“What d’you mean, the wedding is off? Honestly, Charlotte, dealing with you is like coping with a petulant child!” The normally placid Joe shocked Charlotte by reacting in serious anger when she called into the shop to tell him that the wedding had to be cancelled.
“But Joe, you don’t understand—”
“I understand that when there’s a problem you push me away. Won’t you ever think of us as a team? A partnership? Sensible, dependable Charlotte! That’s how people see you, isn’t it? Well I think you’re simply afraid.”
“Joe, that’s ridiculous.” She backed away from him, startled at the unexpected rage.
“Is it? The truth is that you seek the easy way out. Rather than confront your difficulties you fall over backwards to avoid dealing with them. You’re a coward, Charlotte Russell, and you haven’t the guts to become one of a couple. You haven’t the guts to stand up for me, for us. Always on your own you’ll be, unless you change, and pretty damned quick!” He walked out of the shop, slamming the door behind him and after the shock of his explosive anger had faded, she wondered what to do.
She’d never had anyone walk away from her in a huff before and she didn’t like the feeling. She looked around the neat, orderly shop and felt trapped. She didn’t want to be there when Joe finally returned, yet how she could leave the shop open and unattended? She sat on a chair in the small office, trembling, frightened, his words stabbing into her brain like knives. He was so unfair. She couldn’t help her mother being the way she was. How could he expect her to walk away and leave her to face her father’s return, her uncle’s illness and the possibility of a divorce?
Two hours later she was still there, worrying about getting the dinner, but still unwilling to leave Joe’s shop unlocked. She decided that the dinner was unimportant on this occasion; Joe did come first. She felt guilty, but less so than she would have if she failed to look after Joe’s property. Mam wouldn’t die without dinner, she might even get something for herself, although that she doubted.
She sold a few small items, demonstrated a bicycle to someone considering moving up from an old sit-up-and-beg bicycle to one with three-speed gears and drop-handlebars, and between times she sat and stared into space. There was a phone but she didn’t telephone home. What was there to say? No sympathy from her mother over having quarrelled with Joe, that was certain!
The door opened and Joe stood there, the anger still in his eyes and her instinct was to push past him and run out, but she didn’t.
“Oh, Joe,” she said softly and he came towards her, his expression softening, his arms opening to enfold her.
“Charlotte. I’m sorry. But we really do have to deal with it, together.”
“I’ll try. Joe.”
“At least everything is out in the open now. she knows what she has to face. The worst is over.”
“Unless she finds out about Lillian. If she were told about Dad and Bertha—”
“If it’s true, mind, you know what this place is for rumours. Besides, a secret kept for eighteen years isn’t likely to break now, is it?”
“I hope not, Joe. I hope not.”
“Remember” – the steel was back in his voice as he touched her cheeks and made her look at him – “remember, my pretty, if it does, we’ll help her but it’s something for us to cope with, to face together. Right?”
Together. It had a lovely sound.
Charlotte went to the hospital frequently. On the third day of her uncle’s stay she found him improved and able to talk to her. For two days he had been semiconscious and it was with relief that she looked around the doorway and saw him propped up on his pillows and looking towards her. He waved a greeting and she ran to hug him.
“Uncle Peter! What a relief to see you’re on the mend.”
“I’m certainly better than yesterday. Did you come?”
“Of course I did.”
“What about your mother?”
“She’s well,” she said, deliberately misunderstanding him.
“I meant, did she come?”
“I know you did.” She busied herself packing away the clean clothes she had brought and taking out items for washing. The speed of her actions revealed her anger. “I’ve tried to persuade her, Uncle Peter. She won’t consider it.”
“Don’t be angry with her.”
“Even Rhoda came in to sit with you yesterday with her patient and adoring Brian. She sat holding your hand being terribly brave, as if she were the patient and about to have surgery. But Mam went to the pictures.”
