The Hills and the Valley (29 page)

His motor cycle was off the road now, since he had loaned it to a friend who had drunk a little too much and wrapped it around a lamp post.

‘Go by train,' Barbara said.

‘Yes, but even trains are a bit uncertain these days.'
‘And I don't think you can miss another day's college, Barbara,'
Amy said severely.
‘Oh Mum!'

‘You've had all day today.' Amy glanced at her watch. ‘Maureen's bus should be in now soon. You can take my car and go and meet her. It's pouring with rain.'

Barbara brightened. She loved driving Amy's car.
‘All right. Are you coming with me, Huw?'

‘Don't hog him, Barbara. I want to talk to Huw myself. You go for Maureen and Huw can chat to me while I'm peeling the potatoes.'

About to protest Barbara remembered what Huw had said about not leaving Amy out. Perhaps she was being selfish.

‘All right.' She fetched her gabardine raincoat and a scarf. When she had put it on her face peeped rosily out of the hood. ‘I won't be long.'

‘Take care,' said Amy.

Huw and Barbara exchanged a secret smile and she went out humming.

The moment the car had left the drive Amy turned to Huw.

‘I'm sorry, Huw, but I wanted to get Barbara out of the way. I have to talk to you alone.' Her voice was serious, her face drawn into tight lines. He looked at her in surprise.

‘You worry too much. Things aren't, as bad as you might think.'

Her mouth quirked but without humour.

‘I'm afraid they are. But that's not what I want to talk to you about. Nothing to do with the war. It's about you and Barbara.'

‘Oh!'

‘I'm sorry, Huw. I'm really sorry to have to do this at such a time when you're trying to snatch a couple of days relaxation. But I can't see any alternative.' She pulled out a chair. ‘Let's sit down, shall we?'

She sat and he perched on the table opposite her, waiting.

‘You see, I can't help noticing the way things are going between you and Barbara,' Amy said. There was a little tremble in her voice. ‘I am right, aren't I?'

Huw shifted slightly, feeling uncomfortable.

‘Well yes, if you put it like that.'

‘You are becoming fond of one another.'

‘Yes.'

‘More than fond.'

‘Yes,' he admitted. ‘Look, Amy, I know it may seem strange to you after all these years, but Barbara and I – well, I suppose you could say we have discovered one another. Since you've brought the subject up – I want to marry her.'

Amy blanched. ‘You can't.'

He got up, crossed to the sink and leaned against it.

‘I know it's a bit sudden, but I suppose at a time like this when you don't know from one day to the next what is going to happen to you things
do
happen more suddenly.'

‘What does Barbara say about this?' Amy asked.

‘She doesn't know yet. I haven't asked her. But it's been on my mind all day. I can't stand the thought of leaving her. I love her, Amy.'

Amy sunk her head in her hands and saw nothing but bright flaring patterns on a background of darkness. It was just as she had feared. Worse. The only blessing was that he hadn't said anything to Barbara yet. At least she could spare her daughter that. But there was no easy way out for Huw. No way at all …

‘You can't,' she said.

‘But I do. And she loves me. I'm sorry if it's a shock to you, Amy. I hoped you might be pleased.'

‘No, I mean you can't. Really can't. It's wrong for you to love her and you certainly cannot marry her.'

The seriousness of her tone got through to him.

‘What do you mean?' he asked.

‘I need a drink,' Amy said. She hurried into the drawing room, poured two glasses of whisky, neat, from Ralph's bottle of Glenlivet and gave one to Huw. ‘By the time I've finished I think you'll need one too,' she said wryly.

He took the glass and set it down on the draining board.

‘What is all this, Amy?'

‘Huw, you know that I took you in when your mother died.'

‘Yes, and I am very grateful.'

‘But you don't know why. Very few people do. I can think of only three. My mother. My solicitor. And … someone else. I never saw the need to tell you and perhaps change the parameters of your world. Now I see I was wrong. I should have told you long ago what I am going to tell you now. Did you ever know why you and your mother had come to Hillsbridge just before she died?'

