Chapter one of my novel in the making!

My gosh, I'm on a role! It's taken me about ten years to start a blog and I'm making two posts in one day!! Hah, unbelievable! Anyway, I'm not going to knock it, just hope it lasts! So, it's quarter to eleven at night and I've just finished my very VERY final edit, for now at least, of the first chapter of my book - A Violet Spring - and every fibre of my being is desperate to go over it again but I'm not going to do it. I can't. So I'm just going to post it, right this second, well I'm going to try the whole copy and paste thing and hope it works out and if it does I'll then quickly shut off the computer, run and hide! I never thought I would find it quite so nerve wracking knowing people could potentially be reading my stories! Exciting and it feels wonderful to know I'm taking the next step but oh my Lord ... !! Right, enough procrastinating, here I go! Hold on, I've just had a thought though, is there a word limit to these blogs? I haven't a clue. If there is I suppose I could just spread it over two posts, couldn't I? What did I just say about procrastinating?!

Chapter One

As the haunting, melancholic cry of a distant peacock filled the autumn air, seeping, it seemed, into every nook and cranny of the once beautiful but now forgotten garden surrounding me, I stared up at the house I never really believed I would ever actually see.

Medlar Manor, the centre of my most favourite childhood tale and although it was exactly how my grandfather had described it, already it had surpassed all my expectations.

This afternoon its Elizabethan gables and fairytale medieval tower, smothered in an ancient tangle of scarlet red Virginia creeper which would, I knew, give way to the tumbling lilac blooms of wisteria in midsummer, were soaring up into a sky as blue as a black birds egg, the last of the day’s crisp golden sunshine bouncing off the western windows with latticed glass so old and thick they gave a distorted view when looked through.    

Even from the outside its age and history were tangible, as if everybody who had lived in it had left just a little of themselves behind.

What, I wondered, had my grandfather left behind? And his father before him? 

How strange it felt to know a little of my own family history was steeped in this grand, mysterious place. A place which had, until now, seemed almost mythical, real only in my mind.

But it was, of course, I knew that now and the sight of it brought something suddenly to my mind. A long ago conversation I’d had with my grandfather, a conversation I’d all but forgotten. I hadn’t thought much about it at the time but now I could see exactly what he had meant. Houses like this, like Medlar Manor, weren’t built anymore and there was a sadness in that, I thought, but did it not, in turn, make them all the more special, all the more important that they were preserved?

It was now that I asked myself the crucial question and perhaps properly for the first time since discovering the advert in The Lady two days before.

Could I really be a part of preserving this one? 

There were so many reasons, logical reasons that surely should be heeded, telling me that taking this job simply wasn’t possible. In all of my carefully planned and considered thirty one years, in which very little, if anything, was ever spur-of-the-moment, this had to be the craziest idea I’d ever had. Completely and utterly ridiculous, unrealistic and sentimental. 

For a start, I had a career already, did I not? And what was more a career I loved. Or certainly used to love and very much for that matter. Admittedly, there had been a complete lack of enthusiasm of late, at the mere thought of returning to school in two weeks time a hollow void in my heart I feared I would never again be able to fill but really, that wasn’t entirely surprising, was it, and surely not reason enough to throw away the career I had worked incredibly hard to have in the first place?

I sighed and pushed the questions from my mind, questions to which there seemed simply to be no answers, no matter how hard I searched for them and instead turned slowly to look out over the front lawn, roughly mown and rolling gently downhill to where an old stone fountain stood still and silent, to where a ha-ha, hidden of course but I knew it was there, opened out onto parkland, dotted with ancient oaks, their trunks twisted and gnarled by the winds. 

But it was upon a point in the distance on which my eyes focussed immediately, a faraway corner, slightly to the east by the swimming pond. But I could see nothing, not a hint of the old Victorian folly I knew was there and longed, perhaps more than anything, to see. My heart plummeted as I scrambled for my bag, plunging a hand inside until I felt my fingers brush against the creased black and white photograph I’d owned forever. 

Perhaps my bearings were off, although I very much doubted it. This may be my first physical visit to the manor but I’d looked out over this view more times than I could possibly remember. Every detail, every hillock, every curve of the trees hugging the park, I knew by heart.

Holding the photograph tightly in my hands, for fear of it blowing away in the gathering winds, I held it up, comparing both views but only in the photograph could I see the folly. Two gothic turrets flanking the stone verandah, cleverly designed and created to look old and decrepit the day it was built. As a child I remember listening to my grandfather talk of it, my eyes wide with wonder and yet here I was, the closest I’d ever been and all I could see was a wild thicket of rhododendrons, a mass of vivid, almost unnatural green for everything else had turned for autumn.   

     ‘Miss Flores?’

At the sound of the voice, low and deep, a little husky with an unmistakeable upperclass lilt, I span round to see its owner standing in the entrance portico, my heart giving a kick in my chest. 

Guiltily, I thrust the photograph back into my bag, hoping it hadn’t been seen but knowing, of course, that it had. 

Thank you very much for taking the time to read this, I really do appreciate it and please, if you happen to have an opinion about it of course, please feel free to let me know! Even if you think it's utter rubbish, it'll give me something to work on! 


Dorothy, xxx