“I’ve never told you about your mother’s childhood, have I, Charlotte? I’m sure she hasn’t told you either. It was an empty and sad one. Everyone she began to care for left her. Your grandparents lived abroad and your mother was left here. From a cruelly early age she attended a boarding school. During the holidays she came home to an empty house with only indifferent servants to look after her, and mostly they were servants who were new to her, they never stayed long. And I suspect that her parents found it cheaper to close the house and employ someone just for the holiday then close it again.”
Charlotte said nothing, she only half listened, closing her mind to sympathy. Hadn’t it been similar with herself and Rhoda? Left with Joe’s Auntie Bessie Philpot night after night? If it had been so terrible for her mother without parents constantly near, why had she treated her own children in the same way?
“There was no Auntie Bessie Philpot for her,” Peter added, cutting across her thoughts.
Again Charlotte didn’t respond. She admitted to herself that Joe’s Auntie Bessie had been a loving, caring, deputy mother. How could that sort of childhood make her mother so unfeeling? How could that explain her non-appearance at the hospital to comfort Uncle Peter when he was so ill?
“But why doesn’t she come to see how you are?” she asked finally. “I don’t see how a lonely childhood could stop her wanting to make sure you’re all right. You’ve never left her alone for a day since Dadda went away. Not even during the war. She was one of the lucky ones.”
“She was sent to nursery school as soon as it was possible and during the holidays, stayed with a succession of friends. Many of whom didn’t really want her. She sensed this and was bewildered and sad. At seven she went to boarding school and, because they were so far away, her parents couldn’t even visit on open days. When all her friends had their families with them she stood in the background utterly alone. Imagine how she must have felt.”
Peter closed his eyes for a few moments and Charlotte wanted him to stop talking, to stop trying to make her understand. Why should she understand a mother who allowed an unhappy childhood to ruin her own daughter’s life? She’s trying to prevent me marrying Joe simply for her own reasons, not out of concern for me, Charlotte thought. Resentment, not pity, filled her heart.
“At term’s ending,” Peter went on, after another, longer pause. “when all the other children were being collected by their parents, swept up, kissed, hugged, she had to wait until the person who was paid to mind her turned up. Always the last. A stranger every time.”
Charlotte saw that Peter was tired and she said nothing while he closed his eyes and rested again, dozing intermittently. Lost in her own thoughts, she began to imagine that lonely little girl and it became impossible not to feel sympathy for her. Yet it didn’t really explain her mother’s non-appearance at the hospital. She depended on Uncle Peter so much, some affection must have grown between them? Even if there was no affection, normal behaviour must deem it proper for her to pretend some? To put on an act?
The loneliness of which Uncle Peter spoke was of long ago. She had been married more than twenty years. Since her father’s disappearance she’d had Uncle Peter for support. Surely it was time to forget her hollow childhood? She saw Peter’s eyes reopen and she prepared to listen with exaggerated interest. It seemed important for him to tell her. Perhaps once he had, he would rest. He looked so dreadfully tired, his eyes bright and feverish.
“Then,” he went on, as if he hadn’t paused, “when the immiment return of her mother and father promised a life filled with love, attention and security, her parents died. They caught a fever during their last weeks in Malaya and in days they were dead.”
“She couldn’t have missed them. She didn’t know them.”
“Their most recent letters had been full of what they would do on their return. It all sounded like a wonderful dream. Holidays together, picnics, visits to friends, everything she had imagined, and everything she had seen other children enjoying.” Again his eyes closed and she sat patiently, trying to imagine the little girl that her mother had been.
“She had a calendar on her bedside table on which she was marking the days. With only two weeks to go they let her down, finally and irrevocably, by dying and leaving her practically peniless.”
“But then she had Dadda and now she has you,” Charlotte insisted. “And Rhoda and me.”
Peter seemed not to hear. “She was engaged to marry and he let her down too, abandoning her only days before the wedding. The banns were called, then he told her he was marrying someone else. She married your father on the rebound and all the years they were together she constantly reminded him he was second choice.
