The Complete Wideacre Trilogy: Wideacre, The Favoured Child, Meridon

She sighed a deep breath and she wiped her cheeks again with the wet scrap of lace.

‘You are so good, so generous, to suggest such a thing, Beatrice,’ she said gratefully. ‘It is like you to think nothing of yourself and everything of me. But your generosity is misplaced this time. It would not be a great, a generous gift. It would be leading me into dreadful error.’

I tried to nod and smile sympathetically, but my face muscles were stiff. I felt a rising tide of panic and fear of my pregnancy, and with it a rise of nausea. I was terrified of this growing child, which would neither die nor be given away. At the horror I had of the shame if I was forced to confess it. At my fear of what my mama would do, of what Harry would do. I should be sent away from my only home in shame. I should be tucked away in some dowdy market town with a pretend marriage ring on my finger and nothing from Wideacre around me except a monthly pension. I would have to wake in the morning to the noise of carts and carriages, and the birdsong of home would be far away. The sun that ripened the crops on the fields would shine through my dirty windows but its warmth would not feel the same. The rain, sliding down the window panes of my genteel little town house, would be filling the pools and hollows alongside the Fenny, but I would never drink that sweet water again. I could not bear it. This would be the end of me.

I looked at Celia, a slim figure in lilac silk, and I hated her for her obstinate morality, her silent, secret clarity about right and wrong, her wilful resistance to my needs. She was barren and I longed for that empty, clear, uncomplicated state. She was married and had traded independence and freedom for dependence and a quarterly pittance. But she had such security! Nothing would remove Celia; she would die in the Squire’s bedroom. While I, who loved the land and needed the land and longed for the land, would die of homesickness in some narow bed in a little room and be buried in soil that did not smell of home.

I had to get Celia out of the room or I would weep before her.

‘Good heavens,’ I said lightly. ‘Look at the time! Julia will be crying for you.’

It was the surest trigger in the world. Celia leapt to her feet and rustled to the door. She went with a light step, the pretty little moralist. Her sorrow was no heavy weight in her belly. Her pathetic conscience had blocked the only escape I could think of, and she had sunk my plan. And I sank too. Sank to my knees on the floor of my office, laid my head on the great carved chair that had always belonged to the Master of Wideacre, hid my face in my hands in that unyielding walnut seat and let my sobs shake me. I was utterly alone. I was desperate.

In the distance I heard a horse’s hoofs on the drive and raised my head to listen. Then, to my horror, John MacAndrew’s beautiful silver Arab horse was at my window, and John MacAndrew was looking down from his vantage point in the saddle to me kneeling, my dress creased, my eyes red, my head in my hands. His merry smile was wiped off his face and he wheeled Sea Fern around to the stable yard. I heard him shout for a groom and then open the side door of the west wing where the workers came for their pay. Then he was in the room without knocking and I was in his arms.

I should have pushed him away; I should have gone to my bedroom. I should have turned my face from him to look out of the window and said in cold tones that I had a headache, or the vapours, or anything, anything. Instead I clung to his lapels with two desperate hands and wept my heart out on his broad, comforting shoulder.

‘Oh, John,’ I said miserably. ‘I am so glad you are here.’

And he, wise, tender lover, said nothing, not one word other than soothing, meaningless noises like, ‘Hush, little darling’ and, ‘There, there, there.’

No one had smoothed my back while I sobbed since I had shrugged off my mama’s caresses at six or seven, and the strange tenderness made me even more weak with self-pity. Finally my sobs subsided and John sat himself in the master chair without a word of by-your-leave, and drew me, unresisting, hopelessly compromised, on to his knee. One firm arm was around my waist, the other hand came under my chin and turned my face to meet his scrutiny.

‘You have quarrelled with Harry? With your mama?’ he asked.

‘I can’t explain,’ I said, lost for a lie. ‘Don’t ask me. I just realized, because of something, that it is as you said: that I have no real home of my own. And I cannot bear to leave here.’

‘I understand about Wideacre,’ he said, his eyes scanning my tear-stained face. ‘I understand. Although I cannot imagine feeling the same way about land, I do sympathize.’