‘Not really. It was something to do with money.' He was casting his mind back to the small boy he had been, remembering how he had trailed miserably behind his mother up a long hill to visit – yes, Amy. It was something he had pushed aside with the passage of years. The memory of ‘the woman'as he had called Amy then shouting at his poor sick mother and turning them out of her house did not square with the Amy he knew now. Somehow in the period of adjustment he had blotted it out.

‘Yes, it was to do with money,' Amy said. ‘After your mother's husband died she was more or less destitute. She came to Hillsbridge to beg assistance from
my
husband not knowing that he had been killed in an accident at his transport yard.'

Huw's eyes narrowed.

‘Why should she do that?'

Amy took a gulp of the whisky. It burned her throat. ‘Because,' she said slowly, ‘my husband Llew was your father.'

The silence seemed to go on forever.

‘I didn't believe it at first,' Amy went on, her voice low yet perfectly audible in the quiet kitchen. ‘I sent her packing. Then, when she got pneumonia and died and you were left all alone I thought I had better investigate what she had told me. I questioned Mrs Roberts – Llew's mother – and I discovered to my horror that it was true. Llew had had an affair with your mother back home in the Valleys. Her husband had accepted you as his own, but after he died and she was desperate for money, she turned to Llew for help. He had been sending enough to support you but when he was killed the money stopped. That was why she had come to Hillsbridge – to find out the reason for her letters remaining unanswered. And to beg for help. Times were different then, you see, Huw. The depression and all that …'

‘So you took me in because you felt guilty,' he said. It was taking shape now, all of it, and he could not understand why he had never questioned it before and come up with an answer that was somewhere near the truth.

‘I took you in in the beginning because you were Llew's son. I loved Llew very much.' Her voice trembled. ‘Then I kept you because I came to love you too. But you see now, Huw, why there can never be anything between you and Barbara. You and she have the same father. She is your half sister.'

‘Oh my God.' For a moment he sat stunned, then reached for the glass of whisky and swallowed it all in one gulp.

‘I'm so sorry, Huw,' Amy said. ‘Under any other circumstances I'd have been so pleased, but …'

‘You should have told me,' he said. ‘God, Amy, I had a right to know.'

‘Yes. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry …'

The door opened. The girls burst in.

‘Hi, Mum, we're home!'

In the tension neither Amy nor Huw had heard the approach of the car. Now the girls stared, puzzled by the atmosphere in the kitchen.

‘You weren't long,' Amy said. Huw sat, not speaking.

‘Hang your coats up,' Amy said.

They looked at one another and Barbara looked at Huw. He avoided her eyes. They went out to the hall.

‘Huw – please – don't tell Barbara,' Amy begged softly. ‘I don't want her to know that her father …'

‘I don't know,' he said. He looked like a boxer reeling from a low punch.

‘Please!'

He got up. ‘I'm going for a walk.'

‘I'll come with you!' Barbara said eagerly, coming back into the kitchen.

‘No,' he said abruptly. ‘No, Barbara, I want to go alone.'

Barbara sat on the bus shrouded in wretchedness.

‘What's the matter, Babs?' Maureen asked.

‘Nothing. Leave me alone.'

‘Sorry, I'm sure. I don't know what's wrong with everybody. You are all as snappy as snapdragons. I don't understand it.'

Barbara said nothing. She did not understand either – could not fathom the change which had occurred in the short time it had taken her to collect Maureen from the bus yesterday. She had left bubbling with love and happiness and returned to an atmosphere of tension. And Huw had hardly spoken to her since, seemed to be avoiding her. Why had he gone rushing off for a walk on his own like that? After the lovely day they had shared it did not make sense. And the whole evening had been the same, awkward and subdued. The meal had been rotten – hardly surprising as Amy had never been a good cook and since marrying Ralph had had little need to practise what skills she had possessed, but even taking that into account it had been worse than usual. And afterwards, though they had played their favourite games of Lexicon and Rummy at Ralph's suggestion, that curious tension had remained.

