The Hills and the Valley (60 page)

‘The invasion of course! What do you think?'

‘Invasion?' Charlotte repeated blankly.

‘Yes! Where have you been all day?'

‘Here, of course. Where else would I be?'

‘And you haven't heard? On your wireless?'

‘My batteries have gone,' Charlotte said. ‘What's going on?'

‘We've gone and invaded!' Peggy said importantly. She had spent half the morning glued to her own wireless. ‘Our boys and the Americans landed in France about six o'clock this morning. They're going to show that little blighter Hitler what's what at last!'

‘Oh!' Charlotte said. It was news they had waited for for so long; now she could hardly take in the fact that it had actually happened and she knew nothing about it. ‘How's it going, do you know, Peg?'

‘Quite well, it seems. Not a bit like last time. If you ask me, Lotty, this could mean it's all nearly over. Thank the Lord!'

‘Oh Peg, that is good news!' Charlotte said.

‘I'll have to go.' Peggy turned back up the Rank. ‘I've got some prunes stewing on the stove. But I'll let you know straight away if I hear anything else.'

‘Oh, I wish you would!' Charlotte said.

Too excited to sit in the sun now she went back into the house and suddenly she was remembering the day when Charlie Durrant had come running along the Rank, just as Peggy had today, waving his newspaper and announcing that war had been declared. Only that was the last war, Charlotte thought, puzzled that it could seem like only yesterday. That was almost thirty years ago. She shook her head wondering where the years had gone. Then she crossed to her wireless, turning it on and hoping that there might be just a little juice left in the tired batteries. It would be nice to be able to hear that the war was over for herself. Although, if it came to that, it didn't much matter how she heard it. Just as long as it ended soon.

I should like to live to see the boys come home, Charlotte thought. Our Alec and our Fred and Bob. And as the first thick, slurry crackles emitted from the wireless set she offered up a silent prayer that it would be so.

The day after the D-Day landings Margaret received a letter from

Mrs Cooper saying that she had now completed her arrangements

for the children's return and giving instructions as to which train they should travel to London on, but no mention of money to pay their fares.

‘She's the absolute limit!' Harry said crossly. ‘You'd think she'd have put in a postal order, wouldn't you? She seems to think we're made of money!'

Margaret did not reply. Her heart had dropped like a stone when she opened the letter as Mrs Cooper had taken so long to send for the girls that Margaret had begun to hope that she had had second thoughts. Now, however, there was no more room for hope.

‘I think I shall go up with them,' she said now, trying to be practical. ‘I don't like to think of them going all the way to London on their own. And I don't trust that woman to meet the train, either. If something else cropped up she'd leave them high and dry. At least if I go with them I shall know they're safely with her before I leave them.'

Harry shook his head sadly. He couldn't imagine Margaret ever being able to stop worrying about the girls even when they were no longer her responsibility. She had allowed herself to become too involved with them emotionally for that.

Margaret wrote to Mrs Cooper telling her of her decision to accompany Elaine and Marie and received a reply by return. This was so unusual she could scarcely believe it when she saw the envelope with the blotchy writing and the London postmark, but when she opened it the reason for Mrs Cooper's hasty reply soon became clear.

She was very glad Margaret would be with them as she was working at lunchtimes as a barmaid in a pub and meeting the train might prove to be difficult. Could Margaret shepherd them across London? It wasn't far on the underground, just a few stops down the Bakerloo line, and Elaine would be able to point the way from there. The pub where she was working was almost opposite her house – she would certainly be able to be there when they arrived, but if anything happened to prevent her she would leave a key out – ‘Elaine will know where'.

Margaret was incensed and her misgivings about Mrs Cooper's intention to turn over a new leaf where the children were concerned redoubled. But there was nothing she could do about it and she kept the details of the letter from Harry, whom she was sure would be furious at the imposition and perhaps even forbid her to act as unpaid nursemaid beyond the confines of Paddington Station.

During their last week she helped the girls get all their things together, providing them with an old brown suitcase she got out of the attic, for they now had a great many more clothes and possessions than when they had arrived. Jumpers, skirts, raincoats, sandals as well as their walking shoes … what would happen when they grew out of them? Margaret wondered.

