The Emerald Valley (17 page)

But at least she had not been the one to find him. Cowardly though she felt herself to be, she was glad about that. It was Barbara, whimpering for sweets, who had saved her from that. Instead Herbie had found him and the shock seemed to have turned him into an old man overnight.

‘Whatever will you do, Mrs Roberts?' he asked when she next saw him, but his broken voice made her feel that he was the one who needed comforting.

‘I don't know yet, Herbie. I haven't been able to think straight,' she replied simply.

The funeral was arranged for the Wednesday. Amy had been terrified that with the strike going on there would be nobody to bury him, but the minister assured her there would be.

‘We wouldn't put you through that, Amy,' he promised, laying a hand on her shoulder. ‘If I had to dig the grave myself, I'd see that the dead were decently buried.'

The dead.
The words tore another hole in the defensive fog that surrounded her. The dead. That meant Llew, just as Sergeant Eyles had meant Llew when he had talked about ‘the body'whilst making arrangements for the post mortem.

‘Don't call him “the body”!' she had wanted to cry. ‘He's not “the body”. He's my husband!' But the fog had sealed her lips and she had said nothing.

The body. The dead. And to the frock-coated undertaker, ‘the deceased'.

‘You'll be wanting one of my very best oak coffins, I'm sure,' he said in his sonorous voice. ‘There are sure to be a lot of people wanting to pay their last respects to the deceased.'

‘Are there?' Amy had said, sounding small and lost.

She had hoped for a quiet funeral, where her grief would be private and she would be supported only by those closest to her. But Llew's family was almost as big and sprawling as her own and he had become quite a public figure in the short time since he had come to Hillsbridge. There would be a great many people anxious to attend his funeral.

On the Wednesday morning Dolly arrived to help Amy with the preparations for entertaining the mourners afterwards. She looked peaky, but Amy was too wrapped up in herself to notice. Together they made sandwiches, cut up slab cake and set out cups and saucers, with the big brown earthenware teapot that Charlotte had loaned her and which was always used for family occasions.

About midday the flowers started to arrive, daffodils and narcissi fresh-picked from the neighbours'gardens, and the family cross which Amy had ordered and a big, impressive wreath from Llew's family, both delivered by the local florist. Their perfume soon permeated the house, though it was not a pleasant scent, thought Amy, but the oppressive smell of funerals. Then, soon after the flowers, the relatives began arriving – Jack, her teacher brother who had driven up from Devon with Stella, his wife; Ted, scallywag and drifter, who still managed to be her favourite and who had come so as to ride with her in the front car; and Llew's parents and brothers and sisters.

‘If they're going to go from the house, I reckon our Mam should too,' Dolly whispered to Amy as she sliced cold ham, so Jack was despatched to fetch Charlotte and Harry.

Llew's mother, always an emotional woman, was in floods of tears and soon she started everyone else off. Only Amy remained aloof in her tight little world.

‘What are you going to do?' She was asked again and again and she could only shake her head.

‘I don't know. I haven't had time to think. I don't know …'

The cars arrived, impressive black. Amy had been offered the ornate, horse-drawn hearse, but had refused it in favour of the stark modern motorised one. Illogically, perhaps, she had always had a fear of horses and her vision of them bolting with the hearse behind them fitted too easily in to her present nightmare world.

Then she was sitting in the front car with hands locked together, eyes misted, head bursting with unshed tears. Ted squeezed her arm, saying nothing, but remembering perhaps the girl he had loved and lost – sweet, innocent, tyrannised Becky Church – and the sense of sharing communicated itself to her for a moment before the fog closed in again … that fog which made her feel quite alone, no matter who else was suffering or had suffered as she was.

The road blurred by … people stopping to look, the men removing their hats as a mark of respect, the women lowering their eyes. Amy saw them but was apart from them. Just so had she ridden with Llew on their wedding day, she thought, her hand in his, heart bursting with pride because the people who watched her pass by knew she was now Mrs Llew Roberts.

