The Hills and the Valley (51 page)

‘What do you think you're laughing at?'

Bryda's thin face sobered though she looked as if it would not take a great deal to make her laugh again.

‘Excuse me!'

‘Standing there sniggering!' Joan exploded.

‘Hey, wait a bit!' the soldier said. He had a ruddy round face and he was wearing the uniform of the Devons. ‘Lay off, missus. What's she done to upset you?'

Joan was battling mad now. ‘You really want to know? My bloke is out in Singapore now because of her. She led him on, just like she's doing with you, no doubt, made him feel sorry for her and came between us. He even came to blows with her husband over her. Have you met her husband yet? He's a big man, bigger than you, I should think. So watch out. Just blooming well watch out!'

The soldier was staring in amazement but at least Bryda was no longer laughing.

‘You want to watch what you say!' she flared at Joan. ‘Just because you can't keep a man don't go blaming me.'

‘You little cow!' Joan flew at her, grabbing a handful of hair. Bryda retaliated, lashing out at Joan's face with her fingernails.

‘Hey ladies, ladies!' Careless of his own safety the soldier managed to get between them. ‘You're worse than bloody Hitler!'

Joan took one last swing at Bryda with her shopping bag. As it connected she heard one of the ornaments inside smash but she did not care. It was worth it. She started down the lane, shouting over her shoulder. ‘That's one man you won't deceive, Bryda Deacon. At least that's one that's seen you in your true colours!'

She was still shaking as she walked back up Combers End, but now her mind was made up. She would have to sell the cottage now whether she liked it or not. She never wanted to see that Bryda Deacon again.

The next day she visited the estate agents where Eddie Roberts used to work and put the cottage on the market. They would be able to sell it easily, they reckoned, for the bombing had put the housing market in short supply. As for Bryda Deacon, Joan never gave her a second thought. Sometimes, in the months that followed, she saw her in the town with her little girl but never close enough to speak to and with some satisfaction Joan guessed that the soldier was unlikely to be paying her any more visits. It was a small enough triumph, and not really enough to make up for the misery and heartache Bryda had caused her but it was some consolation all the same. Enough to sustain her while she waited for news of Alec at any rate. Joan hid her heavy heart behind her inexpressive features and carried on with her life as before.

Throughout the spring months Barbara bloomed. Incipient motherhood suited her and for the first time since her marriage she was truly happy. And Marcus it seemed was a new man. From the moment he had accepted that the baby was his he began to revert to his old charming self. He was gentle with her; he was considerate. It was as if the achievement of fatherhood which most men take for granted had somehow miraculously restored all the confidence that had seeped away when he had lost his men.

One person had heard of Barbara's pregnancy with mixed feelings, however. Margaret was genuinely delighted on Barbara's behalf and congratulated her niece warmly, for there was not a jealous bone in her body. But the news had also touched the deep pool of sadness within her and reawakened her longing for a baby of her own.

For the most part she had put her grief at her miscarriage behind her; her days were busy and there was no time for brooding. But nevertheless, odd little things could touch it off and sometimes she would lie awake thinking that if things had not gone tragically wrong her baby would have been a toddler by now, into all kinds of mischief, and she wondered what he would have looked like and whether he would have taken after her or Harry. She wished, too, with all her heart, that she could conceive again. But it had not happened and sometimes she wondered if it ever would.

To some extent little Marie had filled the gap. In the two-and-a-half years they had been with her, Margaret had watched Marie grow from a skinny frightened urchin to quite a plump little girl who would sit on her knee to enjoy a bedtime story and could be as affectionate as a puppy dog. Elaine she had never been able to get close to and for all her efforts the girl still regarded her with suspicion and resentment, greedily accepting whatever benefits came her way yet remaining a stranger whom Margaret found it difficult to trust.

