Philippa Gregory - Wideacre

‘What do you know about farming?’ I demanded rudely. ‘Either of you! All you have seen, John, have been the Edinburgh drying greens; and all you know, Celia, is the inside of your parlour. If we do not farm in this way we will lose Wideacre!’ I stopped on a shaky half-laugh as a great crack of lightning lit up the room and showed me Harry’s aghast face.

‘I am not exaggerating,’ I said. ‘We are desperately overstretched and we have to keep on this course or we will lose all. No Wideacre for us, no Wideacre for Julia. The poor carry the brunt of it, of course they do. The poor always do. But once the profits of this season come in we will be able to ease the burden a little. And then yearly it will get better.’

‘No,’ said Celia. She was standing by the window, the sky livid behind her, the black clouds underlined with the garish orange light of the setting sun.

‘This is not a time for gradual improvements,’ she said. ‘We must change completely. It is not right that we should eat well at table while people starve on our land so that we can grow rich. It is not Christian, it is not right, that there should be such a great gulf between rich and poor. I will not accept that this is the way it has to be. You are a tyrant on Wideacre, Beatrice; you can decide absolutely how things are to be. But you may not decide that the poor starve — I will not allow it!’

‘I manage Wideacre in the only way there is to increase yields …’ I started but Celia’s voice broke in over mine, clear and sharp with her anger.

‘You do not manage Wideacre, Beatrice,’ she said, and her voice was full of scorn and disdain. ‘You ruin it. You ruin everything you love. You are a wrecker. I have loved you and trusted you and I was mistaken in you. You adored Wideacre but you have destroyed every good thing about it. You loved the meadows and they are gone. You loved the woods and they are sold or uprooted. You loved the downs and your ploughs are going higher and higher. You are a wrecker and you destroy the very things you work for.’ Her eyes flickered from me to John and I knew she was also thinking of how I had tried to wreck him too, the man I loved.

I took a deep breath that sounded like a harsh groan as she held up this hard mirror to my life. And I knew she was right.

‘I will not live with you while you persist in this destruction,’ she said as cool as a judge with a hanging sentence in mind. ‘I will not permit you to destroy the morality of our life by forcing us to be party to this horror. I will not attack the people who look to us to shield them. I will not starve people who have no defence.’

She stopped and in the silence Harry’s eyes went from her flushed face to my white one. But he said nothing. I bit the inside of my cheeks to steady my breathing and then I drew breath to defeat her. I had words, I had power. I could beat her down.

But John’s sharp eyes had been on me all the time, and he spoke first.

‘You are wrong, Celia,’ he said, and I quickly glanced at him, an unexpected ally. ‘You are wrong,’ he said. His eyes were bright, and very sharp on my face. ‘They do have a defender,’ he said slowly, watching me. His emphasis surprised Celia and she was looking at me too. Even Harry was alerted.

‘They do have a defender,’ said John again. ‘The Culler is on Wideacre.’

‘No!’ I said, and I crossed the room with two quick strides and took John’s lapels in a hard grip, scanning his face, wide-eyed.

‘It is not true,’ I said. ‘You are trying to torture me, as I tormented you. It is a lie.’

John’s look at me was empty of any compassion. ‘No, Beatrice,’ he said. ‘The Culler is on Wideacre. I heard them say so tonight. Who is he? And why is he such a terror to you?’

I half closed my eyes and near swooned. John put two ungentle hands under my elbows to support me and scanned my white face with his hard, questioning gaze. I opened my eyes to look past him, to the familiar safe landscape of my home.

And then I saw them.

Two black dogs in the rose garden. They were still, as still as well-trained keeper’s dogs when he has ordered them to stay and has an eye on them from some dark shadow. The spaniel was sitting, ears cocked, eyes bright on the house, black as mourning velvet. The black lurcher was lying, head up like some heraldic monster, watching the house, watching me.

‘He is here,’ I said, and took one staggering step to the chair by the fire before my legs gave way and I sank into it. A hard hand on my shoulder twisted me around and I raised my dazed eyes to see Celia bending over me. But her touch was hard, and her eyes were cold.

‘Who is he?’ she said. I could hear a little insistent echo of the question over and over again, which said ‘Who is he?’ ‘Who is he?’ ‘Who is he?’ in my frightened whirling head.

‘Is he coming for Julia?’ she asked. Her hard little hand on my shoulder tightened and she half shook me in her own fear. ‘Is he coming for Julia?’

I gazed blankly at her. I could scarcely remember who Julia was. In the grip of my own terror all I could see were the two dogs with their eyes fixed on the parlour window, waiting for their master to send them in like a hunting pack.

‘Is he Julia’s father? Is he coming for her?’ Celia’s voice, sharp, with an edge of hysteria, still could not get through to me.

‘Yes,’ I said, neither knowing nor caring what I was saying. ‘Yes, yes.’

Celia gasped as if I had slapped her, and stretched a hand to John.

‘What?’ said Harry, utterly bemused. His secure world was shattering too fast. His life was being undermined from too many sources at once. ‘What are you all talking about? I am Julia’s father.’

‘No,’ said Celia dully, one hand held by John, tears pouring down her cheeks. ‘This is just more of your sister’s wreckage, Harry. Beatrice cheated you, and she cheated me. I am not Julia’s mother. She is Beatrice’s child. And now her father is coming for her.’

Harry’s frightened eyes turned on me.

‘Beatrice?’ he said, as if he meant to call for his mother. ‘Beatrice, tell me, this is none of it true?’

‘It is true,’ I said. I was in my own private hell and I cared not who else plunged into their own nightmares. ‘Julia is my child and the Culler is her father.’

‘And who is the Culler?’ asked John, following the thread through the tortuous maze of lies. ‘Who is this Culler?’

I met Harry’s eyes.

‘The gamekeeper’s lad,’ I said. Celia and John looked to Harry for it meant nothing to them. There was a second while Harry’s face was blank and then his pitiful confusion was replaced with a look of pure terror.

‘He is coming for us?’ he said. ‘He is coming for you? He is coming to get Julia?’ The tone of terror in his voice tipped Celia over the border from fear to panic.

‘I am going,’ she said. ‘I am leaving here and taking the children at once.’

I slumped back in the chair. It was all wrecked, as Celia had said it was. The maze was falling in, and the Culler’s dogs waited in my garden.

‘I’ll harness the horses,’ said John and he left the room without another glance at me. Questions were still burning in his mind, but one look at Celia’s aghast face had sent him running to save her from the horror that I knew, and that Harry confirmed.

John had been waiting for this moment, when the maze would be wrecked and he would pull Celia and the children she loved out into safety. He thought I lied about Julia’s father. He thought I lied when I confirmed Celia’s long secret fear that one day the mysterious father would come to snatch Julia from her. But he knew the sound of terror in my voice, and he knew the world of Wideacre was crumbling around us. And all he cared for was that the innocent should be out of the wreckage when the world caved in.