Charlotte could see there was something wrong when her mother returned from the day out subdued instead of full of chatter. After such occasions she happily shared the rumours and gossip she had been privy to and made them all laugh with her explanations of some of the group’s behaviour. A day out, although she had to be persuaded to take it, usually succeeded in cheering her, albeit temporarily. Today there was none of it.
“Is something wrong, Mam?” Charlotte asked as she handed her mother a cup of tea. “Come on, drink this and tell me what’s worrying you. Quarrelled with Kath Thomas, did you? Or was Bessie forgetting she was your cleaner and presuming friendship?”
“No need to be pert, Charlotte!”
“But something is wrong, isn’t it?”
Rhoda and her husband Brian were there to welcome her back after her day trip and they stared at the almost tearful face of Harriet with concern. noticing the way her hands trembled when she took the proffered tea.
“It’s Barry Island, isn’t it?” Rhoda said emphatically. “I said, didn’t I, Brian? Said you shouldn’t go. It brought back too many memories of the time when Dadda was with us. I knew!”
Harriet looked at her daughters, her pale blue eyes heavy with sadness. “I shouldn’t have gone. You shouldn’t have persuaded me.”
“Bringing back memories,” Rhoda went on, looking at Brian, tight-lipped, waiting for him to say how right she had been.
“I saw your father,” Harriet whispered.
“Mam,” Charlotte said gently, “we’ve had this talk before. You’ve seen Dad a dozen times and each time you’ve been mistaken.”
“Not this time. I followed him for an hour or more, saw him go into that house and heard the children call him Dadda. I spoke to the woman in the shop and she said they were called Russell.” Her voice broke as she went on. “My name he’s given the woman, mind. My name. I’m Mrs Eric Russell, not her, whoever she is. It just isn’t fair.”
“What else did you find out?”
“That his wife – so called! – this Gloria woman, has been ill since the latest baby was born. Latest baby mind! Not the first.” She shook her head solemnly. “This wasn’t a mistake. I feel more cheated now than when he first left us. Fancy going off and getting mixed up with some woman and having children, and all the time leaving me, his lawful wife, wondering and bewildered by his disappearance. How could he do it?”
“You need to talk to someone, Mammy.” Rhoda said. “Brian agrees, don’t you, Bri?” Brian gave a cursory nod. “Someone who’ll know the best thing to do.”
“No! I couldn’t bear anyone to know. You’re the only ones who know the truth. You won’t say, will you? I’d be so shamed for anyone else to know.”
“Joe will be told,” Charlotte said firmly. “He has a right to know what goes on in the family that will be his one day.”
“No! Not Joe Llewellyn. I don’t want Bessie Philpot to know! I’d die of embarrassment!”
“Twp you are, Mam. What shame is there in all this for you? It’s Dadda who should be shamed! What have you done? It’s Dadda who ran off, and him who’s living over the brush with some woman, pretending to be her husband!”
“Not Joe,” Harriet said firmly. Charlotte noticed that her mother’s hands were shaking again with shock.
“At least talk to Jack Roberts. He’s trustworthy and he won’t tell anyone. You have to have help in this.”
“Uncle Peter will have to be told,” Harriet sobbed. “It’s his own brother who’s done this to us.”
“I agree with Charlotte, Mam, don’t you Bri?” Rhoda said to her husband who sat there swallowing his adam’s apple, afraid to say a word. “I think you should tell Jack Roberts and ask for his help. Church Elder he is, mind. Surely you can trust him?”
It was late when they finally persuaded Harriet to have a few sips of brandy – for the shock – and go to bed. She was so exhausted by the day’s events that she slept almost immediately. Rhoda and Brian left a few minutes later and Charlotte looked at the clock, wondering if ten past ten on an April evening was too late to call on Joe. She had to tell him: there had never been any secrets between them.
A few moments later, Charlotte was cycling down the hill towards the town. She was practically running when she passed through the gate and up the path to the front door where, mercifully, a light still showed.
Joe listened to Charlotte’s story, his arms around her to comfort her. He guessed that while Harriet talked, Charlotte would have remained calm and strong, now, with no one to support, she could let her feelings show. It was her father they were talking about, someone on whom she should have been able to depend. Harriet seemed not to realise how this affected her daughters as well as herself, Joe thought grimly. Typical of the woman.