The suspicion she felt went against the grain for Margaret. She liked to believe that no child was really bad, only mischievous or misguided, and she made excuses for Elaine both to Harry and to herself – the girl had never been taught right from wrong; she was lonely and afraid in an alien world; and her hard-boiled calculation and moments of dishonesty were symptoms of her deep-seated insecurity. But as time passed she began to doubt her own conviction. Elaine didn't seem cowed or frightened. There was never a chink to suggest anything soft and childlike beneath the surface. Margaret did not like the sly way she caught her looking at her sometimes; she did not like the ease with which lies rolled off Elaine's tongue; and she did not like the children Elaine had chosen as her friends. There was a gang of them now, made up of the hardest roughest cases from Batch Row and a handful of other vackies. They stayed out long after dark in the evenings supposedly playing but Margaret suspected they were roaming the streets and getting up to mischief. The company the girls were keeping worried her. The
Mercury
often carried stories of vackies breaking into lock-up shops and even houses, causing wanton damage and generally making nuisances of themselves, and she felt that Elaine, though not necessarily an instigator in a gang situation, would certainly be easily led. But she could not prevent Elaine from going out to play nor choose her friends for her, and could only keep an eye on what was going on and remonstrate with the child if she became too disobedient.

Fortunately, Marie no longer followed her sister as blindly as she had done when they first came. Sometimes she would go out with Elaine and the others, but more often than not she would soon be back, popping her forlorn little face around the kitchen door and creeping inside as if she half-expected to be yelled at to ‘Get back out!'

‘Home already?' Margaret would say and Marie would nod, sucking on her thumb and regarding Margaret with huge solemn eyes.

‘What are they up to, Elaine and the others?' Margaret would ask, but she could never ascertain the reason why Marie had come home. Though she now followed Margaret with the same puppy-like devotion she had once shown towards her sister, she still maintained her sense of loyalty. Sister did not ‘split'on sister. Whatever it was that Elaine was up to, Marie had rio intention of telling.

During the spring of 1942 several more of the Hillsbridge evacuees went home. Since the previous summer there had been little aerial activity over London and parents who missed their children were only too ready to convince themselves that the worst danger had passed. Against the advice of the authorities they arrived to take them home. But Elaine and Marie were not amongst those claimed and though for herself Margaret was glad, she was also hurt and angry on behalf of the children that their mother took so little interest in them.

‘I think I'm going to write to her,' she said to Harry one day. ‘It's not right that she should abandon them like this. Surely she could at least come down and visit them once in a while.'

‘It seems to me she's glad of the war as an excuse to be rid of them for a while,' Harry said. ‘I doubt if anything you can say will make the slightest bit of difference.'

‘But I have to try,' Margaret insisted. ‘You don't give up on hopeless cases – why should I?'

Harry had not argued. He was too busy with council work and meetings he had to attend as prospective Labour candidate to be able to give much thought to his evacuees. His work, too, was all-consuming for in addition to the daily cases he had to fight for the union he was involved with pressure groups which were struggling for the early nationalisation of the coal industry.

That evening, when the girls were in bed, Margaret sat down and composed a letter to their mother, inviting her to stay and pointing out how much it would mean to the girls. Then, after a great deal of thought, she folded three one-pound notes into the envelope and wrote a postscript.

‘I hope you will not be offended if I offer to help with your train fare. Since the authorities pay me for having the girls to live with me, I feel in a sense that it belongs to them.'

It was not true, of course, that she was making anything out of them. On the contrary, she was so generous in buying their food, clothes and books that she was often out of pocket. But she felt that the three pounds would be well spent if it persuaded the girls' mother to make the trip she might otherwise be unable to afford.

With the letter in the post Margaret sat back to await a reply. It did not come. Margaret began to worry that the letter had not reached her. She had not heard that the girls'old home had been bombed but it was always possible. Or perhaps the woman had been killed and never identified. There were such tragedies in the cities, she knew, cases where bodies had been recovered but their papers lost so that they became no more than countless pieces of flotsam and jetsam to be buried in unmarked graves. Then one morning just as she had given up hope, a letter arrived. It was addressed to Elaine and Marie in the childish almost unintelligible hand and there was a note enclosed for her: ‘I got your letter. Sorry but I can't come just now.'

