The Hills and the Valley (5 page)

A high-pitched droning, loud in the still air, made them all look up. A plane was passing over, quite low, the sun glinting on the silver tail, the red white and blue bullseye marking on the fuselage clearly visible. For a moment they were all silent watching it. Once an aeroplane had been a fairly rare sight, now the skies seemed to positively hum with activity – another portent of the war which everyone was coming to believe was inevitable.

‘Training flight, probably,' Ralph said. It was a sensible assumption; there was a flying school in Filton and another at Hullavington, just over the border in Wiltshire.

‘I bet it's not,' Maureen said. ‘I bet it's Huw with the plane he picked up, coming round to have a look at us. Has anybody got a white hanky – Ralph?' She fished her own small square of lace edged cotton out of her pocket and began to wave madly.

‘Don't be silly. He went hours ago.' Barbara's voice was impatient and Amy looked at her in surprise. That didn't sound in the least like Barbara. Normally she would be first to hop up and down and wave – particularly where Huw was involved. And Maureen, too, was looking a little shamefaced suddenly where usually she would have snapped back in that inimitable way sisters have …

‘Never mind Huw – how about that cup of tea? Ralph said and Amy came back to earth with a jolt.

‘The kettle is probably boiling away like mad.'

They went into the kitchen. Whilst they had been outside the kettle
had
come to the boil and steam hung in a heavy cloud around the chains of the gas lamp and drifted towards the corners of the room.

‘Drat!' Amy pulled the kettle off the hob and went to open a window.

‘What's for dinner? I'm starving!' Maureen dumped her satchel on a chair.

‘Cold pie and salad,' Amy said pouring water into the teapot. ‘It's Mrs Milsom's day off.'

‘I don't like salad.'

‘If this war comes and they start food rationing you'll think, yourself lucky to eat what you can get,' Amy said tartly. ‘And put your satchel away. I don't want it cluttering up the kitchen.'

Maureen picked her satchel up again. ‘I only put it there for the minute. I'm taking it upstairs to do my homework now.' She tossed her head so that a thick braid of hair, a duller gold than Barbara's, fell across her slightly flushed face. ‘And anyway, Babs doesn't like salad either, do you Barbara?'

There was no reply from Barbara and glancing at her Amy saw that she had not been listening. There was an anxious expression on her usually sunny, open face and Amy's earlier impression was reinforced. Something was worrying Barbara.

‘What's wrong, Babs?' she asked.

Cornflower-blue eyes flipped up to meet hers and the guilt was clearly visible in them before they flipped away again.

‘Nothing.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘Oh, leave me alone, Mum.'

Amy sighed. Sixteen was not an easy age to be, though Barbara seemed to weather it with less difficulty than some of her friends, if the stories she heard from their mothers was anything to go by. Oh well, let Barbara be for the moment. She'd find out later what it was. Just some confrontation with one of the nuns probably over a piece of skipped homework. Barbara was not a scholar and never would be, and Amy could feel some sympathy with her. She had never seen the sense of learning for learning's sake, either. Yet when she had met the real world head on she had knuckled down and made a success of it.

‘Do you two want a cup of tea?' she asked.

‘Not especially. I'd rather have Mrs Milsom's lemonade if there's any left,' Maureen said.

‘There isn't.'

‘Salad and
tea.
How boring. Well, I'm going to do my homework. Coming, Babs?'

The two girls left the room and Amy took two cups over to the table where Ralph had settled into one of the large old kitchen chairs. As she put them down he caught her wrist pulling her towards him.

‘Good day?'

‘Not bad.' She relaxed against his shoulder; it felt good and solid. ‘How about you?'

‘The usual. All the war talk is causing a bit of panic. I must say I'm particularly worried about the Swedish end if it comes.'

Ralph had interests in a Swedish timber company which had extended the Hillsbridge business through a depot in the port of Gloucester.

‘Sweden won't get involved will it?' Amy asked.

With one arm still around her waist Ralph reached for his tea.

