This trip had to be prevented. I knew, because I knew Harry, that if he were all alone with Celia for two months he would come to love her. And who could resist him? I had seen him with a frightened foal or an injured hound, and I knew how he prided himself on his gentle understanding, on winning a shy creature’s confidence. He would see Celia’s coldness as a result of her cruel treatment at home and set himself the task of becoming her friend. Once he came to know her he would realize she was indeed the best bride he could have found.

Under her shy and cool defences, Celia was warm and loving. She even had a little bud of humour, and Harry would learn to make those brown eyes twinkle and he would hear her girl’s ripple of laughter. It would be inevitable that they would warm to each other, and equally inevitable that one night, after the opera or the theatre, or some peaceful dinner for two, Celia would be smiling with wine and new confidence. Harry would turn to her for a kiss and she would give him one. He would touch her breast and she would not push his hand away. He would stroke her narrow pliant back and whisper endearments, and she would smile and twine her arms around his neck. And I? I would be forgotten.

Nothing of these panicky thoughts showed in my face as Mama and I went downstairs, but when we entered the breakfast parlour some hours later I had a second shock of pain at Harry’s delighted greeting to Mama and his warm smile to me was as sunny and open as his delight in seeing her. I drank tea and ate a little toast, while Harry wolfed down cold ham, cold beef, some new bread and honey, some toast and butter and finally a peach. Mama ate heartily too and laughed and joked with Harry as if she had never been ill. Only I sat silent. I was back in my old place at the side of the table rather than at the end. The outsider again.

‘Beatrice looks so well and so happy I think she should have some more riding,’ Mama remarked as Harry carved himself one more slice of meat. He picked at the white fat with his fingers and ate it first. ‘Perhaps you could make a point of seeing she goes out daily,’ Mama said, as if I were a lapdog that needed walking.

‘Rather,’ said Harry unhelpfully.

‘Could she ride today in the morning or in the afternoon?’ she asked. I looked up from my plate and my eyes sent an urgent message to Harry. ‘Now! Now! Say now, and let us race up to the downs and tumble into our little hollow and I will forget this jealousy and pain and give you such pleasure that you will never want to come home and never want another woman in your life.’

Harry smiled at me, his open, brotherly smile.

‘If you don’t mind, Beatrice, I will see to it tomorrow. I promised Lord Havering I would look at his coverts with him today and I dare not be late.’

He took out his watch and pushed back his chair to go.

‘I’ll not be back till late tonight, Mama. I shall stay to dinner if I’m asked. I have not been there for three days and I shall have to make my apologies!’

He bent and kissed her hand and smiled at me in farewell and strolled out of the room as if he had not a care in the world. I heard his footsteps cross the hall, then the front door open and close. In the silence I could hear the clatter of his horse as the groom led it round from the stable and then the clip-clop as he rode away. He rode away as if love and passion meant nothing. He rode away because he was a fool. I had put my heart in the keeping of a fool.

My mama looked at me.

‘You must not mind, Beatrice,’ she said. ‘A young man is bound to be thoughtless of his family when he is engaged to be married. You cannot blame him for preferring Celia’s company to ours. We will all be more settled when this time of waiting is over. I am sure he will find time to ride with you tomorrow.’

I nodded and moved my face muscles into a semblance of a smile.

I held that smile all the long day.

In the afternoon Mama was going calling, but she had enough sympathy with my forlorn state not to force me to go with her. As soon as her carriage had vanished, I took my horse out and rode down to the River Fenny — not near the old cottage where Ralph used to live — but upstream to a deep, clear pool where Harry sometimes tried to catch fish. I tied the horse to a bush and lay face down on the ground.

I did not weep or sob. I lay silent and let the great waves of jealousy and misery wash over me. Harry did not love me as I loved him. Sensuality for him was an occasional pleasure — necessary in that second of desire, but swiftly enjoyed and forgotten. To me it was a way of life, the very kernel of myself. Harry had his outside life: his newspapers, his journals, his books, his men friends, his engagement to Celia and his visits to the Haverings. All I had to dream of, to fill my life, to keep me alive and glowing, was Wideacre. Wideacre and Harry.

