Wideacre Read online

  ‘I say, steady on,’ said Harry, roused at last from the plate of cakes on the little table before him. ‘You know why I cannot help, Beatrice. They pay no mind to me, and I cannot bear insult.’

  My lips curved in a disdainful smile. ‘No reason why you should, Harry,’ I said. ‘I go out and bear it for you. For all of you.’ In my mind I saw again the obscene dollies and the wheathead cock and the crafty skill of the making, as they seemed to roll over and over with their perverse passion, falling from the stook in the middle of their thrust.

  ‘I am tired,’ I said with finality. ‘Please excuse me, all of you. I should go and wash my ill-temper away.’

  But I should have known better than to hope for decent service while there was a party starting at the mill. Every one of the kitchen staff had taken leave without one word of permission from me. The cook had taken a day off and gone to Chichester with Stride in the gig. Only Lucy was left to serve me and she complained bitterly about every hot water can she had to lug up the two flights of stairs and along three corridors.

  ‘That’s enough, Lucy,’ I said finally when I felt rested and brave again. ‘Now tell me again, who is in the house?’

  ‘Only the valets, Lady Lacey’s maid and me,’ said Lucy. ‘All the others have gone down to the mill. There’s a cold collation laid for your dinner.’

  I nodded. In the old days the staff shared in every party and feast that the village could dream up. Sometimes they begged permission to borrow the paddock for Wideacre’s own sports events. But now the easy uncounting, uncalculating days were past.

  ‘I’ll dock them a day’s pay,’ I said while Lucy draped a towel around my shoulders, unpinned my hair and brushed it in long sweeps. She nodded. Her eyes meeting mine in the mirror were cold.

  ‘I knew you would,’ she said. ‘They knew you would. So they asked Lady Lacey, and she said they might go.’

  I met her gaze with a long hard look that I held until her eyes dropped to her hands.

  ‘Warn them not to push me too far, Lucy,’ I said, my voice even. ‘I am tired of impertinence in the fields and house. If they push me too far they may be sorry they ever started. There are many servants looking for places, and I no longer have much attachment to people born and bred on Wideacre.’

  She kept her eyes on the tumbled silk of my copper hair and brushed it in steady even sweeps. Then she deftly bunched it into one hand and twisted it into a smooth knot on the top of my head.

  ‘Beautiful,’ she said grudgingly. I looked at myself in the glass. I was lovely. The days in the field had bronzed me into my usual summer honey and now that the strained weary look had gone from my face I once more looked like a pretty twenty-year-old. The colour was back in my cheeks and there was a dusting of tiny freckles over my nose and upper cheekbones. Against the honey tea of my skin my hazel eyes gleamed greener than ever. My hair, burnished with the sun, was bronze as well as copper, and some of the curls around my face had even been sun-bleached to red-gold.

  ‘Yes,’ I said coldly, acknowledging like her the physical perfection of the oval face in the glass.

  ‘I’ll wear the green silk,’ I said, rising from the glass and dropping the damp towel on the floor for her to stoop and pick up. ‘I’m sick of greys and dark colours. And no gentry will be there.’

  Lucy opened the wardrobe and shook out the deep green sack dress. A matching green stomacher tied tight at the front and a wide swaying panel shimmered loose at the back.

  ‘Good,’ I said, as she slid it over my head and tied the stomacher tight. ‘But I cannot breathe in here. Open the window, Lucy.’

  She threw open the casement window but the heat and the damp air flowed in like a river of steam from a kettle to scorch the inside of my mouth and nose. Involuntarily I gave a little moan.

  ‘Oh, if only this weather would break,’ I said longingly. ‘I cannot breathe this air. I cannot move in this heat. Everything is so unbearably heavy all around me!’

  Lucy looked at me without sympathy.

  ‘It’s affecting the children, too,’ she said. ‘Master Richard’s nurse asked if you would step into the nursery when you were changed. He is fretting and she thinks he may be cutting a tooth.’

  I shrugged my shoulders. The fresh silk was already feeling too warm and sticky.

  ‘Ask Mr MacAndrew to go,’ I said. ‘I have to get ready to go to the mill. Mr MacAndrew will know what to do, and Richard minds him.’

  Lucy’s eyes met mine and I read her instant condemnation of a woman who would not go to her own child when he was in pain and calling for her.

  ‘Oh, stop, Lucy!’ I said wearily. ‘Just tell him to go to the nursery at once, and then you come back and powder my hair.’

  She went, obediently enough, and I moved to the window to try to breathe. The rose garden was drained of colour. I could not even remember how pretty it used to be before this nightmare light closed in. The green grass of the paddock was grey and ghostly looking. The scarlet roses in the garden looked green and sickly. The belly of the storm was leaning on the rooftop of the house and I looked up to a ceiling of purple clouds as billowing and claustrophobic as a tent. It stretched from the top of the downs to the top of the common without a break, without a chink to admit either light or air. The only light was the great dropping wall of sheet lightning that cracked as if the back of Wideacre had broken in two on the rack of my plans. The white light burned my eyes. I was still dazzled while Lucy powdered my hair and handed me my wrap.

  ‘I’ll take nothing. It’s too hot,’ I said. The merest touch of the pure wool on my fingers had me sweating and itchy.

  ‘You don’t look well,’ said Lucy coolly. She cared nothing for me now. I could be dying and she would not care.

  ‘I am perfectly well,’ I said coldly. ‘You may go, Lucy. I shall not want you any more tonight. Are you and the valets and Lady Lacey’s maid going down to the mill?’

  ‘If we may,’ she said with a hint of insolence in her voice.

  ‘You may,’ I said, too weary to challenge her again. I had worn out any affection for me. I had worn out all the love that everyone had felt for me. I was still only a young woman but I had already lived too long. I had enjoyed my best years, the years when I was surrounded with love and everyone adored pretty Miss Beatrice. Now I was old and tired and longing for sleep. I swept past her, my silk train hushing behind me and rippling like a flood of green poison all the way down the stairs. I had lost my quick easy stride; I felt less like a pretty girl than a snail with its sticky trail over everything it touches.

  They were waiting for me in the hall and the carriage was at the door. Harry, portly and pompous in his grey silk with a black embroidered waistcoat and silver grey stockings. Celia, drained of colour in a navy silk dress, which made her strained face haggard in the yellowish storm light. John, handsome and meticulous as ever, and glowing with the knowledge that none of this could go on for much longer; that, like the storm, something was certain to break. Their faces turned to me as I came through the west-wing door and, in a sudden spurt of rebellion, I said to myself in horror, ‘My God! What have I done? I have planned my life and waded through blood; I have wilfully killed and accidentally killed and gone on and on with my heart growing harder and colder, so that this useless trio should live here in wealth and ease with clean consciences. So that I can see them every dreary day for the rest of my life. So that my long struggle should have as its goal seeing Harry, Celia and John every day until I die.’

  I mastered my face with an effort and put my fingers to my forehead to smooth out the skin and the sudden expression of despair from my face.

  ‘I am sorry to have kept you waiting,’ I said. ‘Shall we go?’

  Only Coachman Ben was there to drive us. The footmen were down at the mill released by dear Celia for a night out with the villagers. So John pulled in the steps and shut the door. The rocking of the carriage in the eerie light reminded me of my sickness at sea, and I pressed my lips together.