The Hills and the Valley Read online

  ‘Where is she then?’ Elaine demanded.

  A woman in a smart suit carrying an official looking briefcase was talking to one of the Hillsbridge organisers. Gussie took Marie by the hand and led the two girls over to her.

  ‘My two can’t find their mother,’ she said.

  The woman with the briefcase looked up and down the platform.

  ‘Doesn’t look as though she’s come then, does it? Who are they?’

  ‘Elaine and Marie Cooper.’

  ‘Cooper.’ The woman appeared to be thinking. ‘Yes, I know Mrs Cooper. Can’t say I’ve seen her today.’ She looked around once more, then her lips tightened. ‘She probably missed the train sleeping off a hangover,’ she added quietly.

  ‘A hangover?’ Gussie could hardly believe her ears.

  ‘Either that or she’s spent the night with some man and couldn’t tear herself away.’

  ‘Oh my goodness!’ Gussie whispered, shocked. ‘Well, what am I going to do with them? What am I going to tell them?’

  The woman with the briefcase turned to the children and her voice became softer as she spoke to them.

  ‘Sorry, girls, it looks as if your mum isn’t coming after all. It’s a disappointment for you I know, but there will be another time. The best thing is for you to go home now with Mrs …’

  ‘Young,’ Gussie supplied.

  ‘… and try not to be too upset about it.’

  They stared at her their faces pinched and bleak Then Marie’s mouth puckered.

  ‘She’s dead ain’t she?’ she wailed. ‘The Germans have gone and got her!’

  ‘No,’ the woman promised. ‘She is certainly not dead. Now try to be brave, there’s a good girl.’

  ‘Yeah, stop snivelling, our Marie,’ Elaine admonished but for once she looked close to tears herself.

  The last carriage door slammed, the guard blew his whistle and the train began to move slowly away from the platform.

  ‘We’d better go,’ the Hillsbridge organiser said to Gussie.

  Without another word they each took hold of one of the children’s hands and led them down the cold and echoing stone staircase to the waiting coach which overflowed now with happy and reunited families.

  Instead of sitting in the back seat as they had done on the way to Bath, the two children squashed together in a seat with Gussie, fighting back the tears. And Gussie, soul of peace, had one of the most violent thoughts of her life as she looked at them.

  Never mind Hitler, Gussie thought. If I could get hold of their mother right now I’d kill her myself. With my bare hands if necessary!

  For the majority of the evacuee children Christmas began and ended with what was for most of them a memorable day with their parents, but one family in Hillsbridge had to wait until Christmas Eve for a longed for reunion.

  Huw had been granted a few days’leave and the whole Porter household prepared enthusiastically for his homecoming.

  Mrs Milsom put a couple of big old stone hot water bottles in his bed to make sure it was well aired, informed Smith the gardener that she would need another pound of sprouts for Christmas dinner and decided that an extra two dozen mince pies might just about satisfy the returning prodigal. ‘A tray of a dozen never lasts two minutes when Master Huw is around,’ she said to herself as she weighed up fat and flour and checked the stock of mincemeat in the pantry.

  Ralph crossed the yard to the garage where Huw’s car was laid up, checked it over and put the battery on charge. The car was a Riley Imp and very precious to Huw. He had bought himself a motor cycle for use at his base but Ralph felt sure Huw would want to drive the Riley while he was at home.

  Amy went out to shop for the extra presents which she had thought would be too bulky to send to him by post – a book on the history of aviation and a pair of leather slippers lined with sheepskin, and Maureen insisted on keeping back a couple of paperchains when they had finished decorating the living room to festoon Huw’s bedroom – a tribute Amy was not at all sure he would appreciate.

  For Barbara, however, preparations took a slightly different direction. Everyone else seemed to be making arrangements for Huw’s welfare; she concentrated on more personal things.

  ‘I wish I could have a new dress,’ she said to Amy.

  ‘Whatever for? You have more than enough clothes,’ Amy replied. The fact that she now had more money to spend than she had ever had in her life had not altered the slightly frugal approach that she had inherited from her upbringing – a good best dress and a couple of sweaters and skirts constituted a more than ample wardrobe for a girl who still spent most of her life in school uniform.