“How could he do it?” Charlotte whispered. “There isn’t any reason for his behaviour.”
“How can anyone ever know what goes on in another’s head? He and your mother might not have been as happy as she pretends. She’s hard work to live with, you must know that. Like your sister Rhoda.”
“I’m sure Rhoda and I would have known if they were so unhappy that he had to leave.”
“Your mother was probably right, had a breakdown he did, then couldn’t face coming back,” he soothed.
Then Charlotte pulled herself out of his embrace and said angrily, “You don’t believe that! Don’t talk to me as if I were a baby, Joe Llewellyn!”
“All right, I’m sorry. He must have been very miserable at home.”
“He and Mam were perfectly content!”
“Perfectly content? Were they?”
“Well, there were plenty of rows. But we thought that was just the way they were, we never considered it was serious.”
“Didn’t you?” Joe asked gently.
Charlotte looked away. Of course the rows had been serious. She remembered lying in bed listening to them when they returned from some party or other, marvelling that the plaster didn’t fall off the walls.
“They were deeply unhappy and you know it,” he chided.
Hurt and angry with him for making her see how things really were, something she had covered with pretence, Charlotte stormed out, half running back along the lane to where she had left her cycle. Joe called after her but she ignored him and ran on, tripping, almost falling, tears blinding her, not stopping until she reached the road.
Harriet was persuaded, after hours of tears, to allow Jack Roberts to know that the missing Eric had been located. Peter was already there when they walked up the following morning and met in his office. Harriet held her temples against the noise of the machines, and ran a disapproving finger along the dusty desk. “What a noisy, filthy place to bring me to to discuss such a predicament,” she scolded Charlotte. “I don’t know why we had to come here.”
“It’s Bessie’s morning for cleaning, the gardener will be there this morning too and the window cleaner comes after twelve. Too many ears altogether. If we cancelled them all, Auntie Bessie Philpot’s nose would vibrate and almost fall off as she ferreted around for secrets!”
“She isn’t your auntie, she’s a servant… and I wish you wouldn’t call her that!”
Jack listened to Harriet’s story with spurious anger. He doubted very much if Harriet had really discovered Eric’s whereabouts. Surely the man would have had the sense to move further away from Bryn Melinau than Barry? But he knew from past incidents that, with Harriet, it was better to appear to agree. “If you think it best,” he said finally, “we’ll drive to Barry so we can check on the address.” In her misery, Harriet had failed to take note of it. “Then,” he went on, apologetically hushing her protests, “you and I will prepare a letter asking for him to meet you and discuss a divorce.”
“I couldn’t,” Harriet meant she couldn’t divorce Eric. Jack thought she couldn’t face meeting the man.
“We’ll be with you, Charlotte, Rhoda and me. I promise you’ll have our full support.”
“I’m not afraid of meeting him, the scoundrel,” Harriet confided to Charlotte when they returned home that evening. “It’s the divorce. Couldn’t Eric and that woman take my home? It was my mother’s and now it’s mine, but I could lose it, couldn’t I?”
“Don’t worry,” Charlotte said confidently. “I’m sure we’ll find a way around it. Relax and leave it to Jack and Uncle Peter.” But she was dreadfully afraid her mother was right. Mill House could be sold and the proceeds used to support her father’s second family, half-brothers and sisters she hadn’t known about just twenty-four hours ago.
The consequences of a divorce were mind numbing as she thought them through. One of them being the postponement of her marriage to Joe for as far into the future as she dared to look. Blown like a seed before the wind, you are, Charlotte Russell, she told herself, blown by the wayward wind. When are you going to make a stand and choose your own route?
Not yet, she thought sadly, not yet.
The drive to Barry was almost silent, each of the occupants of the Ford Prefect wrapped in their own thoughts. Jack parked Peter’s car in the street a few doors away from the house pointed out by a trembling Harriet. Several times the door opened and small children wandered in and out, and a few young women, including a nurse, Charlotte presumed they were friends of the woman her father lived with.
