Philippa Gregory - The Complete Wideacre Trilogy - Wideacre, The Favoured Child, Meridon

‘Is this Harry’s idea?’ I asked, coming out of the towel and dressing with my back to Mama in the window seat.

‘He and Celia dreamed it up together when they were always singing Italian songs,’ she said complacently. ‘He thought she would like to hear them sung by Italians or some such nonsense. They won’t be gone long, only two or three months. They will be home for Christmas.’

I gasped, but she did not hear me, and as I turned to brush my hair at the mirror she did not notice that my face was white. All my old pain of longing for a safe arm to hold me and a promise of love I could trust was flooding back over me. It was even worse now I had lain with Harry and knew what it was to be loved by him. I could perhaps live without his loving. Or I could live without being the first person on Wideacre. But I could not live with neither. And I could not bear the prospect of another woman having both the love and the power. If Celia was a beloved wife there was nothing to stand between me and the dominance of my mama. Nothing to save me from the emptiness of dutiful daughter days. Nothing to prevent me from being married off to the first likely suitor who chanced our way. If I lost Harry now, I would lose everything I had ever wanted – my pleasure and land. Just as Ralph had said.

This trip had to be prevented. I knew, because I knew Harry, that if he were all alone with Celia for two months he would come to love her. And who could resist him? I had seen him with a frightened foal or an injured hound, and I knew how he prided himself on his gentle understanding, on winning a shy creature’s confidence. He would see Celia’s coldness as a result of her cruel treatment at home and set himself the task of becoming her friend. Once he came to know her he would realize she was indeed the best bride he could have found.

Under her shy and cool defences, Celia was warm and loving. She even had a little bud of humour, and Harry would learn to make those brown eyes twinkle and he would hear her girl’s ripple of laughter. It would be inevitable that they would warm to each other, and equally inevitable that one night, after the opera or the theatre, or some peaceful dinner for two, Celia would be smiling with wine and new confidence. Harry would turn to her for a kiss and she would give him one. He would touch her breast and she would not push his hand away. He would stroke her narrow pliant back and whisper endearments, and she would smile and twine her arms around his neck. And I? I would be forgotten.

Nothing of these panicky thoughts showed in my face as Mama and I went downstairs, but when we entered the breakfast parlour some hours later I had a second shock of pain at Harry’s delighted greeting to Mama and his warm smile to me was as sunny and open as his delight in seeing her. I drank tea and ate a little toast, while Harry wolfed down cold ham, cold beef, some new bread and honey, some toast and butter and finally a peach. Mama ate heartily too and laughed and joked with Harry as if she had never been ill. Only I sat silent. I was back in my old place at the side of the table rather than at the end. The outsider again.

‘Beatrice looks so well and so happy I think she should have some more riding,’ Mama remarked as Harry carved himself one more slice of meat. He picked at the white fat with his fingers and ate it first. ‘Perhaps you could make a point of seeing she goes out daily,’ Mama said, as if I were a lapdog that needed walking.

‘Rather,’ said Harry unhelpfully.

‘Could she ride today in the morning or in the afternoon?’ she asked. I looked up from my plate and my eyes sent an urgent message to Harry. ‘Now! Now! Say now, and let us race up to the downs and tumble into our little hollow and I will forget this jealousy and pain and give you such pleasure that you will never want to come home and never want another woman in your life.’

Harry smiled at me, his open, brotherly smile.

‘If you don’t mind, Beatrice, I will see to it tomorrow. I promised Lord Havering I would look at his coverts with him today and I dare not be late.’

He took out his watch and pushed back his chair to go.

‘I’ll not be back till late tonight, Mama. I shall stay to dinner if I’m asked. I have not been there for three days and I shall have to make my apologies!’

He bent and kissed her hand and smiled at me in farewell and strolled out of the room as if he had not a care in the world. I heard his footsteps cross the hall, then the front door open and close. In the silence I could hear the clatter of his horse as the groom led it round from the stable and then the clip-clop as he rode away. He rode away as if love and passion meant nothing. He rode away because he was a fool. I had put my heart in the keeping of a fool.

My mama looked at me.

‘You must not mind, Beatrice,’ she said. ‘A young man is bound to be thoughtless of his family when he is engaged to be married. You cannot blame him for preferring Celia’s company to ours. We will all be more settled when this time of waiting is over. I am sure he will find time to ride with you tomorrow.’

I nodded and moved my face muscles into a semblance of a smile.

I held that smile all the long day.

In the afternoon Mama was going calling, but she had enough sympathy with my forlorn state not to force me to go with her. As soon as her carriage had vanished, I took my horse out and rode down to the River Fenny – not near the old cottage where Ralph used to live – but upstream to a deep, clear pool where Harry sometimes tried to catch fish. I tied the horse to a bush and lay face down on the ground.

I did not weep or sob. I lay silent and let the great waves of jealousy and misery wash over me. Harry did not love me as I loved him. Sensuality for him was an occasional pleasure – necessary in that second of desire, but swiftly enjoyed and forgotten. To me it was a way of life, the very kernel of myself. Harry had his outside life: his newspapers, his journals, his books, his men friends, his engagement to Celia and his visits to the Haverings. All I had to dream of, to fill my life, to keep me alive and glowing, was Wideacre. Wideacre and Harry.

And at this moment I had only Wideacre. My cheek lay on the damp, dark leafmould of the forest floor, and when I opened my eyes I could see small, spindly plants with heart-shaped leaves pushing their narrow stems up through the dark peat. Beyond their bowed little heads was the sheen of the Fenny, gleaming like pewter. It flows almost silently here between deep banks, overhung with maidenhair fern and lit by brilliant lanterns of kingcups – as bright above the water as their reflections on the shiny surface.

In the centre of the river one can see two worlds. The reflected world of air and winds, the tossing trees and cloudy sky, and the underworld of the riverbed, a mixture of pure white sand and stones as yellow as gold. In the dark curves of the river where ponds have formed the filtered scraps of peat make the hollows black and ominous, but in the main stream the riverbed glows like sunshine. The bright green weed tossing in the current hides young trout, baby eels and a few salmon. The green ferns at the bank mask the holes of water shrews and otters.

I lay in silence until the thud of my own angry and resentful heart had stilled and until I could hear the safe steady beat of the heart of Wideacre. Deep, deep in the earth, so deep most people never hear it, beats the great heart, steady and true. It spoke to me of endurance and courage. Of setting my heart on the land and staying with the land. Of being full of sin and blood to get thus far, and of other sins which would take me steadily further.

I saw them pass before me without blinking. The death’s head of my father’s agonized face; the scream from Ralph; even the fluttering fall from my window of the owl we had called Canny. Wideacre spoke to me in my loneliness and my longing for love and the beat of its heart said, ‘Trust no one. There is only the land.’ And I remembered Ralph’s advice – which he himself had fatally forgotten – to be the one who is loved. Never to make the mistake of being the one who does the loving.