Philippa Gregory - Wideacre

‘You may wish to visit him, or to write,’ Dr Rose said. ‘You, or any one of your family, would be most welcome to stay, if you wished.’

‘That will not be possible,’ I said. ‘And I think it would be better if he had no letters from home, at least for the first month. Recently, the most innocent events have upset him most dreadfully. Perhaps the safest thing you could do would be to send any letters he receives back to me.’

‘As you wish,’ said Dr Rose neutrally. He picked up his bag and closed it with a snap. I rose from my chair and found that my knees, and even the muscles of my calves, ached as if I had the ague. I walked stiffly towards the door and found Celia waiting in the hall, a sealed envelope in her hand.

‘I have written to John to tell him that I do indeed feel that I have failed him, but that I never ever meant to betray him,’ she said, her voice even. The tears were rolling down her cheeks but she did not seem to notice. ‘I have begged his pardon for failing to protect him from the violence he suffered.’

Dr Rose nodded, his eyes on the letter. As Celia preceded us to the waiting carriage he raised his eyebrows at me and nodded towards the letter in her hand.

‘You may take it from his pocket when you have left, and send it to me,’ I said, low-voiced. ‘It would certainly upset him.’ He nodded and followed Celia out to the carriage.

John was stretched along the length of the forward seat, still strapped in the strait-jacket, wrapped in a plaid travelling rug. Above the garish red and blue of the rug his face seemed deathly pale, but his breath was steady and his face, so strained and anguished before, was now as peaceful as a sleeping child’s. His fair hair had strayed from its tie in the struggle and curled around his head. There was the trace of tears on his cheeks but his mouth was slightly smiling. Celia climbed into the carriage and tucked the letter into his pocket. Her rumblings with the strait-jacket woke him and he opened eyes that were hazy blue with the drug.

‘Celia,’ he said, his voice low and slurred.

‘Please don’t speak, Lady Lacey,’ said Dr Rose firmly. ‘He should not be distressed again.’

Celia obediently dropped a kiss on John’s forehead in silence and stepped out of the carriage. She stayed by the window as Dr Rose got in beside his burly colleague, her eyes fixed on John’s face.

His eyes were still open and he gazed at her as if she were a lighthouse at some distant safe port in the middle of a stormy sea. Then his hazy drugged gaze sharpened, and he looked beyond her to where I stood, stiff as a ramrod on the steps.

‘Celia!’ he said, and his tone was urgent though the words were slurred. ‘Beatrice wants Wideacre for Richard,’ he said.

‘Goodbye,’ I said abruptly to Dr Rose. ‘Drive on,’ I said to the driver.

Celia took three rapid steps to keep up with the window so John could see her white desperate face.

‘Save the children,’ John said in one choking shout. ‘Save the children from Wideacre, Celia.’

Then the horses broke into a trot and the carriage wheels scrunched on the gravel and Celia’s little steps fell behind. And he was gone.

We dined in silence that evening. Celia had been crying all afternoon and her eyes were red and swollen. Harry at the head of the table shifted in the great carver chair as if he was sitting on pins. Celia had waited in the stable yard for him all morning and had begged him as soon as he appeared to withhold his signature from the documents committing John to Dr Rose’s care, and to order them to send John home. Harry retained enough sense to refuse to discuss the matter with Celia alone and told her that I had a right to be the judge of the best treatment for my husband. Celia had nothing to say to that, for all she had were vague impressions, frightened suspicions, that somehow, and she did not know how or why, I was not to be trusted about John.

So she kept her red eyes down, watched her plate and ate hardly a thing. I too had lost my appetite. John’s chair stood against the wall, his side of the table seemed curiously bare. I could not clean my ears of the memory of his terrified shrieks when the gaoler doctor had piled on top of him and bound him. The violence that had exploded in that sunny parlour seemed still to be echoing in the house as if a hundred ghosts were alerted by John’s screams.

Celia would not even enter the parlour after dinner but said she wanted to sit with Julia in the nursery. I remembered with a superstitious shudder how John too had sought the nursery as if only the children in the house were free from sin and violence and the lingering smell of corruption. But I smiled at her with all the warmth I could bring into my eyes and kissed her forehead to say goodnight. I thought, I imagined, that she shrank from my touch as if it might somehow mark her, leave some smudge of my ruthlessness on her. But I believed that Celia, like Mama, might hold the thread of detection in her hand and still fail to follow it into the maze.

So Harry and I sat alone in the parlour and when the tea tray came in it was my duty to pour and sweeten Harry’s tea to his liking. When he had sipped, and munched his way through a whole plate of petits fours I stretched my satin shoes out to the brass fender and said, casually, ‘Have you signed and posted the documents for Dr Rose, Harry?’

‘I’ve signed them,’ he replied. ‘They are on your desk. But what Celia tells me about Dr Rose, and about John, makes me wonder if we are doing the right thing.’

‘It was a most distressing scene,’ I agreed readily. ‘John was like a madman. If the two doctors had not been so prompt and efficient I do not know what might have happened. Celia thinks she can control John and help him with his drinking but the way he behaved today proves that she has little influence over him,’ I said. ‘It has been nearly two weeks now since she started trying to make him give up drinking and he has been drunk nearly every night. He even turned on Celia today and accused her of betraying him. We really cannot manage him if he is half mad from drink.’

Harry’s round face was downturned with worry.

‘Celia did not tell me that,’ he complained. ‘She only told me that she thought the doctors were too rough with John and that she feared the whole idea of getting him committed. She even seems to be concerned about John’s fortune: the MacAndrew shares.’

‘She has been influenced by the nonsense John was shouting,’ I said smoothly. ‘It was a very distressing scene. But dear Celia understands nothing of business and these matters. There is no doubt that Dr Rose’s home is the best place for John and of course he has to be committed into their care so that they can make sure he does not run off to buy drink. We should know how impossible it has been to keep it from him! Celia has had the cellars locked for a fortnight and still he has been getting drink from somewhere.’

Harry shot me a sly sideways glance.

‘You don’t know how he has been getting hold of the drink, Beatrice, I suppose?’ he said nervously.

‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘I have no idea.’

‘Well, I shall reassure Celia that we are acting in John’s best interests,’ said Harry, getting to his feet and standing before the fireplace. He hitched up his jacket to warm his plump buttocks before the blaze, for the night was bitterly cold. ‘And I shall tell her that his fortune will be absolutely untouched until he comes to take control of it again,’ said Harry. ‘We have power of attorney over it, but of course we would not use it.’

‘Unless we see some business opportunity for him that we would do wrong to miss,’ I agreed. ‘The whole point of us having control of his fortune is so that his wealth can be properly managed during his illness. Of course we will not use his money to do anything he would not like. But we would be treating him very badly if we did not watch for his interests and act accordingly.’