No more kisses, no chance to exchange a word even. And when she had left this morning and gone to kiss Huw goodbye she had sensed his withdrawal.

But why – why – what had gone wrong?

It must be something Mum said to him, Barbara thought. That she didn't want us to be together, that I'm too young or he's too likely to be killed, or something. But why should he take it like this?

Tears choked at the back of her throat and she stared out of the window of the bus swallowing at them angrily. She would not cry. She would not. And really there was nothing to cry about. Huw's feelings could not have changed in half an hour. It was something else that was making him different.

She would write to him tonight. She would tell him that whatever her mother had said she didn't care. She loved him and wanted to be with him.

Oh, please God let it be all right! Barbara prayed.

And please, above all, keep him safe!

Their letters must have crossed in the post.

Barbara received hers from Huw two days later. She took it up to her room to read filled with a sense of dread as if she already knew what it said.

‘Dear Barbara. I'm sorry but what happened when I came home was all a mistake. Please try and forget it and go back to the way things used to be between us. Go out with other boys. You'll soon find someone who will make you forget me. I'm sorry if I hurt you. I didn't mean to. Love, Huw.'

She sat staring at it and the tears washed down her cheeks.

Forget him? As if she ever could!

The rain beat on the window, but not even the bleakness of the winter weather could match the bleakness in Barbara's heart.

Christmas came and went, a miserable Christmas by most people's standards. The shop windows which were usually a blaze of light at this time of year were covered with blackout paper and every conceivable extra which made Christmas festivities special was in short supply or not available at all. Sugar and butter were rationed, making it difficult to cook rich festive fare, and nuts, grapes, bananas and tangerines were nowhere to be found. As if even nature herself was tightening her belt against the war the holly bushes were bare of berries, so that when Amy sent the girls out to look for sprigs to tuck behind the pictures as she did each year they returned with an armful of sad looking branches, and Ralph rather felt that his regular contribution of a Christmas tree was something of an extravagance.

The new year augured no better. In the first week of January the meat allowance was reduced for the second time in as many weeks and the children were unable to buy sweets or chocolates – all available supplies were being sent to the forces, it was said.

In the third week of January Ralph's Spitfire Fund achieved its target. The idea had caught the imagination of everyone and many of the villages surrounding Hillsbridge had joined in with their own schemes to raise money, from collecting boxes left on the counters of shops and general stores to ‘penny bun sales', from whist drives and dances to slide shows. A final handsome donation from Sir Richard Spindler made up the required £5,000 with £1.2s. 3d. to spare! Everyone was full of congratulations for Ralph and his team but in the midst of the euphoria Amy could only be secretly glad it was over – coming on top of her long hard days at the office the raising of the money had meant a lot of extra work.

She was worried, too, about Barbara. At first she had been only grateful that Huw had behaved as he had and told herself that Barbara would soon get over the ending of her first love affair, but it had not been that easy. As she watched Barbara's misery day after day she began blaming herself. Huw had been right, she should have spoken out long ago, and she found herself remembering her mother's old dictum: Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive!

Yet even now she did not see what she could have done about it. She had wanted only to preserve family harmony and the moment for telling Huw had never seemed the right one. She had gone on in the mistaken belief that it was something which need never come to light and by the time she had begun to realise what was happening between Barbara and Huw it was much too late.

God forgive me, Amy thought. I only did what I believed to be for the best and look how it has turned out!

On the Monday evening after the Spitfire Fund target had been reached a final meeting was arranged and Amy, anxious to find anything to take Barbara's mind off her broken heart, suggested she should come along with her and Ralph.

‘Oh, I don't want to go to a boring meeting,' Barbara said.

‘This one won't be boring – it might be fun!' Amy coaxed. ‘The organisers from the villages will be there and we've planned a celebration to thank them for all their hard work. You're not fire watching this evening, are you?'