The Hills and the Valley Read online

  ‘Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about a thing – except Margaret.’

  She replaced the receiver. Her mind seemed to have gone blank. No, not blank. A kaleidoscope of whirling thoughts none of which she could get hold of. Barbara was hovering in the doorway, her face anxious.

  ‘It’s Auntie Margaret. She’s been knocked down,’ Amy said. ‘I’ve got to get over there and look after their evacuees while Uncle Harry is at the hospital.’

  Barbara’s response was immediate. ‘I’ll come with you, Mum.’

  ‘Will you?’ Amy felt a rush of gratitude followed by a swift stab of surprise. Barbara was displaying none of the panic she was feeling, just serious sympathy and a calm strength of purpose which only the young whose own lives have never been touched by tragedy can feel. For an instant, Amy felt that she wanted to lean on her, take advantage of that inviolable young strength and this too surprised her. Barbara was her daughter – she, Amy, had always been the one to do the protecting and provide the sure harbour for Barbara’s life to ride at safe anchor. This must be a portent of what happened in old age when the strong became the weak, dependent suddenly on the very young they had protected. The sense of frailty it embodied lasted a moment only; Amy was herself still too young to depend on any strength but her own. But the thought of Barbara’s support was even so a comforting one.

  ‘I may be late,’ Amy said. ‘It depends on how long Uncle Harry has to stay at the hospital. In fact, I may have to stay all night. Thanks for the offer, Babs, but I think you had better stay here with Maureen. You can tell Ralph what has happened when he gets back. And you’ll be able to get yourselves off to school in the morning.’

  ‘If you’re sure …’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure,’ Amy said. ‘I’ll let you know what’s happening as soon as there is any news.’

  She fetched her coat and scarf and put them on. Her papers were still spread out across the table and she took a moment to stack them together and ram them back into their folder. There would be no more work done tonight. Taking her car keys and bag she went out into the dark November night.

  Margaret lay in the ugly functional hospital bed surrounded by

  dark green screens. Her face was as white as the freshly laundered

  pillow slip, her hair, mussed up, fanned out in a halo around it, her arm with the drip tube snaking into it lay still and lifeless-looking on the dark green bedspread.

  On the hard ward chair drawn up beside her Harry eased his position slightly without once taking his eyes off that deathly pale face. Dear God but she looked terrible. The thought was a leaden weight in the pit of his stomach and he reached out and touched her hand, curling his fingers round it.

  Why had he let her walk home in the dark? he asked himself for the umpteenth time since Sergeant Button had come to the Miners’Welfare Office where he was working late and broken the terrible news. Why had he not insisted on going to fetch her? But he was always so busy, tied up with the problems of the men he represented, and Margaret was so determined he should not waste precious petrol on unnecessary journeys, saying with a certainty that would not be brooked that she would be all right. And somehow it had never crossed his mind that she would not be. Margaret was such a capable person and he had been proud of her for it, glad she was not the sort of clinging vine some men had for wives.

  So, perhaps he had not taken such good care of her as he should. But that did not mean he did not love her. He did and always had. There had never been anyone for him but Margaret and he thought there never would be.

  She has to get through this! he thought fiercely. She has to! Nothing else matters. No, not even … Just as long as she gets through.

  The prospect that she might not was too terrible to contemplate, too terrible to allow even a moment’s fleeting thought.

  That bloody idiot Ewart Brixey! he thought viciously. If I could get my hands on him God alone knows what I’d do to him! But Ewart Brixey was in hospital too, not here in Bath but at the Cottage Hospital just outside Hillsbridge where less serious cases could be dealt with. Ewart, who was known to ride his motor cycle and sidecar at reckless speed, had suffered only a broken leg while Margaret …

  Harry’s throat filled again as he looked down at her still white face, disfigured down one cheek by angry gravel rash. He leaned closer, as if his nearness could transfer some of his own strength into her broken body. He would stay here just as long as they would let him and when they decided it was time for him to go they would have to drag him away.

