Philippa Gregory - Wideacre

‘You plan that she and Richard will be joint owners?’ Celia repeated slowly. ‘That she and Richard should grow up together on the land, learning about the land together?’

I nodded.

‘And you and Harry would take them both out on the estate, looking at the land and learning to farm. And all the time they would be growing closer and closer. And only you and I would know that they are not just partners, and not just cousins, but half-brother and half-sister?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But Celia …’

‘But we would not be able to tell them that!’ she said. ‘They would be best friends and playmates and business partners. They would think they were first cousins, but they would be close kin. They would learn to love each other, and their interests would lie together. How could they then turn aside from each other and learn to love the people they will be betrothed to marry? How can my Julia have the life I had hoped for her and planned for her as a girl of Quality if she is an heiress from the age of two in a partnership with a boy who is neither husband nor distant relation?’

She spun on her heel so she did not face me and buried her face in her hands.

‘It is a nightmare,’ she said. ‘I cannot tell what it is but some danger is threatening Julia from this. I do not know what!’

‘You are being foolish, Celia,’ I said coldly. I took her shoulders in a firm grip and felt a shudder run through her like a terror-struck foal. ‘Wideacre is a family business,’ I said levelly. ‘Julia would always have had obligations to meet on the estate. She will simply work with Richard as Harry and I work.’

That reassurance tripped her control.

‘No!’ she said, and it was nearly a scream. ‘No! I forbid it! You gave her to me and said that she should be my child. I claim my right as her mother to decide her future. She shall not be with Richard as you and Harry are, for I am afraid of something about you and Harry, even if I have no words for it but only a dread that chills and frightens me when I wake in the night. I do not know what I am afraid of, and I make no complaint against either of you. But I am afraid, Beatrice! I am afraid for Julia! I do not want her to be part of another brother-and-sister partnership. No. I do not give my consent. I shall tell Harry.’

I leaped for the door and spread my arms so that she could not get past me.

‘Celia, wait,’ I said. ‘Don’t dash out to Harry like that while you are distressed. He will think it most odd. He will think we have quarrelled. Calm yourself and consider what you mean to say. If you do not want Julia to be joint heir with Richard she can always sell him her share when they are older, or he can sell his. There is no need for you to become so upset over this, Celia.’

She had heard none of it. She was looking at me as if she had seen me for the first time. She was looking at me curiously, with disbelief, as if there were some mark scrawled on my face, or as if I had spiders crawling in my hair, or some other horror.

‘Stand aside, Beatrice,’ she said. Her voice was low and hard. ‘I want to speak with Harry.’

‘Not while you are so overwrought,’ I pleaded, and I did not move.

‘Stand aside,’ she said again. And I remembered her before the library fireplace with two smashed bottles of whisky dripping from her hand.

‘You will distress Harry,’ I said. ‘He planned this to make you happy.’

‘Stand aside,’ she repeated, and her eyes flickered towards the bell pull. For one brief moment I wondered if she could face the scene of the butler coming and her ordering him to push me out of the way by forcing open the door. But I saw the look on her face and knew I was arguing with a woman on the edge of hysteria.

‘Beatrice, I have asked you three times,’ she said and her voice was tight with control that might break at any moment. I feared Celia in a panic more than I feared her when she could judge to speak or be silent. If she screamed out that Richard and Julia were brother and sister then I would be irreparably lost. But if she kept herself under control, and if I went with her, I might manage this scene still.

I opened the parlour door for her with a little ironic bob curtsy and followed, hard on her heels, as she swept across the hall to the dining room. A footman was coming through the door from the kitchen bringing more biscuits for Harry, and I scowled at him so he turned on his heel and went back behind the baize door again. Celia saw nothing, heard nothing. She flung open the dining-room door and made Harry jump with the bang. He had a plate before him heaped with cheese and biscuits, and the flagon of port by his hand. He had butter on his chin. I could trust him as far as I could flick water.

‘I do not consent to this arrangement,’ said Celia in her high, hard voice. ‘The documents are not to be signed. I do not wish it for Julia.’

Harry’s blue eyes were wide with surprise.

‘But it’s done!’ he said simply. ‘We signed them this afternoon. The entail’s changed, and Richard and Julia are joint heirs.’

Celia opened her mouth and screamed, a thin wail like a small animal trapped. She stood motionless, her eyes on Harry’s face, his cheeks still full of biscuits. I was frozen too. I could not even think what I could say to stop Celia’s mouth. But her horror and her fear of the unknown thing that hid in the corners of Wideacre and that one could almost feel breathing among us kept her wordless.

Her mouth still open, she gave a little whimper like a child with a finger trapped in a door. Her eyes rolled from Harry, motionless at the head of the table, to me, silent behind her. She found one word in her panic-stricken mind. She said, ‘John.’ Then she picked up her silk skirts in her hands and whirled from the room.

Harry bolted his mouthful and looked wildly at me.

‘What’s the matter?’ he demanded. ‘What’s wrong with her?’

I shrugged. My shoulders were stiff and I could feel the gesture was wooden. My face must have been as white as a sheet. I could feel the control and the power slipping through my fingers like the sands of the common.

‘Listen!’ I said. I heard the door to the west wing bang and straight away thought of my desk and the incriminating bundle of Celia’s letters to John, which had never reached him. Without a word to Harry I dashed after Celia and to my office. The room was in darkness; she was not there.

I called sharply, ‘Celia!’ but I had no answer. I could not think where she might be. I checked my west-wing parlour but although the candles and the fire had been lit there was no Celia weeping on the pretty sofa. I ran up the stairs to my bedroom, to John’s room; I even glanced into the nursery to see my son sleeping like a tousled angel. But no Celia. Then I heard the sound of wheels on the paving stones of the stable yard and ran to the window. The coach was out and Celia was stepping inside.

‘Celia!’ I called. ‘Wait!’ With fumbling desperate fingers I struggled with the catch and the window swung open.

‘Stop!’ I shouted. The stable lads looked up at my voice even as they were shutting the door to Celia’s carriage.

‘Stop!’ I said. ‘Wait!’

Celia’s head appeared at the window and I could see she was repeating the order to drive on to the coachman. I knew the coachman. I had given him a chance when Papa had been looking for a new man only six years ago. I had told Papa then that Ben was one of those people that can charm horses into the shafts. I could not remember his surname. He had been ‘Coachman Ben’ to us for what seemed a lifetime. But he was Wideacre born and bred. I had given him his job. I paid his wages. I knew he would stop, and Celia would have to climb down out of the carriage; then, between us, Harry and I, we could pet her and bully her, and confuse her and mislead her until this show of courage and activity was knocked out of her. And I could carry on, ploughing my straight furrow, scything in my straight line. Whatever stood in my path.