“Poor Eric, he tried so hard to do everything she asked, to compensate for being the wrong man. Her guardians refused permission for her to marry your father, you know. They considered him far below her socially, even though all the money her family once had was lost in some financial swindle.” He smiled at her and went on. “They married anyway and I think were happy, for a time. At least until the disappointment of not having the large family they both wanted so much. Then your father gave her the social life she craved, for as long as he could stand it, then – well, you know what happened then.”
“So why is she so against Joe? Didn’t she learn from her own experience of others deciding for her?”
“Joe was – but no, that’s another story for another time. She has never lost the fear of losing those she loves. She’s afraid of losing you, I suppose.”
“She won’t lose me if I marry Joe. In Main Street I’ll be, not Malaya! She’d only have to shout and I’d hear her!” She sighed with impatience. “Really Uncle Peter, you’d think she’d sympathize, not stand in our way, having been in the same position with a guardian disapproving of the man she loved.” Peter seemed not to hear.
“Your mother and father desperately wanted children. There were three babies which failed to survive before you arrived healthy and yelling your head off,” he went on, his weary eyes staring into space as if seeing again those sad events. “Losing three babies after a childhood like she had had would be enough to send many women out of their minds. The fear is constantly there. She was very anxious about you and Rhoda when you were small. If you and Rhoda weren’t home from school on the stroke of three-thirty she was in tears.”
“I don’t remember such concern,” Charlotte whispered rebelliously.
“When your father went away, she transferred her anxieties onto me, heaped the reasons for panic onto my shoulders,” Peter said. “It’s as if she has to have someone to worry about, someone on whom she utterly depends.”
His voice was low now and Charlotte had to bend close to him to hear. “If I’m five minutes late home she imagines me crushed under the wheels of some enormous lorry. I let her down you see. Like all the rest. I’d promised her she could rely on me forever. I swore I’d always be strong. By getting myself injured and stuck in a wheelchair, I let her down too.”
Charlotte sat unmoving, silently digesting her uncle’s words. She tried to see how such experiences could make it impossible to overcome fear with love, and she failed.
As she saw it her mother had let Uncle Peter down by her reaction to his disability. Surely she could have taken over and cared for him? Surely she owed him that much?
She wouldn’t let Joe down, whatever happened to them, and why, if childhood without attention was so damaging, why had her mother left her and Rhoda so much? Going on holidays without them, spending evening after evening entertaining and being entertained, leaving them with Joe’s Auntie Bessie Philpot? She couldn’t make sense of it.
The only time she and Rhoda were included was when they were dressed up prettily and brought into a room filled with people they hardly knew and were made to sing for them, an embarrassing and painful experience for herself. Although, she remembered, Rhoda had seemed not to mind being paraded and admired. What her uncle had told her only added to her belief that her mother was a selfish woman. That she was repeating the follies of her childhood without a thought for what her own children were suffering, simply made it worse.
She wondered if she dare discuss her mutinous thoughts with her uncle but when she turned to him, he was sleeping. Not a peaceful, replenishing sleep but one that appeared agitated and unrestful. He began moving his arms about, thrashing the covers as if locked in a nightmare. His swollen face and his unhealthy, moist, red skin alarmed her. Anxious now, she ran to fetch a nurse.
Bertha walked down the lane leading to her home and saw her daughter walking up to meet her.
“Thought you’d got lost, Mam.” Lillian said, smiling as if she had told a brilliant joke. Bertha laughed and hugged her.
“Never. Fat chance I have of getting lost when I never leave the town.”
“I cleaned out the chickens coop and put the straw and shit in a bag for the allotments.”
“Hush that talk! Call it manure, Lillian.”
“That isn’t what they call it over the allotments, Mam.”
“You must call it manure.”
“Why?” Lillian wore her stubborn look and Bertha resigned herself to a hour of sulks.
