The Emerald Valley (16 page)

Further down the hill, the valley opened up beneath them and Amy could see the yard with the lorries standing there. So Llew had not gone out, then; he'd been telling the truth when he said he had no job today. But from the stillness you would never know there was anyone there working, especially anyone as vitally energetic as Llew. At full stretch he moved the very air around him, Amy thought.

Just before the turning that led down to the yard was a little shanty shop that sold sweets, biscuits, fruit and some provisions.

‘Can I have my sweeties now?' Barbara asked, holding on to the handles of the pram and hopping up and down.

‘You know you always have them when I've finished my shopping and not before,' Amy told her.

Barbara's face fell. ‘Me want them now!' she pouted and Amy, visualising how the child would keep on and on while she was trying to talk to Llew, almost gave in. Only the fact that the sweets were always an end-of-shopping treat stopped her; break the habit and she could never enforce it again. But there was an alternative.

‘Tell you what. We'll go shopping
before
we go to see Daddy,' she decided. ‘No, it's no use throwing a tantrum, Babs, you can easily wait a little while for your sweeties.'

This same air of unreality which had been apparent in her road hung over the entire town of Hillsbridge. Today there were no ponies drawing the wagons of waste on the tramlines across the road outside Starvault Pit, and the great wheels that worked the cage were still. Just a few days before the strike, a firm of local steeplejacks had begun work erecting a new chimney to rid the town of the clouds of choking smoke and fumes that the old one had dispensed into the atmosphere of the valley bowl – now that too stood abandoned, a monument to the strike. Under the wall at the pavement's edge some Starvault miners squatted in a row, looking for all the world as if they were waiting for time to begin their shift at the colliery, except that they had no bait tins containing the customary cognocker of bread and cheese, no tallow candles, no jar of cold tea. Amy recognised a couple of them as men she had known since she was a child, but they did not speak and she had the uncomfortable feeling that there was hostility in their eyes as they watched her pass.

‘That's her husband who's blacklegging,' she could imagine them saying, but for the first time she felt no real shame, only a sense of injustice that they did not understand. Walking down the road she found herself formulating all the arguments in her mind and wishing she could find the courage to say them aloud to the men with the accusing eyes.

As she had expected, the shops were less busy than usual. Only one week into the dispute they might be, but that had already meant one pay-day missed and Federation funds were not sufficient to bring strike pay up to wage levels, low as they were. In the Co-op where she bought tea, biscuits and sugar, she heard women swapping their tales of woe and in the confectionery shop she felt quite guilty buying jam tarts for tea when the talk over the counter was how soon cheap loaves of bread would be introduced to help feed the hungry strikers'families.

‘Come on then, girls, we'll go and see Daddy now,' she said, giving Barbara her twist of chocolate buttons.

As they emerged from the confectionery shop a distinctive sound attracted her attention and she turned to see the town ambulance bowling along the road towards them.

There was no mistaking the ambulance. It had begun life in shell-shattered France during the Great War, ferrying the wounded and sometimes the dead to and from the field hospitals, and when the last reveille sounded and it was no longer needed it had come home to civilian duty. Now its main purpose seemed to be rescuing the victims of the numerous accidents that were happening as a result of so many inexperienced drivers and motor cyclists taking to the roads, and the moment she saw it Amy's first thought was that something of the kind had happened again.

‘Look, girls, it's coming this way!' she said, and although she told herself it was nothing to do with her a small chill ran through her all the same, as it always did at sight of the vehicle.

‘The ambulance! The ambulance!' Barbara cried excitedly and Maureen managed her customary, ‘Da! Da!'

The ambulance passed them, turning the sharp corner into Frome Hill, and by the time they rounded it themselves had disappeared from sight.

Amy pushed the pram in silence, wondering what to say to Llew to explain her unexpected visit; then she realised what a perfectly idiotic thought that was. He was her husband and they had been married for four years. She didn't have to say anything by way of explanation; he would know, just by her being there, that she wanted to make amends. And his eyes would meet hers and he would smile at her the way he had smiled that first night at the dance under the Palace … the way that could still make her melt inside. And he would probably whisper in her ear: ‘I'll see you tonight, Mrs Roberts!'

