Wideacre Read online

  The bracken still glowed bronze under a silvering of white frost. The few trees I would have to fell were my beloved silver birches, their trunks paper-white and their twigs a deep purple-brown in a shape as graceful as a Sèvres vase. The heather still held pale grey flowers under the coating of hoar frost, so every plant masqueraded as lucky white heather. The ground beneath the wheels of the gig was hard as a rock where the wet peat had frozen, but in the little valleys the white sand was as crunchy as sugar and looked as pale and as sweet.

  ‘You can enclose this?’ Mr Llewellyn looked at me, his face quizzical.

  ‘There are no legal problems,’ I said. ‘The land belongs outright to the Wideacre estate. It has always been used as common land and there is only a tradition of access and use. Our people have always taken the lesser game here; they have always grazed animals here; they have always collected firewood or kindling here. But there is nothing in writing. In the old days it used to be agreed annually by the Squire and the village, but there are no records. There is no written agreement to stop us.’

  I smiled but my eyes were cold.

  ‘And even if there were records,’ I said ironically. ‘They are kept in my office, and there are few of our people who can read. There is certainly no reason why we should not enclose this.’

  ‘You misunderstand me.’ Mr Llewellyn spoke softly, but his eyes no longer twinkled. ‘I meant to ask whether you felt you could bear to rip up this land with a plough, level the valleys, fill in the stream beds and plant acres of corn here.’

  ‘That is my intention,’ I said, my face as grave as his.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said, and he said no more.

  ‘You are interested in a mortgage on this land?’ I asked neutrally, and I turned the trap back the way we had come.

  ‘Indeed, yes,’ he said coolly. ‘It promises to be a most profitable venture for the estate. Would you wish to have the money paid directly to you, or to your London bankers?’

  ‘To our London lawyers, if you please,’ I said. ‘You have their address.’

  We sat in silence then, and the trap rattled home in the yellow winter sunshine, which brightened but could not warm the icy day.

  ‘A pleasure to do business with you, Mrs MacAndrew,’ he said formally, as we drove into the stable yard. ‘I’ll not come in again. I’ll be off now as soon as my horses are put to.’

  He went to his chaise and brought the two contracts out to me. I took them, standing beside Sorrel’s head, her soft lips gently nipping at my fingers, cold inside the leather gloves. I tapped her russet nose and held my hand out to him in farewell.

  ‘Thank you for calling,’ I said politely. ‘Good day, and safe journey.’

  He got into his chaise and the footman folded up the steps, slammed the door and swung himself up into his seat behind. A cold ride he would have of it, I thought, all the way to London in his livery. I raised a hand in farewell as the carriage moved off.

  The day was cold, but I was chilled inside at the change in Mr Llewellyn’s manner towards me. A total stranger, he despised me for my attitude to the common land, for reneging on the informal contract between me and the poorest of the poor, for my willingness to destroy the easy fertile beauty of Wideacre. I shivered. Then the carriage was no longer between me and the Hall, and I could see the door to the west wing. Celia was standing there, watching me. She was dressed in the usual black, and she looked thin, and slight, and scared.

  ‘Who was that gentleman?’ she asked. ‘Why did you not invite him in?’

  ‘Just a merchant,’ I said easily, handing the reins of Sorrel to one of the stable lads. I swept Celia in with an arm around her waist. ‘It’s freezing again,’ I said briskly. ‘Let’s go and warm up beside your parlour fire.’

  ‘What did he want?’ she persisted as I stripped off my gloves and cape and rang for hot coffee.

  ‘To buy the timber from the new plantation,’ I said with a convincing half-truth. ‘I had to drive him up there and it was terribly cold.’

  ‘Selling the timber already?’ said Celia surprised. ‘But the plantation isn’t ready for cutting yet, surely?’

  ‘No, not yet, Celia,’ I said. ‘He’s a timber specialist. He offers you a guaranteed price long before the cutting. Actually it is growing well and will be ready for felling soon. You haven’t been up there for years, Celia. You don’t know what it is like.’

  ‘No,’ she admitted, accepting the rebuke. ‘I do not get out on the land like you, Beatrice. I do not understand it like you.’

  ‘No reason why you should,’ I said briskly, and smiled at Stride as he brought in the coffee. I gestured to him to pour and took my cup to the fireplace to drink it before the blaze. ‘Your control over the kitchen is flawless. What’s for dinner?’

  ‘Game soup and venison, and some other dishes,’ said Celia vaguely. ‘Beatrice, when will John come home?’

  The suddenness of her question took me by surprise and I jerked my head up to look at her. She was sitting in the window seat with neither darning nor embroidery in her hands, but her eyes were not idle — she was scanning my face — and her brain was not idle. I could feel her trying to think her way out of the incomprehensible situation that seemed to be before her.

  ‘When he is completely well,’ I said firmly. ‘I could not bear to have to go through that scene again.’

  She paled as I had thought she would.

  ‘God forbid,’ she said, and her eyes dropped to the floor where John had lain screaming for her to rescue him. ‘If I had known they would have treated him like that I should never have supported your idea of sending for them,’ she said.

  ‘Certainly not,’ I said, matching her fervent tone. ‘But once they had him and he was sleeping peacefully it was obvious that the only thing to do was to let them go on with the treatment. After all, it was John’s own wish to go.’

  Celia nodded. I could see a host of reservations behind her eyes, and I wanted to hear none of them.

  ‘I shall go and change for dinner,’ I said, tossing my tricorn hat into the chair. ‘It is too cold to go out this afternoon. Let us take the children into the gallery and play shuttlecock with them.’

  Celia’s face lightened with her quick affection for the children. But her eyes stayed shadowed.

  ‘Yes, lovely!’ she said, but there was no joy in her voice.

  So at the cheap price of an afternoon of unmitigated tedium playing at shuttlecock with Celia, two doting nurses and with children too small to understand the game, and too little to play it if they did, I won freedom from any questions about Mr Llewellyn, and entails, and my sudden need for capital. And freedom from questions about John, and John’s proposed return.

  Celia assumed John would come home for Christmas. But Christmas came and went and John was not well enough to return. We could not have a great Wideacre Christmas party for we were still in mourning. But Dr Pearce suggested a smaller party for the village children at the vicarage, which Harry and Celia and I could attend.

  I thought we could do better than that; I thought we had better supply it too. Miss Green — the Vicar’s housekeeper, the miller’s sister — had a spinster’s notion of what Acre children should eat, and the sort of amounts that were suitable. So on Christmas Day I drove to church with a bootful of meat and bread and jellies and sweetmeats and lemonade. The party was to be immediately after the church service and Harry and Celia and I walked from the church, saying ‘Good morning’ and ‘Happy Christmas’ to the wealthier tenants who had stopped in the churchyard to greet us.

  The poorer tenants, and the Acre villagers, and even the cottager children were in the vicarage garden, dourly supervised by Miss Green and by the two curates.

  ‘Happy Christmas, good morning,’ I said generally as we entered the garden gate and was surprised at the response. There were no smiles. The men bared their heads or pulled a forelock as Harry and Celia and I walked up the path and the women dipped a curtsy. But the warmth of a Wideacre we