‘Everybody is going to be involved this time whether they like it or not. Warfare has changed in the last twenty years, Amy. And leaving everything else aside, shipping is sure to be difficult, if not well nigh impossible. I'm stockpiling all I can, of course. The price is certain to go sky high. But I can't pretend that I think the future is anything but bleak for any of us.'

‘Oh, it's so unfair!' Amy exploded. ‘Just when the girls are getting to an age when the world should be their, oyster, it looks as though everything is going to have to go into cold storage again. And Huw. I can't help worrying about him, Ralph. I keep thinking of what happened to Jack – and Jack was lucky.' She shivered, levered herself away from Ralph and reached for her own tea with an angry movement. ‘Wouldn't you think the powers that be would have more sense than let it start all over again? Why can't we just mind our own business?'

‘Bullies don't go away if you ignore them, Amy,' Ralph said. ‘They just get more and more drunk on their own power and the time comes when you have to either make a stand or submit. I don't think I'm ready to submit, whatever it might cost me.'

‘Not even if we lose the businesses that we've worked so hard for?'

‘No.'

‘Not even if our children get killed in the process?'

Ralph set down his cup. She had never seen him look so serious.

‘No, Amy. Not even that.'

‘Oh, my God,' she said.

They were silent for a moment each in their own world. Then Ralph went to pull her close once more but she broke away.

‘I'm going up to see Barbara.'

‘Why?'

‘There's something wrong with her. I want to find out what it is.' Suddenly it seemed desperately important that her daughters should not waste a moment of what little of the halcyon days might be left to them on silly petty quarrels and anxieties.

She went upstairs. The girls had their own rooms, tiny twin rooms on the far corners of the house, barely larger than boxrooms, but it was better than sharing. There were less, quarrels that way. She tapped on the door of Barbara's and pushed it open a fraction.

‘Can I come in?'

‘If you like.' Barbara was standing by the window, staring out. Her back presented a straight, uncompromising line.

Amy closed the door behind her.

‘Babs – what is the matter? Did something happen at school today? Don't say nothing, because I know there is.'

‘Nothing …' Then Barbara swung round defiantly. ‘Oh, I suppose I might as well tell you. You'll have to hear sooner or later. I played truant from school and went to see Huw.'

‘You …? Oh, Babs!'

‘I know. I shouldn't have done it. I told Sister Claude a story about having to go to the dentist and I got caught out. Someone saw me at the station and told her.'

‘Oh, Babs!' Amy said again. ‘That was very wrong of you.'

‘I know. But I don't really care. Not even if I get expelled …'

‘Expelled!'

‘She threatened. But she won't do it. She's just a lot of hot air. And even if she did do it, oh Mum – don't look like that!' Barbara's lip wobbled suddenly. ‘I'm sorry, but I did want to see Huw so much.'

‘I see,' Amy said.

‘You don't, Mum. Everybody keeps talking about a war coming and if it does, goodness knows when we shall see him again. He might …' her voice trembled, ‘he might even be killed. Well, he might! Flying aeroplanes is all very well, but suppose he crashed. Oh Mum, I couldn't bear it!'

‘Babs, Babs – don't talk like that!' Amy coaxed, but Barbara's wide worried eyes showed the depth of her fear. Amy pulled Barbara to her, holding her the way she had as a child, with the golden head against her shoulder. ‘Babs, darling, nothing is going to happen to Huw.'

‘How can you be so sure?' Her voice was muffled.

Amy did not answer. She knew there was nothing she could say. Barbara was only voicing her own fears, fears she preferred not to acknowledge but which were there all the same, dark shadows in the quiet of the night. She pushed aside Barbara's blazer, dropped carelessly onto the bright cotton bedspread, and sat, pulling Barbara down beside her.

‘Oh Mum!' Barbara whispered into her shoulder. ‘Mum, I'm so scared!'

‘Don't.' She fumbled in her pocket for a handkerchief and gave it to Barbara. ‘What did Huw have to say anyway? How is he?'

‘He's fine.' Barbara brightened. ‘He bought me a coffee. We talked.'