The corner of her mouth twisted upwards and she looked at Maureen, who had fallen asleep against her pillow, and Barbara wedged in the little dickey seat, her mouth full of chocolate drops that had trickled a brown stream down her chin.

I couldn't be luckier, thought Amy. I have a loving husband, two lovely children and a house better than my mother would ever have dared dream of living in. Sometimes, just once in a while, I ought to stop and count my blessings instead of behaving like a spoilt child when things don't go my way. Sometimes I ought to go down on my knees and thank God for all I have in case he thinks I'm ungrateful and snatches it away …

She reached the turning to Mill Road and turned into it. The hill sloped away steeply for the first hundred yards and she had to hang on tightly to the handles of the pram to ensure it did not run away with the two children in it. As they went down the slope at a bit of a run Barbara chuckled with delight, but Maureen still slept.

‘Try not to wake your sister,' said Amy.

Then the sound of a car engine behind her made her pull the pram into the side out of the way and as it passed she noticed that the driver was Dr Vezey.

Funny, thought Amy, a little alarmed. First the ambulance and now the doctor, both going this way. Though she didn't
know
the ambulance had gone this way; it could have carried on straight up the main road and the doctor might be going to one of the miners' cottages in the Rank built underneath Midlington Batch. But she found herself hurrying a little more anyway, her heart beating just too fast for comfort, her knees trembling ever so slightly. As she came around the bend in the road by the mill and saw the doctor's car pulled up outside the gates to the depot yard, she went cold inside.

What was he doing there?

For a fraction of a moment her feet ceased moving; then, quite suddenly, she began to run.

‘Mammy!' Barbara cried in alarm, but Amy took no notice of her.

A step or two more and she saw the ambulance too. Panic flooded through her.

‘Mammy!' Barbara wailed.

‘Be quiet!' she snapped.

There was a blue-overalled figure coming out of the depot gates. It was Herbie.

‘Herbie!' she cried, running towards him. ‘What is it? What's going on?'

Herbie was white. His gaunt face seemed to have aged ten years since last she had seen him. ‘
Herbie!
' she half-screamed.

He stood blocking her path as if, should she try to pass him, he would spread out his arms and stop her bodily. ‘Don't go down there, Mrs Roberts,' he said.

‘But why? What's happened?' she sobbed.

Herbie's eyes were great haunted pools. ‘There's been an accident.'

‘An accident? What do you mean, an accident? Llew? Where's Llew?'

‘Mrs Roberts – don't!' Herbie caught at the pram handles. ‘Come in the Mill a minute.'

‘I don't want to go in the Mill! What's going on? For pity's sake, Herbie …' She was in utter panic now and the blue, sun-lit sky seemed to have gone dark. Her voice rose hysterically; Barbara, frightened, began to cry and the noise woke Maureen who screamed in unison.

‘
Tell me!
' Amy demanded.

‘Oh, Mrs Roberts, I don't know how – I told you – there's been an accident, a terrible accident. Mr Roberts …' He broke off, unable to form the words, but somehow there was no need. Amy only looked at him and knew.

‘Oh, my God!' she whispered.

Every vestige of the shock she had already felt gathered together now into a icy torrent that rushed through her veins, blinding her, deafening her, sweeping away common sense and coherent thought. An accident. Llew. The ambulance. The doctor. Herbie looking like a ghost. An accident. Llew. Llew!

She looked around wildly.

‘Take the pram, Herbie.'

‘Mrs Roberts …'

‘Do as I say!'

Too shaken to argue, he did so. In his oily blue overalls he made an incongruous picture holding the pram, with two screaming children in it.

Amy began to run down the road. The ambulance was moving towards the yard gates and she ran towards it, scrabbling at the firmly closed doors with her hands.

‘Hey – wait a minute now!' There was a hand on her arm, restraining her, and she turned to see Dr Vezey. ‘Leave me!' She tried to shake herself free. ‘My husband …'

‘No,' Dr Vezey said simply.

‘No? You mean it's not him … ?' Her eyes were wild, puzzled.

‘Mrs Roberts, I think you should come and sit in my car.'

‘I don't want to! I want Llew!'