“Go and talk to Auntie Bessie while I get dinner,” she told Lillian. Talking to Bessie always restored Lillian’s normal good temper. Perhaps she would be able to have an hour’s lie down. She pushed a couple of potatoes into the oven. They’d be nice for tea with a bit of sauce to hide the lack of butter.
Lillian hauled herself up from the chair she had flopped into and watched her mother climb the stairs, and heard the creaking as she lay on the bed. Knocking on next door’s window brought a smiling Bessie to the door.
“It’s my birthday soon, Auntie Bessie.”
“Yes, darlin’. Eighteen you’ll be, quite grown up now, you are.”
“Perhaps he’ll come with a present, my father. Some people have lots of presents for their birthdays, don’t they?”
“Some,” Bessie said. “But not all.” Dropping her voice she added sadly. “Never have a present, I wouldn’t, if it wasn’t for my Joe.”
“My Dadda coming home, that would be a present, wouldn’t it?”
“A wonderful gift.” Bessie handed her the glass of home-made lemonade and a small Welsh cake. “Eat up now then we’ll go for a walk along the riverbank.” Lillian picked up the flat, spicy cake with a nod of thanks.
“Do you think he’ll be like Ronald Coleman?”
“Who, my darlin’?” Bessie asked, although she knew who Lillian was thinking of.
“My Dadda. Tall he’ll be because I’m tall. But not fat. I won’t be fat when he comes, or shy. Mam says I’m shy because I haven’t got a father. But I have and he’ll come and he’ll make everything better.”
Bertha called to tell Bessie where she would be, and walked up the hill to Mill House. The door was opened by Charlotte, for which she gave silent thanks. If Harriet had answered her knock she might not have said what she came for. Snooty beyond was Harriet Russell.
“Called for a word with your uncle I have,” she explained. “Home from hospital, isn’t he?”
“Home but far from well. Come in and I’ll see if he’s awake.” Charlotte led her into the back room overlooking the garden and left them to talk. It had been apparent from Bertha’s tightened lips that she wanted to talk to her uncle privately.
“I’ll make us some tea,” she said, closing the kitchen door behind her.
Peter smiled at his visitor. “Bertha, nice to see you. How are you managing. All right?”
“That Jack Roberts of yours has been fighting again,” she said. “Funny mind, considering how well he’s thought of, but I’ve never trusted Jack Roberts. He lives in one of Kath’s cheapest rooms, yet he’s got money. I was behind him in the bank once, changing five shillings worth of pennies that I’d saved, I was, and he was drawing out a lot of money. All them white fivers like I’ve never seen more than twice in my whole life. What could he be wanting to draw such a large sum for? What did he do with it? He’s never left the town so far as I can discover. And more’s to the point, where did he get it?”
“As you say. he doesn’t spend much of his wages, living in one room, with Kath doing his cooking and his laundry. What he does with his savings is his concern. We mustn’t pry.”
“So long as he doesn’t cheat Kath.” The small woman looked so fierce that Peter was reminded of a ferret he used to keep when he was young. Small, intelligent and looking rather cuddly and harmless, but with a bite that could kill a rabbit in seconds.
“I’m sure he wouldn’t do that. Not Jack.”
Peter was thoughtful as they sat and sipped their tea and Bertha talked to Charlotte. It was intriguing to wonder what Jack was doing with a bunch of fivers. Then he smiled in relief. Of course, it would have been the business account. Jack went to the bank and took out money to pay the wages every week. He explained this to Bertha.
After Bertha had gone he frowned. The wages paid to the small work force didn’t really explain why Jack had a load of five pound notes. One pound notes, and ten shilling notes and lots of silver and copper, but there weren’t many who earned more than five pounds.
He mentioned it to Charlotte then put the puzzle from his mind. Whatever the explanation, Jack had the right to do as he pleased with his own money.
Harriet overheard some of the conversation and repeated it to Kath some days later.
“Bertha says he’s taking you for a fool, living cheap while he has a lot of money.”
