Philippa Gregory - Wideacre

He was back within the hour, his face grim as he drove the wagon past my window. I pushed the letter I was writing aside, and waited. The west-wing stable door banged and I felt the gust of hot wind as Harry came into my room without a knock.

‘They insulted me!’ he said. His lower lip was trembling with rage and distress. ‘They would not speak to me. They would not sing the reaping songs we used to sing. They did not give me a place on the line of reapers. They squeezed me up against the hedge. The girls didn’t smile at me. And when I said, “Come on, lads, let’s sing,” one said, “We’re not paid enough to breathe, Squire, let alone sing. You get that flint-eyed sister of yours to pay us the proper rate, the fair rate, and we’ll sing like bloody blackbirds to please you. But while we hunger, you can sing to yourself!” ‘

‘Who?’ I said swiftly. ‘I’ll have him off the estate at once.’

‘I don’t know!’ said Harry petulantly. ‘I don’t know all their names like you do, Beatrice. I can’t even tell them apart. They all look the same to me. They don’t seem to have proper features. It was one of the older men, but I don’t know who. The others would know.’

‘And it’s likely they’d tell me!’ I scoffed. ‘Well, what did you do?’

‘I came home!’ said Harry indignantly. ‘What else could I do? If I can’t harvest my own fields I might as well come home for dinner. You’d think they’d be glad to have a Squire to work alongside them. If it’s the old ways they want, what could be more traditional than that?’

‘Odd indeed,’ I said drily. ‘How far had they got?’

‘Oh, I hardly noticed, I was so upset,’ said Harry uselessly. ‘Really, Beatrice, it is too bad. I can tell you, I shan’t go into the fields again this season. You’ll have to do the supervision, and if it’s too much for you it must be John Brien. It really is quite wrong I should be exposed to such insult.’

‘Very well,’ I said wearily. ‘Now go and have some coffee and biscuits, Harry. You’ll feel better after that.’

‘But why should they speak to me so?’ he demanded, his face working with distress. ‘Don’t they realize that this is the way the world has to be now?’

‘They certainly don’t seem to.’

‘I get a pain in my chest when I am upset,’ Harry said, the sickly-child whine in his voice again. ‘I should not be exposed to a scene like that. It is time they realized we are doing our best. When I think of all the work we provide for them. And the charity too! There’s Celia spending pounds every week on soups and bread for the poor. And this harvest dinner too! A pretty penny that will cost. And no thanks for it, you know, Beatrice!’

‘Harvest dinner?’ I said sharply. ‘There is to be no harvest dinner this year.’

Harry looked blankly at me. ‘Celia is organizing one,’ he said. ‘You asked her to make the arrangements, she said. It’s to be at the mill, once the last field is cut, and they bring the last wagon in, as usual.’

‘No!’ I said aghast. ‘Harry, it cannot be! Bill Green himself faces ruin and he will hardly welcome merrymakers at the mill. It will be the Christmas party over again. We cannot tell what will happen! Besides, it is hardly bringing the harvest home when we are merely storing it, and threshing it at the mill and Mr Gilby’s wagons will come and take every grain of it out of the county!’

‘Well, it’s all arranged, Beatrice,’ said Harry awkwardly. ‘And I told all the people about it today, before they would not let me reap. I suppose it would only make everything worse if we said now that it would not take place.’

I scowled dreadfully. ‘I never meant Celia to take me seriously,’ I said. ‘It will have to be cancelled.’

‘As you wish,’ said Harry uncertainly. ‘But everything is prepared, and everyone seems to be planning to come. It might be easier to go through with it than to cancel outright.’

I nibbled the tip of my finger, lost in thought.

‘Oh, very well,’ I said. ‘If it is all planned, and Miller Green has not refused, I suppose it should go ahead. But it is odd, midway between the old ways and the new like this.’

‘Perhaps when they have brought the corn in they will all cheer up and have a good party,’ Harry said witlessly. ‘Perhaps it will be like that first wonderful summer.’

‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘One never gets the same summer twice. And Wideacre is all different these days. And you are different. And I would not know myself.’ I paused, my voice had sounded so sad. ‘Anyway,’ I said briskly, ‘if it is all planned it will have to go ahead. And we can leave early if there is any unpleasantness.’

Harry went off to change and take coffee, a little soothed, and was able to pour out the tale of his wrongs to Celia’s sympathetic ear. But when she, prompted by a hard look from John, suggested that the men would not have been so rude if they had not been in despair, Harry was quickly up on his high ropes.

‘Now, Celia,’ he said, wagging a plump finger at her. ‘You must let Beatrice and me run the land as we see fit. If they have to tighten their belts in Acre for a few days that will do no great harm. It will give them an appetite for your harvest supper! Beatrice and I know best on this.’

Celia opened her mouth to reply, but then thought better of it. She shot a swift glance at John from under her eyelids. They needed nothing more. They understood each other so well. John now took up the debate, knowing, without being told, that Celia could not challenge Harry further than she had done.

‘Celia is right, you know, Harry,’ said John. He was hiding his distaste of Harry in his anxiety to get Harry to see reason about the land.

‘Celia and I have spent much time in Acre recently,’ said John. He spoke with his old incisive authority. ‘We have set in hand a system so the food we give is distributed first to the families with ill children, then to the old people, and then to the other families in need. But it is evident to me that we can do nothing effective while there is no long-term solution to the problem of poverty on Wideacre.’

‘No one denies that!’ said Harry. ‘It is a hard time for all of us who are dependent on the land.’ He took another cake and bit into it with resolution.

‘It’s not just “hard” in Acre,’ John said patiently. ‘There will soon be many deaths through starvation if nothing is done. The supply of food we have provided can keep some families going, but there are more of them in need than we can satisfy.’

‘That is because they insist on having large families,’ I said coldly. ‘They bear children with no idea how to support them. All you two have been doing is encouraging them to live in a fool’s paradise. While you give them free food they will never understand the way of the real world.’

John shot me a hard look. ‘This real world of yours, Beatrice,’ he said in a tone of detached interest, ‘this is the world where you can employ every man in Acre for hundreds of years, and then suddenly refuse to keep any, save two skilled workers, on the wage books?’

I said nothing.

‘This real world is one where there is no way of preventing the conception of children and yet the bastards of Quality wear silk and can look forward to inheritances? Yet the legitimate children of the poor go hungry?’

I knew he was thinking of two bastards, two incestuous bastards, in this house. I said nothing again, but I shot a murderous glance at Harry who was licking his fingers and looking at John.

‘No wonder they do not understand the real world,’ said John, ‘for this real world of yours baffles me. I have never been anywhere like Wideacre and I have travelled all around England and Scotland. In less than a year this estate has gone from being one of the most profitable, happiest places in the county. Now it is in the hands of the creditors, and the poor are starving. Which picture is real? The reality you inherited, or this horror you have made?’