The Legacy of Foulstone Manor by J. C. Briggs

Author:J. C. Briggs [J. C. Briggs]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sapere Books
Published: 2024-02-16T00:00:00+00:00

22

Amanda

‘What are you looking for?’ Joan asked when we were sitting at her kitchen table after breakfast the next morning. I had Helena’s diary open.

‘Mrs Bate’s address.’ I slipped my fingers down into the back pocket and drew out a yellowed piece of paper. Helena’s writing.

‘You’re not thinking of going back to London?’

‘I’m thinking it’s an odd story. Helena sees a man in the woods — a ghost of sorts, she said, and he just stared at her. What was he seeing?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I wonder if it was Bate. She saw him on the lawn in the night.’

‘But he wasn’t missing then.’

‘Oh, I’d forgotten that. Let me look at what Mrs Bate said. “He’d go off for days at a time.” He didn’t tell her where. He only told her he was coming to Kendal because they had a row. Suppose he did come here before that last time when we think she saw him under the bridge and had the miscarriage. Then Mrs Bate comes, Gerard is furious, and Helena wonders —’

‘If Gerard knew him.’

‘We need to see if there’s anything about Bate in Gerard’s papers.’

There was no diary for Gerard Revell, just a few bundles of papers we had found in the top drawer of his desk. Bills mostly — for boots, jackets, breeches, all the things he had needed for his hunting, shooting, and fishing.

‘Expensive,’ Joan said, her lips folding rather tightly.

There were a few copies of The London Mercury where we found his poems. Helena had mentioned the one called ‘The Ghost’. We read that. I noted again those words, “You were the one/ The truest and the best.” Nowell had meant a lot to Gerard Revell. Had he loved him in a way that he could not love Helena?

They were quite haunting poems. I wondered why he had not continued writing. Nothing to say after the war, perhaps.

‘Nowell,’ Joan says, ‘it sounds as if Gerard’s looking for Nowell, yet it’s Helena who sees him. I wonder if he thought Helena was Nowell in the garden. He told her Nowell was nothing to do with her — as if Nowell had to be his. His friend — like the house. It was his. She was just there to produce another Nowell — for him. Selfish — that’s what he was.’

I didn’t tell her my thoughts about Gerard and Nowell. ‘I suppose it was what happened in the war. No one else could share it.’

Joan didn’t answer. She was turning over more sheets. ‘Here’s something. It’s about what happened to Nowell.’

I could see that Gerard had written it out several times. The first two versions were heavily crossed out with words in the margin. We couldn’t read what he had crossed out. Perhaps he had been preparing for some kind of memoir. It was written in the first person.

In front of our trenches about three or four hundred yards away, there was a bulge in the German line — a nuisance to us, overlooking the next-door battalion — meaning that the Germans could fire down the length of their trench — dangerous, of course.

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