The Legacy of Foulstone Manor by J. C. Briggs EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
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- Author:J. C. Briggs
- Language: English
- Genre: Historical World War II Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2.5 MB
- Price: Free
Joan
I left Foulstone Manor when I was a child. My aunt took me away to
Kendal. I say aunt because that’s what I called her. Let’s get the truth out.
She was Mrs Goss, really, who had been housekeeper to my father, but I
called her Auntie Mary. That was what I was told. ‘Easier, lovey,’ she’d say,
‘if folk ask.’ And folk did, looking at me sympathetically, having heard the
story of Auntie Mary’s sister, Margaret, who’d died young, and who had
been widowed, too. It wasn’t that long after the first war so that was enough
said. Auntie Mary told a good tale — brief, but with telling pauses and nods
returned — so good, I came to believe it myself. I was only three years old
when they took me away. Joanie, she called me at first. Then I became Joan.
I forgot that it wasn’t my name.
I didn’t know Foulstone Manor was mine until just before my uncle died.
Uncle William — not, of course, my uncle, or anybody’s. I never heard of
any relative. He was ninety years old. Auntie Mary had said it was a cursed
place, but she never said why. It was what she said to keep me from asking
questions. My uncle never spoke of it, but when he was eighty-nine and my
aunt was long dead, he told me that she had been right. It had brought
nothing but misery to those who owned it, and it should be left to rot.
‘Leave it,’ he said, ‘leave it. You’ve this house now — your home.’
And I did. I believed my uncle for he was a good, kind man which my
father was not. My aunt said that he was a troubled man, Gerard Revell, not
meant to be a father. The war, she said, had made him bitter and badtempered. Nothing to do with me, but best to forget him. But I heard her.
‘Madman,’ she muttered to herself, banging a pan down onto the range,
before telling me that things were as they were. ‘No use thinking about
what’s gone. Me an’ William are your parents, good as. ’Twere us as
brought you up, lovey, an’ you’ve naught to complain of now, have you?
We’re all right as we are.’
I accepted what she said. I really didn’t have anything to complain of. My
life was very ordinary. I worked in the bank. I went out with some boys.
The girls I knew got engaged, married, and had children. I stayed at home
with auntie and uncle. Somehow, I didn’t meet a boy who wanted to marry
me.
I’m not bad looking — not ugly, not plain. I was quite pretty as a girl with
dark curly hair and deep blue eyes. Boys asked me out, but the dates
petered out. They went on to someone else — someone livelier, I supposed,
someone more confident, more sure of what she wanted. I didn’t know what
I wanted, and then, of course, I didn’t know who I really was. And there
was no one to ask.
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