Missing the Moment

  There seemed no trivialities to discuss to break the stiffness of the gathering. Brian slurped his drink and began to cough. He scurried from the room with undisguised relief.

  Rhoda called after him. “Don’t forget you’ve got something to say, Brian.”

  Harriet sipped her drink. put the glass down with a hand that shock and demanded. “Well? What d’you want to do, then?”

  “I want a divorce.” Eric said quietly. “It’s the only honest thing to do.”

  “No.” Harriet’s voice was equally quiet. But her mouth was a straight line of defensive determination.

  “It’s the children, you see,” Eric said, still in his modulated voice. “I can understand your anger, I’m not denying that I’ve behaved shamefully. But there are the children, who are innocent of any guilt. I’d like to give them my name.”

  “It’s my name! I’m Mrs Eric Russell. That Gloria woman is using my name.”

  “I’m sorry Harriet, but I want it to be hers.”

  Harriet’s lips tightened further and she turned her head away from him. Brian intervened then, walking back into the room and nervously interrupting. The silence had seemed set to continue all day, both parties looking away from each other, staring unseeing at the woodsmoke-stained walls.

  “If you do agree to a divorce –” Brian began. swallowing nervously, and Harriet’s head turned sharply and she glared at him. “— I’m not saying she should, mind. But if she does, what will happen to Mill House?”

  “Nothing at all.” Eric said. looking at Harriet. “It’s yours, Harriet, and always will be. I don’t want the house or anything in it, all that is yours by right, if not by law. Gloria and I have a home, rented and without much in the way of luxury, but we don’t want to take your home from you.” They all saw the lowering of Harriet’s face as the tension of that particular worry eased. “Sorry I am, Harriet, if you’ve been worried. That has never been my, or indeed Gloria’s, intention.”

  “Will you give that assurance now, in writing?” Brian suggested. Eric looked surprised at this apparent doubting of his word, but he nodded agreement.

  Harriet gave an audible sigh of relief as Eric wrote the words dictated by Brian, promising that the divorce settlement would not include the house or its contents, which would remain in the complete ownership of Harriet. “We’ll go to a solicitor as soon as possible and get this made legal.” Brian said with his own sigh of relief that his part in the proceeding was over. He put the piece of paper in his pocket then stood up. “Come on Rhoda my dear, and you, Charlotte. I think we should leave your parents alone to discuss what needs to be done. We’ll be outside when you’re ready to leave, all right, Mother-in-law?”

  Harriet looked more anxious than before as Charlotte stood with her sister and prepared to leave, but she nodded her agreement in repetition of Eric’s.

  Charlotte squeezed her mother’s shoulder briefly before going out into the warm sunshine. Rhoda and Brian went for a walk along the road to look down on the beach but she didn’t go with them. She sat and leaned against the ancient, sun-warmed walls of the public house, where many hundreds of people must have sat in the years of the building’s existence. She half closed her eyes, imagining generations of men sitting there wearing stout trousers and Welsh flannel shirts, clay pipes in their mouths, looking at the same scene that was before her, which could hardly have changed.

  * * *

  “You’re looking well, Harriet.” Eric said, his voice low and gentle. “Your hair is still fair, not much sign of grey. Your skin is as smooth as when you were a girl.”

  “You haven’t worn so good!” was Harriet’s reply. He was unnerving her with his mild flattery and the urge to hurt him was not softened by it. “Your hair looks like something I’ve used to scour the sink. And your neck’s all scraggy!”

  Eric laughed. “I was never a beauty!”

  “Good cook is she, this Gloria?”

  “Not as good as you.”

  He seems determined to be nice, she thought. “All those children. The place must be a tip. You always liked things orderly.”

  “Marvellous housewife you were.”

  She wanted to ask, why did you leave me then? Why did you put me through seven years of hurt and humiliation? Instead she stood up, dragging the chair noisily over the slate floor and called the others.

  “No,” she said. as she pulled on her gloves and hat and prepared to leave. “No, I won’t divorce you. You and that woman will have to live in the mess you’ve created. None of it is my making. Remember that, Eric Russell. None of it is down to me!”

