The Hills and the Valley Read online

  ‘There we are, Vi. You’ll see these catch the post, won’t you?’ Amy said.

  The girl looked up, keeping her place in the ledger she was marking up with her finger.

  ‘Yes, I’ll make sure they’re there in good time, Mrs Porter.’

  ‘And if Deacons ring tell them I’ve arranged things so that we can do the job for them tomorrow as they wanted.’

  ‘Yes Mrs Porter.’

  ‘If it’s Mr Deacon himself you’d better make my excuses – you know he always likes to speak to me personally.’ A small smile lifted one corner of her mouth – with some clients her femininity had been a positive advantage especially since she had become successful as well, but she had the way of dealing with them off to a fine art. ‘I’m off now, Vi. You’ll make sure everything is locked up properly when you leave, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes Mrs Porter. Don’t worry. You get off home.’

  Amy nodded, satisfied. Letting the reins go a little, even where mundane chores were concerned, had not come easily. After running the business single-handed she had felt herself responsible for everything that happened at the yard. But with expansion she had had to learn to delegate – there was no way she could possibly do everything herself. And Vi was a good girl, steady and responsible with a pleasant manner which the customers liked. She had been well trained at a secretarial college in Bath and her shorthand and typewriting speeds were good – essential as far as Amy was concerned, for patience had never been her strong point. But Amy fancied that Vi’s telephone manner had been learned not in any college but at her mother’s knee, for Vi was the daughter of Edna Denning, who had operated Hills bridge telephone exchange from the front room of her cottage for many years until a purpose-built office had been erected.

  I wonder what Llew would say if he knew I had a secretary? Amy wondered as she paused in the doorway looking back at the girl who was once again busy with her work.

  It was a thought which occurred to her sometimes at odd moments and while she found his imagined surprise amusing it also struck a chord of sadness. Maybe she was married again, and very happily, but that did not mean she had forgotten Llew, who had been her first love, the father of her children – and the boy who had made the dream of starting a haulage company into reality. Sometimes it all seemed so long ago, like part of another life, sometimes it might have been just yesterday when they had sat side by side on one of the grassy slopes that surrounded the Hillsbridge valley, where dust-blackened buildings clustered around railway sidings and pits, a young couple in love and with all their lives before them – or so they had thought. ‘I don’t want to work for anybody else,’ Llew had said. ‘I want to be my own boss. I’m going to get a lorry. Motor transport is the thing of the future.’ She had almost laughed at him then. Back in 1922 there had been more horses and carts than motor vehicles on the roads in Hillsbridge. But he had been right and now it seemed to Amy very unjust that he should not have lived to see his vision realised.

  Yet with the sadness there was also a pride and a joy which made Amy’s heart swell when she thought of what she had done and she knew that if Llew had not died she would never have had this chance to discover herself. Whatever had happened to the business, whether it had been successful or not, she would have been simply Llew’s wife, mother of his children, and a glorified unpaid housekeeper. Although at the time she had wanted nothing else, now she was honest enough to admit it would never have satisfied her.

  She pulled the office door closed behind her and stood for a moment on the woodplank step looking around the yard that was her domain, a small, still-pretty woman in a smart blue linen dress with crisp white collar and cuffs. Hard work had helped to keep her figure trim where it might otherwise have run to plumpness, and her hair, well cut to help retain its natural curl, bounced irrepressibly around her face much as it had always done. One day, perhaps, it would turn snow white almost overnight as fair hair so often does, with barely a moment of greyness. But there was no sign of that yet. With the sunshine on it, Amy’s hair was the same glorious honey gold it had always been.

  Yes, she thought, looking around the yard with a small surge of that ever present pride, I haven’t done badly. What had once been an open area was now surrounded by garages and stores, a rest room with toilet facilities for the men and a workshop where the mechanic Amy now employed could attend to the maintenance of the vehicles. The workshop had an inspection pit; Amy had insisted on that. After what had happened to Llew she wanted to be quite certain that no-one should ever have to jack up a lorry again. Only the office was the old original – a wooden shed with a tarpaulined roof. Replacing it was the next thing Amy planned to do but at the moment, with a war threatening, it would just have to wait. She could have had a new office, of course, years ago if she had been prepared to allow Ralph to finance one for her. In the bitter cold of the first winter after they were married he had offered to do just that.

  ‘It’s like an icebox in here,’ he had said when he called into the yard one day and found her hunched over her little paraffin heater wearing her coat and scarf, her fingers almost too numb to hold her pen. ‘You need a properly constructed building, like the one you’ve had put up for the men. For heaven’s sake ring round for a couple of estimates and get it done.’

  ‘I can’t afford it just now. I’ve reached my limits for capital expenditure.’

  ‘You can’t think properly if you’re half frozen. If your company balance won’t stand it at the moment I’ll make you a loan, interest-free.’

  She shook her head. ‘My company pays its own way.’

  ‘A loan, Amy. Come on now, don’t be stubborn. I don’t like to think of you working in conditions like these. Besides which it’s doing nothing for your looks. Your nose is like a cherry.’