At five o’clock Eric turned the corner, wearing a neat suit and carrying a raincoat over his arm. His hands held two carrier bags, from which vegetables and bread protruded. He obviously dealt with the family shopping. That the man really was her father she had doubted until this moment. Now, seeing him pause, look down the road and smile at a neighbour, her doubts faded. It left her with a sick feeling of half joy, half hurt and bewilderment.
“It’s Dadda.” she blurted out.
“I knew you didn’t believe me,” Harriet sobbed.
Charlotte wanted to go and hug him, feel his arms around her, breathe in that special, well-remembered smell… the factory, pipe smoke, laundered shirt, tweed suiting and soap. They watched for a while longer and drove home more subdued than on the outward journey. There was no discussion concerning what they would do next. Jack drove without even looking at his passengers; Harriet sobbed quietly. Charlotte was eaten with regret that after seven years she had seen her father and had not been able to talk to him.
The following morning, Charlotte enjoyed a few hours alone. Uncle Peter was at the factory, her mother and sister had pushed aside their worries, put on forced smiles, dressed up in their most glamourous clothes and sallied forth to wander around the shops, stopping for coffee at Vi and Willie’s café and meeting friends. Charlotte ignored the dusting and tidying and went up onto the hill.
She sat on a fallen tree. Distorted by the wind, it had finally succumbed to the winds and lay on its side, already colonised by lichens and mosses and with a frill of dead grass along its edge. It moved as she relaxed her weight. The voice startled her so, she almost lost her balance on the precarious seat.
“Hello. I hope I’m not disturbing you, miss.”
Charlotte turned and saw a tall figure smiling down at her from beside a nearby hawthorn tree.
“No, er, of course not. Good morning.” She looked at the tall stranger. He was young, about her own age, she guessed, and obviously a walker. He wore a weatherproof jacket, and corduroy trousers tucked into heavy boots. He had a rucksack carried casually across one shoulder; a woollen hat was pushed back from his forehead revealing curly brown hair. Uneasy, self-conscious, she moved away from him.
“I can’t stop,” she said, rising and brushing her skirt with a nervous hand. “but if you want to know where you are, this is Bryn Melinau below us.”
“Yes, I know. I’m walking up towards Breconshire, but I had to detour and look at this place. It’s in my guide book, see. Hill with the remains of seven mills. That right, is it?”
She looked at the grinning face, the hint of mischief in his eyes and smiled. Something about him made a smile inevitable.
“Don’t you believe the guide books then?”
“I don’t believe anything until I check for myself. I do believe in luck, though. How else could I explain our meeting? Who’d believe I’d find someone like you on a lonely hill at this time of the day. Will you direct me to the nearest café and have a coffee with me?”
Reluctantly, Charlotte shook her head. “You’ll find Vi and Willie Walters’ café next to the clothes shop, but I can’t go with you. I’m on my way to do a few hours work. My uncle’s factory is just down the lane.”
“All right. but at least meet me later and show me where these windmills and watermills are. Please?”
“I live in a house that was once a windmill,” she said, looking at him, trying to make up her mind. “All right, come for me at two and I’ll show you the ruins.” She explained where Mill House was situated and watched as he walked away.
She didn’t go to the factory but went home instead. What had got into her? Inviting a complete stranger to call. Agreeing to show him the hill. She wondered if there was time to go down and ask Joe to go with them, suddenly afraid of where the afternoon might lead. But she didn’t.
Explaining to her mother that she had offered to show some tourists around the area, she stood by the gate at five minutes to two, not wanting the man to knock on her door and meet her mother. She wanted this afternoon to be hers alone. She would tell Joe of course. Later.
He strolled up in a leisurely way and waved when he saw her waiting. She had brushed her hair and added an alice band to keep it out of her eyes. Her clothes hadn’t changed from the morning, sensible skirt and jumper, strong shoes and short socks.
“Where do we start then?” he asked, his eyes looking deeply into her own. He looked so pleased to see her she felt herself blushing under his stare.
“We’ll walk to the top and work our way down.”
She led the way, up paths that grew narrower and more overgrown, until they were threading their way through heather and gorse on what were little more than animal tracks.