“My lodgers are my business and no one takes me for a fool. I decide who should live in my house. I don’t want the likes of you discussing my boarders.”
“How dare you speak to me like that?” Harriet said angrily.
“Dare, is it? Why shouldn’t I dare talk to you like that? Because you think yourself above the likes of the rest of us? Damned cheek telling my private business to all and sundry. For all your fancy pretentions you’ve got a mouth bigger than the Severn Tunnel, you have.”
“I don’t spread—”
“You aren’t going to say you don’t spread gossip? Harriet Russell, may my tongue come loose and fall out if you aren’t the biggest gossip this side of Offa’s Dyke!”
“I’ve never seen you blocking your ears so you can’t hear!”
“Bertha was concerned, and talked to Peter for reassurance. You’re passing it on for the joy of it, there’s a difference!”
“You support Bertha Evans, a woman with an illegitimate child, and not me!”
“Your life isn’t so pure that you could afford for people to talk about you, mind!”
“At least I haven’t got a child with no known father!” Harriet said haughtily.
“No known father, is it?” Kath was furious now. “No known father? Well then, Mrs High and Mighty, what if I tell you what I should have told you years ago. Your Eric! That’s who’s been paying for Lillian’s keep. Why would he do that if he wasn’t responsible? No known father indeed! Paying her a couple of pound every week he’s been ever since she was born, to help feed the poor girl. There, how’s that for a juicy bit of gossip then? Like it do you, when you’re the victim? Mrs-superior-sodding-Russell?”
Harriet ran from her, stumbled along the pavement, stepping out onto the road, running for Rhoda’s house to hide her shame. She ran blindly, oblivious of traffic. Bicycles swerved, horses pulled up, cars squealed their brakes and irate drivers shouted and called her names. She was aware of none of it, hardly caring if she were knocked down or not.
Eric, with Bertha. It couldn’t be true. He wouldn’t. Not with Bertha. And all this time Bertha hadn’t said a word. She wouldn’t have kept it to herself. Not for more than eighteen years. Lying Kath was, for sure.
She reached Rhoda’s house, then remembered with a wail of dismay that Rhoda and Brian were still in Aberystwyth. In a daze, she walked home. Her shoes, unsuitable for walking, cut into her feet. She puffed as she hurried away from the town where she imagined everyone was laughing at her. Sobs wracked her body. Life was too cruel. How could she live through this? Nothing, nothing could ever be worse than this.
Charlotte was out. She didn’t go in to see Peter, she had almost forgotten he was there.
What she needed was to be alone to consider this latest punch in the face from a cruel fate. First Eric turning up to make her story about a mental aberration a lie, and now this. How could it be true? How could the slow, overweight Lillian be half-sister to her lovely Rhoda and Charlotte? Going to her bedroom, she lay on the bed, eyes dry now, but the ache in her heart was like a stone.
Eric had been such a catch. A neat, attractive man, mannerly and quiet, hard working and helpful in the house. He had been earning a good wage up at the factory and he had saved money to buy into the firm. The previous owner had died and he and Peter had taken over the business and made a success of it. He had restored the neglected Mill House and refurnished it and they had planned to fill it with children. Even during the war, when he had been exceptionally busy and had been called to do extra duties like fire watching, he found spare moments to work on the house. She had believed he was content with her and their life together. It had all been a lie.
She had boasted to everyone that her husband was generous and kind, comparing him with her friends’ husbands and making them discontented. And all the time he’d been straying, and, she realised with a shock of pain and grief, others must have known. In the bleakness of this latest discovery, others knowing about the affair seemed the worst of his cruelty. She wouldn’t divorce him though. That way she could prevent that Gloria woman from winning everything. No, she’d make him pay by refusing to let him marry the woman and legalize her children.
A few days later, a letter came from a solicitor in Barry, explaining that Eric was beginning proceedings to divorce her. She didn’t reply to the letter.
Charlotte and Joe knew nothing about the newest revelation that had given Harriet so much grief. Her depression was put down to her worries over Peter, who was still terribly unwell.
