The Mixture As Before

by Rosie Harris

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  A Selection of Recent Titles From Rosie Harris

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  A Selection of Recent Titles from Rosie Harris

  LOVE AGAINST ALL ODDS

  SING FOR YOUR SUPPER

  WAITING FOR LOVE

  LOVE CHANGES EVERYTHING

  A DREAM OF LOVE

  A LOVE LIKE OURS

  THE QUALITY OF LOVE

  WHISPERS OF LOVE

  AMBITIOUS LOVE

  THE PRICE OF LOVE

  A BRIGHTER DAWN

  HELL HATH NO FURY *

  STOLEN MOMENTS *

  LOVE OR DUTY *

  MOVING ON *

  THE MIXTURE AS BEFORE *

  * available from Severn House

  THE MIXTURE AS BEFORE

  Rosie Harris

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This first world edition published 2015

  in Great Britain and the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2016 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  eBook edition first published in 2015 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2015 by Marion Harris.

  The right of Marion Harris to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Harris, Rosie, 1925-author.

  The Mixture as Before.

  1. Widows–Fiction. 2. May-December romances–Fiction.

  I. Title

  823.9’14-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8529-6 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-632-9 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-692-2 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,

  Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  For Noah Frank Ockerby

  and Elliott Stephen Ockerby

  Acknowledgements

  With many thanks to Kate Lyall Grant and her colleagues at Severn House, and to my agent Caroline Sheldon.

  One

  Dressed in black, they swirled around Margaret Wright like a cluster of grim crows as they emerged from the chapel at the Slough Crematorium.

  Sitting in one of the front pews, she hadn’t realized how many friends and acquaintances had joined the family gathering. She looked around with a sense of alarm, recognizing faces she hadn’t seen for years, marvelling that they had bothered to come. She felt disorientated; her thoughts were elsewhere as she tried to acknowledge the murmur of condolences.

  Relieved that the formalities were over she took a deep breath, savouring the pungent smell of wet flowers, damp grass and sodden soil. Why did it always seem to rain at funerals?

  It had been a fine drizzle when they’d left Cookham, misting the windscreen and making the wipers squeal like trapped mice.

  By the time they left the parish church it had become a steady downpour. Umbrellas had popped up like black mushrooms as the cortège wound its way like a crippled centipede down the gravel path. Then, as they drove along the Bath Road in convoy en route for Slough Crematorium the heavens had opened. It had been more like a tropical downpour than an April shower.

  Now though, the rain had stopped and a thin, watery sun made the grass steam. A haze of luminous grey, like smoke seeping from the crematorium furnaces, hung over everything.

  The thought that if it had been a traditional burial the grave would have been awash and they might even have had to postpone the burial sent a shudder through Margaret Wright’s slim, black-coated frame.

  She glanced at the tiny gold watch on her wrist, a present from Reginald on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary fifteen years ago, and wondered how much longer it would be before people began to leave. She chewed on her lower lip. She wished she could go home, right now, make a pot of tea, sit down and quietly collect her thoughts.

  And think about the future … her future.

  ‘We’ll be leaving any minute now, Mum,’ whispered her daughter, taking her arm proprietorially. ‘You’re bearing up wonderfully well. Don’t give way now.’

  Margaret shook her arm free. ‘Don’t fuss, Alison!’

  The hurt look on Alison’s face made Margaret feel guilty. How could she expect Alison, or anyone else for that matter, to understand how she felt at this moment?

  Everyone thought she was being brave because she was dry-eyed and composed, while most of them were sombre-faced and struggling to control their feelings. It wasn’t stoicism on her part, but an overwhelming sense of relief.

  She wondered what they would have thought if she had openly admitted that she wasn’t heartbroken or feeling a sense of loss and that she hadn’t cried even when the doctor had pronounced Reginald dead; or at any time since.

  In fact, it was as if a load had been lifted from her shoulders and she was at last freed from the overpowering restraint that had blighted her days ever since Reginald’s enforced retirement almost ten years ago.

  She would miss Reginald, of course. After all, they had been married for over forty years and since his retirement they had not been out of each other’s sight for more than five minutes. She was prepared for that; it didn’t distress her in any way. In fact she felt exhilarated by the sense of freedom it gave her. It was as if she’d been in limbo for the past five years and now she was returning to the living world completely unencumbered.