I buried my head in the comfortable warm softness of his woollen jacket shoulder. He smelt of cigars and of the fresh autumn air, and also a hint of sharp clean shaving soap. With the tears drying on my cheeks I felt a rising awareness of him as a man, and our sudden, surprising embrace. I laid my face close to his neck and touched his throat, almost shyly, with my lips.

‘Marry me, Beatrice,’ he said, low-voiced at the first touch of my mouth on his skin. He turned his face down and caught the secret little kiss on his lips. ‘I love you, and you know you love me. Say we can be married and I shall find some way to make you secure here, on the land you love.’

He kissed me gently on my sad mouth, and then, as the corners of my mouth curved up in a smile of pleasure, he kissed me harder. Then my arms were around his neck and I held his face to mine as he kissed every inch of my face: my sweet-smelling hair, my wet eyelids, my flushed cheeks, my ears, and then he pressed his mouth hard on mine and I tasted him with delight.

Then his mouth was on my face and my hair and the lobes of my ears, and I could not have told what I was doing or what I wanted. I was hardly an inexperienced girl, but somehow that clever man with the lazy veiled eyes had me off his knees and on the floor before the fire before I had decided, before I had even had time to think about what I was doing. And his hands were inside my gown, touching my breasts till I cried out for the feel of his weight coming down hard upon me. And his skilful doctor’s hands were ruffling up my skirt and my petticoats before I had time to protest, or words to protest or, God knows, the least idea in my head of protest.

The door was not locked; the curtains were not drawn. Anyone could have driven past the window and glanced in, or any servant could have come to the door with candles. I did not think. I could not think. All there was in my head was a ripple of laughter at the outrageous way John MacAndrew was behaving, and a more serious longing like a cry, a sweet clear cry from my heart to his that said, ‘Do not listen to all the refusals I have made to you. Let there be nothing more said between us. But love me, love me, love me.’

And then the one sane corner of my mind that was left noted that I was on the floor underneath him, and that my arms were around his neck, and my eyes were shut, and my lips smiling, and that a voice, my voice, was whispering his name and saying, ‘Love me.’ And he did.

And after I had cried out in pleasure – too loudly, too clearly, for safety – he said, very quietly but with great easiness and relief, ‘Oh, yes, yes, yes.’

And then we lay still for a very long time.

Then the logs on the fire shifted and I jumped out of my trance, and struggled to be up with a guilt-stricken wriggle. And he took his weight from me, and helped me to my feet and pulled my creased skirts down for me with as much courtesy as if we were in a ballroom, and with a little secret smile to acknowledge the incongruity of it too. Then he sat himself back in the master chair and drew me to him again, and I laid my face against his cheek and smiled with secret delight, and nearly laughed aloud for my happiness.

When I opened my eyes we smiled at each other like conspirators.

‘Beatrice, you strumpet, you have to be betrothed after that!’ he said, and his voice was husky.

‘I suppose I am then,’ I said.

We stayed in my office as the sun set over the western fields and the evening star came out low on the horizon. The fire burned down to red embers and neither of us troubled to toss another log on. We kissed gently, lightly, and we also kissed hard and with passion. We talked a little, of nothing. Of the run we had out hunting that day, of Harry’s incompetence as Master. He did not ask me why I had been crying, and we made no plans. Then I saw the candles lit in Mama’s parlour, and the silhouette of the maid drawing the curtains.

‘I thought it would hurt,’ I said lazily, with one passing thought for my reputation as a virgin.

‘After the horses you ride?’ he asked with a smile in his voice. ‘I am surprised you noticed it at all!’

I chuckled aloud at that, unladylike; but I felt too easy to pretend to be anything other than my sated, smiling self.

‘I must go,’ I said, scarcely stirring. As idle as a stroked cat on his knee. ‘They will wonder where I am.’

‘Shall I come, and shall we tell them?’ asked John. He helped me stand and smoothed the back panel of my dress where the silk was creased and crushed from our long courting.

‘Not today,’ I said. ‘Let it be just for you and me, today. Come for dinner tomorrow, and we can tell them then.’

He bowed in mock obedience, and let himself out of the west-wing door, with one final gentle kiss. His visit had passed unnoticed by Mama, by Harry and by Celia, but I knew that all the servants in the house and all the stable lads would know that he had been with me, and how long he had stayed. That was why no candles had been brought to my office as the light had faded. They had all conspired to leave John and me to court, like any village girl with her lover, in the gloaming by the fire. So, as is always the case, Wideacre people knew far more than Harry or Mama would ever have guessed.