‘Mam,” Charlotte said one day in early June. “I want to marry Joe.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, it’s impossible at present, surely you can see that!”
“I can see my twenty-fourth birthday approaching. How much longer do you want me to wait, Mam?”
“Until you find someone suitable.”
“Joe is my choice. Surely you can understand. I love him, like you loved Dad, in spite of others trying to persuade you different.”
“Who’s been talking to you? Uncle Peter, I expect. Well, when you think of how your father has treated me, I might have been wiser to listen to those dissenting voices!”
“You had twenty happy years. I’d settle for that while hoping for more.”
“Happy? You don’t know the half of it!”
Surprised at the vehemence in her mother’s tone, Charlotte raised her own voice and said. “Uncle Peter tried to make me understand your unreasonableness but all I understand is your selfishness!”
She stood angrily. wanting to say more but afraid to. She had so rarely answered her mother back, and even now, at her age, when so much was at stake, she couldn’t continue. They glared at each other and the air prickled around them as if filled with electricity. The knock at the door startled them.
“I’ll go,” Charlotte said, but her mother pushed her aside.
“Go to your room until you’ve calmed down!” Irritated by the interruption, she pulled open the door.
Eric stood there, his hand raised to give a second knock. Standing beside him was a girl of about eighteen, whose hands were held by two small girls.
The toddlers were holding on to Eric’s trouser leg and peering up at her with curiosity. Eric had a small baby in his arms, wrapped tightly in a woollen shawl.
“Can we come in, Harriet?” Eric asked.
Bewildered, not knowing what or how she should feel about such an invasion. Harriet stepped back and watched like someone in a dream, as Eric ushered his brood through the passageway and into her living room.
The children stood in a row while he introduced them.
“Miranda, who is eighteen, then Ellie, six, Isabelle, five. Louise is four, Petula is just two and this,” hugging the infant in his arms. “this is Matthew. He’s only three months old and missing his mother very much, as we all are.”
“Missing her?” Harriet stuttered. This was her home, yet these people were making her the odd one out. Where was Charlotte? She looked around, desperate for her daughter to appear and help sort this out.
“Gloria died three weeks ago. I was wondering if you could see your way to taking us in here.”
“What?” Harriet shouted the word and Matthew jumped in Eric’s arms and began to cry, a snuffling, dry sound that ate straight into Harriet’s heart. For some obscure reason, memories of her own lost babies flooded back and the once familiar ache of bereavement returned with an intensity that was an acute pain.
“But – I don’t have room for all of you,” she said. trying to think clearly. Where was Charlotte? She should be here. How could she manage anything like this without Charlotte?
Eric was jiggling the baby and saying soothing words to comfort him. “I realise you’d have arrangements to make. If we gave you a week?”
“Give him to me, Dad,” the eighteen-year-old Miranda said, and she took the baby, sat down and began to give him a feed from a bottle taken from Eric’s coat pocket.
“Dad?” Harriet faltered.
“He isn’t really my father.” Miranda smiled. “Our father, mine and Danny’s that is, was killed at the battle for Tobruk.”
“Danny? How many are you for heaven’s sake?”
“Seven.” Eric replied, sitting and taking the two youngest girls on his knees. “Lucky seven we used to say, while Gloria was carrying little Matthew here. Sadly, he didn’t bring us luck. Gloria didn’t recover from the birth.” He looked at Miranda and they shared a look that brought a tightness to Harriet’s throat. It seemed so long since anyone had looked at her with love or even genuine affection.
“You won’t turn us away, will you, Harriet?” Eric said. “I don’t know how I’ll manage if you refuse to help us.”
“Why should I help?”
“No reason at all, except your basic goodness.”
Eric watched her as fleeting thoughts and changing emotions flashed across her face. A small, untidy figure, in a creased suit and less than pristine shirt and tie, his grey hair awry, a gentle, patient smile on his tired, pale face.
