The Hills and the Valley (10 page)

Tonight, however, he seemed abstracted.

‘Ralph?' Amy prompted, opening a pot of night cream and leaning forward to examine the tiny wrinkles that were forming in spite of her ministrations around her mouth and eyes. ‘How are you going to manage?'

‘Oh, timber is definitely going to be one of those very necessary commodities. Though shipping is going to be hazardous – maybe impossible. And I've lost three of my men too, and there may be more once the call-up gets into its swing. More serious for me than for you, actually.'

‘Why?'

‘If the worst comes to the worst you can always try to acquire some smaller lorries, then you can take on younger drivers. As long as they're competent you could catch them between seventeen and eighteen now that the test has been abolished. But two-and-a-half tonners wouldn't be much good to me.'

‘Thank heavens I've still got Herbie!' Amy said, slapping the last bit of cream onto her face and rubbing it in with more vigour than finesse. Then, as another thought occurred to her, she swung round on the stool. ‘Ralph –
you
won't have to go, will you?'

‘Not as things stand, no. The top age limit is forty-one. But that could change if things go on for long.'

Her eyes narrowed. ‘You said that almost as if you hope they will!'

‘Yes.' He folded his hands behind his head, staring into space.

‘What do you mean –
yes?
‘

‘Well, I was in the last show. I don't much care for the feeling that I'm getting too old to be any use.'

‘You – old!' She tipped her head to one side, teasing him. ‘Since you have a business to run and a home and family, I'm jolly glad they don't know just how young and fit you are! Or how many things you are decidedly
not
too old for!'

She expected him to grab her then and pull her down onto the bed but he did not.

‘I've been thinking, Amy. I want to do something,' he said. ‘They want more ARP wardens. I think I'm going to volunteer for that.'

‘Oh but surely you've got enough on your plate!'

‘That's hardly the point. Unless we can win this war none of us are likely to have a plate to have anything on.'

She spun round. ‘
If
we can win? What do you mean by that? Of course we'll win – and teach that nasty little German a lesson!'

He smiled. ‘Your patriotism does you credit, Amy. But that “nasty little German” as you call him has got to be reckoned with. He fancies the idea of ruling the whole of Europe, you know. And he's built himself a pretty efficient war machine. It's not going to be a pushover. It's going to be a hard struggle – especially if he invades.'

‘Invades!'

‘He'll try it. Mark my words. And we've all got to do our bit if we are to make sure he doesn't succeed.'

Amy was silent for a moment. Ralph sounded so serious and over the years she had learned to respect his opinions. Then her natural optimism reasserted itself.

‘He's got a nasty shock coming to him, I'm sure of that. And I suppose if you've made up your mind to be an ARP warden there's nothing I can say that will make any difference.' She turned out the light and went to the window, unpinning the carefully secured makeshift blackout.

It was a clear fine night; by the light of the moon the valley looked peaceful and beautiful, the silhouette of the banked firs along the ridge of batches darker than the velvet sky, the river a slender silver thread winding its way between the trees which overhung its banks. Impossible, almost, to believe that a war was going on somewhere out there beyond the black guardian hills; even more impossible to envisage it touching their lives, encroaching on this serenity. And yet …

She looked up at that midnight-blue sky shimmering with a million stars and imagined that one of them might be the winking lights of a plane. Not that a plane would be flying with winking lights to advertise its position now, she supposed. It would move through the darkness with as much stealth as its throbbing engines would allow, unseen by the naked eye yet with this panorama in shades of black and silver spread out beneath it, the landscape marked out like a map by the hedgerows and trees and the shining thread of the river …

‘I wonder where Huw is?' she said. ‘Do you think he is flying tonight?'

Ralph did not reply. Anxiety stabbed at her suddenly, sharp and sickening.

‘He will be all right, won't he?' she asked.

Still Ralph said nothing. He could see all too clearly the course this war would take, and the dangers for Huw and all the young men like him. Too many of them would die before it was finally won or lost. Too many would climb fearlessly into the cockpits of their Spitfires and Hurricanes and Lancasters and would never return. Pray God Huw would not be one of them.

