‘Don’t let him do it!’ called a desperate voice from the crowd. ‘Miss Beatrice, don’t do this to us!’

‘Oh, get on with your work!’ I said in sudden desperate impatience. ‘Enclosures are taking place up and down the country. Why should Wideacre be different? Get on with your work!’ And I flicked the reins on Sorrel’s back in one irritable gesture and he jumped forward and we swirled away down the lane, away from the circle of shocked faces, away from the old lovely wood, which would be felled, and away from the sweet rolling heather and bracken common, which would be burned and levelled and drained dry.

All the way home I had tears on my cheeks and when I brushed them away with the back of my gauntlet I found my face was wet again. But I could not have said what had made me weep. Indeed, there was nothing. The common would be enclosed as I had ordered, the half-spoken protest of Acre village would be the talk of the ale-houses for half a year and then forgotten. The new fence would soon blend in, greened with moss and greyed with lichen. And the new courting couples of Acre would find another tree for their carvings. And their children would never know that once, through the woods, there had been hundreds of acres of land where little children could hide, and play at war, and picnic and roam all day long. All they would know would be field after flat field of yellow wheat where they would not be allowed to play. And knowing no different, why should they grieve?


It was those of us who had known the common who would grieve. And the next day when I put on my black silk dress I felt I was in mourning indeed. For by now the fences would be up and the men would be cutting down the great lovely trees and hacking out the roots. I would not drive out and see the work done. I did not want to see it until it was so far advanced that no sudden softness of mine could halt the relentless progress of the mindless beast that Harry exultantly called ‘The Future’. Neither would I be driving to Acre village for a while. The voices in the crowd had been grieved, not angry, and no crowd led by Gaffer Tyacke would ever be other than courteous. But when they saw the fences going across the ancient footpaths they would be angry. And there was no reason why I should see that anger. I did not choose to.

But after a long breakfast, during which I planned my day, which seemed very empty if I was not to drive out on Wideacre, I went to my office and found John Brien waiting in the lobby by the stable door.

‘Why are you not at the common? Has something happened?’ I asked him sharply, opening the door and beckoning him in.

‘Nothing has happened,’ he said, ironically. I sat at my desk and let him stand.

‘What do you mean?’ I said. He heard the tone in my voice and he heard the warning note.

‘I mean nothing has happened because the men won’t work,’ he said. ‘After you left yesterday morning they went into a little huddle with old Tyacke …”

‘George Tyacke,’ I prompted.

‘Yes, Gaffer Tyacke,’ he repeated. ‘And then they said that they wanted to take an early dinner break. So they all trooped home and when I waited for them to come back an hour later no one came.’

‘And then?’ I said sharply.

‘Then I went to look for them,’ he said, his voice almost petulant. ‘But I could get no answer at any of the cottages. They must all have left the village for the day, or else locked their doors and kept silent. Acre was like a ghost town.’

I nodded. This was a petty rebellion; it could not last. The people of Acre were in a hard vice of needing work, and Wideacre was the only employer. They needed access to the land, and we owned all the land. They needed roofs over their heads, and they were all our tenants. No rebellion could last long under those circumstances. Because we had been good, even generous, landlords they had forgotten the total power the Squire of Wideacre has for the using. I would not want to use the power. But I would certainly do whatever was needed to get those fences up and that common land growing wheat.

‘And today?’ I asked.

‘The same today,’ John Brien said. ‘No men waiting to work, and no reply at the cottages. They just will not do it, Mrs MacAndrew.’

I flashed him a scornful look.

‘Would you ask them to get my gig ready with Sorrel harnessed,’ I said in a tone of icy politeness. ‘I see I shall have to come out again and get this settled.’

I changed into my driving dress and found John Brien waiting beside the gig in the yard. He was riding his own mare, a horse good enough for a gentleman born.

‘Follow me,’ I said in a tone I reserve for impertinent servants, and swung out of the yard.

I drove down the lane to Acre. This tale of silent cottages might do for John Brien but I knew that behind every cottage window there would be a pair of eyes watching me go past. I drove to the chestnut tree at the centre of the village green, as clear a signal for a parley as if I was carrying a stick with a handkerchief.