  ‘But it’s nice to have something new to wear on Christmas day,’ Barbara insisted. ‘Couldn’t I have one for part of my Christmas present?’

  ‘I’ve already bought your Christmas present,’ Amy told her. ‘And with the price of things now a dress wouldn’t be just part. It would be the main item.’

  ‘Well, if I paid you back for it?’ Barbara pleaded. ‘I’m sure to get some money – Uncle Jack always sends a cheque and it would be such a shame not to be able to buy my dress before Christmas.’

  Amy felt a slight pang. It seemed no time at all since the girls had thought clothes and even money the most boring of presents – all they had been interested in was toys.

  ‘All right, Barbara, we’ll see what we can do,’ she promised. ‘Just as long as you realise that if I do buy you a dress you owe me whatever we pay for it.’

  So Barbara got her dress – a pretty cherry red wool with a Peter Pan collar. When they first saw it hanging on the rail Amy thought it would be too bright to suit Barbara’s complexion, but she was wrong. The colour seemed to bring her to life, complimenting the honey gold of her curls and reflecting her vibrant personality. She looked young and fresh and sparkly yet at the same time more grown up than she had ever looked before and Amy felt a sudden unexpected lump in her throat as she looked at her.

  ‘Well, Mum, what do you think?’

  ‘It’s very nice, Babs,’ Amy said swiftly.

  In addition to the dress Barbara insisted she needed something done to her hair. The salon in Bath Hill which they always patronised was heavily booked with clients wanting steam waves for Christmas, but as Barbara, like Amy, had never needed more than a trim for her naturally wavy hair they were able to fit her in.

  ‘You’re a very lucky girl, Barbara,’ Mrs Baker, the proprietor, told her as she cut the hair so that it curled flatteringly around Barbara’s pretty face. ‘You’ll never have to spend a fortune on perms like most people!’

  And Barbara smiled at her reflection, accepting the compliment as a statement of fact but pleased all the same with the result.

  Huw arrived late on Christmas Eve. They heard his motor cycle roar up the hill as they were putting the finishing touches to trimming the tree which Ralph, as usual, had obtained for them. It was a magnificent tree, over six feet in height and uniformly bushy, and Barbara was standing on a chair to attach the last of the glass baubles when she heard the motor cycle.

  ‘It’s Huw! He’s here!’ she cried, leaping down from the chair and setting all the baubles swinging and jangling. Then she stopped, overcome suddenly by a rush of uncharacteristic shyness. It didn’t seem right somehow to go rushing out to meet him like a child. Instinctively, her hands went to her hair fingering the curls into place and instead of heading for the door with the others she ran upstairs to her room to touch her lips with the rose lipstick Amy allowed her to wear.

  She did so want to look nice for Huw and it was very important to her that he should see that she was growing up at last. His remarks when she had met him at the station back in the summer about her not being old enough to smoke or to join the armed services had hurt her a little. The difference in their ages was not very great after all and in a few years’time would seem even less. But it was hardly surprising that he still thought of her as a child when she had been wearing school uniform. Barbara was determined
that this Christmas he should realise that she was now a young woman.

  Satisfied that she had done as much as she could about her appearance without Amy and the annoyingly observant Maureen noticing that she was making an effort, Barbara went downstairs with all the composure she could muster. The sound of eager voices all chattering at once told her the family were in the kitchen and she pushed open the door.

  The kitchen was full of the smell of yet another batch of mince pies baking and the pungent scorched smell of the taper with which Mrs Milsom had been singeing the last bits of fuzz and quills from the cockerel for tomorrow’s dinner. Mingled with these was the scent of the pine needles that had got onto Barbara’s hands as she trimmed the tree and the faint lingering aroma of fruit and nuts piled in a bowl on the table. Barbara drank in the warmth of the atmosphere without really noticing she did for she had eyes for no one but Huw, everything and everyone in the room existed only as a background to him.

  He stood warming himself by the big old range, tall and handsome with his leather motor cycling jacket still done up to his chin and covering his air force blue uniform. For just a moment she stood looking at him, the love pure and simple welling up inside her. Then she could contain it no longer and she forgot all her self-imposed dignity and ran to him.