  Alison had been dabbing at her eyes ever since they’d come into the cremator
ium. Even Charles and Steven were emotional. As for the grandchildren, they all looked utterly bemused. She felt it had been wrong to bring them. Amanda had always been able to cry to order and she’d taken her cue from her parents and sobbed rhythmically throughout the service.

  Margaret sighed. They were the ones behaving conventionally, reacting in the way expected of them. She was the philistine. You’re supposed to feel grief, not relief, at your husband’s funeral, she scolded herself silently.

  She glanced covertly at Alison and felt a sense of unease as she saw the way she was struggling unsuccessfully to hold back her tears.

  She edged away from her daughter, pretending to look at the flowers. It was a good thing Reginald wasn’t still with them or he would have been sneezing his head off, she thought as she stared down at the assortment of wreaths and sprays banked up in regimented formation on the grass outside the chapel. Flowers always gave him hay fever, or so he complained whenever she’d had any in the house. Yet, they never seemed to affect him if they were on the table when they attended an official function, or on the rare occasions when they visited other people’s homes.

  ‘Come along, Mother, everyone is waiting for us to depart. We have to leave first, you know.’

  Margaret looked up startled as her eldest son spoke. Tall, like his father, Charles had the same straight dark hair and dark eyes beneath firm dark brows, the same robust good looks. Strange, she thought, today even his voice seemed to have the same authoritative tone as Reginald’s.

  To her, Charles was still the shock-headed toddler, the studious schoolboy, the anxious teenager, so eager to join his father’s firm. Now he was head of the family!

  He was taking his responsibilities so seriously his father would have been proud of him, she thought wryly as he took hold of her elbow and propelled her firmly through the hovering black-hatted friends and relations.

  ‘Yes, of course!’ Conscious that her black handbag was banging against his side she quickly transferred it to her other arm.

  ‘You’ll be in our car going home,’ he told her as he saw her looking round for the sleek black limousine she had arrived in.

  ‘Oh, I see!’ She didn’t really but she felt it was not the moment to cross-question him as to why he had sent the other car away.

  Her two granddaughters were already in the maroon Jaguar. She had been shocked by the way they were dressed. They were both wearing black pleated skirts and long-sleeved white blouses. Their white panama hats were trimmed with black bands and they wore black shoes and knee-high white socks. In her opinion, at sixteen and fourteen they looked childish dressed like that on such an occasion. In her opinion their outfits were more suitable for a school concert than a funeral.

  ‘Are you going to sit in the back with us, Gran?’ they chorused.

  ‘Grandma will ride in front … it’s only proper,’ fussed their mother. She, too, was dressed in black and white. Her black linen suit had a scoop neck white silk blouse under it and she was wearing ultra-sheer black stockings, high-heeled black court shoes and a large-brimmed black straw hat.

  ‘You always say it makes you feel carsick if you travel in the back …’

  ‘Quiet, Charles!’ Helen’s carefully pencilled eyebrows drew together in a warning frown.

  ‘It’s all right, Helen, I would sooner ride in the back with the girls,’ insisted Margaret.

  She sat in the middle of the maroon leather seat. Her youngest granddaughter, Amanda, nestled in beside her, her feet pressed against the back of the front passenger seat. Petra climbed in on the other side.

  Sandwiched between them, Margaret kissed first one and then the other on their satin-soft cheeks as they waited for Helen to belt herself into the front seat.

  As they pulled away, Amanda clung to Margaret’s arm as tightly as if it was a lifeline. Her thin little body shaking with gulping sobs.

  ‘Shush,’ murmured Margaret. ‘There’s nothing to cry about.’

  ‘It’s because Grandad has died and has gone forever and ever. We’re going to … to miss him an awful lot,’ explained Petra.

  ‘Miss him! You hardly ever saw him … except on pocket money day!’ snapped Helen.

  Amanda looked questioningly at her grandmother, her mouth quivering. ‘Will … will we still get pocket money? Now that Grandad’s dead, I mean.’

  ‘Amanda!’ Helen’s voice registered both shock and annoyance.

  ‘Of course you will,’ Margaret assured her. ‘In fact, I think I might be able to manage a rise all round …’

  ‘Don’t encourage her! This is neither the time nor place,’ hissed Helen, turning round to scowl at her eldest daughter and then at Margaret.

