Eyes closed. Lying still.Today, though, I’m sitting by her bed and I tell her that I’ve had to sell some Orme land. Nothing else could be done. There are increasingly less farmhands. All the young are being encouraged to work in the city, where they are paid higher wages, they say there’s nothing in the country for them any more. They resent their parents and their old ways, they want to see more than fields and early mornings. The estate needs money, I don’t know how it could have got so bad. There’s so much repair work to be done, and our machinery is terribly out of date. And there are rumours I heard from one farmhand that it is all my fault, that I am incapable of running a farm. I do not know how it happened, but it has; somehow we are in debt.I can’t bear to look at the portraits. The people who bought the land promised me that they would not build on it. But they did not sign on that issue. They said, We’ll call it a gentleman’s agreement. I feel ashamed. I sit by my wife holding her hand and say – Alice, my darling, I’ve had to sell some land.When I finish speaking I see my wife’s eyes flick open as if my sentence were the key to her lock.I never go into the hall any more, I cannot bear to look at the portraits.