I tied Sorrel to one of the low branches, I climbed back into the gig and waited. I waited. I waited. Slowly, one by one, the doors of the cottages opened and the men came sheepishly out, pulling on their caps and shrugging on their sheepskin waistcoats, their wives and children following at their heels. I waited until I had a goodly crowd around the gig, and then I spoke clearly and my voice was cold.

‘We had a few words yesterday and you all explained to me why you wanted things at Wideacre left as they are,’ I said. ‘I told you then that it cannot be so.’ I paused and waited for any comment. None came. ‘John Brien here tells me that none of you stayed to work yesterday,’ I said. I let my gaze wander around the circle of faces. Not one eye met mine. ‘Nor today,’ I said.

I signalled to John Brien to untie Sorrel and pass me the reins. ‘The choice is yours,’ I said flatly. ‘If you refuse to work I shall send to Chichester for the labourers from the Chichester poorhouse and they can come and earn your wages and take home your pay while you sit in your houses and go hungry. Or, if there are problems with that, I can bring in Irish labourers and I can cancel your tenancies and give them your houses.’ There was a shudder of horror at that thought. I waited until the spontaneous moan had died, then gazed around the circle of faces again. They were all people I knew so well. I had worked side by side with all of them ever since I had been out on the land. Now I sat high above them and spoke to them as if they were dirt in my road.

‘The choice is yours,’ I said again. ‘You can either take the work that these changes provide. And take the wages that are fairly set by the parish. Or you can starve. But either way those fences are going up. The common will be enclosed.’

I nodded to Brien to stand aside from Sorrel’s head and loosened the reins to move off. No one said a word this time, and I had the feeling that they were silent even when I was out of earshot. They were stunned by the ruthlessness of a woman they had loved since she was a tiny girl on a fat pony. They had thought I was their pretty Miss Beatrice who would never fail them. And now I looked at them with a cold set face and offered them the choice between independent starvation and starvation wages.

They went back to work. Of course they did. They were not such fools as to try to stand against one who was landlord, employer and landowner all in one. Brien rode up to the Hall during their dinner break to tell me that the work had started and that the fences were going up quickly.

‘You did tell them!’ he said admiringly. ‘You should have seen their faces. That’s broken their spirits all right. I wish we had brought the Irish in. It would wake that village up for once! But they looked pretty sick when you trotted off, Mrs MacAndrew, I can tell you! You slapped them down pretty hard!’

I looked at him coldly. His spite against my people reminded me again of the oddness of the role I had to play. And the disgusting nature of the tools I had to use to do the jobs I had to do. I nodded.

‘Well, get back to work,’ I said brusquely. ‘I want that common ready for spring sowing.’

I did not spare myself the pain of seeing the common this time but drove down to it in the early spring dusk, which came at about four o’clock. In the gloaming I could see little of the common, but the smell of it, the frosty bracken and the hint of icy pine needles, pulled at my heart strings as I sat on the gig at the end of the lane and Sorrel chafed at the bit. Before us loomed the new fences that marked out the limits of this year’s wheat-fields. Next year we would enclose and drain more and more until the only fields left to grow hay and the sweet meadow flowers would be the ones that were too high or too steep for any plough. All of the common that rolled in such easy soft valleys would be gone in a few years’ time, and this fence, which was causing Acre village so much worry and grief, was only the first of many lessons that would teach them that the land belonged only to us, and that in years to come they would not be allowed so much as to set foot on it without permission. But behind the dark outline of the new fence I could see the soft rolling profiles of the little hills and valleys of the common where it drops down to our woods. And my heart ached for it.

I drove home in a hurry for I wanted to be in time to bathe Richard and to put him into his fleecy little nightshirt. I wanted to tickle his bare sweet-smelling warm tummy, and to tease him by poking my chilled fingers in the soft little pits under his arms. I wanted to brush his hair into black little kiss-curls, and to bury my face in his warm neck and sniff at the sweet pure smell of baby. But most of all I wanted to see him to reassure myself that I did indeed have a son who would be Squire if I could only hold to this one true course, that I was not crazy to tear the heart out of the land I loved.