Another Chance for Love

Chapter 1Bristol, England, 1920 Adam Merryweather looked out of the first-floor window at the busy scene below on Corn Street. Right in the centre of the bustling city, everyone was occupied about their business. Horse-drawn and motorised traffic noisily clogged the winding medieval street. Be-hatted bankers dashed across the road as fast as their dignity would allow. Porters in their flat caps exchanged quips with passing drivers in their homely West Country accents as they wheeled their trolleys and carts in and out of St Nicholas’ Market, laden with goods. Adam stifled a curse of frustration. In amongst this industrious everyday scene, it seemed like the only person without any function whatsoever was himself. Glancing up, he caught his reflection in the window glass. He looked every inch a well-groomed upper-middle-class gentleman in his suit and tie, the progeny of a successful insurance broker. His fair colouring and regular features made others refer to him as handsome and he knew he had a fair amount of charm of address that made him eligible in local society as a sought-after spare man. What he lacked was purpose. He had been glad when his father had engaged him in the office of the family firm the best part of a year before. It got him out of the house and away from the well-meant nagging of his mother. It gave him a routine which stopped him thinking too much. But now, all these months on, as he gradually settled back into some sort of normality, he realised he was a mere decoration in his father’s waiting room. Mr. Briggs, his father’s business manager and secretary, dealt with all the serious business in his father’s outer office, and scurried constantly in and out of his father’s inner sanctum. Adam was left to shuffle papers pointlessly on his relatively empty if rather grand desk and be polite to visitors. At first, this was challenging enough, gathering his war-shattered nerves together sufficiently to greet his father’s clients. But now, he was adequately restored to realise how surplus he was to requirements. It’s not that he wasn’t grateful. He was damned lucky to have got away with the lightest of injuries in the hell that was the final battle of Ypres. His badly fractured leg had finally healed cleanly and ached only in the coldest of weather. He had recovered most of his mind after having been buried alive in the mud of the battlefield, rescued in the nick of time from the horrors of suffocation, and his family had supported him loyally through his long rehabilitation. He knew full well he was better off than most. He shrugged his shoulders at his dispiriting reflections. He did not mean to complain at his very comfortable lot, but he would give anything to feel useful again. He had enjoyed his studies at university and excelled in his chosen field of mathematics. He’d achieved a first-class degree just before military conscription had interfered with his and so many other lives. Looking out over the lively street, he knew that even in the madness that was war, at least he felt useful and part of something greater in receiving and giving orders. But now, despite his easy circumstances he felt lost and rudderless. At the sound of feet on the stairs, he willingly turned from his gloomy thoughts to paste on his most welcoming smile for his father’s next appointment.