  Under other circumstances Amy might have laughed. That day she had simply been too cold. But she had no intention of letting Ralph help her out. It would have been all too easy to allow her companies to be amalgamated into his when they had married – had they ever got around to discussing it. But Amy’s fierce pride had strengthened her then, and it strengthened her now.

  ‘You can leave my nose out of it, Ralph Porter,’ she had retorted. ‘And kindly leave me to manage my business in my own way. When I want assistance I’ll ask for it.’

  Ralph had shaken his head and given up, irritation at her shortsightedness conflicting with admiration for her determination to stand on her own two feet. Amy had gone out and bought two new heaters which raised the temperature to an acceptable level on all but the most icy days and the old office still stood, a monument to her independence.

  As she crossed the yard Herbie Button emerged from one of the garages, wiping his hands on a piece of waste. Herbie had been with Llew from the very beginning and he was loyal, trusted and true; some years ago Amy had made him foreman but it was a small enough tribute to a man whose help and loyalty had left Amy with a debt she knew she would never be able to repay. Now he ambled towards her, a tall spare man in a pair of much washed blue overalls.

  ‘Going home then be’ee, Missus?’ he enquired mildly.

  Amy smiled. Even after all this time it still amused her to be addressed as ‘Missus’, a title Herbie had adopted because he had found it difficult to call her ‘Mrs Roberts’and well nigh impossible to adapt to ‘Mrs Porter’. To him, as to so many of the older folk in Hillsbridge, she was Amy Hall and always would be, no matter how many husbands she may have. But it wasn’t right to call her by her Christian name since she was his boss – and so to Herbie at any rate she had become ‘Missus’.

  ‘Yes, I’m going a bit early today, Herbie,’ she told him. ‘Ralph and I are going out this evening. I think everything is under control here.’

  ‘I think so, Missus. I shan’t be going for a bit, anyway, so I can keep an eye on it all.’ He finished wiping his hands, stuffed the rag into his pocket and proceeded to wipe them again on the bib of his overalls. ‘An’I’ll make sure your young lady loc
ks up safe while I’m at it.’

  ‘She will, Herbie. You can leave the office to her,’ Amy said hastily. Herbie’s one fault was a slight officiousness born of an over enthusiastic sense of duty and she did not want him treading on Vi’s toes. ‘Goodnight. See you tomorrow.’

  ‘Goodnight, Missus.’

  He went off in the direction of the men’s room and Amy crossed the yard and let herself out of the small gate into the lane. In the old days when she had lived in Hope Terrace she had driven to the yard in her little Ford motor car, but after marrying Ralph and moving into Valley View with him she almost invariably walked. It seemed lazy to use the car for such a short journey unless it was raining hard or she needed to go into Hillsbridge to see her accountant or Arthur Clarence, her solicitor, and she found the fresh air helped her to get into the mood to concentrate on work in the mornings and cleared her head after a long day spent on costings and rotas, wages and insurance matters.

  Now she stepped briskly out along the lane which ran between the yard on the one side and a steeply sloping field on the other, enjoying the light fragrance of the cow parsley which grew shoulder high in the hedges and hearing the faint musical trickle of the underground streams that ran from the high sloping valley wall into the river which provided a natural boundary to the yard on its far side. Beyond the river was the railway line, beyond that again the batches rose, elongated ridges of colliery waste that had come from two or three of the Hillsbridge pits. There was no tipping on these batches now, a fleet of trucks carried the waste further along to a new incline, and fir trees had been planted on the dusty black slopes in an effort to beautify them. But in summer the trees themselves turned almost as black as the coal waste they grew on and sparks from passing trains set them alight with monotonous regularity. Sometimes the fires would burn for days in spite of the efforts of the local Fire Brigade, running along in the combustible ground to re-emerge in a new spot, and where the fires had burned nothing was left of Sir Richard Spindler’s precious trees but an army of charred skeletons. When she had been a little girl Amy had liked to watch the fire engines tackling the blaze, sometimes from below, their hoses using the water from the river, sometimes from above. But after the terrible fire at Ralph’s timber yard when Huw had almost lost his life she had come to dread seeing that first thin spiral of smoke that signified batch-on-fire and the wail of the fire hooter could turn her stomach to water.

  This afternoon, warm June day though it was, there was no fire. Amy reached the triangular patch of grass where the moon daisies stood in tall white clusters and began to climb Porters Hill, where she had collided with Ralph’s Morgan whilst driving the lorry and set in motion a chain of events which had changed all their lives. It was a steep hill, no more than a lane’s width from burgeoning hedge to burgeoning hedge, and her feet crunched on the loose gravel which Ralph used, to help keep the pot-holes at a manageable level. Amy was a little out of breath by the time she reached the gate and she smiled wryly to herself. She hadn’t used to get out of breath on the hill no matter how she hurried, Maybe it was old age creeping on – or, more likely, since she was still only thirty-six years old, the cigarettes she indulged in when she was relaxing – and sometimes when she had a thorny problem to solve as well.