  “Sure about that, are you, Harriet?” For the first time there was a hint of censure in his voice. “Sure of that, are you?”

  She was not inclined to speak on the return journey. Apart from thanking Brian for getting the agreement with Eric not to claim half of her house, she said nothing.

  Charlotte saw that her mother’s eyes were overbright and staring and guessed she longed for privacy so she could howl. She looked out of the window at the burgeoning countryside and the occasional glimpses of the blue, sparkling sea, calm in the bright sun, and allowed herself to dwell on her private thoughts. When her mother was ready to talk she would be there, willing to listen.

  * * *

  Rhoda invited Charlotte to meet her in town at the café run by Vi and Willie Walters. When their coffee had been served with a plateful of cakes from which to choose, Rhoda told her sister of her plan to throw a house-warming party.

  “I’ll do the food if you like,” Vi, carefully listening to the conversation. called from the counter.

  “Thank you Mrs Walters, but I think I can manage.” Rhoda replied in her careful, clipped voice.

  “Caterings extra to the rations, remember,” Vi coaxed.

  ‘All right, I’ll let you know.” Rhoda promised. She whispered to Charlotte. “It might be an idea. Brian can afford it and if I can wheedle the extra cash out of him it will leave me free to get my hair done and all that. Perhaps you’ll come early and help me set out all the food?”

  Charlotte was not keen to attend: she and her sister spent little time together without disagreeing.

  “I’m not sure how I’ll be fixed for Saturday. It’s Joe,” she extemporised. “He’s very busy now, with the shop sale almost ready to complete.”

  “Joe? You can’t bring Joe.” Rhoda said. “Mam would be most upset!”

  “What?”

  “Charlotte. Mam’s had enough upsets recently. You know how she feels about Joe. It would ruin my evening. Don’t make a fuss, please.”

  “I won’t make a fuss.” Charlene said coldly. “I simply won’t come.”

  “But you must, Charlotte! What will Mam say?” Rhoda wailed, but her sister was standing, gathering her shopping and preparing to leave.

  “Please. Charlotte.”

  “Not without Joe.”

  Before Charlotte left the town, she called to see Joe.

  “Dad wants a divorce and Mam won’t agree.” she told him. “I’m sorry I haven’t seen you but –”

  “But your Mam comes first, I know that,” he said quietly.

  “Joe, it isn’t like that. I’ve had so many shocks lately, and well, it isn’t easy you know.” Her voice sharpened with anger. He ought to understand, not stand there disapproving.

  “If I’d had shocks or problems I’d have run to you, not away from you.” he said, sadness in his eyes.

  She told him about the party, between serving customers, and explained that she did not want to go. He closed the shop door, put a “back in ten minutes” notice on the door and took her back to Vi and Willie’s café for a teacake.

  “When is this party?” he asked.

  “It’s on Saturday, April the twenty-second,” she told Joe. “So I want us to be doing something that prevents us from attending.”

  “They didn’t invite me, did they?”

  “Of course,” she lied, “but I really would hate it. Can we book to go
to the theatre or something?”

  “They invited you but not me and you aren’t able to tell them you’re angry. Instead you want me to pretend we have an unbreakable arrangement. When are you going to stand up for us?” he added. “Don’t you think we’re important enough to make a stand for?”

  “I do, Joe, of course I do. I told Rhoda I wouldn’t go without you. But you know what Mam’s like. She’s so easily upset. She is trying to cope with Dad’s reappearance, a threat of divorce as well as Uncle Peter’s illness. It’s hard for her.”

  “Duty I can understand. I even approve. But martyrdom is for someone else, not me.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Come back to the shop. We have to talk.” Leaving the “back in ten minutes” notice pinned to the door he pulled her into the partition and kissed her fiercely, then he stopped her protests with another kiss. A third was gentler, his lips moving slowly on hers, his body moulded against her own, a kiss which reached the deepest parts of her and which she didn’t want to end.

  He turned away then and talked gruffly as if in anger.