But what a short time ago that seemed – like only yesterday! The knot of tears expanded in her throat, threatening to spill over into her eyes and she swallowed hard. Her pride would not allow her to let those people see her cry.

For the next half hour Amy was called upon to do a great deal of swallowing. She held her chin high as she followed the coffin into the handsome grey stone chapel, holding tightly to Ted's arm. She bit her lip until the blood came as the voices swelled in ‘Abide with Me'and the minister extolled Llew's virtues and lamented his death. Then she was following the coffin again along the main street to the churchyard. There were people standing in groups under the swelling trees but she did not notice their faces, or see whether they were strangers or friends. She saw only dark, silent forms and averted her eyes, holding on tight to the tears.

Up the steep grey path between the green grass and the gravestones, the angels with outspread wings, the marble book pages. Some graves were overgrown, almost hidden by the new spring grass, others were neat and bright with splashes of colour from daffodils and tulips, grape hyacinths and narcissi. It was when she saw the freshly dug grave that she almost choked on her tears and her fingers gripped convulsively at Ted's arm.

I can't bear it, she thought. I can't watch them lower him into that … that hole!

Her eyes swivelled around in panic and she fought against the urge to turn and run, away from the staring people, the sympathetic and the merely curious, away from the flower-decked coffin, away most of all from that sickeningly deep hole in the ground. She fought and won and felt the fog close in once more, claustrophobic and yet oddly comforting, for there was no way her legs could carry her anywhere except slowly straight ahead whilst it weighted her down. And through it she heard the words of the burial service, too familiar to the older people present, sharply new yet an unintelligible jumble to Amy.

The coffin was lowered, the handful of earth scattered onto it.

‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust …'

And then it was over, the minister was saying something comforting to her and Llew's mother weeping again – everyone, it seemed, was weeping except her.

Perhaps they think I don't care, thought Amy, bewildered by her own composure that masked such a sea of bleak grief. Perhaps they think that …

But it didn't matter. Nothing mattered except getting home again to privacy and normality. No, not normality. Private it might be, but it would never be normal again. Home was a house which had grown to deserve that name because of shared plans and dreams, shared love. Home was a shoulder to lay her head on, arms to hold her and ease the tension out of her body. Home was someone to warm her, baby her, depend on her, yell at her sometimes, but most of all to
be
there. Home was where Llew was – but Llew would never be there again. He was in a box in a hole in the ground with a scattering of earth upon it. All that was left to see of him was a brass plate bearing his name. And soon even that would be hidden from view by six feet of dark, cloying earth …

Oh Llew, oh Llew, she thought, you've gone for ever and never even kissed you goodbye. I was so mean to you and you walked out in anger. And now I can never put it right never …

The tears erupted in her throat and she could contain them no longer. As they gurgled into her mouth, eyes and nose she stood motionless with hands clenched, body heaving.

‘Amy!' It was Ted, but she could hardly hear him above the roaring in her ears. ‘Come on, Amy, it's all right.'

Her cheeks were drenched, her lips parted to let the sobs escape, but still she did not move.

‘Amy,' Charlotte was beside her, her arms circled her daughter and for a moment, as if she were a child again, Amy laid her head against her mother's chest. But there was no comfort there now. Once Mam had turned mountains into molehills, but that was no longer possible. Now the mountains were real and Mam, like the rest of mankind, was only human.

Sobs tore at her throat and her whole body shuddered with pain. Like a swimmer with stomach cramp she wanted to fold up and in on herself but even in her grief something stopped her, some small, civilised safety-curtain that dropped over the screaming portion of her mind and urged restraint. Mam was on one side of her, Ted on the other, steering her away towards the path, making her turn her back on Llew's grave. She went with them obediently for a few steps; then halted, looking over her shoulder.

The coffin was out of sight now, but the mound of earth surrounded by flowers was still visible and for a moment it seemed to her as if Llew himself was there, standing beside the grave and looking after her with something like pleading in his eyes.

Pleading? For what? Amy didn't know. Grief was blinding her, making her deaf, muzzing her mind.

