Everything to Gain and a Secret Affair by Barbara Taylor Bradford Read Free Book Online

entire downstairs to clean.
    I take great pride in Indian Meadows.
    I love it most of all when everything sparkles and gleams and looks perfect. Diana has always said I should have been an interior decorator. She thinks I have great talent for putting furniture and things together to create unique and attractive settings. The idea doesn’t appeal to me; I don’t think I would enjoy doing this kind of work for clients in the way that Diana buys antiques, paintings, and beautiful objects for the customers who patronize her prestigious antique shop in London. I am sure it would be far too frustrating, trying to please other people, not to mention convincing them that my taste is superior to theirs.
    I prefer to be an amateur decorator creating a home which pleases Andrew and me, just as I paint for my ownpleasure, for the satisfaction and gratification it gives me.
    Nora never joins me on this wall for a picnic. Invariably, she eats her lunch inside, preferring the cool, air-conditioned interior. Certainly it is much more comfortable inside the house today; it is positively grueling out here. A great yellow orb of a sun seems to be burning a hole in the fabric of the sky, which is of such a sharp and brilliant blue it almost hurt my eyes to look at it.
    The wall where I’m sitting is wide, with big flat stones along the top, and it is very old, built by hand by a local stonemason many years ago.
    In Yorkshire, drystone walling, as it is called, is an ancient craft. All of the stones have to be perfectly balanced, one on top of the other, so that they can remain tightly wedged together without the benefit of cement. It is done by the crofters on the Yorkshire moors and in the lush green dales, but it is a dying craft, Diana says, almost a lost art. I’m sure it is here, too, and more’s the pity, since these ancient walls are beautiful, have such great character.
    I am extremely partial to this particular wall on our property, mostly because it is home to a number of small creatures. I know for a fact that two chipmunks live inside its precincts, as well as a baby rabbit and a black snake. Although I know the chipmunks well and have spotted the bunny from time to time, I have never actually seen the snake. But our gardener, Anna, has, and so have the twins. At least, that is what they claim, most vociferously.
    Ever since my childhood, I have loved nature and the wild creatures who inhabit the countryside, and I have encouraged Jamie and Lissa to respect all living things, to treasure the animals, birds, and insects that frequent Indian Meadows.
    Unconsciously, and very often without understanding what they are doing, some children can be terribly cruel, and it always makes me furious when I see them hurtingsmall, defenseless animals, pulling wings off butterflies, grinding their heels into earthworms and snails, throwing stones at birds. I made my mind up long before the twins were born that no child of mine would ever inflict pain on any living thing.
    To make nature more personal, to bring it closer to them, I invented stories about our little friends who inhabit the garden wall. I tell Jamie and Lissa tales about Algernon, the friendly black snake, who has a weakness for chocolate-covered cherries and wishes he owned a candy store; about Tabitha and Henry, the two chipmunks, married with no children, who want to adopt; and about Angelica, the baby bunny rabbit, who harbors an ambition to be in the Fifth Avenue Easter Parade.
    Jamie and Lissa had come to love these stories of mine; they can’t get enough of them, in fact, and I have to repeat them constantly. In order to satisfy my children, I’m forever inventing new adventures, which entails quite a stretch of the imagination on my part.
    It’s struck me several times lately that perhaps I should write down the stories and draw pictures to illustrate them. Perhaps I will, but only for Jamie and Lissa. This idea suddenly took hold of me. What a