The Emerald Valley (59 page)

One afternoon when she had been driving for two or three weeks, Amy took her Model T – or Trixie, as she had christened it – into town to do some, shopping.

It was a risky move, she knew – she could hardly leave the engine running whilst she was in several different shops – but she had to get used to starting the engine by herself sometime and thought it might as well be now. She drove around the triangle in the centre of Hillsbridge trying to choose the best place to park, and eventually after two full circuits she decided upon one corner of the station yard. She drew up and parked alongside the picket fence where hoardings advertised the merits of Newbery's Furniture and Carpets. Then she climbed out and walked briskly around to the shops she needed to visit – Fords, the drapers in South Hill for some darning wool and elastic; the chemist's for another bottle of cough mixture in an effort to get rid of the cough which had plagued Barbara since the winter; and Reads, the hardware shop, for some screws and plugs which Herbie had asked for so that he could continue improving the new drivers'rest room at the yard.

Amy did not particularly like the hardware shop. It was small and poky, with uninteresting items like washers, nails and tacks all crammed together in heavy wooden drawers. High-stacked, unidentifiable boxes full of equally unidentifiable miscellany lined the walls, and a narrow staircase led up to a store-room which, judging by the regularity with which the assistants disappeared there, contained just as much stock as the shop. How anyone ever found anything was a marvel, Amy decided, buying the screws and leaving as quickly as possible.

One port of call remained – the Co-op Grocery Store. Amy had most of her staple needs delivered, orders being made up from lists on specially printed forms and taken out on a round once a week. Her groceries always arrived on a Monday afternoon and were left in a large cardboard box just inside the coal-house, ‘so the cats can't get at it', the Co-op man always said.

But this was Thursday and already the cheese had gone, demolished by a hungry Huw. Amy wanted to replace it and also get some biscuits for the men at the yard to have with their tea.

It was coddling them, she supposed, but she firmly believed in the benefits of a contented work force.

In direct contrast to the hardware store, the Co-op Grocery was an impressive shop, double-fronted, with large vaulted windows and doors that opened majestically from the top of a flight of steps. Inside, a wooden counter ran the length of the shop on one side, carrying displays of tinned biscuits and hiding the less attractive commodities – sacks of flour and sugar which were weighed up into blue paper bags, also rice and dried fruit. On the other side another counter, equally long, was topped with a marble slab and sectioned into two – the cheese counter and the bacon counter. From each serving point, overhead cash railways whisked away both money and a little paper ‘check' bearing the shopper's membership number so that the purchase could be totted up towards the prized ‘divi'which was paid out at the end of each quarter. The cash railway was similar to the one Charlotte had loved – and seen wrecked – when she had worked in the County Stores during the Great War, but with one modification. This railway not only received wooden cups that zinged along the wires on the ground floor; it also had an added refinement in that it could cater, by means of something like a minuscule dumb waiter, for cash spent upstairs in the furniture shop, which also had a small hardware department. ‘Perhaps I could have got the screws I wanted there instead of going to Reads,' thought Amy.

She bought the cheese and the biscuits she wanted and paused just inside the doorway beside a display of high-stacked cereal boxes, wanting to check the contents of her purse. The shop was busy with customers coming and going, and a buzz of conversation ran constantly beneath the tinging and clatter of the cash railway. As she sorted her change, sixpences and shillings from threepenny-bits and copper, Amy suddenly became aware of two voices which she could hear above the rest.

‘Who does she think she is, I'd like to know?'

‘Just what I say! Only went to the Board School like the rest of us, but to see her riding around in that car you'd think she was Lady Muck!'

The speakers were hidden from Amy by the boxes of Quaker Oats and the voices, though local, were unidentifiable. But Amy was suddenly, chillingly aware that
she
was the subject of their conversation.

‘Of course, she always did think herself better than anybody else. Dancing along with ribbons in her hair when she was a kid. Remember?'

