But sitting on my high hunter with my pretty cap perched on my head, it seemed to me that I might plough and plant this field every season for a thousand years and you would still be able to see where the village children had driven the geese, and where the oak tree had stood for courting couples to carve, announcing their betrothal.

I turned Tobermory with heavy hands and headed for home at a jolting trot. It was a warm scented humming summer afternoon. The silk of my dress was rippling in the breeze of the trot that lengthened into a canter as I dropped my hands and Tobermory lengthened his stride. I moved in the saddle like a lump of wood, and under my ribs felt like a frozen stone.

* * *

Only Harry welcomed me back with blind good humour. They were taking tea in the parlour when I came in, unpinning my cap for it seemed suddenly too tight.

‘Good to see you out on the land again!’ he exclaimed, his voice muffled around some fruit bread.

Celia’s eyes were on my face, worried at my pallor. I saw her glance at John and he scanned me with his measuring, professional, unloving stare.

‘Have a cup of tea,’ Celia said, gesturing to John to pull the bell pull. ‘You look tired. I’ll order another cup.’

‘I am perfectly well,’ I said with some impatience. ‘But you were quite right, Celia, it does look like being an excellent crop. With a good summer we should clear many of the outstanding debts of the estate.’

I shot a look from under my eyelashes at John as I said this. He looked scornful, and I was certain, as I had guessed, that the MacAndrew fortune had bought even lawyers’ and merchants’ secrets, and that John alone of the three of them knew that one season would not clear our debts. Four or five good ones would be needed. And whoever had good weather when your survival depended on it? I was running on the spot with Wideacre, like one of those dreadful dreams when you cannot flee from a threat coming for you.

‘Excellent!’ said Harry heartily. ‘I am especially glad that you are up and about, Beatrice, because I wanted you to take the London corn merchant to the fields next week.’

I frowned at Harry, but the damage was done.

‘A London corn merchant?’ asked John quickly. ‘What can he want here? I thought you never sold direct to the merchants?’

‘We don’t,’ I said promptly. ‘We never have done. But this man, a Mr Gilby, wrote to say that he was in the area and would like to look at our fields to give him some idea of the standard of Sussex wheat.’

Harry opened his mouth at the lie, but at a look from me closed it again. But that single betraying gesture was enough for John, who looked hard at Celia in an unspoken message that as good as called me a liar to my face.

‘Perhaps it would be better if you did not see him, Harry,’ Celia said, her soft voice tentative. ‘If he were to offer a very good price you could not help but be tempted, and you know you have always said that local corn should be locally sold and locally ground.’

‘I know,’ said Harry impatiently. ‘But one has to move with the times, my dear. Wideacre is farming in the way that all sensible land is now run. And the old idea of little markets and a pennyworth of corn for the poor is really not good business sense.’

‘And hardly a conversation for the parlour,’ I suggested smoothly. ‘Celia, could I have another cup? This warm weather makes me so thirsty. And do you have some sugar biscuits there?’

Celia bustled behind the urn, but I could tell by her face she had not finished. John stood still by the fireplace, his eyes on Harry, and then looking in turn at me. He looked at us both with a detached curiosity as if we were some specimens in his university medical training that were interesting, but rather unpleasant, examples of some lower animal life.

‘So you will not sell to him,’ he said flatly. He knew very well we had to. I had to sell to the top bidder to start to clear the backlog of debts.

‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘Or at the very most we will sell only a small part of the crop. The wheat off the new fields, which would not have been in the market last year anyway. There can be no objection to that. It would be madness to flood the Midhurst market with corn and bring the price down, after all.’

‘Indeed?’ said John, with affected interest. ‘I should have thought that after the winter the poor have endured you would be glad that they should have cheap bread this summer and autumn.’

‘Oh, yes!’ said Celia with emphasis. ‘Do say that it will be a good harvest and the benefits will be passed on to the poor, Harry! Beatrice! It has been a terrible winter for them, as John says. But one good summer and I am sure all of Acre would be happy and well fed again.’

I sipped my fresh cup of tea and said nothing. She was Harry’s wife and he had sworn he would have no ill-informed sentimental meddling with our land. He shuffled his feet and looked back at me to give him a lead. Like a cat’s green unwinking stare, my eyes were on his face, challenging him to make a stand against Celia’s mistimed Christian spirit.

