Philippa Gregory - Wideacre

Harry gulped and said, ‘Yes, my dear,’ like flotsam in the flood.

‘Beatrice?’ she asked, and her voice was as stony as her face.

‘Of course, if you wish it,’ I said, my eyebrows raised in an insolent, easy gesture.

She ignored me and turned to Stride.

‘We will go and lock the cellars now, if you please. But send Dr MacAndrew’s valet to take him to his room. He is not well.’

‘Mr MacAndrew’s valet has the night off,’ Stride started. Celia cut in at once.

‘Dr MacAndrew, you mean,’ she said, and held his gaze. Stride’s eyes fell before her brown bright hardness.

‘Dr MacAndrew,’ he said.

‘Then send a footman,’ she said briskly. ‘Dr MacAndrew will be tired and needs his sleep. And send someone to clear up in here.’ She turned to me and Harry, standing mumchance on the scorched carpet with the smell of expensive smoke around us. I was as nervous as a horse on burned land.

‘When I have locked the cellar I shall go to bed,’ she said. ‘We will discuss this, if you wish it, in the morning.’

And she turned and left us.

And there was nothing I could do to stop her.

15

In the morning she was the same. In the afternoon she received some callers and while I worked in the office I wondered if the babble of high voices and the tinkle of laughter would tire and undermine her. When I came down to dinner in the evening, my silk skirts rustling, my own head held high, she met me look for look. She was unbending. She was mistress of the house.

I claimed Harry’s hand and we went in for dinner with John squiring Celia to her place. He had now been a full day without a drink and his hands were shaking and there was a nervous tremor around his mouth. But with Celia on his arm his head was up and his walk was straight. I glanced covertly at them and they looked like a pair of heroes who had survived the worst of their adventure. They both looked tired: John was in bad shape physically, and Celia had violet shadows under her brown eyes to bear witness that her anger had made her sleepless for another night, but they looked ready to follow any thread into any maze and face any bull-like monster that might be lurking in the darkness there.

There was no wine at dinner. John drank water, Celia sipped at a glass of lemonade, and Harry had a pint mug full of water at his plate. Harry looked sour, as well he might, and I took my lemonade in mutinous silence. None of us made any attempt to maintain the appearance of a normal meal. I would normally set a conversation going and include Harry and Celia, but tonight I was sulky and unprepared for this defeat. The meal was brief and when Celia and I rose to withdraw I was relieved to see that the gentlemen were coming with us. I had not relished the prospect of private time alone with Celia before the parlour fire.

We ordered the tea table early and sat in silence, like suspicious strangers. When I had drunk my tea I put the cup down in the saucer with a decisive click and said to Harry, ‘Would you come to my office, Harry, if there is nothing you would rather do? I have had a letter about water rights on the Fenny and I want you to see the problem with a map.’

Celia’s eyes were on me, and I saw that she was testing my words for the truth.

‘That is, if Celia permits,’ I said sharply, and watched her quick rise of colour and her eyes drop in what looked like shame.

‘Of course,’ she said, softly. ‘I shall be going to the library to read in a few moments.’

I did not bother to maintain the pretence once I had shut my office door, but I spun round on it, leaned against the panels and said imperiously to Harry, ‘You must stop Celia with this madness. She will drive us all crazy.’

Harry threw himself into the armchair by the fire like a sulky schoolboy.

‘There’s nothing I can do!’ he said with irritation. ‘I spoke to her this morning for she would hear nothing about it last night, and she just said again, “I am Lady Lacey and John will not have drink in my house.’”

‘She’s your wife,’ I said crudely. ‘She has to obey you, and she used to be frightened of you. Threaten her, raise your voice to her. Break some china near her, hit her. Anything, Harry. For we cannot go on like this.’

Harry raised his eyes to me. He looked aghast.

‘Beatrice, you forget,’ he stumbled. ‘We are talking about Celia! I could no more shout at her than I could fly to the moon. She is not the sort of woman one shouts at. I could not possibly try to frighten her. I could not begin to do it. I could never wish to do it.’

I chewed the inside of my lip to control my rising temper.

‘Well, as you like, Harry. But we will have a pretty miserable Christmas on Wideacre if Celia keeps the wine locked away. You cannot even have a glass of port after dinner. How will we entertain our guests? What can we offer callers at noon or dinner? This plan of Celia’s simply won’t work and you must tell her so.’

‘I have tried,’ Harry said feebly. ‘But she just keeps on about John. She is really determined to stop him drinking, you know, Beatrice. She will not hear of any other course.’

His face softened. ‘And she is right when she says how happy we were before Mama died. If he did stop drinking, Beatrice, and you and he were happy together again, that is worth any amount of sacrifice, is it not?’

‘Yes, of course,’ I said sweetly. ‘But in the meantime, Harry, it grieves me to see Celia, who used to care for your comfort so well, forbidding you the smallest of innocent pleasures: like a glass of sherry before your dinner, and a glass of port with a friend. You will be the laughing-stock of the county if this gets out. How people will joke about Wideacre gone teetotal, and a Squire so much under the cat’s paw that he is not even allowed a glass of his own wine.’

Harry’s rosebud mouth turned down still further.

‘It’s bad, I know,’ he said. ‘But Celia is determined.’

‘But we agree with her!’ I said beguilingly. ‘We too think John should stop his drinking. It is just that we know that here we cannot ensure that he has no access to drink. The only way to do it is to send him to a doctor who can cure him. I have looked into this and there is a Dr Rose at Bristol who specializes in precisely this problem. Why do we not send John there? He can stay till he is cured, and when he comes home he will be well and we can all be happy again.’

Harry’s eyes brightened. ‘Yes, and while he is away everything can be as normal again here,’ he said, visibly cheered.

‘Well, put the scheme to Celia now,’ I said. ‘Suggest it straight away and then we can have John out of the house within the week.’

Harry bounced from his chair with new energy and left the office. I waited. I reread the letter about the water rights, which is every landowner’s nightmare, and checked the claims against a map. It was a farmer further down the valley of the Fenny who was following a new-fangled plan of irrigation to grow some moisture-loving crop on his land. He had dug some fancy channels and was all ready to open the sluice gates from the Fenny when suddenly the water level had dropped. It was our millpond filling up after a period of milling, and if the man had been farming with an eye on the river rather than his nose in a book he would have seen the changing levels of the Fenny before he put his expensive gates in place.

Now his work would have to be redone, and he was blaming us and insisting on a guaranteed flow as if I could manage the rainfall. I became absorbed in drafting the reply, and barely glanced up when the door clicked.