Missing the Moment Read online

  Missing the Moment

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  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

  Copyright

  Missing the Moment

  Grace Thompson

  Chapter One

  Charlotte Russell looked around her at the untidy workroom where the few employees were doing various tasks in a desultory manner. Uncaring as well as untidy. she thought bitterly. Once, Russell’s Bookbinders and Restorers had been a proud family business, but since the disappearance of her father, Eric Russell, and his brother Peter’s accident, motivation and efficiency had dwindled.

  For a while they had allowed things simply to tick over. believing against all common sense that Eric would return. Now, after an absence of seven years, all hope had gone. Charlotte knew that her mother had never given up believing that her husband would come back to her and she continued to watch each day for a letter from him explaining his absence and announcing his imminent return. Charlotte and her younger sister Rhoda had encouraged her in that belief, wrongly it now seemed, as Harriet Russell continued to waste her life waiting for that distant day when everything would be all right once again.

  They knew he hadn’t died. Every year Eric sent them a Christmas card, one to Charlotte, one to her sister Rhoda and one to Harriet. The cards arrived in August and each was sent from a different holiday resort. Harriet insisted they showed no one the cards and refused to discuss them. They all agreed they were simply a way of informing his family that he was alive, without giving away his whereabouts.

  As far as everyone else in Bryn Melinau knew, Eric Russell had suffered a breakdown and wandered off, having lost his memory. To anyone who asked, Harriet explained in details that were pure invention, how all this had been due to his terrible experiences during the war. A few wondered how Eric could have suffered anything so serious in Aldershot, which was where he had spent the war, but no one questioned it. Like Harriet, they accepted the fabrication.

  Now, in the sadly neglected workroom that had been her father’s pride and pleasure, Charlotte swallowed the disappointment she felt each time she came there, and prepared a smile for her uncle.

  Uncle Peter was looking through the pages of the monthly accounts ledger and from his face she knew he was not concentrating on the figures he had before him. He cared little for what they told him, like everyone else, she thought with mild anger. Then a frisson of pain crossed his face and at once she felt remorse. Uncle Peter was almost constantly in pain and if he hadn’t given so much of his time trying to gather together the threads of her father’s business, he might now be living a more relaxed and comfortable life.

  When she had made her own cursory examination of the book and gathered the letters to which she would reply at home when her mother wasn’t around, she kissed her uncle and refastened her coat and scarf.

  “I’ll have to go. Sorry I can’t stay longer, Uncle Peter, but you know what Mam’s like if I spend too much time up here.” She smiled. “Got to make sure dinner’s ready. Mam’s out with Kath Thomas – you know, her from the boarding house on the bridge. She hates it if she comes back and I’m not in. Specially when it’s as cold as today.”

  She saw the relief in Uncle Peter’s face as he pushed aside the heavy ledger and moved himself away from the desk, where a curve had been cut to accommodate his wheelchair.

  “I won’t be far behind you, Charlotte. I’ll be glad of something hot, the heating doesn’t cope with this weather very well and my hands are a bit stiff.”

  “You’re all right. aren’t you?” At once she was concerned. “Shall I ring the doctor for some more tablets? Or ask him to visit?”

  “I’m fine, just a bit chilled like the rest of us. January is a cruel month.”

  They discussed some of the work that had arrived and took pleasure in the more unusual tasks that offered a challenge; like the Victorian flower prints that needed restoration. Then, with regret, Charlotte left the office. Her uncle had reached for the order books and was scanning the pages with some dismay, but his concentration was already waning as she turned away from the factory doors to walk the half mile to her home.

  She turned to wave, but Peter wasn’t looking. From his desk he was staring out of the window, with its view of the small tributary to the river below. Through the seasons, he followed the progress of the several families of herons who lived there, and loved to watch for the darting colour of the kingfisher. She suspected that he spent more and more time watching the birds and less time dealing with the day-to-day running of the small bookbinding firm that had once given Charlotte and her sister Rhoda a very comfortable standard of living.

  If only her mother would allow her to spend more time at the office and not resent every moment she was away from their large and solitary Mill House home, this comfortable standard might continue.

  Peter Russell was unable to give the same amount of energy to the family business that he once had, and even with his assistant, Jack Roberts, he simply couldn’t manage to keep ahead of the daily routine. It didn’t help that neither Uncle Peter nor her mother Harriet, would admit that a problem existed, Charlotte thought with a resurgence of simmering anger and frustration. Why wasn’t she allowed to help?

  She wished once again that her mother were less dependent on the support of her daughters. If only her sister Rhoda hadn’t married so young… If only she, Charlotte, had married Joe Llewellyn the first time he had asked. If only. What a stupid expression that was. What an utter waste of time thinking about “if only”. No one could turn back the clock. She and her mother knew that better than most.