‘And you may depend one or other of that family is always in the news. Her brother thought he was somebody, too, going in for teaching. And after he married Hal's daughter – well, that was it, wasn't it? A sight too big for their boots all of'em!'

Amy was trembling now, indignant but shocked. One part of her wanted to march round the stack of Quaker Oats and confront the gossips; another longed only to sneak away unseen. What could she say to them? There was no point in making a scene. They were not spreading lies, just passing opinions. But who were they? She was not even sure she wanted to know. For a moment she stood undecided, wishing the ground would open and swallow her.

‘Well, I must get on.'

‘Yes – look, you'll miss your turn …'

The speakers moved away and without stopping to think, Amy dived out of the shop. Her face was burning. How awful! she thought in confusion. How awful to think that people could say such things about her … and about the rest of the family too! Did others think – and say – the same? It was jealousy, of course, sheer jealousy, but …

Oh, I could die! Amy sobbed silently. Thank goodness they didn't know I was there! Suppose they saw me afterwards … ?

She cast a quick look over her shoulder while still half-running across the gravelled forecourt of the Co-operative Stores. Nobody looking, nobody staring … Then some sixth sense screamed a warning at her and she jerked back her head to look where she was going. Three broad steps ran the length of the forecourt down to road level, deep at the valley side, shallower as the hill rose to meet the forecourt. She knew they were there, of course, she just wasn't thinking. Now she attempted desperately to alter her stride, but it was too late. Her speeding feet were running away with her and she teetered on the edge of the top step before lurching forward. The second step she cleared completely, but as she hit the ground her ankle turned and she went sprawling across the pavement, bumping her forehead as she fell on the wheel of a cart drawn up at the kerb.

For just a second she lay there, stunned. Then, into the shocked vacuum – What have I done? What's happened? – came rushing the embarrassment and shame. Oh, they'd see her now, those women who had been talking about her! They'd see her lying here in the gutter! She tried to rise, but as she did so the giddiness began, swirling around her.

‘Hey, missus, why don't'ee look where you be going?' The voice of the haulier whose cart she had collided with was irate, but there were other voices, kindly and concerned, with anxious faces to match.

‘Are you all right? Goodness me, what a tumble!'

‘I'm all right,' Amy tried to say, but the words were going away from her and the faces were blurred and distorted like reflections in the Hall of Mirrors on the pier at Weston-Super-Mare.

‘She's not all right. She's going to faint …'

She heard what they said, but it seemed to have nothing to do with her. Desperately she tried to focus, to pull herself back from the brink of blackness, but it was useless. She was in a limbo world, full of panic and acute embarrassment. Vaguely she was aware of arms lifting her, supporting her, but she was no longer able to make out what the voices were saying or even to understand what was happening. The numbness in her head was beginning to turn to pain, a pain that spread like thick cold treacle over the whole of her face and sharpened into a central point as if a steel bolt was being driven into her temple. They were carrying her and the jolting increased the pain and swirled the mists of dizziness.

‘Don't … don't …' Amy mumbled, but nobody seemed to be taking the slightest notice of her.

Timeless moments. She was indoors now – there was no longer sunshine hurting her eyes and the voices were flatter and closer. And then another voice, different yet oddly familiar, a voice that might have been part of a dream.

‘Fine. You can leave her with me now.'

The dizziness lifted a little and Amy realised her head was between her knees, pressed down by fingers on the nape of her neck. She drew a deep breath and another, concentrating on fighting her way back to full consciousness, then as the pressure relaxed she lifted her head and found herself looking up into the face of Dr Oliver Scott.

Briefly the shock almost overcame her. She had known he was back in Hillsbridge of course, but this was the first time she had seen him – the first time she had seen him in fifteen years, if it came to that, apart from the brief encounter when Jack had married Grace's sister, Stella – and in that first startled second Amy became a child again. Instead of being here in his surgery next door to the Co-op, where anxious passers-by had carried her, it seemed she was back in Greenslade Terrace as a nine-year-old, racked by the pain of so serious a scalding that he had referred to her as ‘parboiled', and looking with adoring eyes at the young doctor who provided the only bright spot in days which stretched end-to-end, boredom interspersed with agony.