And at this moment I had only Wideacre. My cheek lay on the damp, dark leafmould of the forest floor, and when I opened my eyes I could see small, spindly plants with heart-shaped leaves pushing their narrow stems up through the dark peat. Beyond their bowed little heads was the sheen of the Fenny, gleaming like pewter. It flows almost silently here between deep banks, overhung with maidenhair fern and lit by brilliant lanterns of kingcups — as bright above the water as their reflections on the shiny surface.

In the centre of the river one can see two worlds. The reflected world of air and winds, the tossing trees and cloudy sky, and the underworld of the riverbed, a mixture of pure white sand and stones as yellow as gold. In the dark curves of the river where ponds have formed the filtered scraps of peat make the hollows black and ominous, but in the main stream the riverbed glows like sunshine. The bright green weed tossing in the current hides young trout, baby eels and a few salmon. The green ferns at the bank mask the holes of water shrews and otters.

I lay in silence until the thud of my own angry and resentful heart had stilled and until I could hear the safe steady beat of the heart of Wideacre. Deep, deep in the earth, so deep most people never hear it, beats the great heart, steady and true. It spoke to me of endurance and courage. Of setting my heart on the land and staying with the land. Of being full of sin and blood to get thus far, and of other sins which would take me steadily further.

I saw them pass before me without blinking. The death’s head of my father’s agonized face; the scream from Ralph; even the fluttering fall from my window of the owl we had called Canny. Wideacre spoke to me in my loneliness and my longing for love and the beat of its heart said, ‘Trust no one. There is only the land.’ And I remembered Ralph’s advice — which he himself had fatally forgotten — to be the one who is loved. Never to make the mistake of being the one who does the loving.

I listened to that secret beat, that hard wise secret, for a long, long time, until my cheek took the impress of the dead leaves and the front of my grey habit was darkened with the damp of the soil. The chill cooled me and hardened me, like a new-forged weapon of iron. Then I mounted my horse and trotted at a ladylike pace for home.


We dined early for there was no point in waiting for Harry. I poured Mama’s tea for her in the parlour and she told me about her calls and the latest women’s tittle-tattle of the neighbourhood. I took care to nod and look interested. When she rose to go to bed, I threw another log on the fire and said I would stay and read for a few minutes longer. She kissed me goodnight and left. I sat stock-still, like an enchantress in a fairy story, my eyes on the burning log in the grate.

The front door opened quietly. Harry made no noise crossing the hall, thinking the whole house was asleep. He saw the light under the parlour door and came in. I saw at a glance that it was as I had hoped. He had been drinking and was unsatisfied. His walk had a quickness and an alertness. His blue eyes sparkled.

‘Beatrice!’ He said my name as a thirsty man might say, ‘Water!’

I smiled and, more like an enchantress than ever, said nothing, but let the magic of my body and face draw him from the doorway across the room to kneel at my feet before the fire.

‘I felt we should be apart today,’ he said hesitantly, apologetically. ‘I needed to think.’

My face showed no sign of my impatience at his silly lie. Harry think indeed! I knew he had lost his nerve and — afraid of my sensuality, afraid of his own, afraid of the sin, afraid of the consequences — had fled to Celia’s coolness to escape the heat of home. And I knew well enough what had happened there. Celia and her pretty young sisters had petted and teased him all afternoon; Lord Havering’s good wine and generous glasses of port had made him bold again. He had begged a moonlit walk in the garden with Celia and her frightened, struggling refusal of a kiss had set him on fire again with unsatisfied desire and brought him back to my feet. But it was not love with Harry. And it should not be love with me.

‘I hope you did not mind,’ he asked tentatively. He looked up at me and took one still, unresponsive hand. I looked as if I had no idea why I should mind. My hazel eyes fixed on the fire were wide open with detached and polite interest in Harry’s conversation.

‘I was afraid of us as lovers,’ he confessed honestly, his eyes fixed on my face. Still I said nothing. My confidence was growing but I was still chilled inside from my sad vigil in the wood. And I would never love a man who did not love me more.

He fell silent and I let the silence stretch.

‘Beatrice,’ he said again. ‘I will do anything …’