  Since her marriage at the age of seventeen to Brian Carpenter, Charlotte’s sister Rhoda had continued to spend a great deal of time at the family home. Charlotte was grateful. Rhoda kept her mother from sitting and brooding about their father’s disappearance and Uncle Peter’s accident and its consequences. With Rhoda free to spend hours of every day with her mother, Charlotte was able to go to the small bookbinding factory and help for a few hours most days to keep the firm alive. Now, with Rhoda and Brian on holiday, things were even more difficult, with her mother wanting her at home every moment of the day. Charlotte was despairing of ever getting the overdue letters typed and the monthly accounts delivered.

  Around her the Welsh hills were locked in the grip of winter; the colours sombre, yet with a bleak beauty. Their greys, blues and purples deepened to black like an intricately woven tapestry, enlivened here and there with the rich greens of the conifers that rose through the darkness of the season and provided a reminder of better days. The sky was low now and threatening snow. She looked down at the river that looped its way around the town of Bryn Melinau and likened it to molten metal frozen into stillness. It seemed hardly to move and was silent in the bleak landscape, forbidden to disturb the hush of winter.

  On the hill that gave the town its name, the hill on which seven mills had once stood, the ruins of those ancient buildings showed a rich green, where ivies defied the season of somnolence, retained their rich colour and gave protection to many of the small birds that went about their constant search for food in anxious, fluttering silence.

  The day was without warmth and she pulled her scarf up over her dark hair, which she wore
in a sleek under roll just free of her shoulders. Up here, high above the Welsh town of Bryn Melinau, the wind cut into her head like a chilled knife. Her long, slender legs strode out a little faster to warm herself but soon slowed. She was never in a great hurry to reach home these days.

  Charlotte’s hazel eyes looked around her: she was fascinated as always by the richness and variety of the countryside. The road was a narrow one with hedges on each side, and birds were busily searching for food. A flock of goldfinches swooped across the hedge and up again like a scattering of gold and red confetti. A charm of goldfinches: she remembered the collective noun with a smile. A bullfinch with its startlingly red breast stood on a branch, impatient for the new shoots to emerge so he could enjoy them. She smiled in pleasure. Even in this darkest of months there was the knowledge that in weeks food would be more plentiful and the birds would be busy nest-making.

  The smile faded. When would she be able to start nest-making? Never, unless something happened to release her from fulfilling her mother’s need for her constant attention. Rhoda couldn’t be relied on to amuse her mother indefinitely. Her younger sister would soon have a family of her own and then it would be she who would again be expected to forgo any plans of her own to fill her mother’s hours.

  It was past midday. She was later than she had promised. She knew her mother would be standing at the gate, watching for her return, almost tearful with anxiety and impatience. She would be wearing her fur coat and matching hat to protect her against the chill of the January day. Harriet Russell never stepped outside the door without first checking she was suitably dressed to impress.

  As she turned into Heather Gardens with its few select and isolated properties, Charlotte was unable to hold back a sigh. She knew she was fortunate to live in such a beautiful place, but at twenty-three, she wondered with increasing frustration, when was she going to start living a life of her own? It was January 1950. The war had been over for almost five years, yet, in spite of the magazines she read telling her that this was an era for fun and a time when anything was possible, she foresaw only years of sameness stretching before her. That is, unless she married Joe Llewellyn.

  Since they were children. Joe had proposed on a regular basis. It had almost become a joke, but not quite. In his quiet way, Joe was persistent, and it was apparent to all who knew them that one day they would marry. For Charlotte, Joe was a safe future and she loved him, of course she loved him. But something held her back from facing her mother and arranging a firm date for her marriage to “that bicycle repair man” as Harriet called him.

  Facing her mother was the main problem. Charlotte blamed the disappearance of her father for her mother’s fragile state of mind and for her own predicament; her mother was, like Charlotte herself, a victim of circumstances. Inwardly, she bitterly resented the fact that at twenty-three she was still having to accept her mother’s rules.

  But was she being completely honest in blaming either of her parents? Why was she stepping back from a commitment, accepting her mother’s dislike of Joe as a reason to delay? Wasn’t the true reason for her hesitation not her mother’s but her own uncertainty? Was she holding on to Joe while waiting for something better, more exciting?

  Marrying Joe wouldn’t change much, she admitted to herself. She knew that fun was not a priority for Joe Llewellyn, who ran a business selling and repairing bicycles. He had returned from the army and resumed his life and his living, which had been in the care of his Auntie Bessie Philpot, with hardly a ripple to reveal the four years’ disruption.

  She sighed again. Joe loved her and she loved him – she supposed. The doubt brought guilt and confusion back to her mind and she pushed it away. She and Joe would make a good partnership. She had been trained well for marriage, never having worked outside the home, apart from the few hours she stole to spend at the family’s bookbinding factory. She would organise Joe’s home, serve well-cooked and economically sound meals, deal efficiently with his finances and give him a secure and contented base from which to go out and earn the money to keep them. It was what every young woman wanted from life. So why did it sound so abysmally dull? What was wrong with her that she wanted more?

