The Girl at the Farmhouse Gate by Julia Stoneham

Author:Julia Stoneham [Julia Stoneham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780749012885
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2012-11-11T16:00:00+00:00

Roger Bayliss, driving the familiar mile up the hill to Higher Post Stone Farm, considered the various subjects that he and his warden had touched on that night. Was he ashamed of his son? Not ashamed, surely. But obviously this was the impression he had given, not only to the Webster girl but to Alice herself. And she thought badly of him because of it. They both did. He nosed his car in under the covered space, where, in the old days, the horse-drawn carriage had been kept, switched off the engine and sat for a while in the silent darkness.

So the Webster girl – Georgie, they all called her – had had feelings for Christopher, had she? Had perhaps been a little in love with him. But no longer was. He wondered, vaguely, what had changed her mind. He refused to examine the subject of his presumed embarrassment when Christopher had cracked up because he dared not let his mind explore it. Instead, and as usual, he had shut that issue, together with another that also had to be excluded from his mind, into a familiar, dark place, closed the door on it and locked it. He did this almost without being aware of it and turned his mind to the other subjects of that evening’s conversation.

The incident of the flying bomb was the first to capture his attention. Then the injury to Alice’s hand and her concern for her son, should she die. The boy’s ambitions to farm interested him. Then they had spoken of Alice’s increasing interest in a career. As his mind moved from one set of facts to another, his tension gradually left him. These things he could relate to, speculate upon. But not the subject of Christopher’s breakdown or of his own, apparently unacceptable, reaction to it. The clues to this lay, where they had lain for more than half of his life, buried in the past. Classified information which, at the time, his parents had banned from discussion or exploration. And more or less without question, he had obeyed them. It was, they said, for his own good. The unease he felt when, on the rare occasions he had allowed his mind to stray in that direction, only confirmed the logic of their decision and he would retreat, excluding the intrusive, unsettling thoughts.

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.