“The hill was home to a number of sheep before the war,” she explained to him, “but since we have more visitors, many of them with unruly dogs, the farmers no longer let them wander. So the heather and gorse have taken over. Doesn’t take long for a place to change, does it?”
“No, but it’s fascinating to imagine the hill’s history.”
She waved towards Mill House then showed him the ruins of the other mills. Clouds had gathered over the hills, dressing them in deep purple gauze, and it was already dark by the time they were back at the gates of her home.
“Thank you for sharing the afternoon with me.” he said, offering her his hand. “I must go now. I have a night’s lodging booked with a Mrs Kath Thomas, just near the road bridge.”
As she waved away his thanks, he took hold of her hand again and drew her towards him. He kissed her lightly, then walked quickly away, arm raised, hand waggling in salute, disappearing into the gathering gloom of the evening. It was as if a light had been extinguished somewhere inside her.
She realised she was still holding his guide book. As if she had been given a gift of a few more seconds in his company, she shouted and ran after him to return it. As she reached him, Joe appeared, pushing his bicycle.
“Charlotte? Where are you off to? Just coming to see you I am.”
“Oh, Joe, this is, er –” She looked at the stranger. embarrassed to realise she didn’t know his name. “– a tourist. I’ve been showing him the ruins on the hill.”
“Hi.” Joe said. “Staying long?” Then he frowned, something about the man’s appearance and voice suddenly familiar. “Say, weren’t you here a week or so ago? I seem to remember you asking me how to get to Barry.”
“Not me, mate. I haven’t been here before and I know where Barry is. Just come from there on the train, haven’t I?”
“Funny. I could have sworn…” Joe shrugged.
“Got to be off. Nice meeting you both.” A wave and he was gone, his long legs taking him out of their sight in moments.
“What did you want to see me about, Joe?” Charlotte asked.
“Oh, it’s nothing really, my pretty. Just to tell you the sale of the shop seems to be going through and I wondered if I dare ask you to help me do a stocktake. Boring ol’ job it is, mind, counting all the thousand and one things I sell. D’you think the Dragon will let you give a hand, say, on Sunday?”
“Let’s ask her when Uncle Peter’s there. Better chance of her saying yes, then.” Disturbed by her few hours with the fascinating stranger, she hugged Joe to reassure herself that he was real, the visitor only a passing fantasy.
On Jack and Peter’s advice, Harriet wrote to Eric, marking the letter private and confidential. A response was immediate. To her chagrin there was no apology, no remorse, just a few sentences saying how surprised he was to hear from her and suggesting they meet at a fourteenth-century public house in the Vale of Glamorgan, this being what he called neutral ground. He promised to telephone and arrange a date.
Eric intended to see his brother Peter before the reunion with his wife and daughters. He telephoned the factory and arranged to meet Peter there one morning.
Peter wheeled his chair away from the desk that had been Eric’s and waited, watching the door for his brother’s arrival with some agitation. Eric slipped in through a side door without walking through the workroom and startled Peter with his unexpected appearance. Peter thought he was thinner and less well dressed than he remembered. His hair was greyer but still the same as it had always been, untidy and overlong. But the look in the dark eyes was one of contentment.
“Eric, you old sod. How are you?” Peter said opening his arms for a hug.
“Hello, long-lost brother,” Eric said, putting his arms around the thin shoulders, glad of the excuse to hold Peter and hide the shock he’d had at the man’s sickly appearance.
“This is a bit cloak-and-dagger, boy, creeping through the goods entrance,” Peter laughed. “Why aren’t you in disguise? Someone will recognise you for sure and news of your visit will be round the town faster than Ianto’s bus!” Ianto’s bus was a local joke. The old man, long dead, had owned a bus that rarely travelled between one stop and the next without breaking down.
“I hope I won’t be recognised. I wouldn’t like news of my sudden recovery from amnesia to get out before I’ve talked to Harriet and the girls.”
“You know about that, then? Your Harriet pretending you had suffered memory loss, to save face?”