‘I won’t discuss it,’ Harry said at length. ‘Celia, you and John are very right to care for the poor; I care for them myself. No one wants anyone to go hungry. But if they are so improvident as to marry and have huge families without knowing how they are to support themselves they can hardly expect cheap wheat. Of course there will be no starvation in Acre. But I cannot support a whole village as well as run the estate as it should be run.’

‘Should be run?’ John queried.

‘Oh! Let’s change the subject!’ I said with abrupt playfulness. ‘Harry the Squire has spoken! And indeed there is little hardship in Acre now the good weather is coming. Let us talk instead about some visitors or amusements now summer is here. I long to take Richard down to see the sea; shall we make a party of it?’

Celia looked still uncertain but she could not face an open clash with Harry, and the topic was safely closed. I saw John’s hard eyes on me and knew I had not turned him from his dogged pursuit of the truth of my plans, of the trail of my deceptions. But without Celia’s gentle support he did nothing. He merely sat in silence and watched my face. Only when his eyes were on Celia did they soften.

After that, I took good care that Celia and John should be off the estate on the day I expected Mr Gilby. I reminded Celia of the urgent need for new shoes for both children and the toughness of the village cobbler’s leather — good enough for Harry and me when we were small, but quite inadequate for the little princess. Celia decided to take both children to Chichester for a day’s shopping and we all agreed to go. At the last moment I feigned a headache and cried off, and had the satisfaction of seeing the three of them, and the two children, bowling off down the drive a clear hour before I expected Mr Gilby.

He was punctual, which I like. But that was the only thing I liked about him. He was a slight man, a townsman with natty, almost dandified, well-cut clothes, snowy linen, and boot-tops so bright you could see his weaselly little face upside-down, looking up at you when he bowed low. He bowed often. He knew, and I knew, that Wideacre wheat had never before been sold while it grew in the fields. That Wideacre wheat had always been offered first to the people whose labour had made it tall and proud and golden. He knew that every prickly, self-important Squire of Wideacre had suspected and disliked London merchants, the clever money-men who might bluff or cheat an honest man out of his profits. And he knew also, as I feared half the City knew, that the estate was overcommitted, that our notes and mortgages were in the hands of Mr Llewellyn, the bankers, and two other London merchants. That we had to deal with the people we had despised because we were locked into a trap of debts and loan repayments. He knew all this as well as I. But no shadow of it appeared on his smooth pale face as he handed me into the gig and I drove him down the drive.

He glanced around the woods mentally pricing them, and he looked left through the hedge and the line of trees to the old meadows, which were now featureless, flowerless, with green tall corn.

‘All this?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I replied shortly and, taking one hand from the reins, swept a gloved finger over the wide acreage shown on the map on the seat between us.

He nodded and asked me to stop the gig. I waited on the driver’s seat while he strolled among the fields like a lord on his own land, and plucked a handful of green ears of wheat, and peeled back the silvery-green sheath, and popped the raw unripe kernels into his mouth and chewed them like a thoughtful locust that I had been fool enough to invite on to my land. The only way to keep the distaste off my face and out of my voice was to be as cold and as bloodless as he. And that was easy. The pain of driving a merchant around the land, where my papa had sworn no business man would ever tread, was turning me to ice; even though the afternoon sun was blazing down on my head and I was hot and stuffy in my long-skirted driving gown and jacket.

‘Good,’ he said, as he swung back into the gig. ‘Excellent crop. Promising. But it’s an uncertain business, buying the crop before it’s cut. You have to make allowances for the risks, Mrs MacAndrew.’

‘Indeed I do,’ I said civilly. ‘Would you like to see the down-land fields now?’

He nodded his assent, and I drove him down the drive and up the bridle-way to the slopes of the downs. The plantation on our left was thriving, but I could scarcely glance at it without a sinking feeling of guilt in the pit of my stomach. Wideacre water and earth were feeding these sweet dark springy trees. But the trees no longer belonged to Wideacre. They were Mr Llewellyn’s, and the wide, lovely crescent of the plantation my papa had ordered with such pride was not a source of wealth for the future, with limitless wood for building and burning. It was gone. Sold as it stood. Before it even reached its mature height. Now I was selling the corn while it was still green. Nothing seemed to belong on Wideacre any more. Not the trees. Not the corn. Not even me.