  In sight of the gates of Mill House, she paused. The large house had been built against the ruin of one of the old windmills and was solid and secure and, to her rebellious heart, like a prison. Her mother was waving, impatience showing in the gesture. Charlotte looked back along the road she had walked. The premises of Russell’s Bookbinders and Restorers was out of sight but she felt the familiar tug of resentment that took her away from an occupation she enjoyed back to the routine of attending her unhappy and highly strung mother.

  “Hello Mam. Sorry I am to be late. There were some interesting books that Uncle Peter wanted me to see. Victorian flower paintings they were. Become a bit ‘fluffed’ they had. I love watching him working on old and beautiful things.”

  “I’m sure.” Harriet Russell’s voice was high-pitched, sharp. belying the tight smile on her face. “And there’s me standing in this freezing cold wind watching for you to come home.”

  “You could have waited inside, Mam.” Charlotte admonished. “It’s only children who think you can make someone come quicker by stretching your neck around corners!”

  “You don’t know what it’s like. sitting here all alone for hours at a time. waiting for a knock at the door or a note to tell me your father’s safe and on the way home.”

  Charlotte didn’t reply. Her mother could hardly have been alone for more than half an hour. References to her absent father were frequently repeated and, after seven years, had become almost meaningless. Harriet bustled past her, disapproval tightening her once pretty face, and went into the kitchen where a vegetable stew, flavoured with oxo cubes, made the previous evening by Charlotte, simmered on the gas ring. Today was a meatless day. The rationing meant that meat was only available three days a week and on one of those days it had to be corned beef.

  “I had to see to all this.” Harriet waved her arms. encompassing the whole kitchen. “I thought you’d never get here on time. It will probably be awful. I haven’t your knack of making these peculiar meals.” She threw her coat and hat down carelessly. With a sigh. Charlotte picked them up and began putting them on the coat hanger near the front door. She would put them away later.

  “Put it upstairs, Charlotte.” Harriet spoke petulantly, as if everyone was out of step with her standards and desires. “If someone should call, it looks so slovenly with clothes hanging about in the hall, dear. Bring down my tablets, will you?” her mother called moments later.

  “I already have them,” Charlotte said, with a grimace of childish satisfaction. Her mother frequently asked for them when Charlotte had already started down the stairs.

  “Thank you dear. You are a gem.” Her mother smiled at her and Charlotte forgave her for the small irritations and smiled back, all acrimonious thoughts gone. She could always see in the small. thin face. the woman who, until the family disasters had occurred. had been so different. This present situation, one that had changed her mother from the beautiful. lively party-giver into an unhappy. possessive person. surely was only temporary. Even after all this time. they all pretended it was only a bad period that had to be lived through with as little resentment as possible. Charlotte told herself she must forget her own ambitions until her mother had returned to her previous independent self. lmpulsively. she gave Harriet a hug.

  * * *

  Peter Russell’s arrival was announced with the tooting of a car horn and Charlotte saw the grimace of ill humour close up her mother’s face. Quickly checking on the dinner, she slipped off the apron she was wearing and opened the front door. Jack Roberts, book-keeper and her uncle’s assistant, was helping her uncle out of the car and into his wheelchair. The car belonged to Uncle Peter but since the accident, it was Jack Roberts who was his obliging and amiable chauffeur. She waved at them both, watching as Peter turned his wheelchair efficiently through th
e gate and propelled himself around the house to the ramp set against the back door. It would be easier for him to enter by the front door, but Harriet refused to have the wooden ramp in view. Peter’s disability was something she tried to forget.

  Peter looked tired: his eyes were heavy and deeply shadowed with lines of pain. She asked her mother if it was time for another visit to the hospital but Harriet shrugged away all talk of Peter’s illness as she always did. Ignore it and it will go away, seemed to be her attitude and nothing Charlotte said could change her mind. Perhaps she would ring the hospital herself and make the necessary appointment. As long as her mother didn’t find out. It wasn’t that Harriet didn’t care about her brother-in-law. Charlotte knew that. Her mother was so afraid of trouble she preferred to pretend it wasn’t happening.

  * * *

  The small Welsh town. Bryn Melinau – Hill of Mills – was built on the lower slopes of the hill on which there were the remnants of no less than seven mills.

  Joe Llewellyn’s workshop was the first – or the last – building on the main road simply named Main Street. There was no through road. The road ended soon atter it had crossed the road bridge, narrowing, then becoming nothing more than fingers of tracks stretching more and more tenuously up onto the hill. Some tracks wound easily upward and were passable by bicycle and a few tough farm vehicles, but few cars could manage the steep gradients beyond Mill House, the home of the Russells.

  Bryn Melinau was a backwater, surviving for only as long as its young people stayed and accepted its limitations. For hundreds of years it had been a thriving place where farmers for miles around brought their grain for the seven millers to process.

  But now the small town had outgrown its usefulness but remained, an area where people lived while they worked in other places, the railway a slender thread that made it possible. It was feared that the town’s population would soon shrink lower than a viable number of inhabitants as an increasing number of young people moved away to find more lively and profitable communities.