‘Ralph!' Amy said. There was real alarm in her voice and he stretched his hand out to her.

‘Come to bed, love.'

Her heart sank like a stone. Ralph was not going to pander to her with false assurances. She knew him better than to expect that he would. But what comfort was there in that?

She crossed the moonlit room, turned back the covers and slipped into bed beside him. His arms went around her, holding her, and the strength of his body against hers felt good.

Whatever happens, whatever comes, I should not grumble, Amy thought. I have been very lucky, luckier than most people I know; perhaps luckier than I deserve.

But knowing it did nothing to ease the hollow aching dread that had begun inside her and for all her optimism Amy knew that this was going to be a long, hard war.

In the kitchen of a cottage in the lower reaches of Purldown, Alec Hall, the only son of Amy's eldest brother Jim, snapped the lid back onto a tin of cream gloss paint, wiped the worst of it from his brush on a sheet of newspaper and straightened up to survey his handiwork. Not bad, even if he did say it himself. By the soft light of the gaslamp the cupboard door and skirting boards gleamed fresh and wet and above all
clean.
Quite a change from the way it had looked when he and Joan, his fiancée, had seen it for the first time three months earlier. Then it had been, not to put to fine a point on it, filthy – a dirt which not even the dark brown paint had concealed. The huge stone sink had been grained with dirt, the cracked window panes so crusted that Alec doubted a blackout would have been necessary to keep the light from showing down the valley, and every corner festooned with cobwebs. The cottage had stood empty for the last year since the old widow who owned it had died – and judging by the state of it Alec had thought it could not have had a good spring clean for many years even in her lifetime.

At first Joan had balked at it.

‘Surely we can find something better than this, Alec?' she had said, standing in the centre of this very kitchen as if to get too close to the walls or any of the fitments might contaminate her.

‘Maybe. But this is in a nice position,' Alec had argued. ‘It's going cheap, too. I don't know that we could afford more. And you'd like a place of your own, wouldn't you?'

‘Well, yes, I would. You know that's what you always said – we'd wait to get married until we could afford a place of our own. But this wasn't quite what I had in mind.'

‘Just wait till I've finished with it,' Alec said. ‘You won't know it and that's a promise.'

‘How long is it going to take you?' Joan had asked doubtfully.

‘Six months maybe, but …'

‘Six months!'

‘That's not so long, is it? Six months out of a lifetime?'

‘No, I suppose not. But I just can't wait for us to get married Alec and it seems as far away as ever.'

‘No it doesn't,' Alec had argued. To him it had seemed a frighteningly short time, but at least it provided a respite. If they had found a cottage in good condition which they could have afforded Joan would have wanted to get married right away – a prospect which made Alec go cold inside.

At twenty-six Alec was no more ready to get married than he had been at nineteen, perhaps less so, for now he saw those friends who had been so eager to fall into bed with the first pretty girl who came along caught in a tender trap of their own making. They were no longer free to stay drinking in the Miners Arms or the Working Men's Club until closing time – or if they did they had someone to answer to. They had to be sure their wage packets went home intact or face the wrath of someone with the power to make their lives a misery. And more often than not they had a couple of squalling kids to disturb their night's sleep. It was not a prospect that enthralled him and the more he thought about it the less he liked it.

‘You take after your Uncle Ted,' Sarah, his mother, had said to him once. ‘He was just like you; we thought he'd never settle down.'

The idea had pleased Alec. His Uncle Ted had emigrated to Australia ten years earlier and to Alec he had the aura of a romantic figure. But even Uncle Ted had succumbed in the end and married Rosa Clements, who had lived next door to the Halls in Greenslade Terrace and adored Ted since she was a little girl. As far as he was concerned, Alec supposed, the same went for him and Joan.