Sometime, she thought, I shall know what to do. And when I know I'll come back and tell you, Llew. I promise.

Then she gave in to the urgings of Ted and Mam and let them walk her away down the grey stone path.

For the Hall and Roberts families, May the twelfth was a day so steeped in sadness that it would be forever remembered as the day of Llew's funeral. But that was not the reason for it passing into the annals of history.

Nor was Llew's funeral the main talking point in the bar at the Miners'Arms that evening. And it was not the reason behind the long faces and subdued manner of the regulars.

‘We've been sold out again,' Ewart Brixey commented and he spoke for them all.

At lunchtime that day, while the Hall and Roberts families were gathering to lay Llew to rest, the news had been given in a BBC broadcast: the TUC General Council had decided to terminate the General Strike that night.

‘I told 'ee there was no dependence in 'em!' Stanley Bristow commented with gloomy glee. ‘I told'ee'twas no good expecting 'em to stick with'ee when the going got rough.'

For a moment there was silence in the bar, then Ewart put down his glass on the table with a crash.

‘Well, one thing's for very sure. They won't break us that easy. They'll find the mining man is sticking out for his principles. And whether they support us or not, they'll learn there's a hell of a lot of fight left in us yet!'

For as long as Harry Hall could remember, Whit Tuesday had been the day of the Labour Party Fete.

It was not the only fete in Hillsbridge – there was the Foresters' Fete, held in the Glebe Field each August, not to mention the numerous garden parties and ‘treats'organised by the church and the various chapels. But for most people in Hillsbridge the only one that really counted was the Labour Party Fete.

‘Are you going, Harry?' Tommy Clements asked him as they idly kicked a football along the Rank.

‘Too true I am! The General Secretary of the Federation is coming here, isn't he? I should like to hear what he's got to say. And Owen Wynn-Jones is speaking too.' Harry was enthusiastic. Platform speakers were always a feature of the Labour Party Fete and although in the past Harry had thought them a rather boring necessity to be lived through before the fun could begin, this year it was different. With the strike going on, everyone was more than ready to listen to words of encouragement, a clarion call to further efforts and the hope of victory in the not-too-distant future, and to have the General Secretary of the Federation actually here in Hillsbridge was more than anyone would have dared hope for. And besides him, Owen Wynn-Jones was a name to be reckoned with, an influential and well-respected man in the Labour movement who had been adopted as the party's candidate for the next General Election in a constituency adjoining Hillsbridge.

‘Hmm. It'll be a lot of hot air, I expect.' Tommy aimed a vicious kick at the football, sending it bouncing into the wall. ‘But there should be a bit of fun afterwards. There's going to be a six-a-side football match played on motor bikes, I heard – a local team against six lads who work for the motor cycle factory in Bristol. And at least this year we'm getting in the recreation ground for free.'

‘If we'd had to pay, there'd be a lot who couldn't make it,' Harry observed.

It was true. The first strike pay had been doled out that week, but it was little enough. As half-members Harry, Tommy and Reg were entitled to only 4s each a week and no one knew how long even that could go on. Funds were still very low from the last stoppage and it was rumoured they would only last another two or three weeks at most.

As the day of the fete approached, excitement mounted as it always did in the town.

‘Labour Party Fete next week,' they said to one another in pub bars, shops and billiard halls. ‘Let's hope the weather keeps fine.'

The murmurings stirred nostalgic chords in Harry, and casting his mind back he found himself recalling the anticipation of a small boy thrusting his fist deep into the sawdust of a bran tub in search of small, mysterious parcels wrapped in crinkly paper, the tooth-breaking crunch of toffee apples and the contentment of being carried home shoulder-high through the dusk, sleepy and happy. He even remembered – or
thought
he remembered, for the tale had been told so many times – the occasion when Charlotte had entered him in the Fancy Dress Competition dressed as a diminutive John Bull. He had hated every moment, refused to join in the procession and screamed so loudly he had had to be taken home early in disgrace.