No more. No promise for the future. No mention of the three pounds.

‘I can't understand it, Harry,' she said as they washed the dishes after the evening meal. ‘How can any mother treat her children that way? Sometimes I think the world has gone mad. There's me, who'd do anything to have a child of my own, while she … well she just doesn't seem to want to have anything to do with them.'

Harry muttered something. He was deep in his newspaper. Since newsprint had been restricted by government order he was not able to get one everyday and when he did he made sure he read it from cover to cover.

‘She must be a terrible woman,' Margaret said, clattering dishes. ‘I even offered to help pay her train fare and still she hasn't made the effort.' She dared not tell Harry she had actually sent money – she knew he would be angry with her. ‘You can say what you like, Harry, she just doesn't want them. People like that shouldn't be allowed to have children.'

She turned to wipe the kitchen table and froze. Elaine was standing in the doorway and from the expression on her face Margaret knew she had heard every word.

‘Elaine!' she said helplessly. ‘What are you doing here?'

The child had been out up the road, playing off-ground touch and ‘ghosties'and Margaret had thought she was safely out of the way.

‘I came in to go to the lav,' Elaine said. ‘And I heard what you said. I heard what you said about my Mum.' Her voice was tight and she looked close to tears. Margaret crossed to her.

‘Elaine, I didn't mean it. It's not true that your Mum doesn't want you. You had a letter from her this very morning …' She reached out and the child spun away, her weaselly face a mask of hate.

‘Don't touch me! You said things about my Mum! You're wicked! I hate you! And I hate it here!'

‘Elaine!'

‘Leave me alone! You're horrible – you poxy bitch!'

Margaret gasped. She had thought at least Elaine's language had improved. The child spun around, eyes blazing, and ran out of the door. Margaret tried to follow but she had gone, disappearing down the path into the gathering dusk.

‘Oh dear – I didn't know she was there!' Margaret said, distressed. ‘I wouldn't have said what I did for the world if I'd known. Oh Harry …'

‘It'no good worrying about it,' Harry said, sounding a little like a reincarnation of his father.

‘But she heard what I said – that her mother doesn't want her …'

‘It's no more than the truth. But I doubt she believed it anyway.' Harry turned over a page of his newspaper. ‘She's as hard as nails, that one.'

His refusal to be ruffled did nothing to ease Margaret's anxiety. As she finished clearing up she continually went to the door, looking out to see if she could see the girls. But there was no sign of them. They were further up the road with Elaine's gang, she supposed, but it was now almost dark and she thought it was time they came in. Added to her distress was a fear that Elaine might relay her remarks to Marie. Elaine was, as Harry had said, pretty resilient, but she hated to think how Marie would react if told of what she had said. Eventually, she could stand the waiting no longer.

‘I'm going to look for them,' she told Harry.

‘Leave them be. They're all right.'

‘They should be in. Goodness only knows what they're up to.'

She got her coat and set out up the road in the direction of Batch Row. Part way along was a small square of recreation ground where a metal slide had stood until it was requisitioned in the drive for scrap metal for armaments and she saw some shadowy figures running about. Relieved she approached them and recognised one of her pupils from the Church School, a ragamuffin boy, last of a long family from Batch Row. She called to him.

‘Colin! I'm looking for Elaine and Marie. Do you know where they are?'

Colin approached warily. ‘No, Miss.'

‘What do you mean? I thought they were playing with you.'

‘They were, Miss, but they've gone. Ages ago.'

‘Gone? Gone where?'

‘Don't know, Miss. They went that way.' He pointed in the direction from which she had come. ‘I thought they were going home.' He was sidling away from her and she knew she would get no more from him.

She stood for a moment looking around as if she expected them to materialise from the darkness, then started back down the road. Perhaps she had missed them somewhere or they were hiding. But she was aware of a qualm of misgiving and the sudden panicky thought that she might never see them again.