Philippa Gregory - Wideacre

Giles’s shameful death was, of course, the sign of a crazy old man’s inability to adapt to a new world. But his belief — that if there was no work to be had on Wideacre, then there was nothing for him but the workhouse — was probably right. The roundsman would take only the fittest of the destitute workers — Giles could never have been employed in the gang. For him it would have been the workhouse — worse than Chichester prison — and the sure road to death. He was a mad old man to take his own life, of course. His death was not a sensible reaction to our attempts to farm Wideacre rationally and profitably. The last thing I needed was a pang of conscience about such an old fool. And I would be mad myself if I even considered that his death should be laid at my door, that I had made his world — Wideacre — unbearable.

So I told myself during the drive home, and when we were inside the Hall with the front door bolted I was ready for Harry’s urgent need for reassurance. We stood by the parlour fire while Celia went upstairs to take her hat and coat off, and fetch the children for their Christmas dinner.

‘My God, Beatrice, that was terrible,’ said Harry. He crossed to the decanter of sherry in two swift strides and poured himself a glass and tossed it off before handing me one. ‘They were like animals! Savages!’

I shrugged, deliberately careless. ‘Oh come, Harry,’ I said. ‘You are too nice. There is always a little pushing and shoving at the Christmas party. It is just that we usually do not see it. They generally wait for us to leave first!’

‘I have never seen anything like it before!’ Harry said firmly. ‘And neither, I am sure, have you, Beatrice. They were near rioting. I cannot understand it!’

I wager you cannot, you fool, I thought to myself and sipped at my sherry.

‘They are anxious,’ I said evenly. ‘They are anxious because many of them have lost their winter wages. And Giles’s death upset them all too. They think at the moment that they are near starvation, but when spring comes they will realize that there has been little real change.’

‘But they behaved as if they had not seen food for a sennight!’ Harry objected. ‘Beatrice, you saw them! You cannot tell me that those were families who find themselves a little short of cash. They looked as if they were starving.’

‘Well, what if they are?’ I demanded, suddenly hard; weary of shielding Harry from the consequences of our joint choice. ‘You wanted to use the roundsman labour gangs. We both agreed there would be no more casual labour for the villagers of Acre. We both agreed we would keep no hedgers and ditchers and helpers with the sheep on the wage books to be paid in good and bad weather and to be paid if they work or no. We agreed to that. Did you think they worked for the love of it? Of course they are hungry. They are receiving no pay; they are trying to last out on their savings until spring. They think that we will go back to the old ways and that every man in the village will be able to do a day’s ploughing, and every lad will be able to earn a penny sowing seed. When spring comes they will find that it is not so. That we shall still use the gang labourers. And if they want work they will have to go to the parish and join the gang and accept the pittance they are offered.

‘Are you saying now that you don’t want to continue with our plans?’ I asked tightly. ‘We are saving hundreds of pounds a month, and we are fanning as you have always wanted to. Did you think no one paid for your fancy farming ideas, Harry? The poor pay. The poor always pay. But they can do nothing against us. And if you don’t like the look of what you are doing then turn your head away and look out of the other window like Celia.’

I spun on my heel and turned my back to him to stare into the fire and regain my temper. I was panting with anger and close to tears. Harry’s wilful ignorance about what we were doing to the land enraged me. But also I was boiling with rage at the trap I was in. For the decision to farm for profit and consider only profit had led us to this point and might yet take us farther. The poorer people would have to leave Acre; the estate could not support so many, farming in this new way. And many, many of them would be stubborn and not leave. Then, I supposed, the old people, and perhaps the frailer children, might die. And Giles would be only the first death on the road to make Richard the heir. With the picture of Richard as Master in my mind I would not retract, I would not relent. But I could see, and no one but I would see, the long, slow, painful path the poor of Wideacre would tread barefoot so that my son could be called Squire.

Harry’s hand fell on my shoulder and I tensed, but controlled myself not to shake it off. ‘This is a bitter time for us both,’ said Harry sadly, forgetting the hungry faces and thinking only of himself. ‘Of course I agree we should go on. Every landowner has precisely these problems. It is a time of change. Nothing we can do could stop that process of change. The people will just have to adapt, that is all. They will just have to learn to live the way things are. It would be folly for you and me to try to farm in the old ways, Beatrice.’

I nodded. Harry had found a way to still his own conscience, and I had my way to silence mine. I could comfort myself with the thought that all that I now did brought my lovely son closer and closer to owning Wideacre. And Harry could tell himself the convenient lie that he was equally trapped by the changes as the people he had dismissed from their work. Harry had Pontius Pilate’s answer that it was really nothing to do with him. He saw himself as part of a process of historical change and he could neither be blamed nor held responsible for what would happen.

‘There is just no alternative,’ he said quietly. And he even sounded sad that there was nothing he could do.

So when Celia came downstairs with the two nurses and the two children dressed in their best and hungry for roast goose we could all exchange smiles and go into the dining room to eat at a table heaped with main courses and side dishes, as if, five miles away, there were no hungry children picking crumbs from the frozen grass of the vicar’s garden.

It was a hard winter in Acre that year. I went less to the village than I had ever done, for it was no pleasure to me to be greeted with surly faces. Once or twice a woman had burst from a cottage with tears in her eyes and put her hand on the side of my gig and said, ‘Miss Beatrice, do take my William to do some hedging for you. You know there’s no one like him for hedging in the whole county. I can’t keep the children on the wages we get from the parish. They’re hungry, Miss Beatrice. Do give my man work.’

Then I would have to hold the picture of my own child, my Richard, and his future very clear before my eyes. I would stare hard at the horse’s ears and not look the woman in the face and say in an even tone, ‘I am sorry, Bessy, but there’s nothing I can do. We only use the roundsman on Wideacre now. If your man wants other work he had best go and seek it.’

Then I would click to the horse and drive off before she shamed herself and her man by weeping before me in the village lane. And my face was set and cold, for I knew no other way to do it.

Harry would do nothing at all. When he met someone in the lane and heard the tale of the bad wages the roundsman gave the gang, of the meanness of the parish and of the fear of the workhouse, he would shrug at the man and say, ‘What can I do? I am no freer to choose how the world is than you, my good fellow.’ And he would put a hand in his pocket for a shilling as if that would help a man with four children and a sickly wife at home, and a long cold winter to get through.