“Yes, I know,” Eric said sadly. “Sorry I am that it was necessary.” He pulled a chair around and sat facing his brother. “Heard about your accident too, Peter. But I couldn’t come back. I was well past the point of no return.” He seemed about to explain but changed his mind. “I just had to hope that you’d be able to keep things running here to support Harriet. That Jack Roberts is a good man, from what I’ve heard of him.”
“Why did you leave so suddenly and without explanation?” Peter asked.
The look in Eric’s eyes sharpened and he glared at his brother. “You know better than most!” He lowered his gaze and said more quietly. “I had to get away. It seemed pointless to stay. Harriet and I had nothing to say to each other. It was as if I were a fly on the wall watching two strangers prattling on, neither listening to the other.
“Unperturbed about my grief she was, sucking the tragic situation for all it was worth, making sure everything fitted into place for her as if it was her right. Complacent, comfortable, demanding everything, giving nothing. And there was Gloria cheerfully struggling. Dealing with the death of her husband, coping with her children, losing her home after someone cheated her, then making a happy home out of the two small rooms she rented. She was so pretty, and so bright. Never complaining, always ready to smile. I thought she needed me more than Harriet did and I certainly needed her. I was miserable, Harriet was miserable. I didn’t think I could do anything about Harriet’s happiness but I knew that with Gloria I would be happy. Cruel I know, but –” He smiled then and his pale face lit up as he added, “– I was right about being happy.”
“What will you do now Harriet knows where you are?”
“I hope to persuade her to divorce me. Then Gloria and I can legitimize the children.”
“Children? How many for God’s sake?”
“A houseful. Beautiful they are.” He grinned again and in the smile his happiness clearly showed. “Two are Gloria’s and the rest are ours.” He opened his hands in a gesture of, what else can I do? “We owe it to them.”
“What if Harriet refuses?”
“Then I’ll divorce her. Somehow.” Again he stared coldly at his brother. “It’ll take time, but I can wait. I want to be free to marry the woman I’ve found happiness with.”
Jack recognised Eric Russell the moment he saw him. He had been curious about Peter’s visitor, who had crept in via the goods deliveries entrance, and so he made an excuse and pushed open the office door.
Sensing rather than seeing his presence in the doorway, Eric looked up and gave a half smile. “Hello, you must be Jack. How are you then?”
“Startled at seeing you! Does your wife know you’re here?”
“No, and I don’t want her to. Not until I’ve had a chance to talk with her, right?”
“She saw you in Barry. I drove her back to check on the address. We all saw you: Harriet, Charlotte, Rhoda, Brian and me.”
Eric jumped up, startled. “Charlotte and Rhoda know? I wish I could have explained before they found out.”
“Damn it all.” Peter said, exasperated. “you’ve had seven years to explain!”
“Not a word about me being here though. Not yet.”
“That was a terrible thing to do to your family,” Jack said quietly. “You haven’t the look of a lothario, but two women. Duw! If you had to, you could at least have been honest.”
“What’s it to do with you?” Eric demanded.
“I’ve seen what it’s done to young Charlotte.”
“Yes, I suppose it affected her badly.”
“I can’t say I’m glad to meet you,” Jack added coldly. “You’re a cheating coward, Eric Russell.”
“I am that. And a very happy one. And,” he emphasized, “I intend things to stay that way, no messing.” Eric’s lips tightened determinedly as he stood to leave. He was a small man, only a little over five feet tall. His grey, absent-minded hair fell in all directions, undecided about where it belonged. He had on a suit that was far from new and his shoes were worn, but well polished. His shirt was snowy and neatly ironed. He looked well cared for, even if a bit shabby.
Eric walked down the hill, glancing only briefly at Mill House. He hurried through the town, trilby hat pulled well down over his face, the collar of his mac pulled up. He didn’t want anyone to stop and speak to him. They might remember, even though seven years was a long time. His heart was racing as he sat on the train taking him back to his home, away from the place he had once thought he would never leave.
On Sunday morning, once the vegetables were prepared for dinner, and Peter was comfortably settled, Charlotte walked down the hill and along Main Street to Joe’s shop. He was already there, the contents of drawers tipped out into cardboard boxes, lists and pencils on every shelf. Stocktaking was underway.
After greeting her with undisguised relief, Joe explained.
