The Hills and the Valley Read online

  ‘I’d better write it in my diary then, hadn’t I?’ Amy said drily.

  ‘Oh Mum!’ Barbara’s face was wreathed in smiles. ‘Does that mean you’ll give your permission?’

  ‘Yes, Barbara, I suppose it does.’

  ‘Oh Mum, thank you! I must phone Marcus and tell him!’

  She hugged Amy and ran off towards the house. Amy shook her head, hoping fervently that her intuition was wrong and that she would not live to regret her change of heart. Then, with an air of resignation, she went back to deadheading her roses.

  Two days after he arrived at his new station Huw’s flight was detailed to act as target-withdrawal wing for the ‘beehive’ – the formation of bombers and their fighter escort which had been instructed to destroy an engineering factory in France that was producing valuable aircraft parts for the Germans.

  ‘Immediately he had installed his belongings in his billet Huw had spoken to the Station Commander about the chances of a short leave pass and had been promised one at the earliest possible opportunity. That night, as he led his men out to the airfield, he was feeling reasonably happy and he whistled as he knotted the silk scarf which Barbara had sent him last Christmas at the neck of his flying jacket and adjusted his Mae West.

  ‘It’s a nice night for flying,’ a voice beside him said and he turned to see ‘Topsy’Brown hurrying to catch him up.

  Topsy was one of the newest pilots on the squadron – a fresh-faced boy who had joined the RAF straight from school – and already Huw had marked him down as one he needed to keep an eye on. Though he handled his Hurricane well his keenness to make his first kill was a little worrying. When he had flown a few more sorties he would learn to temper his enthusiasm with caution, Huw thought, but for the moment he would need watching if he was to survive to fly another day.

  ‘Should be a good chance for a bag tonight shouldn’t there?’ he said now, reinforcing Huw’s opinion.

  Huw nodded. Flying as target-withdrawal wing meant that they would arrive in the target area as the ‘beehive’turned for home and their job would be to assist in any scraps that might still be going on and mop up any stragglers.

  ‘We should have some fun, yes,’ Huw said. ‘But don’t take any risks, Topsy. Do as you’re told and fly yourself in first – right?’

  ‘Yes sir!’

  They took off into the gathering dusk, climbing and heading out over the Channel. In spite of his vigilance towards other members of his flight, Huw felt relaxed. He liked the Hurricane, liked the compact feel of the aeroplane and its marvellous manoeuvrability, though on the ground it looked clumsier than the elegant little Spitfire, and liked the stories he had heard of the amount of punishment it could take and still keep flying.

  The coast of France loomed up ahead and they headed south. Flak was heavy from the harbour defences splintering the darkness of the fine clear night but they managed to avoid it and flew on keeping a sharp lookout for German fighters and aware of the need to arrive at the target area at precisely the right time – the success of these sorties depended on perfect timing.

  Then, just as they expected them to, the fields beneath gave way to the build up of heavy industrial buildings starkly illuminated by a huge fire that was burning out of control and the sky was streaked with the bright criss cross of gunfire.

  The bombers had done their job. They had hit their target and turned for the safety of home. But the Germans were after them like furious terriers snapping at their heels. There was work for the target-withdrawal wing as they had guessed there would be. Huw issued an instruction and they went in, drawing the German fire. An Me109 dived steeply away from Huw and he followed it, though at first his slower plane was left standing. Then the Me109 began to pull out much sooner than Huw expected and as he overhauled it he shattered its tail unit with a burst from his guns. It fell like a stone and mentally he added it to his tally of ‘enemy destroyed’.

  The remaining Germans had scattered and Huw and his flight were about to turn for home when the reinforcements arrived – a flock of fresh and determined Bf109s. Huw shouted a warning; it was every man for himself now. He got one with a full deflection burst at point blank range and saw his shells striking the 109’s fuselage. It nose dived away, hitting the ground and exploding in a burst of bright flame.