Next day, when John came to take me for a drive before dinner, Harry, Mama and Celia paid little attention, but every servant in the house was smiling and peeping from the windows or hovering in the hall. Stride announced to me with elaborate ceremony that John was waiting in his curricle in the drive, and when he handed me up I felt as if I were being led to the altar. And I did not mind.

‘I trust you are not abducting me today,’ I said, and twirled my parasol, sunshine yellow, over my yellow bonnet and yellow woollen dress.

‘No, I’ll content myself with the sight of the sea from the top of your downs today,’ he said easily. ‘Do you think we can get the curricle up the bridle-way?’

‘It’ll be a squeeze,’ I said, measuring the shafts and the pair of glossy bays with my eyes. ‘But if you can drive a straight line it should be possible.’

He chuckled. ‘Oh, I’m a poor whipster, I know. Utterly incompetent. But you can always put a hand on the reins to keep me straight.’

I laughed outright. One of the things I liked about John MacAndrew the most was his immunity to my experimental slights. He had a hard core of resilience that meant he never winced at my attacks. He never even seemed challenged by them. He took them as part of a game we played – and he confessed incompetence or inadequacy without a blush, to bluff and double-bluff me into laughter and confession.

‘I beg your pardon,’ I said gaily. ‘I dare say you could drive your curricle and pair up the staircase without blowing the horses or scraping the varnish.’

‘I could indeed,’ he said modestly. ‘But I would never do it, Beatrice. I would never show you up. I know how ashamed you are of being cow-handed.’

I gave an irrepressible chuckle and gazed into his disconcertingly bright eyes. When he teased me in this way his eyes were as bright as if he were kissing me. Then he pulled the horses to a standstill before the fence and footstile up to the downs, and he climbed down from the driving seat and hitched the reins to the post.

‘They’ll keep,’ he said, dismissing hundreds of guineas of bloodstock as he held an arm to me as I dismounted. He held my hand as I climbed over the stile; walking up to the crest of the downs he still kept it. I should choose no other place for courtship. But I believe I should have been happier on that day if I had not been mere yards from where Ralph and I used to lie, hidden in bracken, or if I had not seen, a dozen yards to the right, the little hollow where I had slapped Harry’s face and ridden him to utter pleasure.

‘Beatrice,’ said John MacAndrew, and I turned my face up to his.

‘Beatrice …’ he said again.

It is as Ralph said. There are those who love and those who are loved. John MacAndrew was a great giver of love and all his wit and all his wisdom could not prevent him loving and loving and loving me, whatever the price. All I had to do was to say yes.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I wrote to my father some weeks ago to acquaint him of my feelings, and he has treated me well; I should say generously,’ said John. ‘He has given me my shares of the MacAndrew Line outright, to do with what I will.’ He smiled. ‘It is a fortune, Beatrice. Enough to buy Wideacre over and over.’

‘It’s entailed; Harry could not sell,’ I said, my interest suddenly sharpened.

‘Aye, that’s all you think of, isn’t it?’ said John ruefully. ‘I meant only to tell you that it is a fortune enough to buy or rent any nearby property you desire. I have told my father that I shall never return to Scotland. I have told him that I will marry an Englishwoman. A proud, difficult, stubborn Englishwoman. And love her, if she will let me, every day of her life.’

I turned to him, my eyes bright with tenderness, my face smiling with love. After Ralph I had not expected to love again. With Harry, I had thought my passion would last for ever. But now I could scarcely remember the colour of their eyes. I could see nothing but John’s blue eyes bright with love and the smile of tenderness on his face.

‘And I shall live here?’ I asked, confirming my luck.

‘And you shall live here,’ he promised. ‘If the worst comes to the worst I shall buy the Wideacre pigsties for you, so long as we are on the sacred soil. Will that satisfy you?’ In impatience and in love he scooped me up into his arms and held me, hard as iron. In a great sweep of my familiar half-forgotten sensuality I felt my knees buckle beneath me when I was held by a passionate man again. When we broke apart we were both breathing in gasps.

‘So we are formally affianced?’ he demanded tersely. ‘You will marry me, and we will live here, and we will announce it at dinner?’

