Philippa Gregory - Wideacre

‘But he has hit on the most wonderful plan to sign the estate over for Julia,’ I said. ‘It was all his idea, but I have helped with it, of course. We kept it from you in the early stages because we needed to discover first if it could be done. But it can be done. It is possible for Harry to buy the entail from our cousin Charles Lacey and to entail it instead upon Julia. She and Richard are jointly to inherit Wideacre, and to run it together.’

Celia’s face was a picture of amazement, then dawning horror.

‘Run it together?’ she said. ‘How would they be joint heirs?’

I kept my voice steady and cheerful, but I was conscious of choosing my words with care. I felt awkward. I felt nervous. It was like taking a horse you do not know to a fence you do not know in a county you do not know.

‘As joint partners,’ I said lightly. ‘Like Harry and I do now.’

‘Like Harry and you,’ said Celia. ‘Like Harry and you,’ she repeated. She had turned back to me but her eyes were on the fire. Something in their hazy brownness made me wonder what she was seeing in a pile of glowing logs.

‘No,’ she said abruptly.

I jumped in unfeigned surprise.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I do not give my consent, I do not wish it. I do not think it is a good idea.’

‘Celia, what are you saying?’ I said. I disliked the speed of her words. The breathlessness, the stillness of the little figure in the pale parlour.

‘I do not wish that this contract be signed,’ she said clearly. ‘I am Julia’s mother and I have a right to a voice in the decision on her future. I do not wish this to go ahead.’

‘Celia, why not?’ I asked. ‘Whatever are you thinking of, to stand against Harry’s intentions in this way?’

That did not stop her, though it should have given her pause. But her eyes were fixed on the fireplace as if reflected on the coals she could see Harry and me frantically coupling on that very hearth, as my mama had done.

‘It is hard to explain,’ she said. ‘But I do not wish Julia to be involved in the running of Wideacre in the way that you have been.’ I could hear the restraint in her voice, which came from her anxiety not to hurt me. But I would have been deaf not to hear the certainty too.

‘Wideacre means so much to you, Beatrice, that you cannot understand that there is any other life open to a girl. But I should like Julia to love this place as her girlhood home, and to leave it with a light heart when she marries the man of her choice.’

‘But this way she is an heiress, Celia!’ I exclaimed. ‘She can marry the man of her choice and he can live here as John and I and you and Harry do. She will be joint owner of Wideacre. You could not bless a child with a better gift!’

‘You could! You could!’ said Celia, speaking fiercely though her voice was low. ‘The greatest blessing I shall give Julia will be to keep her free from the idea that Wideacre is the only place in the world to live. That it is the only thing in the world that could make her happy. I want her to be happy anywhere. I want her to be happy because she leads a good life and has a clean conscience and because she can freely give and freely receive love. I don’t want her to think that her life’s happiness is bound up with a handful of acres and a starving, miserable village!’

‘Celia!’ I gasped, and I stared at her in horror. ‘You don’t know what you are saying!’

‘I do,’ she said emphatically, looking at me directly now. ‘I have thought long and hard on this, Beatrice. I have thought about it ever since we came home to England. I should not want Julia to share her home with another couple, however dear they may be to her. When she marries I should want her to live with her husband and live with him alone. I should not want her to come into another woman’s house as I did, and to see her husband absorbed and working with someone else as I did. If she loved him with her whole heart I should want her to have all his time and all his love.’

‘But we have been so happy,’ I said weakly. ‘We all were so happy.’

‘There was something wrong!’ burst out Celia. She took three swift strides to my chair and pulled me to my feet to scan my face as if she would read my soul. ‘There was something wrong,’ she said certainly. ‘You know what it was and I do not. John knew what it was, but he could not tell me and I think it was that which sent him half mad and made him drink. I can feel it everywhere I go in the house. I can breathe it in the air. And I do not want my child touched with one feather of it.’

‘This, this is nonsense,’ I stammered. I was overwhelmed by the memory of my mama’s sense of sin, of something dirty and black in the house that she could smell but not see. I had trusted my mama to be too much of a coward, too much of a fool, to track down the foul thing and look it in the face. When she saw it, the two-backed beast before the fire, she had died with horror.

But Celia might almost dare to track it into its very lair and face it. Armed with her love for her child and her courage, Celia might go where my mama’s nervous thoughts had failed her.

‘Stop it, Celia!’ I said abruptly. ‘You are distressed. We will talk no more of this tonight. If you really dislike the whole idea we will change it. But let us have tea now, and then go early to bed.’

‘No, I won’t stop here, and I won’t have the tea tray, and we won’t go to bed until I understand more. How was Charles Lacey compensated? What are the terms of the contract?’

‘Oh, my!’ I said lightly. ‘Business, then? Well, very well, if you wish it.’ I snowed her under then, with rack-rents and revisions of tenancies, and long leases made short, and cottagers’ rights, and enclosure acts and the price of corn. How to sell when it is standing in the field, how to gamble on the growth and on the rise of the market when other farmers have poor crops. I even threw in the battle I had won over the water rights until her unlearned head spun.

‘So we have changed our farming system slightly to make greater profits, and we used the MacAndrew money too,’ I finished.

She nodded only to clear her head; there was no assent there. She could not have understood a word of the garble.

‘John’s money?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That is Richard’s contribution, as it were, towards being made heir of Wideacre, jointly with Julia.’

‘You have used John’s money without his consent?’ she asked. Her voice was even but her face was appalled.

‘As a loan merely,’ I said with assurance. ‘The whole idea of the power of attorney is to safeguard the patient’s interests. Obviously it is in John’s interests — and mine as his wife and the mother of his son — that he should get maximum interest. The loan he has made to Wideacre is paying far more than the MacAndrew Line dividends. And it secures Richard’s future, too.’

‘You have used John’s money without his consent and committed his son to Wideacre without him knowing?’ she asked incredulously.

‘Of course,’ I said, challenging her, face to face. ‘Any proper parent would be delighted, as Harry and I are, that the entail can so be changed.’

She smoothed a hand over her forehead as if to wipe away the confusion. It was ineffectual.

‘That is a matter for John and you,’ she said, her mind in a whirl. ‘I cannot think it right. I cannot believe that Harry could have so used John’s entire fortune, and that while he was ill, but if the contract is not signed, perhaps it can all wait until John returns from hospital?’

‘Perhaps, perhaps,’ I said soothingly. ‘I am not exactly sure. Harry has been making the arrangements, not I. I undertook only to reassure you, that although Harry was grieved to understand that you are barren there should be no unhappiness between the two of you, because he has found this way around that sorrow. That your lovely little girl can inherit her father’s land.’