Everything to Gain and a Secret Affair (20 page)

“Nay, Mrs. Andrew, I can't let you climb up there! Goodness me, no! What if you had a fall? Mr. Andrew would be right vexed with me, that he would, and so would Mrs. Keswick. The whole house would be in an uproar, you can bet your last shilling on that.” He shook his head vehemently. “Oh, no, no, no, you can't go up there. I'll bring the book down for you. Now, just let me get on the ladder, and then you can direct me to the volume you mean.”

“All right,” I said, knowing it was no use arguing with Joe. I had tried to do so in the past without success. He was very stubborn, and once he had made up his mind, it was hard to persuade him or to coerce him into doing anything against his wishes. Obviously he thought I was incapable of climbing that ladder, and I wasn't going to make a fuss about it. After all, I'd almost had a mishap on the library steps.

After showing him where to place the ladder immediately behind the shelf, I pointed to the book once more.

“I see it!” he exclaimed, and went up the steps with amazing speed and sureness of foot. Of course he was able to reach it without any problem, since he was taller than I and had much longer arms.

“What is it, Joe?” I asked as he opened it.

“It looks like a ledger. An accounts book, for carpentry items. It says, nails one halfpenny, and there are a few other things mentioned, but there's nowt much else in it,” he said, leafing through the ledger. “It's got a date in it. 1892. By gum, almost a hundred years ago!”

“Interesting. What's next to it?”

“Looks like another ledger. This one's got a cloth cover.” He turned the pages, then glanced down at me. “Definitely a ledger, only one entry. It says fresh fish two pennies No nothing else in it, and no date.”

“And that torn book, which is still on the shelf? The moldy-looking one. What's that, Joe?”

He took it down. After a second or two spent scanning it, he said, “Well, this one looks like a diary, aye, summat like that.”

“Diary? Do you mean it's handwritten?”

“Aye, it is, Mrs. Andrew.”

“Could you bring it, Joe, along with the other two, please? The two ledgers. I'd like to take a look at them.”

“Right-oh, Mrs. Andrew.”

There was a long refectory table in front of the big mullioned window, with a porcelain bowl of flowers in the center and, at either end, a high-backed chair covered in green cut velvet.

I went over to this table, pulled one of the chairs closer to it, and sat down.

Joe brought me the books and put them in front of me.

“Thanks, Joe,” I said.

“I'll leave the ladder, shall I, Mrs. Andrew?”

“Yes, do. You can put the books back for me later. After I've studied them. I'll come and find you when I'm ready.”

He nodded and went to the door, where he stopped abruptly and swung around to face me.

“Don't start climbing up that there ladder! If you want
summat else, another book brought down, come and get me, Mrs. Andrew.”

“I will, Joe. I promise.”

I looked inside the two ledgers first and quickly laid these on one side. There was nothing much of interest in either of them. But the diary intrigued me, and now I opened this book with its tan leather binding, torn and a bit frayed on the spine. The endpapers were of a feather design, a kind of paisley pattern in shades of brown and ochre, rust and beige, with just the merest hint of blue.

Turning the first few pages, which were blank, I came to a handwritten frontispiece.

Slowly I began to read, filled with growing anticipation and excitement.

Clarissa was a Keswick family name, one we had chosen for our own daughter, and there had been several
Clarissas before ours was born six years ago. The Victorian Clarissa whose elegant copperplate handwriting I was now reading had been one of the earlier ones.

Elated by my discovery and eager to read more. I turned the first page, and once again I was staring at a frontispiece, the words set out in the center.

Flipping this page, I read the first words of Lettice's diary, so carefully copied by the Victorian Clarissa nearly a hundred years ago.

I went on reading avidly, my eyes moving swiftly across page after page. I was eager to know more, fascinated by Lettice Keswick's jottings about her life in Yorkshire in the seventeenth century.

There were several more short sections, dated the end of June; then she moved on to cover a few days in July and August. Once more she was writing about her everyday life and her doings. She wrote of her two little daughters, Rachel and Viola, her life as a country squire's wife and the lady of the manor. The last entry for August was a joyful notation that she was at last pregnant and hopeful it was with a son.

I paused for a moment and gazed out the window reflectively. Nothing has changed since time immemorial. We all harbor the same dreams and hopes and desires as those who have gone before us. Here I was, reading about Lettice's desire for another child in 1660, and this was mine and Andrew's dream at the moment,
now in 1988. I smiled to myself thinking how very little really changed in life, and, dropping my eyes, I continued to read.

The diary as such stopped quite abruptly. I experienced a genuine sense of disappointment, even irritation, so taken was I by Lettice Keswick's words.

