She came to me then and kissed my cheek in an empty gesture of courtesy. But her lips were cold. Then she went to bed and left me by the fire looking at the red pyramids and castles, caverns and caves, in the embers, and seeing a long long line of despair and failure for the man I had married for love.


The next night Mr Haller came to dinner so we had to serve wine; John had a glass and then another. Celia and I left him, Harry and George Haller to their port. John’s valet put him to bed, dead drunk.

The night after Dr Pearce came up from Acre to take pot luck. ‘For a little bird told me you were having hare in red wine sauce, and that is my favourite dish,’ he said sweetly to Celia.

‘What little bird was that?’ she asked, her eyes flickering to me.

‘The most beautiful little bird in the parish!’ said Dr Pearce, kissing my hand. Celia’s face was stony.

The following night we had an invitation to dine with Celia’s parents and by common consent it was agreed that John should not come.

Celia spent some time with Stride and I imagined she was making him promise that John should have no wine with his meal and no port thereafter. Stride met me in the hall. He looked patient. His pay was certainly high enough to cover the problem of resolving contradictory orders, and in any case there was only one voice that gave orders at Wideacre, and it spoke now.

‘Mr MacAndrew is not to be served wine or port tonight,’ I said. ‘But you will put two bottles of his whisky with a glass and water in the library for him.’

Stride nodded. His expression did not change by a flicker. I think if I had told him to set up a hangman’s noose in Mr MacAndrew’s bedroom he would have done so without comment.

‘I told Stride, John should have nothing to drink tonight,’ Celia said to me as we settled ourselves under the rugs in the carriage for the drive to Havering Hall.

‘Of course,’ I nodded. ‘I only hope he has no whisky.’

Celia looked shocked. ‘I had not thought of that,’ she said. ‘But I feel certain that if he is not actually offered drink he will not order it brought to him.’

‘I hope so,’ I said piously.

Harry grunted his reservations but said no more.

I made sure the evening was a long one. Lord Havering was at home and was happy to beg his wife for another game of cards when I was his partner, sitting opposite him, my slanty green eyes decorously on my cards but sometimes sliding to his raffish, bloodshot face with a secret smile.

But when we got home every light was blazing and the curtains were not drawn.

‘What’s this?’ I said, my voice sharp with alarm, and I sprang from the carriage before the steps were down.

‘Is Richard all right? Julia? Is it the Culler?’

‘It’s Mr MacAndrew,’ said Stride, coming out to the carriage. ‘He has set fire to the carpet in the library and smashed some china.’

Harry gave an exclamation and strode past me to the library and flung open the door. It was in chaos. The priceless Persian carpet was blackened and scorched with a great wide hole burned in it. The glass cabinets had been staved in, and some floor-standing flower vases had been flung across the room and smashed. Books had been tipped from the cases and were scattered, leaves curled, in the middle of the room. And in the midst of this wreckage stood my husband, booted and in his shirtsleeves, with a poker in his hand, looking like the Prince of Denmark in the travelling theatre.

Harry froze on the threshold, too stunned to speak. But Celia dipped like a flying bird under his arm and ran into the room to John.

‘What is it, John?’ she said, her words tumbling out in her distress. ‘Have you gone mad? What is it?’

He pointed the poker. On the little round table, drawn temptingly close to his favourite chair, were the two bottles of whisky and the decanter of icy water. A small plate of biscuits, and a trimmed cigar ready for lighting.

‘Who put that there?’ demanded Celia, and she spun round on Stride. She seemed suddenly taller, and she held her head high and her eyes burned with anger. ‘Who put that there?’ she said, and the note of command was clear in her voice.

‘I did, your ladyship,’ said Stride. He faced Celia without shrinking, but he had never before seen her like this. None of us had.

‘Did Dr MacAndrew order it?’ she asked. No lie would have been possible to Celia as she stood there, her eyes blazing and her face icy.

‘No, your ladyship,’ said Stride. He did not volunteer that it was my order. But Celia had, in any case, heard enough.

‘You may go,’ she said abruptly, and nodded him to close the door. Harry, John, Celia and I were left alone in the wreckage of the room.