  ‘Oh Huw – I’m so glad you could come!’

  Was it her imagination or did he hesitate slightly before swinging her into his arms? Did some tiny spark take him by surprise and make for a moment’s unexpected awareness? Then she was hugging him as she always did in greeting, her face buried in the stout leather of his jacket, her arms twined tightly around his solid muscular back.

  Oh Huw – Huw – her heart echoed her voice and for a moment the others ceased to exist. Then she became aware of her mother’s voice, gay, but with a slight edge to it.

  ‘Barbara, for goodness sake let poor Huw take his coat off!’

  She moved away, some of the awkwardness returning, but not enough to quench the fires of fierce joy. Huw was home if only for a couple of days. Huw was home, safe and well, the same Huw he had always been.

  It was going to be a wonderful Christmas.

  They spent a lovely, lazy Christmas day sleeping late because it had been the small hours before they had exhausted all they had to tell one another and finally gone to bed. After breakfast they opened their presents which Amy had stacked under the tree the last thing the previous night as tradition demanded. Considering it was a wartime Christmas there were plenty of them, some surprises, some not, all carefully wrapped and tied with coloured twine.

  Ralph had bought Amy a pair of earrings set with sapphires – they sparkled darkly against the jewellers’floss in their small square box and Barbara could not help but notice the look they exchanged when she opened it. Every Christmas since they had been married Ralph had given her a piece of jewellery, usually with sapphires, so that it had become as much a tradition as the tree, but that had never detracted from Amy’s pleasure in this expression of their love. Lucky Mum, thought Barbara, catching the shared glance through newly aware eyes.

  In return, Amy gave Ralph a pair of gold cuff-links engraved with his initials and a bright woollen scarf, and for the girls there were twin bracelets of fine silver link, each set with a small star, and new night-dresses made of dainty flowered voile, too pretty and lightweight to wear in the cold winter weather, but as Amy explained, ‘I thought that with the war on we might not be able to get things like that much longer.’

  Huw, too, had managed to buy presents – another scarf for Ralph: ‘At least we’re making sure you won’t catch cold!’ Amy laughed; perfume for Amy and a brooch each for the girls, dainty porcelain ovals hand-painted with a flower design. His packages were more clumsily wrapped than the others but Barbara melted inside at the thought of how long it must have taken him to tie the fiddly little bows.

  There were all the usual stocking fillers too – the handkerchiefs and bath cubes and socks, all exclaimed over with delight.

  With the present opening completed they toasted one another with sherry and tucked into the lunch of cold ham and pickles which Mrs Milsom had left for them, followed by the inevitable mince pies and chunks of delicious iced Christmas cake. Mrs Milsom had gone to have lunch with her sister but would be back during the afternoon in time to cook their Christmas dinner.

  After lunch it was time to visit Charlotte and the rest of the family who had gathered at Greenslade Terrace. Warm, comfortable and full of sherry and lunch as they were they did not feel in the least like moving, but not to pay a visit ‘home’would have been unthinkable on Christmas Day and Amy knew Charlotte would never forgive them if they failed to arrive. Ralph was to take the big saloon car which he used on the occasions when more room was needed than his Morgan could offer, but at the last moment Huw decided to drive his own Riley Imp.

  ‘Who wants to come with me?’ he asked and Barbara felt that his eyes were on her.

  ‘I will,’ she said, but Maureen answered just as quickly:

  ‘Me!’

  ‘You’ll have to share it then,’ Amy said. ‘One there, the other back.’

  ‘Maureen can go with Huw then and I’ll come back,’ Barbara said, preferring to save her ride and savour it rather than have it over and done with in the next few minutes.

  She was glowing today, a picture that no one, not even Maureen, could fail to notice and appreciate, her face slightly rosy from the sherry, her eyes very blue, her hair shining fair in the light from the Christmas tree candles, and there was a dreamy quality about her mouth.