  “You know how much I want you. You know I’ve loved you since we were kids being cared for by my Auntie Bessie while your mother had a full and happy social life. She ignored you then. Had no time for you in her hectic round of parties and dances and theatre visits. Now, when that life has ended, she clings to you, demands your loyalty, uses you as her crutch. Well, my need of you is greater, and less selfish than hers. But the choice is yours, my pretty.” He turned then to face her, staring into her rather startled eyes, but he didn’t touch her. “I’m not waiting until I’m an old man to marry you,” he said quietly. “It’s now or not at all. We postponed when your uncle was taken to hospital, we didn’t cancel. There’s no problem that can’t be overcome if the will is there. There’s no need to wait any longer, unless you’ve changed your mind.”

  “Joe. I’ll marry you as soon as it’s possible. But – with Uncle Peter and the divorce and –”

  “Middle of June. That’s possible. The shop will be mine, the flat above will be habitable and we can work on the rest of it once we’re in.”

  “Middle of June –” She looked away from his intense gaze. A sigh made her glance at him. Something in his expression made her realise that for all his amiability, he was determined to get a firm answer. “All right, Joe, let’s make it June.”

  Joe took out his pocket diary and said, “The tenth.”

  “Twenty-fourth, gives us more time.”

  “The tenth, there’s no more time to waste.”

  “All right.” She smiled up at him and moved into his arms. “We’ll start making arrangements very soon.”

  “Now, Charlotte. We’ll go this minute and tell the Dragon.”

  Her protests were ignored and she found it very exciting to have him so resolute.

  A customer knocking on the door broke them from their final kiss. Joe went to open it and found Kath Thomas demanding a screwdriver to fit a screw she had brought with her. She looked up as Charlotte came from behind the partition, then looked at Joe.

  “So that’s what you’ve been doing. No wonder ten minutes became almost half an hour!”

  When Charlotte arrived home a few hours later she found her mother waiting for her at the gate, a sure sign that all was not well.

  “Get in that house,” Harriet said.

  “Mam! There’s no need to talk to me as if I were a child! What on earth is the matter?”

  “You! That’s what’s the matter. Locking yourself in that shop with that repair man! That’s what’s the matter. Haven’t you any pride? Everyone is talking about you. Locking yourself away with that bicycle man so everyone knows you’re there but not answering the door. And in that flat above that slaughter house. Don’t think I haven’t heard.”

  “A butcher’s shop, Mam.”

  “In there for hours you are, just you and that Joe. He shows no regard for your reputation. But there, what d’you expect from the likes of him!”

  Charlotte stared at her mother but declined to argue. She guessed that frustration over her father caused her mother to welcome an excuse to explode over something. Pity it isn’t Rhoda once in a while though, she thought irritably.

  “I couladn’t tell her, she was in such a state,” Charlotte explained to Joe that evening. “Please, Joe, don’t be angry. I want us to wait just a few more days and announce it at Rhoda and Brian’s party.”

  “Clever trick that’ll be. I’m not invited, or had you forgotten?”

  “Rhoda can hardly refuse to allow us in!”

  * * *

  The folowing day. Charlotte asked Joe to go with her to see if there was anything that needed attention at Russel’s Bookbinders and Restorers.

  Joe ageed but insisted they went to confirm their wedding date first. Carrying all the necessary papers, they went on their bicycles to the registry office. They cycled home with the date firmly booked. At ten o’clock on the morning of Saturday the tenth of June, she would become Mrs Joseph Llewellyn.

  She was filled with a sense of excitement and utter happiness, unable to resist smiling at everyone she saw. They pushed their bikes up the steep hill, remounted at Mill House and rode along the quiet lane to the factory.

  While she checked the work book trying to ensure that all the jobs were flowing easily through the various stages, Joe idly glanced through the accounts. It was one of Jack’s rare days off or he would have felt unable to pry. Something puzzled him and he asked Charlotte if he could take the books home for a proper examination.

  “Why?” she asked. “Surely they are impeccably kept. Only Jack Roberts deals with them. Uncle Peter can hardly have messed them up the way he messes up everything else.” She did not notice that he gave no reply.