Their books, too, she packed, along with their crayons, jigsaws and Marie's collection of pressed flowers, and her feeling of utter desolation grew.

On the last Friday afternoon, Marie came home from school proudly clutching a ‘pattern'she had made that afternoon in art class.

‘It's called a potato cut,' she told Margaret, offering the smudge of blue, green and violent orange for approval and Margaret felt her throat thicken. Next week there would be no footsteps on the path, no noisy yells as the girls came in from school, no garishly painted artworks to adorn the kitchen walls.

‘It's lovely,' she said. ‘Do you think I could keep it when you go back to London tomorrow?'

Marie's face clouded. She folded the paper protectively against her chest. ‘Oh, I don't know …'

‘I'd like to put it on the wall,' Margaret said. ‘And you won't miss it, will you? I'm sure you'll soon do lots more like it.'

‘Yes, but …' Marie was still hugging the painting as if she was afraid Margaret might snatch it from her, ‘this one's special. I did it for my Mum.'

‘Oh, I see,' Margaret said. There was a pain inside her. ‘Well, in that case you'd better go and put it away safely, hadn't you?'

The child looked at her as if suddenly aware of Margaret's hurt but she ran upstairs with the painting. When Margaret went to their room later to finish the last of the packing it was still on the dressing table and she wondered if Marie had had a change of heart. But next morning she had it with her when she came down ready to leave for her train.

‘You can't carry that loose,' she told her. ‘It will get spoiled. Look, we'll put it in this carrier bag along with the things you want for the journey.'

Harry drove them to Bath to the station. As usual the train was late – did they ever run on time these days? Margaret wondered. Harry waited with them until it arrived, packing them into a carriage and putting the brown case on the rack and telling Margaret to telephone him when she got back so that he could come and fetch her. Margaret agreed. She knew that when she returned alone she would be feeling totally bereft and she dreaded the thought of returning to the quiet house.

As the train pulled out Harry stood on the platform waving but the girls hardly bothered to wave back. It was as if they had already put their life in Hillsbridge behind them.

The journey seemed endless. There were repeated stops, often in the middle of open country with nothing to look at from the windows but green fields stretching away beneath a blue June sky. The girls played ‘I-Spy', joined by an American serviceman who shared their carriage and who reminded Margaret of Joe in his open friendliness, if not his physique. During the game he continually ‘gave her the eye'so that she was forced to stare out of the window to avoid encouraging him.

At last, there were houses and factories instead of fields alongside the railway line, thin at first, then fast thickening into a concrete jungle, and the train was slowing as it came into the great smoke-blackened glass dome that was Paddington Station. The platforms, were crowded with travellers, many of them in uniform, and Margaret was glad she had decided to accompany the children. She guided them across the platform to the Underground noticing that they seemed a little awed by the rush and noise after their years in the peace of Hillsbridge and somewhat bemused herself by the overpowering bustle.

A cold rush of air came up to meet them as they descended into the caverns beneath the streets and Margaret found herself remembering that many Londoners had practically lived in warrens like these when the Blitz had been at its height, sleeping in rows on the cold hard platforms and trying not to think of the bombs that might have reduced their homes to rubble by the time they emerged into the grey morning light.

When the tube train slid from the tunnel like a great curling rattlesnake with glowing eyes the girls became excited again, jumping aboard so eagerly that Marie almost left her precious carrier bag on the platform and Margaret had to rescue it and give it back to her.

Margaret had only been on a tube train once before, when she and Harry had spent a week in London seeing the sights and she was a little worried about missing their station. She need not have worried. Four years or not Elaine knew exactly where she was and she was on her feet, strap hanging, when the tube whined to a stop.

‘This is it. This is where we get off.'

They emerged once more into daylight. The buildings here were grey and mean and there were many gaps of rubble strewn ground, the legacy of Luftwaffe raids, to add to the air of desolation.

‘Oh look – the old
Crown's
gone!' Elaine said, skipping along the pavement and pointing to one tottering wall above a water-filled bomb crater. But she seemed more interested than dismayed.