‘I will,’ I said, as solemnly as any bride. I thought of the baby heavy in my lower belly, and the warmth of desire lighting me up. And a leaping satisfaction in the MacAndrew fortune with which I could do so much for Wideacre.

‘I will,’ I said.

We clasped hands and turned back to the curricle. The horses had stood quiet, nibbling at the dark leaves of the autumn hawthorn hedge, and a blackbird sang sadly in the wood.

John had to back down the narrow track until we came to a gateway where we could turn, then he held the horses in hard down the length of the bridle-way until we were on the level sweep of the drive and heading for home.

The beech leaves fell around us like bridal rice as we passed slowly up the drive; John was in no hurry to be home. The copper beech trees were purple-black this autumn, while the leaves on other trees that had been deliciously green were yellow and orange, unbelievably bright colours even in the fading light. My favourite trees, or nearly my favourites, the silver birches, were as yellow as buttercups and shimmered like gold against the silver of the white trunks. The hedgerows were ablaze with red hips from the dogroses, and black glossy elderberries nodded where the creamy flower heads had been.

‘It is a fine country,’ John said, following my loving eyes as I looked all around me at the familiar but always different trees, and hedgerows, and ground. ‘I do understand that you love it.’

‘You will come to love it too,’ I said certainly. ‘When you live here, when you spend your life here, you will care for it as I do, or nearly as much as I do.’

‘No one could equal your passion, I know,’ he said teasingly. ‘It is not the same for Harry, is it?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I think only my papa cared for it as I do, and even he could bear to be away from it for shooting or for a season in town. I would be happy if I never left the estate again as long as I live.’

‘Perhaps we may take leave of absence once a year,’ said John, laughing at me. ‘And when it is a leap year we might go to Chichester!’

‘And for our tenth anniversary treat I shall let you go to Petworth!’ I said, not to be outdone.

‘We are agreed then,’ he said, smiling at me. ‘And I am well content with the bargain.’

I smiled in return and then we rounded the drive and drew up outside the steps where the candles stood in the parlour windows to light our way home.

The announcement that John made after dinner, when the servants had withdrawn and the fruit and cheese were laid out, was greeted with as little surprise as we could wish. And as much joy. My mama’s face was tender with tears and smiles as she held out both hands to John and said, ‘My dearest boy, my dearest boy.’

He took both hands and kissed them, and then hugged her to him and kissed her soundly on both cheeks.

‘Mama!’ he said outrageously, and earned himself a tap from her fan.

‘Impertinent boy,’ she said lovingly, then she held her arms wide to me and I moved close to her for the first sincere, warmhearted hug I think we had ever exchanged.

‘Are you happy, Beatrice?’ she asked under the hubbub Harry was making with the bell, ringing for champagne, and slapping John on the back.

‘Yes, Mama,’ I said truthfully. ‘I really am.’

‘And at some sort of peace at last?’ Her eyes scanned my face, trying to understand the puzzle that was her daughter.

‘Yes, Mama,’ I said. ‘I feel as if something I have waited for has finally come to me.’

She nodded then, satisfied. She had seen the key to all sorts of puzzles in the dim awareness of her mind. The smell of milk on me when Celia and the baby and I returned from France, my nightmares after my father’s death, the disappearance of my childhood playmate, the gamekeeper. She had never dared to grasp the thread and let it lead her through the maze to the monstrous truth. So now she was well pleased to have thread, maze, monster and all safely buried as if they had never been.

‘He is a good man,’ she said, looking at John who had one arm around Celia’s waist, and was laughing with Harry.

‘I think so, indeed,’ I said, following her gaze. John, ever watchful of me, caught my look upon him and released Celia with exaggerated suddenness.

‘I must remember I am an affianced man!’ he said, teasing. ‘Celia, you must forgive me. I forgot my new state.’

‘But when will you be a married man?’ she asked gently. ‘Beatrice, do you plan a long engagement?’

‘Indeed not,’ I said without reflection. Then I paused and looked at John. ‘We have not discussed it, but I should certainly like to be married before Christmas and before lambing.’

‘Oh, well, if the sheep are to be the arbiters of my married life I suppose it should be whenever is convenient to them,’ John said, ironically.

‘You will call the banns and have a full Wideacre wedding,’ begged Mama, visualizing the dress and the attendants and the party and the feasting on the estate.