  Margaret tried not to smile, because she knew Charles was watching her in the driving mirror. His face had gone dark with anger, just as Reginald’s had used to do if she treated something he considered to be a serious topic in a frivolous manner.

  Taking Amanda’s hand, Margaret gave it a comforting squeeze. ‘Here.’ She opened her handbag and took out a lace-edged handkerchief and handed it to the child. ‘Use this to dry your tears.’

  Amanda scrubbed her eyes dry and gave her grandmother a lopsided grin as she screwed up the square of linen and handed it back.

  ‘Would you like a peppermint?’ Margaret fished a packet of Polo Mints out of her black handbag and fumbled to open them.

  ‘Here, I’ll do it for you.’ Petra took the packet and deftly peeled back the silver foil. She took two, opened the wrapper back further and offered it to her grandmother and then to Amanda.

  ‘Do you want one, Daddy?’

  ‘No! This is no time to be eating sweets.’

  ‘Put them away and behave yourselves,’ ordered Helen. ‘And for goodness sake sit still, Amanda. Your feet are digging right into the small of my back,’ she added irritably.

  As Petra handed the packet of peppermints back to her, Margaret slipped them inside her handbag. She was sure that indirectly the rebuke had been meant for her.

  In the oppressive silence that followed, Margaret’s thoughts focused on the ordeal that lay ahead. She had hated to come away and leave complete strangers in her home, but Helen had insisted that she should call in a firm of caterers to organize the reception at Willow House that was to follow the service at the crematorium.

  ‘Surely there’s enough of us in the family to arrange a buffet spread. Alison and Sandra will help and …’

  ‘Most certainly not!’ Charles was adamant. ‘Father would have hated such a disorganized arrangement.’

  ‘But he’s not going to be there!’

  The withering look Charles had given her had made her cringe. He’d had the ability to do that ever since he was a small child, to make her feel she had said something so utterly crass that it was beyond the pale.

  ‘Surely, you can see that if people are invited to the family home to pay their last respects to him, it is only fitting that the catering is properly organized.’

  His tone implied that the statement was his considered opinion, and therefore didn’t need an answer, so she didn’t bother to argue. She’d long ago learned not to fight battles she had no chance of winning.

  What did it matter, she asked herself. It would all be over in a few hours and then she could close the door on the past. The old order would be broken. After that, there would be no one to dictate what she could and could not do.

  She’d told herself the same thing a hundred and one times over the past week as she’d listened to Charles, Alison and Steven, aided or frustrated by interventions from Alison’s husband Mark and Steven’s wife, Sandra, argue, bicker and wrangle over the funeral arrangements.

  Not once had they thought to ask what she wanted. It was as if she was invisible. They probably thought she was too overcome by grief to be able to organize things, she told herself, giving them the benefit of the doubt.

  She’d seen more of them and they’d seen more of each other in the week preceding the funeral than they had for
years, reflected Margaret. Although they all lived within a radius of five miles, and practically passed each other’s door to visit her, they rarely called in on each other. A family gathering at Christmas, or the barbecue she liked to have on her birthday in July, was the extent of the family get-togethers since they’d married and left home.

  Over the past week, however, they had seemed to be vying with each other to prove their closeness. Each in his or her own way anxious to be the one to shoulder the most responsibility.

  It was all so hypocritical that she wondered if it came from a sense of guilt. Apart from Christmas and on his birthday they had all tended to avoid Reginald.

  Not that she blamed any of them. He wasn’t the easiest of men to get on with and he had grown increasingly difficult to live with over recent years, especially since he’d had his heart attack.

  It was as if once he was past middle age he’d experienced some sort of metamorphosis. Unlike the chrysalis that turned into a gorgeous butterfly, he had done the reverse.

  The nineteen years difference in their ages had become frighteningly important. Margaret kept remembering her mother had warned her that it was foolish for a girl of only nineteen to marry a man of thirty-eight.

  ‘By the time you’re forty-five he’ll be a cranky, grey-haired old devil, ready for retirement. You mark my words!’

  She’d ridiculed the idea that a man as handsome and pulsating with vitality as Reginald had been in those days could ever grow old and cranky, but of course her mother had been proved right.

  Only Charles, identical to Reginald in so many respects, had ever really managed to see eye-to-eye with him. And that, she suspected, was because it had always been Charles’s ambition to take over the family firm and in order to do that it had been necessary for him to work in harmony with his father.