  I’d better try and smoke less, she thought.

  Valley View was a big rambling house with white-painted gables and shutters and so many chimneys it gave the appearance of an irate hedgehog. From the outside it had changed little since the days when Ralph had lived there as a bachelor – there remained a slightly wild feel about the garden where, trees and bushes jostled for light and air, roses rioted and clumps of misty blue forget-me-nots encroached onto the daisy-studded lawns. Water lilies the size of meat platters obscured the greenish surface of the fishpond, and honeysuckle and morning glories filled the air early and late in the day with heavy sweetness. The small patches of garden where Barbara and Maureen had attempted to grow their own phlox and snapdragons had long since reverted to nature, for they had grown tired of their efforts and Amy never had the time nor inclination to supplement the efforts of old Freddie Burge, the gardener.

  It was within Valley View that Amy had left her mark. When she had first set foot in the house she had thought how much a man’s house it was, all dark paint and heavy furniture. Good, sensible – and so depressing! The only room which had shown any sign of a woman’s touch had been the one occupied by Flora, Ralph’s invalid sister. But Amy had soon changed that, introducing a touch here and there to lighten the sobriety and then gradually, as the big, high-ceilinged rooms came to need redecorating, lighter paintwork and modern wallpaper, chintzy curtains in summer and deep rich velvet ones in winter had followed. Sadly Flora had died three winters ago and her room was now a drawing-room which Amy had been able to furnish from scratch. Only the kitchen remained totally unchanged. That was the domain of Mrs Milsom, who had been Ralph’s housekeeper for more years than he cared to remember. When Ralph had announced his engagement to Amy she had gone to him, her plump chins quivering, and stated that she supposed her services would no longer be required. But Ralph had been able to assure her that was not the case. As Amy wished to continue running her businesses, they would be severely inconvenienced if Mrs Milsom was to leave.

  Today was Mrs Milsom’s afternoon off and she had gone to spend it as she often did with her sister who lived at Withywood. Amy unlocked the front door and let herself in. The hall was cool and dark, smelling of polish overlaid with the scent from a vase of roses from one of the enormous bushes that rioted in the garden. She went through into the kitchen and slid the kettle onto the old fashioned range which Mrs Milsom had refused to change for a modern cooker. Oh, for a good cup of tea! But even before the kettle boiled she heard the distinctive sound of Ralph’s Morgan coming up the hill. So he had been able to get off early today too, she thought, and they would be able to have a leisurely meal before getting ready to go out. She crossed to the window and as the Morgan swung around the corner and into view she burst out laughing.

  Not only Ralph, but Barbara and Maureen too. They were piled one on top of the other in the single bucket seat beside Ralph, holding onto one another and the dashboard of the open-topped three-wheeler sports car. She opened the door to greet them and issued her customary warning as they piled out.

  ‘Mind your skirt, Babs! Maureen – be careful you don’t burn your leg on the exhaust – it’s red hot!’

  ‘It’s all right, Mum, we know!’

  ‘Don’t fuss! We’ve done it hundreds of times!’

  ‘Yes, and you’ve burned your socks hundreds of times too,’ she rejoined. ‘There’s not room for both of you in there. I’m surprised Sergeant Button hasn’t seen you riding like it before now and given you a piece of his mind.’

  ‘They’re all right, Amy. They enjoy it, don’t you girls?’ Ralph swung himself over the side of the car on the driver’s side with the ease of years of practice and and advantage afforded by being over six feet tall and, in spite of approaching middle age, athletically built.

  Looking at him standing there beside the car Amy found herself remembering the first time she had seen him when she had run into this same precious car with the lorry. He had been wearing the flying jacket and boots then which were a necessity in an open car on a cold spring day instead of the open necked shirt and cavalry twills he was sporting today, and his hair had been thick and dark. Well, it was still thick, but the black was now etched at the temples with grey and his moustache, too, was pepper and salt. But this in no way detracted from his good looks. He was, Amy thought, as attractive as he had ever been, as if he had somehow been made for maturity. A small quiver tickled the pit of her stomach and she gave herself a little shake. Nine years married and he could still do this to her!

  ‘I would have thought you wanted your brains testing, all of you!’ she said. ‘I can just imagine the ructions if I asked them to squeeze into one seat of my car!’

  ‘Oh, your car!
Your car’s just a boring old Ford,’ Maureen teased.

  ‘I couldn’t very well pass them by and not pick them up now could I?’ Ralph demanded. ‘There they were, plodding along the lane …’

  ‘I just plodded along the lane!’.

  ‘And if I’d seen you I’d have picked up you as well.’ Ralph came around and kissed her. ‘Especially as you look as if you’ve had a hard day.’

  She flipped at him with the back of her hand. ‘I do not!’

  ‘All right, let’s go and have a cup of tea anyway. I hope you’ve got the kettle on.’

  ‘Of course.’

  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 …