‘No,’ I said firmly and with an assured glance at John. ‘No, however it is done it should be quiet. I could not stand a full-blown affair. I should like it to be quiet and simple and soon.’

John nodded, a silent gesture of absolute agreement.

‘It should be as you wish, of course,’ said Celia diplomatically, glancing from Mama to me. ‘But perhaps a very small party, Beatrice? With just a few of your family, and John’s and your best friends.’

‘No,’ I said inexorably. ‘I know the fashion is changing but I stick to the old ways. I should like to wake up in the morning, put on a pretty gown, drive to church, marry John, come home for breakfast, and be out in the afternoon checking fences. I do not want one of these fashionable fusses made over what should be a private affair.’

‘And neither do I,’ said John, coming to my support when I needed it.

‘They’re right,’ said Harry with traditional loyalty. ‘Mama, Celia, you need say no more. Beatrice is famous for her love of the old ways; it would be an absolute blasphemy for her to have a modern wedding. Let it be as Beatrice says – a quiet, private affair – and we can have our party at Christmas as a joint celebration.’

‘Very well then,’ said Mama. ‘It shall be as you wish. I should have enjoyed a party, but as Harry says we can make it a special Wideacre Christmas instead.’

She earned a smile from me for that compromise. And her son-in-law-to-be kissed her hands with an elegant air.

‘Now,’ said Celia, turning to the most interesting question. ‘We shall have to redecorate the west wing for the two of you. How would you like it done?’

I surrendered then.

‘Any way, any way at all,’ I said, throwing my hands up. ‘Any way you and Mama think is the best. All I specify is that there shall be no pagodas and no dragons.’

‘Stuff,’ said Celia. ‘The Chinese fashion is quite démodé now. For you, Beatrice, I shall create a Turkish palace!’

So, between teasing and good decisions, John and I had our way of a private wedding and his removal, with the minimum of fuss, into a broad fine bedroom adjoining mine, a dressing room leading off it, a study downstairs facing over the kitchen garden for his books and his medicines, and an extra loosebox in the stables for his precious Sea Fern.

But we decided to have a wedding trip: just a few days. John had an aunt living at Pagham and she lent us her house. It was an easy afternoon’s drive – an elegant small manor house with a welcoming wide-open door.

‘There’s no land attached to it,’ said John, noting my raking glance out of the parlour windows. ‘She owns it merely as a house and garden. There is no farm land. So you need not plan your improvements here.’

‘No, it is Harry who is the one for the new methods,’ I said, returning without apology to the table where John sipped his port and I was toying with candied fruit. ‘I was thinking only that if the fields were planted longways instead of in patches as they are, it would make a better run for the plough.’

‘Does that make much difference?’ asked John, an ignorant town dweller, and a Scot.

‘Oh, heavens, yes!’ I said. ‘Hours in the day. The longest, worst part of ploughing is turning the horses. If I had my way we would farm only in strips. Lovely long reaches so the horses could go on and on without stopping. Straight, straight, straight.’

John laughed outright at my bright face.

‘All the way to London, I suppose,’ he said.

‘Ah, no,’ I disclaimed. ‘That is Harry again. It is he who wants lots more land. All I want is the Wideacre estate properly rounded off and enclosed, and properly yielding. Extra land is a pleasure to own, but it is new people to know and new fields to learn. Harry would buy it as if it were yards of homespun. But it is different to me.’

‘How is it?’ he prompted. ‘How is the land different from all other goods, Beatrice?’

I twisted the slender stem of my wine glass and looked down at the tawny liquid in the bowl.

‘I cannot really explain,’ I said slowly. ‘It is like some sort of magic. As if everyone secretly belonged somewhere. As if everyone had a horizon, a view, that perhaps they may never see, but if they did, they would recognize it as if they had waited all their lives for it. They would see it, and they would say, “Here I am at last.” It’s like that for me with Wideacre,’ I said, conscious that I felt far more than I could say. ‘As soon as I fully saw it – one day, years ago, when my papa took me up on his horse and showed me the land – in that second I recognized my home. For Harry it would be any land, anywhere. But for me it is Wideacre, Wideacre, Wideacre. The only place in the world where I can put my head to the earth and hear a heart beating.’