“Put the total in the first column, the price in the second. I’ll do the additions and fill in the end column later.”
“Joe Llewellyn, are you suggesting I can’t add up?” she teased and with the light bantering setting the mood, they worked steadily and contentedly for the rest of the morning. Charlotte had been invited to have dinner with Joe’s Auntie Bessie Philpot and at one o’clock they walked along the quiet footpath; arm in arm when it was wide enough, Joe’s hand resting on her shoulder when it was not. The man they saw coming towards them had obviously been in a fight. It took a few seconds for Joe to recognise him.
“Jack Roberts! What on earth happened, man? You look like you’ve been hit by a train!”
“It’s nothing. It’s all right. Just a misunderstanding, that’s all.”
“It wasn’t Eric, was it?” Joe whispered.
“No, not Eric. It was no one I know,” Jack replied emphatically.
Joe insisted he came into his aunt’s house to be cleaned up and Jack agreed. “I don’t want to go back to Kath’s like this.”
“Very thoughtful of you,” Joe said grimly. “But you aren’t going anywhere until you’ve spoken to the police.”
“No, no,” Jack protested. “I tell you, it’s all right. I was mistaken for someone else, that’s all.”
“Then that ‘someone else’ will be more than glad if we can get the bloke before he catches up with him. won’t he!”
Auntie Bessie didn’t fuss or try to get explanations; she presumed it was the same ‘madman’ who had attacked her. Bustling about her kitchen, she gathered cloths and hot water and ointment and quickly sorted out the worst of Jack’s injuries, which turned out to be less serious than they looked – most of the mess being mud – then went back to getting the dinner.
“Did you see the man who hit you?” Joe asked, persisting with his questions. “Was he tall? Young? Brown hair, dark eyes? Heavily built?”
“I didn’t see a hair of him,” Jack insisted.
Charlotte was silent. Joe was describing the stranger, with whom she had spent the afternoon on the hill.
Bessie’s next-door neighbour, Bertha Evans, came to see what had happened, and stayed to listen to Jack’s very brief explanation. Bertha was small, very slim, her grey-green eyes gentle and slow. She was a quiet person who rarely spoke unnecessarily, and her movements were restricted to the minimum. When she sat, she was utterly still and when she listened to someone she flattered them by giving them her whole attention. There was about her an air of calmness and peace and Charlotte always loved to see her.
Bertha seemed to survive on what she could grow or make herself. She had never worked, and how she managed was a mystery that even Bessie had been unable to untangle. She grew vegetables in the large garden behind the cottage, and the remains of an orchard gave her fruit for bottling and jam-making, some of which she sold. Chickens and ducks, which ran free on the grass near the river, and goats for milk both for use and to sell, gave her sufficient money to buy flour for the bread she baked in her oven twice a week.
There had to be more money, Bessie reasoned, and she grew more and more discontented when her relentless questioning and devious investigations failed to satisfy her curiosity.
Bertha’s daughter Lillian, now eighteen, but with the mind of a child more than ten years younger, had tried on countless occasions to get a job. But although the kindly people of Bryn Melinau sympathised with the amiable girl and tried to help, it was soon found to be impossible to employ her, even for the simplest tasks. Very overweight, Lillian enjoyed eating to the exclusion of everything else. When not so employed, she could sit for hours and stare into space, oblivious to boiling pans, crying babies and unwashed floors, and no matter what type of work she tried, she rarely lasted more than three days.
After listening to Jack’s story, Bertha nodded and said, “Well, Jack, it’s up to you, perhaps you’d be wasting Constable Hardy’s time, but I think he should be told. The same man might have hit Bessie and if you’re the second, well, he must be caught.”
Jack was adamant and the matter remained a secret between the few people involved. Bessie was most upset, believing the assailant was the same man who had attacked her.
A further disappointment for Bessie was the news of Eric Russell’s return. In the way of all small communities. Bryn Melinau had ways of rapidly spreading news. Bessie was usually the first to put her expert skills to work but for once she was second in the race to tell everyone. It fanned out via the Russells’ bookbinding factory.