Unerringly, she led the way past warehouses whose bleak walls stretched up towards the grey sky and pubs where the smell of beer and stale cigarette smoke hung in the doorways and spilled out onto the street. Some of the windows had been boarded up, others taped to protect them from blast. They turned a corner into a street of terraced houses which were separated from the pavement by narrow strips of garden.

‘This is it,' Elaine said. ‘This is our street.'

She skipped on ahead leaving Margaret to struggle along with the case and turned into a path where the gate hung, paint peeling, on one rusty hinge and the strip of what had once been lawn was overgrown with weeds and scattered with stones.

Like the gate the front door was peeling, brown paint revealing an earlier coat of dark green. She knocked on it, thumping the tarnished knocker so that Margaret thought it was in danger of falling off, and lifted the letter box to shout through: ‘Mum! Mum – we're here!'

At first there was silence then the door creaked open, dragging against the floor. Mrs Cooper stood there wearing a dressing gown which had once been cheap but cheerful but which now bore the stains of spilled tea and fat splashes. Her hair was in curlers beneath a brightly coloured scarf, her lipstick and rouge had been applied to a face which was devoid of any other make up and was deathly pale.

‘Mum!' Elaine shrieked, hugging her briefly then rushing past her into the house. But Marie hung back, shy suddenly.

‘Oh, you're here then,' Mrs Cooper said. She sounded less than welcoming. ‘Do you want to come in?'

Margaret hesitated. There was a stale smell emanating from the house, a mixture of fried food and cigarette smoke and plain old fashioned dirt. She was suddenly struck by the claustrophobic thought that if she went in through the peeling door she might never come out again. But she still held the brown case containing the children's things and Marie was hiding behind it. Elaine came darting back along the hall and rushed at her mother. Mrs Cooper put her away impatiently.

‘Elaine, don't! I don't feel too rosy. I haven't been to work today. I've got one of my bad heads.'

The child's face fell and Margaret wondered if the ‘bad head' might be the result of having had too much gin the previous evening.

‘Come in, if you're coming,' Mrs Cooper said. ‘I'll make a cup of tea.'

Margaret, who was parched after the long journey, would normally have jumped at the suggestion. Now her stomach revolted. She couldn't face drinking tea or anything else in this smelly house and she hated the thought that the children she had cared for for the last four years would be living here from now on. If she did not go at once, this minute, she thought, she would never be able to leave them at all.

‘It's all right, thank you,' she said. ‘I think I ought to be getting back. With the trains as they are I don't know how long it will take me.'

‘Please yourself, I'm sure. Are you coming in, our Marie, or are you stopping out there on the doorstep all day?'

Margaret put the case inside the hall, gagging at the smell. Then she bent to kiss Marie, checking the urge to take her in her arms and run.

‘Goodbye darling. Come and see us soon – if you can manage it before you go to America,' she added, looking at Mrs Cooper across the top of Marie's head. The woman snorted.

‘Gawd knows when that'll be! Joe's gorn, ain't he? Gorn off to France with the Invasion Force.'

‘He'll be back though when it's all over, won't he?' Margaret asked.

Mrs Cooper pulled a face, her scarlet lips making a downward turned slash in her pasty skin.

‘I s'pose so. Who can tell what these Yanks'll do?'

Margaret smoothed Marie's hair, tucking a strand into her kirby grip.

‘Write to me if you can, darling. And I'll write to you.'

Marie's small face creased suddenly. She nodded, her eyes brimming with tears. Margaret straightened. This was the moment she had to be strong.

‘Goodbye, then.'

She kissed the girls again and walked away down the path. At the gate she turned to wave. Mrs Cooper and Elaine had already disappeared back into the house but Marie stood in the doorway watching her go. She looked very small and forlorn. Tears filled Margaret's eyes and she turned and walked quickly away down the street. She did not dare look round again; the effort of walking and holding back the tears was all she could manage. She had reached the corner when she heard footsteps running after her. She checked and turned to see Marie, out of breath and waving the potato cut pattern.