Wideacre Read online

  ‘Ah, but she would not,’ Lucy said. I felt again that prickle of dread at the rising inflexion of Lucy’s voice. ‘She would not come home to Wideacre because she would not tread the same earth which you tread, Miss Beatrice. She said she would not breathe the same air as you. She said she would rather die than live on your land.’

  I gaped at Lucy. Bea Fosdyke, this girl, of my own age, bearing my name, christened in compliment to my parents, had loathed me so?

  ‘Why on earth?’ I asked incredulously.

  ‘She was Ned Hunter’s girl!’ said Lucy in triumph. ‘No one knew, but they were betrothed. They had exchanged rings, and carved their names in the oak tree you felled on the common. When he died of the gaol fever she said she would not sleep another night on Wideacre land. But now she will sleep here for ever.’

  I lay back on the pillow, trembling with the cold of that freezing room. The chocolate had not warmed me, and no one would light my fire. Even my very servants were against me and had gone to honour the shameful grave of a prostitute who had hated me.

  ‘You may go, Lucy,’ I said, and there was hatred in my voice.

  She bobbed a curtsy and went to the door. But she turned with her hand on the knob. ‘The patch of ground outside the church wall has two heaps of stone there now,’ she said. ‘Old Giles … and Beatrice Fosdyke. We have a graveyard for suicides now. They are calling the suicides’ graveyard “Miss Beatrice’s Corner”.’

  The mist was coming down the chimney like a swirling cloud of poison. It was stinging in my eyes. It was behind my throat making me want to retch. It was clammy on my forehead and my face. I slumped back on the white lace pillows and pulled the fleecy blankets right up over my head. In the friendly dark under the covers I gave a great wail of pain and horror. And buried my face in the sheet, and waited for a sleep as deep and as dark as death.

  The fog lasted until May Day, a whole long grey week. I told Harry and Celia that it gave me a headache, and that was why I was so pale. But John looked at me with his hard clever eyes and nodded, as if he had heard something he had known all along. On May Day morning it lifted, but there was no joy in the air. Acre village usually had a maypole, and a queen o’ the may, a party, and a football fight. The Acre team would take a ball, an inflated bladder, up to the parish bounds, and they and the Havering men would struggle and kick it back and forth over the parish boundaries until one team triumphed and carried it home as a prize. But this year Acre was all wrong.

  The cold grey mist hung over everything and people coughed in the coldness and hugged damp clothes to them. Last year’s queen o’ the may had been Beatrice Fosdyke, and there was some nonsense about it being unlucky to be the prettiest girl in the village and to follow in her shoes. The Acre team could not muster enough sound men. Those who were on the parish dared not be away from their cottages in case John Brien was making up a labour gang and they missed the chance to earn a few pence. And many of the others had coughs and colds because of a long wet spring and poor food. Acre had nearly always won the ball because the team was led by the three tearaways: Ned Hunter, Sam Frosterly, and John Tyacke. Now Ned was dead, Sam on his way to Australia, to his death, and John had gone missing with broken honour, broken loyalty, and a broken heart. So Acre felt indisposed either to dance or wrestle, to court or to make merry.

  I dreaded the coming of my birthday in this dismal weather. I always thought of my birthday as the start of spring and yet it was like November when I awoke. I walked slowly downstairs knowing that I would find presents from Harry and Celia beside my plate. But the doorstep would not be heaped with little gifts from the village children. And baskets of spring flowers and posies would not arrive all through the day. And everyone would see what everyone knew: that I had lost the heart of Wideacre. That I was an outcast on my own land.

  But, incredibly, it all looked the same. Three brightly wrapped presents sat beside my breakfast plate, from Harry, Celia and John. And on the table at the side, as ever, was a heap of small presents. My eyes took them in with a leap of gladness and a sigh, almost a gasp, escaped me. I felt a sudden prickling under my eyelids and could have wept aloud. Spring was coming then. The new season would make amends. And Acre had forgiven me. Somehow they had understood what I had never dared tell them outright. That the plough breaks the earth, cuts the toad, in order to plant the seed. That the scythe slices the hare while it is cutting hay. That the losses and deaths and grief and pain that had soured Acre all this freezing miserable winter and spring were like the pains of birth, and that the future, my son’s future, and Acre’s future were safe. But they had understood. They might have turned against me in bitterness and hatred for a while. But somehow they had understood.

  I smiled and my heart was light for the first time since John had looked at me as he would look at a dying patient. I opened the presents by my plate first. I had a pretty brooch from Harry: a gold horse with a diamond inset as a star on its head. An ell of silk from Celia in a delicate lovely pewter grey. ‘For when we are in half-mourning, dearest,’ she said, kissing me. And a tiny package from John. I opened it with caution and then stuffed it back in the wrapping before Harry and Celia could see it. It was a phial of laudanum. On it he had written: ‘Four drops, four-hourly’. I dropped my head over my plate to hide my white face and shocked eyes.

  He knew that I sought to escape the world in sleep. And he knew also that my sleeping and sleeping through these foggy weeks was a longing for Death. And he knew that I believed him when he had told me that Death was coming for me, and that I was ready. He was now giving to my hand the way to hurry towards it. And the corner outside the graveyard for suicides would be ‘Miss Beatrice’s Corner’ indeed.

  When I gathered my courage and looked up, his eyes on me were bright, scornful. I had shown him the way. When he was struggling against drink he had found everywhere, at every hand, a dewy bottle with an unbroken seal. Now I knew that by my bedside every night would be a liberal supply of laudanum. And that the young doctor, who had loved me and warned me against the drug, would now supply me with as much as I wanted, until I slept and never woke again.

  I shuddered. But my eyes slid to the little table heaped with presents.

  ‘And all these from Acre!’ said Celia marvelling. ‘I am so glad, so very glad.’

  I nodded. ‘I am glad too,’ I said, my voice low. ‘It has been a hard winter for all of us. I am glad it is over.’

  I walked to the table and unwrapped the first little parcel. Each one was no bigger than a cork from a wine bottle, all surprisingly uniform. All wrapped in gay paper.

  ‘What can it be?’ Celia exclaimed. She soon had her answer. From the pretty wrapping rolled a flint stone. It was white, and the grey shards on it showed where the white had chipped away. It was a flint from the common where the villagers could no longer go.

  I dropped it in my lap and reached for another parcel. It was another flint. Harry exclaimed and strode over to the table. He opened half-a-dozen, ripping at the papers and scattering the wrapping on the floor. They were all flint stones. My lap was soon full of them. I counted them mechanically. There was one for every cottage, or house, or shanty, on our land. The whole village and every poor tenant had sent me a flint for my birthday. They did not dare stone me. Only one pebble had ever been shied at my gig. But they sent me, wrapped in pretty paper, a lapful of flints. I stood abruptly and showered them to the breakfast parlour floor. They clattered on the wood like monstrous hailstones in a storm of ice. Celia’s face was aghast. John was looking at me with overt curiosity. Harry was champing on his words, speechless with rage.

  ‘By God!’ he spluttered. ‘I’ll have the troops into the village for this. It’s an insult, a deliberate calculated insult. By God, I’ll not let it pass!’

  Celia’s brown eyes suddenly filled with tears.

  ‘Oh, don’t let’s talk like that!’ she cried out in sudden passion. ‘It is we who have brought this on Beatrice. It is our fault. I have seen the vill