  Into the long night Harry Hall kept his lonely vigil.

  She came gradually back through the layers of consciousness, drifting, becoming aware of her aching body and the expanse of white ceiling above her, drifting again. Someone was holding her hand. Painfully she moved her eyes, shimmying across the dark green screens until a face blurred, then came into focus. Harry. Of course, who else? Warm contentment flooded her, her eyes heavy from the effort of moving closed again. As if from a long way off she heard sounds of life going on, voices brisk and cheerful, the rattle of a trolley. She lay in her suspended world, not wanting to return to reality. But one voice was separating from the others, low, soft, yet close by. Harry’s voice.

  ‘Margaret? Are you awake? Can you hear me, love?’

  The mists of that other world were falling away. Memory was returning, some images sharp and frighteningly clear against the thick curdled cream of the rest of her thoughts. The sounds of a motor cycle engine. Brakes applied fiercely. Tyres squealing. The shock as the corner of the sidecar caught her. The moment’s weightlessness. The sickening thud. And the darkness closing in … A sob caught in her throat. Harry’s fingers tightened on hers.

  ‘Ssh! It’s all right! You’re all right …’

  ‘I couldn’t help it!’ she said. It was an effort to speak – her jaw felt stiff. ‘I didn’t do anything. I only …’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault. We know that. Oh Margaret …’

  And suddenly those other thick-cream thoughts were centralising like the aches and pains in her body and limbs to one terrible core.

  ‘My baby!’ She was almost screaming now, anxiety lending her strength. She tried to move her hand to place it on her stomach and could not. ‘My baby! Is it all right?’

  ‘Margaret, love … Don’t worry about anything now. You’re going to be OK. That’s all that matters.’

  She twisted her eyes up to his face again, saw the anguish there, and knew. There was no need for words. Nothing could erase the truth.

  ‘Oh God, oh God!’ she whispered. The pain was sharper now, a tight steel band pressing around her heart. And then the mists were closing in again, merciful mists now, clouding what could not be borne. Margaret gave up trying to fight them and the darkness came once more.

  Harry brought her home two weeks before Christmas, sitting in the front seat of his car with a rug wrapped around her.

  It was raining, thick cold rain which overtaxed the wipers and flooded down the side windows and the greyness outside was an echo of the greyness in her heart.

  She was still weak, still in pain from a collarbone and rib cracked when she had hit the ground, but she was on the mend.

  ‘You should be fine by Christmas,’ the doctor had told her and Margaret had thought, but not said, that she could not believe she would ever be fine again. Especially not at Christmas.

  This should have been a joyful season, she thought. A season of hope. She and Harry should have been able to spend it knowing it would be the last one when it would be just the two of them, looking forward to next year when there would be a little stocking hanging by the fireplace into which she would be able to pop small cuddly toys, suitable for a baby’s first Christmas. Instead, there would be the emptiness of knowing that the child she had carried within her, the child she had wanted so much, was dead.

  Not that they would have been alone, of course. Elaine and Marie would have been there, and Margaret had been looking forward to making thi
s a good Christmas for them, separated as they were from their mother. Now she did not even know if she would be fit to do that.

  Her mother, Gussie Young, had had the two girls while Margaret was in hospital. Her own evacuee boy had been taken home by his mother a month earlier and rather than uproot Elaine and Marie completely again they had moved up the road to Gussie’s house in Ridge Road. Margaret still intended to have them back when she was fit, but as yet there was no telling when that would be.

  To reach home from Bath they had to drive along the very stretch of road where the accident had happened and Harry took one hand from the steering wheel and reached out to cover Margaret’s for comfort. But she stared at the road impassively as if hypnotised by the same kind of fascination a stranger might feel when looking at the scene of some past disaster.

  ‘Are you all right love?’ he asked.