The poker had dropped to John’s side and he was no longer buoyed up with rage. He was looking hungrily, longingly at the bottles. His shoulders were sagging already with anticipated defeat. Celia strode across the room with fast strides, quite unlike her usual pretty glide, and picked both bottles up by their necks in one hand. With one rapid backward gesture she smashed them against the stone fireplace and threw the broken necks into the grate.

‘You ordered those for him, Beatrice,’ she said, and her voice was full of anger. Her very dress seemed stiff with her rage. ‘You ordered those, just as you have arranged that we should have wine with every meal. You want to force John to drink. You want to keep him drinking.’

Harry’s mouth was gawping like a netted salmon. Events were too fast for him, and Celia in a rage was a sight to shock the coolest of men. I was little better. I watched her curiously, as I might have watched a kitten suddenly turn vicious. And I was afraid of this new strength in her.

‘I am Lady Lacey,’ she said. Her head was up, her breathing fast, her whole face alight with the force of her anger. She had never been angry in her life before, and this explosion of rage was sweeping her along like a spring flood.

‘I am Lady Lacey,’ she said again. ‘This is my house and I order, I order, that there shall be no alcohol available in this house for anyone.’

‘Celia …’ said Harry feebly; and she rounded on him, forgetting her habitual obedience as if it had never been. ‘Harry, I will not have a man destroyed under my very eyes and do nothing to save him,’ she said fiercely. ‘I have never commanded in this house. I have never commanded anywhere, nor felt any desire to do so. But I cannot let this go on.’

Harry gazed wildly at me for help but I could do nothing. I stood as still as a fox in the forest when he hears the horns and the yelps of the dogs. But my eyes ranged from John, unmoving, unspeaking, to Celia, bright with anger.

‘Where are the keys to the cellar?’ she said to Harry.

‘Stride has them,’ he said feebly. ‘And Beatrice.’

Celia walked to the door and tore it open. Predictably Stride and the housekeeper were in the hall and foolish they looked, lingering in earshot.

‘Give me the keys to the cellar,’ Celia said to Stride. ‘All the keys. Miss Beatrice’s set as well.’

Stride glanced at me and I nodded. There was no stopping this torrent; it was like being knocked off your feet by a flash flood. You swim with it until it is spent and only then do you worry how to get home.

Stride fetched his keys, and mine from the hook in my office. We stood in silence until the door from the west wing banged and he returned.

Celia took the two bunches in her firm grip.

‘I shall keep these until we serve wine again, when John is well,’ she said with absolute certainty. ‘Harry, do you agree?’

Harry gulped and said, ‘Yes, my dear,’ like flotsam in the flood.

‘Beatrice?’ she asked, and her voice was as stony as her face.

‘Of course, if you wish it,’ I said, my eyebrows raised in an insolent, easy gesture.

She ignored me and turned to Stride.

‘We will go and lock the cellars now, if you please. But send Dr MacAndrew’s valet to take him to his room. He is not well.’

‘Mr MacAndrew’s valet has the night off,’ Stride started. Celia cut in at once.

‘Dr MacAndrew, you mean,’ she said, and held his gaze. Stride’s eyes fell before her brown bright hardness.

‘Dr MacAndrew,’ he said.

‘Then send a footman,’ she said briskly. ‘Dr MacAndrew will be tired and needs his sleep. And send someone to clear up in here.’ She turned to me and Harry, standing mumchance on the scorched carpet with the smell of expensive smoke around us. I was as nervous as a horse on burned land.

‘When I have locked the cellar I shall go to bed,’ she said. ‘We will discuss this, if you wish it, in the morning.’

And she turned and left us.

And there was nothing I could do to stop her.

In the morning she was the same. In the afternoon she received some callers and while I worked in the office I wondered if the babble of high voices and the tinkle of laughter would tire and undermine her. When I came down to dinner in the evening, my silk skirts rustling, my own head held high, she met me look for look. She was unbending. She was mistress of the house.

I claimed Harry’s hand and we went in for dinner with John squiring Celia to her place. He had now been a full day without a drink and his hands were shaking and there was a nervous tremor around his mouth. But with Celia on his arm his head was up and his walk was straight. I glanced covertly at them and they looked like a pair of heroes who had survived the worst of their adventure. They both looked tired: John was in bad shape physically, and Celia had violet shadows under her brown eyes to bear witness that her anger had made her sleepless for another night, but they looked ready to follow any thread into any maze and face any bull-like monster that might be lurking in the darkness there.