Finding Mr Rochester. Trisha AshleyЧитать онлайн книгу.

       2

      My first visit to Godesend Farm passed by in a mist – literally. A fuzzy, thick grey blanket of the stuff shrouded the moors and it was by sheer good luck that I found the turn to the farm from the road, next to a weathered and dismally flapping sign that read:

      Afternoon teas 100 yards.

      Hikers

      The rest was worn off, but I assumed hikers were welcome, since I couldn’t imagine many other customers finding their way there.

      Following the directions I’d been given, I bumped my way up the track and found the cottage just off to the left, huddled behind a row of stunted rowans.

      As I got out with Missy under my arm, the door opened and a tall, raw-boned woman with iron-grey hair in a long plait over one shoulder and a flowered pinny showing below a quilted red anorak, beckoned me in.

      The mist swirled, Missy shivered and some unseen bird screamed like a lost soul overhead. I’ve seen horror movies that start like that, so I’d have been tempted to turn tail and run for home, except that it would have been bad manners.

      So I followed her into a chill, stone-flagged passageway and through to a kitchen warmed to blood-heat by a woodburning stove, where she introduced herself as Martha, who looked after the cottage and ran the tearoom during the season.

      ‘Is it still the season?’ I asked hopefully, longing for a good afternoon tea by a roaring fire.

      ‘Nay,’ she said shortly, seeming to be a woman of few words.

      ‘The sign’s still out at the top of the lane.’

      ‘I can’t help that. We’re always closed mid-September to Easter.’

      ‘But it’s the first week in September,’ I pointed out.

      ‘When Mr Godet took ill, I thought we could do without strangers traipsing about the place. Not that there’s too much of that, even in the summer,’ she added, ‘bar a lot of hikers wanting their tea.’

      ‘I’ll try not to traipse about too much then, and disturb him.’

      ‘Oh, you won’t be doing that – he died only last week.’

      ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.

      ‘Eh, well, it were a good send-off, even if the boys did come to blows afterwards, when the will was read.’

      ‘His sons?’ I queried.

      ‘His son and his nephew, and both quick-tempered, like all the Godets – as I should know, because my sister married one.’

      ‘There have always been Godets here at Godesend Farm, haven’t there? I looked it up on the internet.’

      ‘That’s right. But you won’t be looking anything up on the internet here,’ she added, with a grim smile. ‘I don’t know what you’ll do with yourself for a week on your own, but if you walk on the moors, stay on the path – there are bogs and places you could fall where no one might find you.’

      I shivered. ‘I certainly will!’

      ‘And don’t go letting that little dog of yours roam about, for there’s sheep around, and that George is likely to shoot a loose dog first and ask questions second.’

      ‘Is that Mr Godet’s son?’ I asked. I didn’t much like the sound of him.

      ‘Nay, his nephew, who’s been working the farm along with his own,’ she said. ‘And a godsend it seems to have been for him, worming his way into inheriting the land as he did.’

      She suddenly seemed to recollect that she was talking to a stranger, for she abandoned this interesting topic and led me on a brief tour of the facilities.

      These were not extensive. Upstairs was a small bedroom furnished in Victorian style, a tiny spartan bathroom with a shower and loo, and downstairs, other than the kitchen, only a chilly and minute front parlour.

      ‘There’s an electric water heater for the shower and the kitchen sink,’ she said. ‘Keep the stove going and the heat will warm the whole place in a couple of hours: there’s wood out the back in the lean-to.’

      ‘There’s no one in the farmhouse at the moment?’ I queried, seeing she was zipping up her anorak and preparing to depart.

      ‘I’m there in the afternoons, but there’s nowt much to do at the moment other than clean. There’ll be no one there at night.’

      She looked at me doubtfully. ‘I hope you’ll be all right on your own.’

      ‘I’ve got my mobile phone,’ I told her, but I don’t think she heard me, for she was opening the door, letting an icy stream of air into the passageway.

      ‘The nearest shop …’ I began quickly, before she vanished.

      ‘Haworth back the way you came, Upvale the other,’ she said. ‘There’s the Standing Stones pub at the crossroads, but I wouldn’t go there alone of a night.’

      With that, she was gone, heading towards the dim outline of a large building that must be Godesend Farm.

      When I checked my mobile later, it had no connection, so it was just as well I wanted a quiet week!

      Missy and I didn’t venture further on to the moors than the start of the well-trodden footpath beyond the farmhouse, and we saw no one about for the whole week.

      Occasionally a tractor would roar up and down the drive outside, and once I heard a car door slam and then the sound of raised and angry male voices but, discretion being the better part of valour, I didn’t go and investigate …

      One day I went down to Haworth to do a little research and make some phone calls, but despite the mist and the isolation, I found myself happy to be back at the cottage and reluctant to go home at the end of the week.

      In fact, there was something about Godesend Farm that drew me back, and I rented the cottage again from early spring for a few weeks, intending to finish off the final editorial changes to Finding Mr Rochester and then have a brief break before the proofs arrived.

      My agent and editor loved the novel and were planning a major publicity campaign leading up to the publication day, and until then, Hephzibah’s memoirs were being kept firmly under wraps – now literally, because I’d sealed the book in a plastic bag and locked it into my suitcase.