  He looked around, every nerve alert and singing, and saw another 109 on Topsy Brown’s tail. Topsy seemed unaware of it. Huw went in drawing the fire and at that precise moment realised that he himself was trapped. Another 109 was heading straight for him, all cannon firing. In a moment suspended in time he saw the crackling lines like deadly sparkler trails and knew the 109 had made no mistake. He was hit.

  Many times, returning after seeing his friends spiral from the sky in flames, Huw had wondered how it would feel to know with deadly certainty that you were going to be shot down. He had had plenty of close shaves but always there had been something he could do. He had dived and climbed, flipped close circle, coaxed dead engines back to life in the nick of time. He had known fear, excitement, the heady crazy mix of emotions which come from surging adrenalin. But never had he faced the inevitable. He did so now and was surprised by the strange calm he found himself in. Life and death had fused, it seemed; eternity stretched before him and there was nothing whatever he could do to escape it. It was euphoric, almost, that moment of inevitability. And then the gunfire hit the Hurricane. An enormous explosion at his feet knocked him almost senseless and then his cockpit was filled with flames and he was sharply conscious once more and the momentary crazy euphoria was gone.

  His plane was lost. He had known that from the moment he saw the deadly accuracy of the cannon fire. But he was alive – if he could get out of the Hurricane which would otherwise be his coffin. With fingers still numb from the force of the explosion he clutched at the release, dragged the hood open and fumbled to free himself from his harness. It gave and he raised himself up so that he was standing in the slip stream. A strange sickening stench assailed his nostrils; he realised it was his own burning flesh. His body was wholly out of the cockpit now but still he was falling with the crippled plane and he realised the toe of his boot was caught. He experienced a moment’s wild panic and kicked out with all his strength. The thrust cleared him and he was hurtling down through the cold night air, tumbling head over heels. The fine honed instincts born of a hundred mental rehearsals for his moment took over where his thought processes had been arrested. He found the ripcord of his chute and jerked hard, the chute opened and he was no longer falling but floating, with the French countryside laid out beneath him ghostly pale in the moonlight and fiery orange away to his left where the factory burned fiercely.

  When he saw the 109 closing in he thought that it was all over for him, for up here, suspended beneath his billowing parachute, he was a sitting duck. But the German seemed satisfied with knowing he had got the Hurricane. The wings slanted and he curled away.

  The ground rushed up to meet Huw. He tried to position himself for landing but his body would no longer obey him. He hit the ground with a jolt, rolled over and tried to rise. But the blackness of the night was inside him now. A wave of pain enveloped him, the field cartwheeled around him again and as the blackness numbed and blinded him, Huw knew no more.

  Amy put down the telephone and went back into the kitchen where the family were having breakfast. It was a peaceful scene repeated every morning five days a week – Ralph opening the mail as he drank tea from his extra large cup, Maureen and Barbara sharing the last piece of toast and faithfully dividing between them what was left of the butter ration. The normality of it struck at Amy as the telephone conversation had not, finding a crack in the strange calm unreality which had enveloped her as she listened to what the caller had to say. Her knees went weak suddenly and she clutched at the door to support herself.

  Barbara looked up, saw her standing there and knew at once something was very wrong.

  ‘Mum?’ Her tone was sharp and anxious.

&
nbsp; Amy tried to speak and could not.

  ‘Amy!’ Ralph rose, jerking his chair back. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘It’s Huw,’ she said. ‘He’s missing.’

  For a moment her words seemed to hang in the air. Maureen uttered a small strangled cry; Ralph asked sharply: ‘When? How?’ Only Barbara remained motionless, holding the piece of toast suspended halfway to her mouth.

  ‘He was shot down last night,’ Amy said. ‘That was his commanding officer on the phone. He said he wanted to tell us himself.’

  ‘You mean he didn’t come back from a sortie?’ Ralph asked.

  ‘No, he was definitely shot down. His Number Two saw his plane crash in flames.’