“What would I tell people?”
“The truth is always the simplest. The people of Bryn Melinau are kind folk; they’ll welcome us all for sure. Shocked they’ll be, but they’ll soon forget.”
“Forget? You waltzing in here after seven years with a family I knew nothing about and expecting me to welcome them like they were my own?” She shook her head. “Shamed I’d be. I couldn’t, Eric. You’re mad to even ask. My friends, all the people in the town, they’d all know.”
“Gossip is always popular here, but people are good deep down, they wouldn’t make us feel unwanted. Time will see us settled and accepted.”
“Damn what they think of you! What about me?” Harriet shouted and again baby Matthew started and began to cry.
“What’s most important, your hurt feelings or the happiness of these beautiful children?”
“I don’t know how to care for children. We always had servants to cope. I couldn’t have any more after Rhoda or I might have learnt. Not that that stopped you. Because your wife didn’t oblige, you found plenty of others who did. Bertha Evans and that soppy Lillian. That’s down to you, isn’t it!” She couldn’t stop the words coming out, even though she knew it wasn’t the right time. She was thrown into utter confusion by this unexpected and unbelievable situation. The need to hurt him was a pain that wouldn’t go away. “I think I hate you, Eric. I couldn’t bear to sleep under the same roof.”
“Then take the children. Miranda will care for them, just give them a home to grow up in together. Please Harriet. I’m begging you not to turn them away. They’ll go into a home if I can’t find us a safe place to live. Separated, growing up not knowing their brothers and sisters. Remember how we planned to fill this house with children?”
“Don’t talk about what we planned.” she said sharply, memories stabbing her heart. “This is something you did that was wicked, Eric. Truly wicked to do this and come back here to taunt me with it.”
“The blame is mine and I readily accept it, but how can you refuse them? Innocent they are, and so beautiful.”
Harriet looked around the room filled with strangers. Where was Charlotte when she needed her?
“Please.” Eric said again, softly.
She turned away from his pleading eyes, tried not to look at the drawn and frightened faces of the children and looked instead at Miranda. The girl was sitting feeding baby Matthew, her head bent watching his face, long lashes on her soft, rosy cheeks, dark hair falling around her shoulders in natural waves.
She’s a very pretty girl, Harriet thought, this stranger who calls my husband “Dad”. There’s a gentleness about her, a trusting look in the dark eyes. She looked away. Although she was the one wronged and being asked the favour, she found she was unable to look any of them in the eyes. She had to stay unemotional, hard, tell them to go, forget they ever came.
“What do you think of all this?” she demanded, looking towards Miranda but focusing her gaze above the girl’s head.
“Eric and Gloria were so happy, it’s a tragedy.”
“I don’t mean how do you feel about your mother stealing someone else’s husband and being happy with him! I mean this,” she waved her arms, encompassing the children and the now silent Eric. “You, expecting me – the wronged wife – to come to your aid.”
“Dad has always told us how much you love children. I think the children would be safe with you.”
“And me? What d’you feel for me?”
“I think your friends will be impressed by your loving and noble act and think very highly of you.”
“You do, do you?”
“I do.”
“Why can’t you look after them? They’re more yours than mine.”
“Dad thinks living with you would benefit us all. Even my brother Danny, who goes to sea, will want a place to come home to. You’re the one. We need you desperately. After your own sad childhood and your desire for a large family. I—”
“I do not want my private affairs discussed!” Harriet, overcome, fled from the room. An hour later, Harriet was clearing the dishes after feeding her guests with soup and a salad.
Eric smiled at Harriet as he stacked the dishes preparatory to washing them. His smile was still capable of weakening her resolve. There was a beat of excitement in her heart. Telling others was going to be a challenge but the idea of a ready-made family was beginning to appeal. Time in her life for a change. Lucky seven indeed! Well perhaps it might be just that – if it meant Eric was back! She’d made him promise to go along with the story about amnesia though. He owed her that much.