‘Dr Scott!' Her voice was faint.

He looked down at her, mild brown eyes crossing the passage of years.

‘Amy. It's Amy Hall, isn't it?'

‘Yes.' Amy Hall. How strange to be called that now! Yet people here about did still think of her as Amy Hall, just as she still called girls she had known all her life by their maiden names.

‘It's all right, Amy, don't try to move for a minute.'

The pain sharpened and jabbed at her temple and she winced.

‘My head …'

‘You've banged it.' He lifted her chin, parted her lids with his fingers and looked into her eyes. ‘You took quite a spill, didn't you? You shouldn't have been in such a hurry.'

‘I wasn't. I …'

‘Don't try to talk just now.' He bent over her and a lick of hair flopped across his forehead. He doesn't look a bit different! she thought, surprised. Not even any older …

‘Well, Amy, you've nothing broken.' As he straightened up, leaning back against his desk, she had a full-length view of him – stocky frame filled out with the years and made stockier by the cut of his good tweed suit; square, fair-skinned face; capable freckled hands, thrust now into his trouser pockets; feet, also looking square, in heavy brown brogues. The very look of him inspired confidence in her now just as it had done all those years ago.

‘A stupid thing to do, wasn't it?' she said shakily.

‘It was rather.'

‘It was my own fault, I wasn't looking where I was going. Oh dear, I do feel peculiar …'

‘I expect you do. The best thing you can do is get home and rest. Where do you live now?'

‘Hope Terrace. But I can't go home. I must go back to the yard. There are things I have to do …'

‘Not today. They will just have to manage without you.'

‘I'll be fine!' She tried to get up, but the dizziness returned immediately and she sat back again quickly. ‘Oh, maybe you're right.'

‘I certainly am. It would be very silly to work any more today. Now, how are you going to get home?'

‘My car is parked by the station.'

‘Well, you're certainly not up to driving it. You would be a danger to yourself and anyone else on the road.'

‘I suppose so. Perhaps I ought to telephone for Herbie …'

Oliver Scott glanced at his watch. ‘I'm leaving here now; I have a few calls to make. I could drop you at home on the way.'

‘Oh, I couldn't trouble you!'

‘No trouble, it's practically on my way.'

‘Well, if you're sure … But could I telephone Herbie anyway, to tell him what's happened?'

‘I'll ask my nurse to do that. Come on, my car's outside.'

Leaving the surgery, Amy felt conspicuous and embarrassed.

‘That's my Ford,' she said as they passed the station yard. She disliked leaving it there, but could see she had no choice.

‘It's a nice car.' He sounded surprised. ‘You've done well.'

‘I've tried. In the beginning it was just that I wanted to carry on with what Llew started, but somewhere along the line it became more than that. I think I'm doing it for me now.'

This was no more than the truth, but it was the first time she had admitted it, even to herself.

‘It's astonishing. But then, you always did have determination.' They were nearing Hope Terrace now. ‘Tell me where to stop,' he said.

Outside the gate he put on the handbrake and turned to her.

‘Now, is there someone who can pop in and keep an eye on you for the next twenty-four hours or so?'

‘Whatever for?' Amy asked.

‘Just to make sure you don't suffer any ill-effects. If you were to get sleepy, or sick, something of that kind, I should want to know about it. Is there someone?'

‘Not really,' Amy said. ‘You know I'm widowed?' As she said it she felt the bleakness of the phrase, but the sharp edge of pain was missing.

‘Yes, I was very sorry to hear about it.' He paused for a moment, thinking. ‘What about a neighbour? There's no necessity for her to stay all the time so long as she keeps an eye on you.'

‘I suppose there's Ruby,' Amy said, thinking this was all rather unnecessary, ‘But surely you don't think …'

‘I'm sure there is nothing to worry about, but it's better to be safe than sorry and you wouldn't want to go into hospital, would you?'