Page 122 of Hope and Happiness in Bluebell Wood
Now I put all the annuals in a pile on the table for Robin to take a look at later, and then I carry on. I’m almost at the end of the last shelf when I find a thick old book with a plain brown cover; there’s nothing on the spine so I open it to see what’s inside.
As the pages fall open in the middle, I’m surprised to find not lines of typewritten font, but pages of handwritten notes instead. The notes appear to be about many different subjects, but they’re all written in ink, in the ornate scroll of someone who has been taught beautiful penmanship.
I carefully turn the page to the front, to find written in the same pretty handwriting:
Miss Mavis Fowler
Teaching Lessons for St Francis Junior School.
1895
Could this be the same Mavis that later married the local vicar?I wonder. Fowler could have been her maiden name, and she might have been a teacher?
The lessons on the pages are basic, but I can just imagine an Edwardian lady – no, she’d have been Victorian then, wouldn’t she? – teaching them in the part of the Bluebell Wood school that dated back that far.
‘Wow,’ I say, suddenly feeling a strong connection to Mavisas I read through her words and touch her handwriting. ‘I can imagine you now. You’re a real person to me, not just a rather stern-looking woman in a photo.’
I glance at the clock and realise that I’ve spent longer than I thought sorting the books, and I’d better get ready for Robin coming soon. I reach over to put Mavis’s book on the table next to the annuals, with the intention of finishing it later. But I don’t quite get it far enough on to the table, so it immediately topples off. I just manage to catch it as it falls, but in the process the pages fan open again, and this time something falls out.
It’s a faded brown envelope.
‘What’s this?’ I ask, carefully opening the thinning paper.
Inside are two black-and-white photos. One I recognise as Mavis: she’s standing by a blackboard, a white piece of chalk in her hand.
‘You were clearly proud of your job,’ I say, smiling at the photo.
The second is a photo of Mavis and Corbin together on what looks like their wedding day. Mavis is in a long white lace gown, and Corbin is wearing his formal priest’s robes, and they both have their hand on a large tome of a book – a Bible, I assume. I imagine this photo would have been of particular significance for a man of the Church on his wedding day.
But it’s when I look at the photo a little more closely that I notice the detail on the Bible. It has a very elaborate cover, almost like it’s made entirely of metal, and there are . . . I squint as I look at the photo . . . it looks like tiny jewels encrusting the cover.
But the most interesting thing of all is the very edge of the Bible, because it looks like it has a clasp on it. A clasp that might have held or even locked the covers together. Nothingodd about that, except this book’s clasp looks exactly like the strange piece of engraved metal we’d found outside the wood. The one Merlin was digging for, and the one the birds had alerted us to . . .
Forty-one
Robin looks around the room as he comes through the door.
‘What are you doing?’ he asks, seeing all the books lying everywhere.
‘I’m sorting out the bookshelves. I have to send the lady who lived here before me all her old books.’
Robin thinks about this.
‘Isn’t she coming back, then?’ he asks.
I shake my head.
‘Does that mean you’re staying?’ he asks, looking apprehensive.
‘I am,’ I say, smiling at him. ‘Are you happy about that?’
Robin doesn’t say anything; instead, he dumps his bag down on the table next to the annuals, runs over to me and hugs me around my waist.
‘Yes,’ he says simply, so I lean down and hug him tightly.
‘I’ve brought my project to show you today,’ Robin says, already moving on to the next thing on his mind.
‘Have you, which one?’