But she had digressed, writing pages of household hints, which I merely glanced at, then listing all sorts of recipes—recipes for making potpourri and pomanders from dried flowers, herbs, and certain fruits and spices. There were instructions on how to make beeswax candles and soap; copious notes about herbs—sweet-smelling herbs for freshening rooms and closets, others for making ointments to treat various ailments, still others to add flavor to the cooking pot.

Her next section was devoted to presees. Now came Lettice's recipes for rhubarb-and-gooseberry jam, quince jelly, bilberry jelly, lemon curd, mincemeat and sweet apple chutney. Once again I simply scanned these and moved on.

Finally the diary of her daily life began anew, the dates of entry running through October to December. I was completely engrossed as I read about winter life at Kilgram Chase, the various family activities, her needlework and embroidery, her husband's hunting and shooting skills, his expertise with horses. She wrote about the winter solstice, the weather, and her difficult pregnancy.

But before she continued with her daily doings into the new year of 1661, she had indulged in another domestic diversion, writing endless pages about the making of pies, puddings, and pastries, elderberry and nettle wine, even ale.

The diary was a veritable treasure trove, in a variety of ways. Unfortunately, I did not have time to read it scrupulously and in its entirety. At least not now. So I scanned,
speed-read the rest of it, still admiring Clarissa's wonderful copperplate handwriting. Not once did it falter; her script was impeccable, a work of art.

As I swiftly turned the pages, I saw that Lettice Keswick's diary covered the early months of 1661 and finished in the spring. She spoke of the birth of her son, Miles, in the April of that year, after a long and difficult labor, and she wrote about her husband's birthday in May.

The very last page was dated May 29. There were no more entries, because there were no more pages left in the book. She had filled it.

Again, I found myself feeling disappointed. Until it struck me that the diary had only ended because the book she was writing in was full. Surely Lettice had continued her diary, for she was a natural writer with an easy, flowing style, almost conversational, and a great eye for detail. There
must
be another volume somewhere here in this library, and Clarissa must have found it and copied it. Just as I wanted to know more, so must she have been riddled with curiosity.

Jumping up, I headed for the ladder, in my anxiety totally ignoring Joe's warnings about climbing it. I did just that, in fact, until I came to the second-to-last step from the top. I did not dare climb higher, for fear of having an accident.

But I was quite high enough, it seemed. I stood immediately below the shelf from which Joe had taken the ledgers and the diary, and it was easy for me to read the titles of the books which remained. There were two novels by Thomas Hardy, three by the Brontes, and six by Charles Dickens, as well as a volume of sonnets by Shakespeare. But nothing else, just a gap on the shelf where the ledgers and Clarissa's copy of the diary had been.

Liking the look of the book of sonnets, which had a gorgeous red binding with gold lettering, I took this off the shelf. It was then that I saw it. A small, thick book with a black leather cover, which lay just behind the Brontë novels against the back of the shelf. For a moment I thought it was a Bible, but when I looked at it I saw that it had a totally plain front. Certainly no gold lettering proclaimed its title.

Balancing myself carefully at the top of the stepladder, I opened the black book. With a little thrill and a rush of excitement, I recognized it at once. It was the
original
Lettice diary, written in her own hand, the one Clarissa had so carefully copied in 1893. I poked around behind the Brontë, Hardy, and Dickens volumes, but there was nothing else there.

Holding the diary tightly in one hand, I edged my way down the stepladder and hurried over to the table in front of the window. Sitting down, I opened Lettice Keswick's original diary.

I stared at it in awe, turning the pages slowly, carefully, afraid that I might damage it if I handled it roughly.

The diary was over three hundred years old, but to my amazement it was undamaged. Some pages felt slightly brittle, but not very many, and there were tiny wormholes here and there. But for the most part, it was wonderfully intact.

What a miracle it was that it had lasted all this time. But then, no one had known of its existence, and so no one had handled it. Except for Clarissa, of course, who had found it, copied it, and presumably put it back for safety's sake. Then again, the temperature in the library remained the same, year in, year out, exactly as it had for centuries, I was certain. It was always cool and dry; there was no dampness, and certainly the heat from the fire would not cause any damage to any of the old books. It
barely warmed the room. No wonder, then, that the seventeenth-century diary had been so well preserved.

The original, written by Lettice herself, was penned in a spidery, rather elaborate script, typical of the century in which she had lived, but her writing was clear and legible. And I discovered, to my delight, that the original diary contained something unique: exquisite little pen-and-ink drawings and watercolors of flowers, fruit, and herbs, and vignettes of Lettice's gardens here at Kilgram Chase, which illustrated the diary throughout.

It was obvious to me that I had stumbled upon a small treasure. Of course, it was of no real value and probably of little interest to anyone except the Keswicks, and I couldn't wait to show it to Diana and Andrew.

Glancing at my watch, I realized that the last hour and a half had sped by. It was almost four o'clock.