Wideacre Read online

  ‘Really, Celia, this is hardly the business you were brought up to,’ I said. ‘The business of managing Wideacre is a complex task and one in which you have previously shown little interest. It is too late now to start meddling with the way I run the estate.’

  ‘You are right to reproach me for knowing little,’ she said. Her breath was fast and as she spoke one of her easy blushes coloured her face and neck. ‘I think it is a great fault that ladies are taught to know nothing of the lives of the poor. I have lived all my life in the country and you are right when you say I am ignorant.’

  I tried to interrupt her, but she talked over me.

  ‘I have lived in a fool’s paradise,’ she said. ‘I have spent money without ever thinking from whence it came or who had earned it.’

  She paused. I moved to the bell push as if to order tea.

  ‘I was brought up to think like a child,’ she said, speaking half to herself. ‘I was brought up like a baby who eats food but does not realize someone has had to cook it, and mash it, and serve it in a bowl. I have spent and spent Wideacre money without ever realizing that the money came from the labour of the poor.’

  ‘Not entirely,’ I contradicted her. ‘You should speak with Harry on the theories of political economy, but we are farmers, remember, not merchants or manufacturers. Our wealth comes from the land, from the natural fertility, from nature.’

  Celia waved away the argument with an impatient gesture and put her palm flat down on my rent table.

  ‘You know that is not true, Beatrice,’ she said. ‘You take the money here every month. People pay us because we own the land. Left to itself the land would grow weeds and meadow flowers. We invest in it as surely as a merchant, and we pay people to work it for us as surely as a mine owner pays miners.’

  I stood silent. Celia had changed so much from the shy girl who had watched the reapers and blushed when Harry looked at her. I said nothing, but I felt a growing unease.

  ‘The mine owner pays them a fraction of what they earn,’ she said slowly as if she was working out her ideas aloud. ‘Then he sells what they have dug, at a profit. He keeps all of that profit. That is why he is rich and they are poor.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You do not understand business. He has to buy equipment and he has to pay back loans. Also, he has to have a return on his investment. If it did not profit him to mine, then he would invest his money elsewhere, and his workforce would have no wage at all.’

  Celia’s honest gaze was on my face and, surprisingly, she smiled as if I was jesting with her.

  ‘Oh, Beatrice, that is such nonsense!’ she said with a ripple of laughter. ‘That is what Harry says! That is what Harry’s books say! I would have thought you of all people would have known what nonsense that is! All the people who write about the need for a man to have profit are rich people. All they wish to prove is that their profits are justified. That is why there are hundreds of men writing thousands of books trying to explain why some people go hungry and others get richer and richer. They have to write all those books because they will not accept the answer which is there before their eyes: that there is no justification.’

  I moved restlessly, but she was looking out of the window past me.

  ‘Why should the man who invests his money have his profit guaranteed, while the man who invests his labour, even his life, has no guaranteed wage?’ she said. ‘And why should the man who has money to invest earn so very much more with his capital than a man could earn working at the very top of his strength, all day? If they were both to be rewarded equally then after the debts had been paid and the new equipment bought, miners would live in houses and eat the food of the mine owners. And they clearly do not. They live like animals in dirt and squalor and they starve while the mine owners live like princes in houses far away from the ugly mines.’

  I nodded emphatically. ‘The conditions are dreadful I am told. And the moral danger!’

  Celia’s brown eyes gleamed at my shift of ground.

  ‘It is as bad here,’ she said baldly. ‘The labourers work all day and earn less than a shilling. I do not work at all and yet I have an allowance of two hundred pounds a quarter. I have taken no risks with capital. I replace no machinery. I am paid simply because I am a member of the Quality and we are all wealthy. There is no justice in that, Beatrice. There is no logic. It is not even a very pleasant way to live.’

  I plumped down in my chair, the Squire’s chair, and I drew my papers towards me. I had forgotten that I had ever thought the world should change. I had forgotten that a landless man had ever persuaded me that the people who know and love the land are those who should make the decisions about it.

  ‘It is a wicked world, Celia,’ I said, smiling. ‘We are agreed on that. But it would do little good if you were paid a labourer’s wage. It would make no difference if we were a Leveller’s commonwealth. The Commonwealth of Wideacre would still have to pay its way in the outside world.’ I tapped the drawer, which held the sheaf of bills due for settling this month. The wood no longer sounded hollow: it was packed tight. ‘It is the outside world that is massing against Wideacre,’ I said. ‘It is the outside world that sets the pace of change.’

  ‘Sell land,’ said Celia abruptly.

  I gazed at her, open-mouthed.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Harry tells me that you two have borrowed so heavily to buy the entail and pay the lawyers’ fees that you have no choice but to profiteer and farm in this new way. Clear the debts by selling land, and then you need farm no longer in a way that starves Acre, and has wrecked the life of Wideacre.’

  ‘You do not understand, Celia!’ I burst out. ‘We will never, never sell Wideacre land while I manage the estate! No landowner ever parts with land unless he has to. And I, of all people, would never sell a Wideacre field.’

  Celia rose from the table and went to stand behind the bureau, looking down on me. She leaned her arms along the top.

  ‘Wideacre has two great strengths,’ she said fiercely. ‘The land, which is fertile, and the people, who will work their hearts out for the Laceys. One of these assets will have to be wrung dry to pay for this mad scheme to which you are committed. Let it be the land. Sell some land — however much is needed, and then you will be free once again to treat the people in the old ways. Not with justice, but at least with tenderness.’

  ‘Celia,’ I said again, ‘you simply do not understand. This year we are desperate to make a profit. But even if we were not, we would be starting to farm in the new ways. The less we pay the labourers the more profit we make. Every landowner wants to make as much profit as possible. Every landowner, every merchant, every business man, tries to pay as little as possible to his workers.’

  She nodded then slowly, as she finally understood. But the colour had gone from her face. She turned and went with a slow step towards the door.

  ‘What of your allowance?’ I said, taunting her. ‘And your dowry lands? Shall I pay your allowance to the parish poor rates, and do you wish your couple of fields to be declared a commonwealth?’

  She turned back to me, and I saw with surprise that there were tears in her eyes. ‘I spend all my allowance on food and clothes for the village,’ she said sadly. ‘John matches it with what his father sends him, and Dr Pearce pays in the same amount. We have been buying food to give the women, and clothes for the children, and fuel for the old people. I have spent every penny you pay me, and John and Dr Pearce have matched it.’ Her shoulders drooped. ‘We might as well not bother,’ she said dully. ‘It is like the dam of Harry’s that broke when the spring floods came. It is all very well giving a little charity when the men are in work and the village is prosperous, but when the landlords are against the tenants, as you are, Beatrice, and when the employers have decided to pay the least they can, charity has no chance. All we are doing is prolonging the pain of people who are dying of want. At best we are rearing children for the next Master of Wideacre to work and t