  There was a hiatus, more as if she was adjusting to the fact that she was being spoken to than anything else. Then she said, ‘Yes. I’m, all right,’ and lapsed into silence once more.

  Harry’s heart sank. Margaret was usually such a chatterbox and her silence told more of the depth of her loss than any words could have done.

  As the road began to drop away the Hillsbridge valley came into view, pit chimneys towering above the clustering lias stone buildings, grey, all grey, against the background of winter fields. Every other year as Christmas approached there had at least been brightness and gaiety in the shops to lighten the sombre hues of December, but not this year. Windows were blacked out and there were no displays to be seen, no dainty white lace-edged handkerchiefs and bright woollen gloves pinned artistically to trellises sprinkled with cotton wool to look like snow, no tempting hampers of groceries open to reveal a great heap of delicacies and at the County Stores, licenced to sell wines and spirits, a bottle of port or two. Even had the windows not been blacked out the people of Hillsbridge would not have enjoyed looking and anticipating Christmas this year, for with England at war feelings of patriotism and the need for austerity had been stirred in even the most self-indulgent breast.

  Margaret neither noticed the absence of Christmas cheer nor cared.

  Harry turned the car into Conygre Hill and as their house came into view she stared at it with the same impassivity. She had thought she would be pleased to see it after the impersonality of the hospital ward but now it made no impression on her emotions. Just a house. An empty house that would never echo to the sound of her baby’s laughter.

  Harry helped her out of the car and she walked, shivering slightly, to the door. Everything inside looked just as it had when she left it yet somehow slightly different, the rooms a different shape, the trapped smell of the breakfast Harry had cooked himself pungent and unfamiliar. For a moment it stirred her, then once more she relapsed into apathy.

  Harry poked the fire to life.

  ‘You sit down there, love. I’ll put the kettle on.’

  She did as he told her, too weighed down by self pity to argue.

  A knock at the back door penetrated her daze. Then her mother’s voice:

  ‘Coo-ee! Can we come in?’

  Margaret’s heart sank. Her mother and the two girls. Harry had said they would be coming down to see her but she had not expected them so soon and she did not want to see them. It was all too much effort.

  ‘Margaret love, so you’re home.’ Gussie was in the doorway, smiling her welcome.

  ‘Hello, Mum.’

  Elaine and Marie were behind her. Margaret registered that they were wearing new jumpers, identical fair isle. Gussie’s handiwork, no doubt. She had always been a knitter, and since George, her husband, had died, the click of the needles had helped fill many a lonely evening. With an effort Margaret stirred herself.

  ‘Hello, girls.’

  Elaine was hanging back, scowling her familiar scowl. But as she spoke Marie darted forward, running across the room and throwing her arms around Margaret’s neck. Momentarily, Margaret recoiled with shock but the little girl scarcely seemed aware of it. Her hair, grown longer now and smelling of sweet-scented soap, was soft against her chin, the thin arms pressed her tightly.

  And somewhere within Margaret’s tortured being something stirred sweet and sharp. She put her own arms round the thin frame, holding the child close. It wasn’t her baby. Her baby was dead. But somehow she had come to be important to this child. She needed her and Margaret’s heart reached out to her.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said softly. ‘I’m all right. I’m home now.’

  It was little enough. But it was a beginning.

  Chapter Five

  The following Sunday just before ten in the morning a motor coach bearing the legend Roberts Transport left the forecourt of the Miners Arms bound for Bath. On board were twenty evacuee children, remnants of the army which had invaded the town in September, with their hosts and helpers, and as the coach rattled slowly up the steep hill from the town centre the chatter and laughter from the rear seats which they had vied for and squashed themselves into rose in a solid roar of excitement that almost drowned the tortured chuggings of the engine.

