The Archivist (Duntisbourne Hall) by L.P. Fergusson

Author:L.P. Fergusson [Fergusson, L.P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: L.P. Fergusson
Published: 2012-06-14T04:30:00+00:00

- 16 -

Maureen Hindle loathed the drive up to Scotland, and this time she resented it more than ever. It was as if each gaudy motorway stop marked another tranche of miles further away from BS Moreton. Michael liked to leave after the rush hour, which meant most of the journey was made in darkness, and although Maureen preferred to watch the countryside in the daylight as it slipped by and metamorphosed from the quaint fields and modest valleys of the south to the hulking shoulders of the mountains as they pressed on up through the Lake District to Carlisle and on towards the borders of Scotland, that Thursday evening she was content to gaze at the lights sliding past them out in the darkness and replay her waking dreams over and over again. The images she conjured up were like short trailers for movies on the internet, and she had to keep rerunning them because she didn’t want to forget a single detail, and as she reran them, she was rewarded by recalling other components of the event that she had hitherto seen as irrelevant.

She was beginning to explain to herself why her feelings seemed to switch back and forth between cherishing BS and ardently hoping that he would be discovered. At times her devotion had seemed so unlikely to be returned that she tried to convince herself that instead of being the great man she initially thought he was, he was a man of straw, flawed like everyone else, and her fear of rejection spurred her on to watch for deficiencies in his character and behaviour which might, she hoped, eventually extinguish her feelings towards him. When the final rejection came, she was riven with such fury that she replaced her quest to see and interpret loving signs with a search to prove him false and disingenuous, fraudulent even, not only towards herself, but to the world in general. However, recent events had made her review the opinion she had held so tightly to herself for the past two seasons. She had invested so much thought around the events of Monday night, she could not believe it was only two days ago. She filled her mind with thoughts such as, This time last night, This time the day before yesterday, and as a result, time slowed. She recalled feeling his trembling fingers return her consoling grip, and realising that his feelings hadn’t altered, she formulated a plausible explanation for his rejection two years earlier: he had not been able to trust himself with her.

And in a flash another thought struck her with such force that Michael turned to her, the headlights of the car behind reflected in the rear-view mirror and falling across his eye like a glowing mask. ‘Did you say something, dear?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘I thought you said something,’ and he turned back to the road in front. She felt a wave of intense irritation that her train of thought had been broken. ‘Would you like a little radio?’ he asked.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.