  Recent correspondence was revealing. An order for two hundred booklets had ended up as two thousand. A request for supplies of tape and muslin had been wrongly sent to a firm they no longer dealt with and they had to pay more than they expected. A customer had asked for a book to be restored and instead of replacing the original cover, the work had been given a new one. Not surprisingly, the customer was refusing to pay. How could her uncle be so careless? She could hardly blame the staff. They only did what Uncle Peter told them to do.

  The joyful mood was lost. She was so upset by the neglectful way the work was being done she was hardly aware of Joe carrying out the ledgers with their beautifully marbled edges, and strapping them to his bicycle carrier. She only nodded vaguely when he promised to get them back before morning, so Jack wouldn’t know they had been examined.

  * * *

  On Saturday morning. Charlotte woke early. Her first thoughts were of Joe. Warm thoughts. Tender, loving thoughts that made her body ache for him. Today they would tell the world they were to marry. She had the usual attack of guilt at the way she was announcing it without discussing the details with her mother but she knew it was the only way. Telling everyone, making it official without prior warning, might prevent her mother from attempting to dissuade her as she had so many times in the past.

  The dawn broke with sunshine so bright that Charlotte felt the warmth of it before she opened her eyes. She bathed, dressed in the new dress she had bought specially for the day, and went downstairs to begin preparing breakfast. Everything about the day seemed perfect.

  “Look outside, Mam, isn’t it a perfect morning?” she said when Harriet came down and accepted the cup of tea Charlotte had ready.

  Her mother looked at the sun-washed garden with bees already drunk with an excess of pollen. “With such a start it can’t possibly last all day.” But even Harriet’s doomladen forecast couldn’t deaden Charlotte’s happiness. The secret added spice to the morning. She hugged her mother and laughed.

  Charlotte quickly realised that Uncle Peter was far from well. The doctor had called the previous day and advised him to stay away from the office for at least another week. Charlotte attended to his morning needs then phoned
and requested another visit. Harriet went into a panic. She knew Peter was seriously ill: Charlotte had told her the poor man hadn’t passed water for an alarmingly long time, and besides, you only had to look at him to know he was very sick. But she just couldn’t bring herself to listen to the doctor’s words. She couldn’t face anything more. It was all too much for her.

  If Peter were to die, what would happen to her? Charlotte would have to give up any idea of marrying for the foreseeable future, that much she was certain. Thank goodness it was Rhoda who had married and moved out and not the sensible Charlotte. It was a huge relief when Charlotte phoned and told her that the doctor had declared him well enough to go to the Saturday evening party at Rhoda and Brian’s. Now she could forget it: if he was well enough to go to a party it couldn’t be serious, could it?

  Charlotte had been pleaded with, and bullied, but had refused to tell Rhoda or her mother that she would attend the party. So when she walked in with Joe there was a sudden silence. Uncle Peter, in his wheelchair, sat beside Jack. Harriet sat on the other side of the room with an elegantly dressed Rhoda and her young friends. It was Uncle Peter who first greeted them.

  “Charlotte! Joe! We thought you weren’t coming. Change your mind about the theatre, did you? We’re so glad, aren’t we, Harriet?”

  “Lovely.” Harriet said, with as much grace as she could manage.

  Bessie, who had invited herself to the party by offering to help, shouted, “Not gone to the theatre then?” Lowering her voice she added, “Now there’s a waste of good money. But then, what do you expect of a girl who rides a bike in high heels,” and she gave them a huge wink.

  “We aren’t stopping.” Charlotte said, as she took a drink handed to her by Brian. “We have a bit of news ourselves.” Charlotte touched Joe’s cheek with a kiss and said. “Congratulate us, won’t you? Joe and I are getting married on June the tenth at ten o’clock. We hope you’ll all come and wish us well.”

  Again it was Peter who spoke first. “My lovely girl, I’m so pleased. I’ve been feeling very guilty, responsible for delaying your wedding like that. We’re thrilled, aren’t we, Harriet? To see you both ready to settle down and start a life of your own.”