  This was the moment they had been waiting for ever since the day they had arrived, more than three and a half months ago – the most wonderful Christmas present any of them could imagine. Treats had been arranged for them in plenty – every organisation, it seemed, wanted to give them a tea party or a social evening, every benefactor in the town was anxious to don the traditional red robes of Father Christmas and put in an appearance bearing a sack laden with more toys than most of the children had ever seen in their lives. But the tea parties and social evenings paled into insignificance before this very special treat. For today they were going to see their parents again. A special train had been laid on to bring them from London to Bath and the authorities had arranged for coaches and charabancs to take the children to meet them. The same coaches would then take them to their host areas for the day and back to Bath in time for the parents to catch the special train to return to London that evening.

  In the corner of the back seat Elaine and Marie were as excited as the others although Elaine had still managed to assert her superiority and get the seat she wanted. They bobbed up and down, their faces pale with excitement beneath the bonnets which Gussie had knitted for them, chattering and laughing. This morning for once they had got up by themselves even before Gussie had woken them, washed without having to be cajoled into it, and dressed in their identical fair isle jumpers, but breakfast had been beyond them. They simply could not swallow, they were so excited.

  ‘Never mind, we’ll have a good dinner when we get back,’ Gussie had said. She had a stew simmering on the stove and potatoes peeled and in the pot ready for boiling.

  Now, sitting towards the front of the coach with the other adults, she turned to steal a look at them and smiled. Their anticipation was a joy to see and she wished that Margaret had been fit to come with them. Perhaps some of the spirit of the day would have infected her too – goodness only knows she could have done with it. The depths of depression into which she had sunk since losing the baby was worrying Gussie.

  The coach arrived at the station with a quarter of an hour to spare before the train was due but already it resembled the square at South Compton on annual fair day. Children from all over the area had arrived and were being marshalled onto the platform to await the train’s arrival.

  ‘Stay close to me girls – I don’t want to lose you!’ Gussie instructed as they were borne along with the tide up the steps to the platform, but she might as well have been talking to herself. The girls, never inclined to take kindly to discipline at the best of times, were concerned only to find a vantage point and they were soon lost in the crush of excited children. Gussie shrugged resignedly and positioned herself near the top of the steps. At least they wouldn’t be able to leave the platform without her seeing them go. She only hoped they would not get too close to the edge and fall onto the line!

  Almost exact
ly on time the signals clanked and they saw the train come steaming around the bend. A long train – so many coaches – and half the windows down with mothers and fathers hanging out eagerly to catch the first glimpse of their offspring. The moment it drew to a stop the doors were open too and the children surged forward, clamouring excitedly. Their joyful whoops joined with the shouts of the parents and within moments the platform was a sea of happy humanity, embracing, kissing, tossing small children into the air and carrying them shoulder high towards the steps where Gussie stood.

  Watching she felt tears prick her own eyes. The separation of families was one of the worst things about any war. And how quickly today would speed by so that it would seem like no time at all before they were back on the platform once more faced with the awful moment of parting.

  The crowd was clearing a little now as parents and children departed to the waiting coaches determined not to waste one precious moment. Anxiously, Gussie scanned those remaining, a few too wrapped up in one another to be ready to leave yet, a couple of mothers running the length of the platform to small children who had remained with their hosts. And Elaine and Marie, standing alone, the anticipation on their faces turning to anxiety as they looked up and down the platform.

  Gussie felt the first stab of alarm. There did not seem to be a single person not already paired with their children and the carriage doors were already being slammed as the porters and guard prepared for the train to leave once more. Gussie hurried across the platform to the children.

  ‘What’s the matter, girls? Can’t you see your Mum?’

  ‘No.’ For once Elaine’s composure was broken. She looked close to tears. ‘She ain’t here. She ain’t come!’

  ‘Oh, she must have!’ She had had a letter herself from the girls’ mother – the first she had received since they had been with her – promising that she would be on the train. The letter had been badly written in block capitals such as a child might write and the spelling was so haphazard it had not been easy to decipher the words, but the intention had been clear enough.