They, too, had known one another from childhood days for Joan had lived two doors away from his home in Pit Cottages, and as she was the same age as his younger sister May and played with her along the Rank he had been delegated to escort the two girls to the Church school in Hillsbridge. Later, this escort duty had been extended to seeing them home from the dances which were held in the room under the Palace Cinema and when May had got herself a boyfriend he had been left alone with Joan. He could never remember actually asking her to go out with him, it had just happened somehow, and he had gone along with it. Joan had grown into quite a pretty girl, if a little plump, but his father had always advised him to pick a girl he could grab a hold of rather than one of the fashionable skinny-ribs and on that score Joan was always accommodating. She liked nothing better than a kiss and a cuddle though she always put her foot down over going further, a fact which intrigued Alec whilst frustrating him. He went through a few minor flings with other girls but when they came to an end Joan was always there waiting and almost without realising it she had become a habit.

It was when he woke up one day to the fact that most of his friends were married, or about to be, that Alec had finally succumbed to Joan's gentle pressure and agreed to become engaged. They had gone to Bath to buy a ring – a nice little diamond that had cost Alec the best part of two weeks'wages – and everyone had supposed that he would be the next at the altar. But somehow each time the subject of setting a date had arisen he had shied away.

First there had been his exams as an excuse – he had followed his Uncle Harry's example and qualified as an examiner at Starvault Pit where he worked, though he knew it was unlikely that he had either the ambition or the ability to rise further – certainly not to the dizzy heights of Uncle Harry, who was now Miners'Agent.

Then there was the excuse of saving up enough money to make a decent start and perhaps to buy a house of their own. For quite a long while that had satisfied Joan who had liked the idea of having a home which reflected Alec's status. But lately even that had worn a little thin. Joan had begun to be impatient and now the only thing which stood between Alec and final capitulation was the work which needed to be done on the cottage they had decided to buy.

Alec washed his paintbrushes in a jar of turps in the kitchen and wondered how much longer he could spin out the decorating and renovations without rousing Joan to what he privately called ‘one of her paddies'. Though generally good-natured and amenable she occasionally lost her temper utterly and completely, something which Alec, a typically peaceful member of the Hall family, found profoundly disturbing.

But perhaps I ought not to spin it out for much longer, Alec thought. With this war who knew what would happen? The bill for conscription had been rushed through when the war was just a few hours old and just because no one from Hillsbridge except the reservists had actually been called up yet didn't mean they wouldn't be. The thought of leaving the job of renovating the cottage offended Alec's orderly mind even if leaving Joan a spinster did not. Finish the cottage and then worry about how to keep his freedom for a few more precious months, perhaps that was the best way …

Raised voices carrying through the wall from the adjoining cottage interrupted Alec's train of thought. A man shouting. A woman's shrill protest. Alec paused with the brush still suspended in the jar of turps listening. He could not make out the words but without doubt there was one hell of a row going on – the walls of the cottage were thick solid stone, not like the paper thin ones they were building nowadays.

Good grief they're going at it hammer and tongs! thought Alec. Even Joan, with her temper up, made less noise. There was a thud followed by another as if furniture was being overturned and Alec shook his head in disbelief, then went on packing up his brushes. It was nothing to do with him if his neighbours wanted to have a full scale row in their own home. He just hoped they wouldn't do it too often!

After a while Alec heard what sounded like the back door being slammed and then all was quiet. His neighbour must have gone out to cool off, Alec decided. He knew the man slightly – Eric Latcham, who worked at one of the pits in South Compton – but apart from passing the time of day if he saw him in the garden Alec had never really spoken to him. And if he's got a temper like that I don't know that I want to, Alec thought.

He finished cleaning his brushes before putting them away and packed up the sheets of paint-streaked newspaper from the floor. Time to be going home – after a hard day's work and an evening's decorating he was just about ready for bed, though he might stop off at the Miners Arms for a pint on the way, he thought. He put on his jacket and let himself out of the cottage. The moon was shining but it took a moment or two for his eyes to adjust after the brightness of, the gas-lit kitchen and the outhouses where he had left his bicycle were in deep shadow. He locked the door, pocketed the key and turned around – then almost jumped as he saw a darker shadow cowering back against the door of the outhouses. Someone was there.