  They piled into the cars and drove the mile or so to Greenslade Terrace. Half the Hall clan were there already, it seemed, replete and a little sleepy from having eaten their Christmas dinner at midday. Jim and Sarah were there, May and her husband and baby, and Alec and Joan, his fiancée. Dolly was in the kitchen brewing yet more tea, Bob and Fred, her sons, there under protest, sat in a corner discussing football, while Victor, her husband, his fog horn voice silent for once, was snoozing in a chair, and young Noel, whose birthday it was, played happily with a clown acrobat that had been meant for a child half his age. All their worst fears for Noel had been fulfilled; big and shambling he was a baby who would never grow up, but his moonlike face was good-natured and everyone adored him. Only the boys were missing – Jack and Stella had not come from Minehead this year and Harry and Margaret were spending the day with Gussie and the evacuee girls. And Ted and Rosa were half a world away in Australia …

  ‘I had a card from our Ted,’ Charlotte said when they had all found somewhere to sit. ‘I expect you did too. I only wish he could be here, though. It doesn’t seem right, Christmas and our Ted not here to give us a song.’

  They were silent for a moment. It seemed so long since Ted had been there and they were remembering other Christmases when they had all gathered round the piano to sing carols, especially that memorable Christmas at the beginning of the Great War when the boys had all lined up to do a comic drill with broomsticks for rifles. How lighthearted they had been then! Now they knew all too well that war was no joking matter. And there had been the Christmas when Noel was born too, another one to stand out in the memory. All that day they had tried to enjoy themselves while knowing Dolly was in labour and in the end Amy had rung Ralph to ask him to take her mother up to South Hill where Dolly lived to find out what was going on, something which had shocked the family who had then regarded Ralph as totally out of their class.

  ‘You never know maybe one year Ted will be here,’ James said stoically from his bed on the sofa. ‘He’s doing very well for himself by the sound of it.’

  ‘Let’s have a carol anyway,’ Charlotte suggested. ‘How about While Shepherds Watched? Who’s going to start it off?’

  Without waiting for them she started herself, her voice still good though she had trouble remembering the words, and they all joined in, even Victor waking up enough to add his loud voice to theirs. Victor was a little deaf as a result of gunfir
e in the trenches and he could scarcely hear his own rather tuneless voice.

  ‘Can’t somebody shut him up?’ Amy, who had always found Victor irritating, whispered to Ralph.

  After the carols Charlotte insisted on everyone having some tea although half of them were already full and others anxious to leave room for dinner. Much to Amy’s concern she cut a plate of ham sandwiches and Christmas cake and they knew she would be offended if they did not eat at least a little. But the men at least seemed to have insatiable appetites.

  ‘It’s a pity the baby isn’t big enough to have Father Christmas call,’ Charlotte said to May. ‘Do you remember when your Uncle Ted used to dress up for you? Never mind, maybe next year …’

  Eventually, Amy said she thought they should be making a move.

  ‘Mrs Milsom will be very upset if we let dinner spoil,’ she explained.

  Charlotte sniffed. She couldn’t understand why Amy and Ralph did not have their dinner at dinner time like everyone else. It wasn’t good for the digestion, eating so late at night. But she knew better than to say so.

  They got their coats and while Charlotte stood talking to Amy, Ralph and Maureen for a few minutes longer, Barbara and Huw went outside to Huw’s car.

  It was a perfect December evening, the stars bright in a sky that was ink black and clear. Barbara shivered and knew it was partly from excitement. This was the moment she had been waiting for – when she would be alone with Huw. She sat beside him in the Imp and the sweet roar of the engine when he started it added to the feeling of excitement.

  ‘It’s been a lovely Christmas,’ she said inadequately. ‘I’m so glad you could come home.’

  ‘If this war blows up big it could be a long time before I can come home again,’ Huw said.

  ‘Do you think it’s going to?’ Barbara asked anxiously. ‘Nothing much seems to be happening at the moment.’

  ‘Not here yet maybe,’ Huw admitted, remembering how thoroughly frustrated by the lack of action he and his friends were. Four Hurricane squadrons had been sent to France to back up the British Expeditionary Force but his own, with its full contingent of Spitfires, was still based in Kent and had little to do but the sporadic patrol of the shipping lanes. What was more, reports filtering back suggested that even those ‘in the thick of it’had little enough to do for the cold hard winter in Europe had put a stop to most activity in the air.