Page 52 of Secrets and Seashells at Rainbow Bay
I jump at the voice, but it’s just Benji.
‘You looked deep in thought there.’ Benji comes through the door. ‘What are you reading?’
‘It’s Clara’s diary – well, one of them. I assume there must be more. This one only covers about six months of 1910.’
‘Clara? You mean the Countess we were talking about yesterday lunch-time?’
I nod.
‘I bet her diaries make interesting reading.’ Benji winks, but I remain serious.
‘This one talks about how she found herself in so much debt, actually. Death duties, apparently, after her husband died; not gambling debts, after all. Perhaps that was just gossip that got embellished over the years?’
‘Oh.’ Benji looks a little ashamed that he’s been one of the people passing on that titbit of information. He looks down into the box where all the other books still reside. ‘Are these booksallClara’s diaries?’
‘I’m not sure; I haven’t looked through the rest yet.’
Benji reaches into the box and pulls out another book. ‘This one is,’ he says, opening the cover. ‘And this,’ he adds, flicking through another. ‘Look, same handwriting.’
Bit by bit we examine all of the books, and find they’re a mix of Clara’s diaries and some other journals kept by another of the former Countesses.
‘Are there any more boxes like this?’ Benji asks, looking around the room. ‘You might have stumbled upon something worthwhile here.’
‘Let’s look, shall we?’ I put Clara’s diaries safely to one side, determined to read through them all later, and then I help Benji search through any boxes that look like they might contain diaries or journals.
Excitingly we do find more diaries belonging to Clara. Some are in old suitcases and trunks, one is in a battered leather satchel, and we even find a couple stashed inside a large chipped garden urn that I imagine might have stood proudly in the castle grounds at one time.
‘Well,’ Benji says, brushing the dust from his trousers when we’ve exhausted all the hiding places we can think of, ‘there’s a good bit of reading here. Do you want to take them to read first? She is your family.’
‘If that’s all right with you?’
‘Of course. There’s obviously a connection between the two of you. It’s understandable you’d want to explore it further. Go for it. Just let me know how you get on.’
‘Hey, how’s the sorting going?’ Tom asks me later when he finds me curled up under a tree on one of the new blue and white striped deckchairs that we’ve decided to put out for the visitors to rest on this summer. ‘Taking a well-earned break?’
‘Something like that. I’m doing a bit of research, actually.’
‘Oh yes?’ Tom asks, pulling another deckchair up next to me. ‘Into what?’
‘Intowho, really – I’m reading Clara’s diaries.’
Tom looks puzzled for a second. ‘Oh,Clara– the woman in the painting you showed me?’
‘Yes, that’s the one. Benji and I found a load of her diaries up in one of the rooms and I’m reading through them one by one.’
‘Interestingreading?’ Tom asks, raising his eyebrows suggestively.
‘If by interesting you mean saucy, then at times they are a bit racy, yes.’
‘I thought as much,’ Tom says, glancing with interest at the page I’m currently reading.
I shut the cover. ‘But once you get past that, you realise that Clara was actually quite a lonely woman, especially when her husband was alive.’
Tom looks surprised. ‘Ah, that’s quite sad, then. Why especially when her husband was alive?’
I look at the book in my hand again, wondering if by telling Tom I was betraying Clara’s trust by giving away her secrets.
‘Going by what I’ve read so far, I think Clara might have been gay.’