  ‘Oh Christ! You mean …’

  ‘They don’t know. They think they saw a parachute. He may have got out. If he did he is somewhere in France. But they don’t know for sure. And even if he’s alive he may be badly burned. He may be …’ Her voice tailed away.

  Ralph crossed the kitchen, put his arms around her and supported her to a chair. ‘Sit down, my love.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ she said, almost crossly. ‘Don’t fuss, Ralph.’

  ‘You’re not all right. You have had a shock.’

  ‘So have we all!’

  ‘He’ll come home safely,’ Barbara said. They all turned to look at her. The glazed expression was still there in her eyes but there was an eagerness too about her face as if by the force of her own will she could make it so. ‘He’ll come home safely – I know he will!’

  ‘Oh please God, I hope you’re right!’ Amy whispered.

  ‘He will,’ she said fervently. ‘He has to!’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Huw came slowly through the mists of semi-consciousness to the pain which had bounded his world for the past days. Waves of burning pain seemed to envelop the whole of his body as if he were still on fire, trapped in his blazing Hurricane. For a moment he imagined that he was and a scream rose in his dusty-dry throat. Then his senses registered the dimness and the overpowering smell of hay and he checked the scream.

  Quiet, you idiot, you bloody fool! Keep quiet can’t you!

  He lay stock still for every movement only increased the agony. He was lying on a makeshift bed, an old mattress covered with a clean sheet. On one side of the bed was a sheet of rusty corrugated iron, on the other three bales of hay formed the walls of a narrow ‘room’. Beside him on the straw-strewn floor stood a carafe of water and a glass, at his feet an aluminium bucket provided primitive toilet facilities. The dryness in Huw’s throat increased, aggravated by tiny particles of hay which he had breathed in and he decided that painful or not he must have a drink.

  Slowly, with great difficulty, for both hands were heavily bandaged, he managed to pour some water from the carafe into the glass. As it touched his lips he winced. The burned skin had peeled from them like an overripe peach and now they were raw and tender in spite of the medication which had been spread on them and was now making the water taste bitter.

  How many days had he been here – four? five? He was not sure. He had tried to keep count but time had lost its meaning. Here in the barn what little light there was was shut out by the wall of hay, so night and day were almost inseparable and the bouts of semicons-ciousness had made a mockery of his own sense of the passage of time. Sometimes it seemed like only moments ago that he had come floating down with his parachute billowing above him, sometimes years, for it was difficult to remember a time before this pain which bounded his universe on all sides like the walls of hay. He was lucky to be alive, he knew, and luckier still to be free in this occupied country. On both counts he owed a debt of gratitude which he could never hope to repay to the farmer who had found him and brought him here, who was still caring for him regardless of the risk to himself and his family, and to the doctor, a general practitioner from the nearby village, who had treated his burns and given him medication to ease the pain.

  His memory of what had happened that night after he had been shot down was hazy, a kaleidoscope of blurred fragments like small sharp clips from a movie. He remembered hearing voices as he lay there in the meadow-grass, tangled still in the harness of his chute, and looking up to see dark shapes silhouetted against the purple sky. The voices were rough, speaking French in a thick country dialect that made them almost impossible to understand, though stunned as he was he caught the odd word.

  ‘Anglais?’

  ‘Oui, Anglais …’ he had muttered but the effort had been almost too much for him. When they lifted him he had passed out again. The next thing he remembered was being here in the barn lying on the straw-covered floor. Two men were bending over him – the two men who had carried him here, he assumed – but as his eyes came into focus he saw a girl standing in the doorway, a tall slim figure with long loose hair. The older of the two men said something to her in rapid, incomprehensible French and she came over, dropping to her knees beside him.

  ‘Restez-vous ici,’ she said. ‘We you hide with straw. We bring M. le Docteur to help your wounds. M. le Docteur est notre ami – our friend. You stay – we hide you now.’

  He only half understood until they began building the bales of hay up around him. It was not so much that her English was imperfect as that he was still incapable of coherent thought. Then, when they had gone and he was alone, he realised the danger. The German pilot would have reported seeing his parachute. Before long they would be combing the countryside for him. When they found nothing they would know someone had hidden him. And if he was discovered here the French farmer and his family would be shot.

