Page 101 of Secrets and Seashells at Rainbow Bay
‘What? But I thought she was the only remaining child of the previous Earl. You said he put in a special clause so she’d be able to inherit the castle.’
‘No, the tenth Earl had already done that. Clara’s father wanted her to inheriteverything– the castle and groundsandthe title. I thought originally it was simply a clause specifically for Clara, but it seems there may have been other motives for his decision.’
‘Ooh, like what?’ I ask, intrigued.
‘This diary suggests he had another child, born before Clara – a second daughter. So in theory, as the eldest, she should have inherited the castle and the title, and not Clara.’
‘Clara had a sister?’ I ask, not really following this. ‘But why then didn’tsheinherit everything on the Earl’s death?’
‘Because she was born out of wedlock,’ Benji explains. ‘The Earl had an affair with one of the maids at the castle before Clara was born. Reading between the lines of what Clara says in here, I would surmise that Clara’s mother had trouble conceiving an heir, causing a rift in her parents’ marriage. The Earl, as was common then, sought comfort, shall we say, elsewhere. Except that comfort produced a child – Clara’s half-sister Mary.’
‘And it says all this in that diary?’ I ask. ‘But why would Clara talk about it in there? She says in her previous diary she was ashamed of something. How did she put it? “A secret so big that if anyone found out it would ruin not only my reputation, but the reputation of all Chesterfords for evermore”? But why was she ashamed of her sister?’
‘You’re thinking about this with your twenty-first-century brain,’ Benji says, ‘a brain that’s used to women having equal rights and a say in how their lives progress. These women didn’t have that. They were bound by traditions and laws that always favoured the man.’
I think for a moment. ‘She was ashamed of her because she was born out of wedlock and to a maid?’ I ask, starting to become irritated by Clara’s snobbishness.
Benji shakes his head. ‘No, I think after reading on a bit further that Clara was more ashamed of her parents’ behaviour than of Mary herself. I don’t think she was even aware of the sister’s existence until she found some documents that suggested this had all taken place some years before. By this time her parents were both dead so she couldn’t ask them about it, and she wasn’t even sure that her sister knew who her father was. She’d never said anything that suggested she knew anything about him.’
‘What do you mean she’d never said anything? Did Clara know her half-sister already, then?’
Benji nods. ‘She worked at the castle – just like her mother had, as a lady’s maid. Clara’s lady’s maid.’
‘What? Clara’s maid was her sister and they didn’t know?’
‘It would seem so, according to Clara’s diary.’
‘This is wild!’
‘It gets even wilder, I can assure you.’
‘Come on, Benji – spill!’ I encourage. ‘This is better than a soap opera.’
‘With just as many twists and turns,’ Benji says. ‘So when Clara found out that she had a sister, Mary was still living and working in the castle grounds but she was no longer Clara’s maid because she had two children of her own. She lived at the castle because her husband worked there as a groomsman, so luckily they’d been given grace-and-favour accommodation that went with the job.’
‘Like Arthur and Dorothy’s cottage?’
‘Yes, a bit like that. Back then there were quite a few cottages like Arthur and Dorothy have now dotted about the grounds, but there were also many rooms in the castle itself that were kept for staff quarters. So Mary lived there with her two children. Sadly her husband was killed at the beginning of the First World War, but Mary was allowed to stay on in exchange for taking on some chores around the castle. Contrary to what you might be thinking about her right now, I believe Clara was a kind-hearted Countess and didn’t want to see any of her staff consigned to the workhouse, especially not her sister and her nieces.’
‘So she found out Mary was her sister in what year?’
‘About 1912, according to the dates in the diary.’
‘But she still hadn’t acknowledged her by the First World War?’ I ask in astonishment. ‘Why on earth not?’
‘Again, put on your 1912 woman’s head, Amelia. Women hadn’t even got the vote by then; they were still regarded as second-class citizens, especially in the aristocracy. If Clara had acknowledged Mary as the rightful heir to Chesterford Castle, and Mary hadn’t been quite so kind hearted as Clara, Clara could easily have been thrown out of the castle with nothing. It’s not like now where the state will help you out when things get a bit tough.’
‘Hardly,’ I mutter grimly. ‘I’ve been there, remember?’
‘Yes, I know, and that’s why I think you’ll have empathy for Clara’s dilemma when you read it in her own words. But for now it falls to me to be the storyteller.’
‘Go on, then. What’s next?’
‘So Clara chose to keep quiet. I believe she did her best to look after Mary and her children, and make sure they never went short of anything. But then tragedy struck, and Mary and one of her daughters died.’
‘Oh no, what happened to them?’
‘Spanish flu happened. There was a pandemic between 1918 and 1920; it killed hundreds of millions of people throughout the world, and it didn’t miss the castle either. Mary and her daughter were immediately quarantined, and her other daughter was removed from the apartment and sent to live in the village with a local family. Luckily they managed to stem the outbreak from affecting too many people here – I read that in some books in the library, not in Clara’s diary, but it did affect a few people in the village. Clara says she thinks her sister picked it up from a man that came to the castle looking for work. She says Mary took pity on him and fed him some scraps from the castle kitchen. She was probably in contact with him for no more than an hour, but that was enough: she had the virus and so did one of her daughters. They got ill, and were not strong enough to recover.’