Jack told Gaynor Edwards who the visitor to Peter’s office that morning had been; Gaynor confided the interesting tidbit of gossip to one of the others in the workroom and before Eric’s train had left the station, a dozen people knew. It only needed a few knocks on doors, a few shared cups of tea, to make it common knowledge that Eric had recovered from his ‘amnesia’. He was back.
No one mentioned him to Harriet, although conversations ceased on her approach, there were gigggles stifled behind gloved hands and Harriet guessed that her secret was out. She wanted to jump off the nearest cliff, she confided to Rhoda and Brian. “But be sure that if I do I’ll push him off first!”
They were sitting in the lounge of Mill House while Bessie washed the kitchen floor. They were unaware that the scrubbing brush had ceased its rasping until Bessie came in with a tray of tea.
“Best you tell him to clear off. You’re happier without him,” Rhoda was saying tearfully. “isn’t she, Bri? We don’t want him coming back and upsetting our lives. Hurt us terribly he did and I for one will never forgive him. No, Mammy, leave things be.”
“Your Rhoda’s right,” Bessie said, undisguisedly eavesdropping.
“You wouldn’t say that if he was yours!” Harriet snapped.
“Wouldn’t I?” Bessie hauled herself to her full height and said, “What makes you think I wouldn’t send him packing?”
“Because you’ve never had a husband!”
“And that’s a crime? Look at you then. What an advert for wedded bliss!” She plonked the tray of tea down and pulled off her apron.
With a haughty expression on her face, Harriet turned to Rhoda. “Pay the woman and ask her to leave, will you?”
“Don’t worry, I’m going!”
Rhoda looked at Brian and smiled. These spats were a regular occurrence and always forgotten by the next time Bessie was due. Harriet knew she wouldn’t get anyone else to do what Bessie did, and certainly not for the money she paid her.
Charlotte and Joe were finishing counting the stock one evening when someone tapped on the shop window. It was after six-thirty at night and the windows had been shuttered to show that the place was closed for the day.
“Can’t they read!” Joe grumbled. getting down from the ladder where he had been checking the contents of boxes on the top shelf. “Shuttered windows, a notice big as a double-decker bus and still they knock.”
“Sorry I am to disturb you, boy, but is Charlotte there?”
“Come in Bertha. She’s in the office going through the lists. Can’t miss anything out, not when it’s my last chance to add to the price.” he joked, nodding towards the corner partition.
“Wondered how poor Mrs Russell is today.” Bertha said. “Got over her terrible shock, has she? Fancy Eric – I mean Mr Russell – turning up like that after all this time.”
“Eric has never turned up! Well I never!” Joe grinned. feigning ignorance. “Rubbish, woman! Nothing but a lot of ol’ rumour.”
“Indeed he has,” Bertha said confidentially. “and I’m so worried for Mrs Russell, she doesn’t deserve that, does she, poor dab?” Cupping her mouth to hide her words from Charlotte on the corner, she added. “She found him with a woman calling herself Mrs Eric Russell, and them with a houseful of kids, would you believe?”
Charlotte didn’t show herself; she didn’t want to discuss the family’s predicament with anyone.
“I’m surprised at Bertha, coming here for a few more items of gossip,” Charlotte said when the woman had gone. “She doesn’t usually involve herself in tittle-tattle. But there, I suppose this is second only to the election results in national importance: Eric Russell and his notorious vanishing trick! But I wonder why she’s so excited?”
“Come to make sure it’s true, I expect. But it can’t make any difference to her, can it? He can hardly make her an ‘honest woman’, can he? Him with a wife and daughters plus another woman and a houseful of kids!”
“What d’you mean, make Bertha an honest woman? What’s Dadda’s reappearance to do with her?”
“Some say he’s Lillian’s lost father.”
“Joe!”
“Well, someone’s been keeping them for the last eighteen years.”
“Well it isn’t my father! Worse than your Auntie Bessie Philpot you are, Joe Llewellyn! How dare you even think it!”
“I’m only saying what I’ve heard,” he protested.
“From your Auntie Bessie Philpot no doubt!”
Joe saw from Charlotte’s face that a row was imminent and he sighed with relief as Constable Hardy knocked on the door and entered to make sure all was well.