  I can’t put them at risk! he thought. But there was nothing he could do. The wall of hay formed a prison and Huw was in no fit state to find the strength to demolish it. He lay sweating and listening, tensing at every sound and gritting his teeth against the waves of pain.

  Before dawn they were back, unpacking enough of the straw bales to make a gateway to reach him. The girl stood at the barn door keeping watch while the doctor tended to him, soothing and bandaging. His English was quite good and he kept up a running commentary on Huw’s burns.

  ‘Hands – face – legs – ah, not so bad. We will have you well soon I think. You will not die this time. So long as the German bastards do not find you. Now I give you something to make you sleep. You sleep a few days. Henri will look after you. I will come back and see you again when it is safe. As soon as I can.’

  Huw tried to argue but he was unable to form the words properly. Then the injection began to take effect and he became drowsy, drifting into the semi-consciousness that was to make a nonsense of the next days for him.

  In his periods of awareness he knew they came to him, sometimes the man, sometimes the girl, who spoke reasonable English. He had no recollection of them making up the bed for him. He only eased out of his stupor one day to realise he was no longer lying on the floor but on a mattress, old and lumpy, but at least offering some comfort to his aching joints. As time passed he realised he was in less danger of discovery but he still worried about it, more for the sake of those who were hiding him than for his own. He had no way of knowing that the German who had seen his parachute had himself been shot down minutes later in another skirmish without ever having time to report that the pilot of the Hurricane he had claimed had survived, or that the farmer had eased his body out of the remains of his flying jacket, charred it still further in his own fire, and deposited it along with his watch and signet ring in the burned out wreck of the Hurricane so that German patrols would believe that he had died with his plane.

  Now, closer to reason than he had been since disaster had overtaken him, he lay in the semi-dark and tried to think beyond his pain. He could not stay here forever; he could not continue to expose the farmer and his family, to the danger of having an English flier hidden on their property. He had to get back to England. There was a very good reason why he should get back – and quickly. Only just for the moment he could not remember for the life of him what it was �
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  A small sound from the other side of the wall of hay attracted his attention and he froze, listening. Then he saw that one of the bales was moving and as it was removed the light came rushing in, hurting his eyes.

  ‘Hello. You are awake then.’ It was the girl. She removed another bale and crawled through. ‘I have some coffee for you and something to eat. Would you like something to eat today?’

  She set down a milk churn on the floor beside his bed, removed the lid and dived inside, bringing out a jug of steaming coffee and a box containing bread and butter, cheese and a bunch of grapes.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. He was hungry though he was not certain he would be able to eat. She emptied the remaining water from his glass and filled it with coffee. The aroma rose temptingly but he knew the hot liquid would sear his lips.

  ‘We wait until it is cool,’ she said, as if reading his thoughts.

  Gritting his teeth against the pain he struggled to sit up. She smiled.

  ‘You are better today, I think. Tell me, what is your name?’

  ‘Huw,’ he said. ‘Huw James.’

  She spread a hand across her chest. ‘And I am Yvette. My father found you when you came down boom! from the sky. Do you remember?’

  ‘Not very well.’

  He was looking at her now with eyes clear at last from the fever. A pretty oval face framed by the long swinging hair, huge dark eyes fringed by thick lashes, well defined dark brows, a wide generous mouth. She was wearing a dress of floral cotton and though she had been strong enough to move the bales her figure was trim.

  ‘I must go,’ he said. ‘It’s not safe for you while I am here.’

  She shrugged. ‘Paw! Nothing is safe these days. Too many of our countrymen give in to the Germans. Not us! We are proud. We still fight for France. We keep you here until you are well then we will find a way for you to go home.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘There are some in the village who are also proud. The doctor, Father Leclerc, the priest, and some others. They will find a way. It will be dangereuse, but …’