‘Come on, now …' He urged her towards the Ford. ‘Come with me, there's a good girl.'

In a dream she let him ease her into the front seat.

‘I don't understand … I don't …'

‘Now get a grip on yourself,' Dr Vezey said and suddenly there was a pool of ice within her so deep, so dark that she was drowning in it without a struggle or a whimper because every bit of her was frozen rigid.

‘You mean … ?'

‘I'm sorry,' he said. ‘There was nothing to be done. By the time he was found it was too late – not that it would have made any difference if anyone
had
been here …'

‘He's dead,' she said softly and choked on the words. ‘But how?'

‘The lorry fell on him. He must have been underneath it. I'm so very sorry.'

‘Oh no!' she said. The pool of ice was spreading, trickling through her veins, freezing wherever it touched and she couldn't believe this was really happening to her. It was like a bad dream, or a play where she was taking the leading role. But it wasn't true – it couldn't be! In a moment the office door would open and Llew would come out, stepping carefully down on to the wood plank step and coming across the yard towards her …

‘What are you doing sitting in the doctor's car?' he would say. ‘And where are the children?'

The children … She half turned to look for them. As she did so she saw the ambulance moving away through the gate and it brought the truth home to her as nothing the doctor could say had done. It was a brief and agonising glimpse through a peephole into another world and it took her breath.

Llew was in that ambulance and he was dead. He was dead – they were taking him away. As the realisation cut through to her Amy began to scream.

‘No – no! I won't let them! Doctor – stop them! Stop them!'

‘Amy!' Dr Vezey's voice sounded far away, coming from a plane of normality that was lost for ever. ‘Are you going to stop that screaming, or am I going to slap your face?'

Her eyes widened as she stared at him and she stopped screaming. But the ice was still there, paralysing her, and the feeling of living a nightmare had descended all around her like a suffocating blanket, shutting off light and air, alienating her, making her whole body into a shaking, trembling jelly.

Dr Vezey's hands covered hers and his eyes, kind and concerned, peered at her from that other plane.

‘All right now?'

She nodded because there was nothing else to do. But the nightmare fog was thickening, cloying around her face, seeping into her pores, ballooning inside her head and in a moment's overwhelming despair Amy felt she would never be all right again.

Throughout the next few days the heavy impenetrable sense of nightmare persisted, pierced only by moments of sharp, almost unbearable grief and made more uncomfortable by the feverish burning of her cheeks and eyes, the heaviness of her head and the ache in her chest and throat.

People came and went, moving like shadows through the grey world … a policeman, an undertaker, the doctor … all firm enough to draw the required response from her – and neighbours and family whose shocked faces were no comfort to her because they reflected her own emotions and reminded her too sharply that this unbelievable fiction was true. There were arrangements to make and she made them, letters to write, condolences to accept and she did it all within the world of that clammy suffocating fog. The children had to be seen to as well – and the mundane tasks of washing grubby faces, spooning soft-boiled egg into unwilling mouths and providing clean socks and knickers were the hardest of all, because they belonged to the old life and now they were distorted, like reflections in a seaside ‘Hall of Mirrors'.

Charlotte had offered to have the children, but Amy had refused. With Llew snatched away from her so suddenly and cruelly she wanted the comfort of their nearness, even if that comfort was no more than a myth and the responsibility of caring for them a trial. At least it made her stay sane. At least it forced her to continue with a life of sorts and for that Amy thought she should be grateful.

The nights were the worst, when she lay awake in the big empty bed with nothing to cushion her from her emotions or separate her from her thoughts … the torture of wondering exactly what had happened, exactly how he had died.

It had been Herbie who had found him – Herbie who, although nominally on strike, was much too loyal to stay away from the yard for long. He had gone in to find Llew crushed beneath the lorry. Each time she thought of it Amy shuddered and a part of her mind clicked off, shutting down on the full horror. What she could not ignore, however, was the realisation that when she had looked down across the valley to the yard on her way to the shops, Llew was already dead. No wonder the yard had looked so still! The lorry, parked so innocently in the centre of the compound, had been hiding a terrible secret. The thought almost made Amy cry out aloud and she pressed her hands to her mouth, forcing it back inside her so that the pain made her writhe.