Listening to her daughter's eager voice as she pushed the spectres back into the dark corners where they belonged, Amy felt a new disquiet. No, not new. Something which had bothered her now for a very long time. Barbara was too fond of Huw. She always had been. Just the natural bond between a boy and girl who had been brought up as brother and sister, perhaps. And perhaps something more …

Oh no, not that, thought Amy. Please God, not that. For if it should turn out to be more I don't know what I would do …

‘Amy!' Ralph called from downstairs. ‘Don't forget we're going out!'

Amy tucked one of Barbara's curls behind her ear and traced the line of her cheekbone with a tender finger.

‘Don't worry any more, Babs. I'll settle Sister Claude.' She stood up and crossed to the door, looking back at her daughter. Bouncy, irrepressible Barbara she looked so vulnerable now sitting there in her school dress with a single tear stain streaking between the dusting of freckles. She is just a child, she thought. You are a fool to credit her with more adult emotions. And if one day what she feels for Huw turns out to be more than that you will just have to deal with it. When the time comes.

‘I have to go now, Babs,' she said. Then, as an afterthought, she popped her head back around the door. ‘And though it was very naughty of you – I'm glad one of us got to see Huw.'

Barbara was smiling at her as she closed the door.

High above Hillsbridge on the south-facing side of the valley bowl, Greenslade Terrace – the Rank as everyone who lived there knew it – stretched a finger of grey stone cottages above a sloping patchwork of gardens which reached almost to the railway line far below. In the years since it had been built to accommodate some of the miners who earned their living in the Hillsbridge collieries it had scarcely changed. A little porch had been added here and there and some of the stone bakeovens on the opposite side of the cobbled lane which led past the back doors had been done away with or converted into garden stores. But, for the most part the houses were just as they had always been, walls blackened by coal dust and soot from the trains that constantly chugged up and down the two railway lines which served the town, yet with paintwork bright and clean, window panes sparkling in the sunlight and brass door knockers lovingly polished. There was running water at the stone sinks in the tiny sculleries but only one or two houses boasted a bathroom – toilet facilities were still shared privies in the same blocks which had housed the bakeovens, and baths were mostly still taken as they always had been in tin tubs in front of the open fires which burned all the year round for cooking as well as heat.

Some of the families had moved out, of course, and young couples had taken their place. The Brimbles had left number 9 to move in next door to their daughter Sarah, who had married the eldest of the Hall boys, Jim. And Jacob Cottle and his wife, whose hearts had been broken when their only son Bert had been killed at Ypres, were both dead and buried now. But the Bryant familly still made the walls of number 4 echo with their noisy laughter; Colwyn Yelling, who had never married after coming home shell-shocked from the Great War, still carried on his bootmending business in what had once been the washhouse of number 19, while Peggy, his mother, still brought babies into the world and laid out the dead, and at number 12 Molly Clements still took in washing which she hung out to dry in billowing white sails over the long gardens. At number 10 henpecked Charlie Durrant, whose wife Martha had been the scourge of the Rank, had taken on a new lease of life since she had died three winters ago. He wore shiny leather shoes now instead of his boots and talk had it that he had a young lady friend.

‘Who she is I don't know, but from the powder and paint on her face she's no better than she should be,' Peggy Yelling had told Charlotte Hall – who, of course, still lived at number 11.

‘You've never thought of moving, I suppose, now that all the children have gone?' Peggy had asked her once and Charlotte had reacted violently.

‘Move, Peg? I should think not! This is my home and has been ever since James and I were married. The only way they'll ever get me out of here is in a box, feet first!'

She had thought of it, of course, mostly when she was struggling back up the steep hill with a load of shopping. The Co-op delivered once a week, but she still liked to go to market for the weekend's provisions and after each winter it seemed the hill grew steeper and longer. ‘I'm sixty-four now and not getting any younger,' she would say when James fussed about her breathlessness and the way her face grew flushed. He could no longer do the hill, of course, and hadn't been able to since a bad bout he had suffered in 1926 when the miners'chest disease, which now went by the fancy name of pneumokoniosis, had finally managed to incapacitate him. It was a miracle he was still alive, most folk said. By all the rules he should have been dead and buried years ago. But he was still hanging on, a tribute to Charlotte's loving care and good cooking, though sometimes his fight for breath was painful to hear.