been angry in her life before, and this explosion of rage was sweeping her along like a spring flood.

  ‘I am Lady Lacey,’ she said again. ‘This is my house and I order, I order, that there shall be no alcohol available in this house for anyone.’

  ‘Celia …’ said Harry feebly; and she rounded on him, forgetting her habitual obedience as if it had never been. ‘Harry, I will not have a man destroyed under my very eyes and do nothing to save him,’ she said fiercely. ‘I have never commanded in this house. I have never commanded anywhere, nor felt any desire to do so. But I cannot let this go on.’

  Harry gazed wildly at me for help but I could do nothing. I stood as still as a fox in the forest when he hears the horns and the yelps of the dogs. But my eyes ranged from John, unmoving, unspeaking, to Celia, bright with anger.

  ‘Where are the keys to the cellar?’ she said to Harry.

  ‘Stride has them,’ he said feebly. ‘And Beatrice.’

  Celia walked to the door and tore it open. Predictably Stride and the housekeeper were in the hall and foolish they looked, lingering in earshot.

  ‘Give me the keys to the cellar,’ Celia said to Stride. ‘All the keys. Miss Beatrice’s set as well.’

  Stride glanced at me and I nodded. There was no stopping this torrent; it was like being knocked off your feet by a flash flood. You swim with it until it is spent and only then do you worry how to get home.

  Stride fetched his keys, and mine from the hook in my office. We stood in silence until the door from the west wing banged and he returned.

  Celia took the two bunches in her firm grip.

  ‘I shall keep these until we serve wine again, when John is well,’ she said with absolute certainty. ‘Harry, do you agree?’

  Harry gulped and said, ‘Yes, my dear,’ like flotsam in the flood.

  ‘Beatrice?’ she asked, and her voice was as stony as her face.

  ‘Of course, if you wish it,’ I said, my eyebrows raised in an insolent, easy gesture.

  She ignored me and turned to Stride.

  ‘We will go and lock the cellars now, if you please. But send Dr MacAndrew’s valet to take him to his room. He is not well.’

  ‘Mr MacAndrew’s valet has the night off,’ Stride started. Celia cut in at once.

  ‘Dr MacAndrew, you mean,’ she said, and held his gaze. Stride’s eyes fell before her brown bright hardness.

  ‘Dr MacAndrew,’ he said.

  ‘Then send a footman,’ she said briskly. ‘Dr MacAndrew will be tired and needs his sleep. And send someone to clear up in here.’ She turned to me and Harry, standing mumchance on the scorched carpet with the smell of expensive smoke around us. I was as nervous as a horse on burned land.

  ‘When I have locked the cellar I shall go to bed,’ she said. ‘We will discuss this, if you wish it, in the morning.’

  And she turned and left us.

  And there was nothing I could do to stop her.

  15

  In the morning she was the same. In the afternoon she received some callers and while I worked in the office I wondered if the babble of high voices and the tinkle of laughter would tire and undermine her. When I came down to dinner in the evening, my silk skirts rustling, my own head held high, she met me look for look. She was unbending. She was mistress of the house.

  I claimed Harry’s hand and we went in for dinner with John squiring Celia to her place. He had now been a full day without a drink and his hands were shaking and there was a nervous tremor around his mouth. But with Celia on his arm his head was up and his walk was straight. I glanced covertly at them and they looked like a pair of heroes who had survived the worst of their adventure. They both looked tired: John was in bad shape physically, and Celia had violet shadows under her brown eyes to bear witness that her anger had made her sleepless for another night, but they looked ready to follow any thread into any maze and face any bull-like monster that might be lurking in the darkness there.

  There was no wine at dinner. John drank water, Celia sipped at a glass of lemonade, and Harry had a pint mug full of water at his plate. Harry looked sour, as well he might, and I took my lemonade in mutinous silence. None of us made any attempt to maintain the appearance of a normal meal. I would normally set a conversation going and include Harry and Celia, but tonight I was sulky and unprepared for this defeat. The meal was brief and when Celia and I rose to withdraw I was relieved to see that the gentlemen were coming with us. I had not relished the prospect of private time alone with Celia before the parlour fire.

  We ordered the tea table early and sat in silence, like suspicious strangers. When I had drunk my tea I put the cup down in the saucer with a decisive click and said to Harry, ‘Would you come to my office, Harry, if there is nothing you would rather do? I have had a letter about water rights on the Fenny and I want you to see the problem with a map.’

  Celia’s eyes were on me, and I saw that she was testing my words for the truth.

  ‘That is, if Celia permits,’ I said sharply, and watched her quick rise of colour and her eyes drop in what looked like shame.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, softly. ‘I shall be going to the library to read in a few moments.’

  I did not bother to maintain the pretence once I had shut my office door, but I spun round on it, leaned against the panels and said imperiously to Harry, ‘You must stop Celia with this madness. She will drive us all crazy.’

  Harry threw himself into the armchair by the fire like a sulky schoolboy.

  ‘There’s nothing I can do!’ he said with irritation. ‘I spoke to her this morning for she would hear nothing about it last night, and she just said again, “I am Lady Lacey and John will not have drink in my house.’”

  ‘She’s your wife,’ I said crudely. ‘She has to obey you, and