The Valley of Lost Secrets

by Lesley Parr

  I can’t think why there’d be one of those round here but I’ll do anything to get out of this house. Just as I’m walking towards the front door, Ronnie bounces past. ‘Ieuan, can we really go now? Aunty Gwen says we can!’ He grabs Ieuan’s sleeve. ‘Let’s go!’

  Mrs Thomas calls from the foot of the stairs. ‘Have fun – be back for tea.’

  *

  It’s so sunny out on the street I have to cover my eyes with my hand. We turn right. The tortoise is washing her windows. She stops as we go past.

  ‘You children landed lucky when you came here, didn’t you?’

  Did we?

  ‘Fresh air and lovely countryside. All slums in London, isn’t it?’

  I open my mouth to say something back but Ieuan shakes his head at me.

  ‘You could be right, Mrs Maddock,’ he says. ‘The coal tips are particularly splendid at this time of year.’

  I laugh so suddenly it comes out like a snort. She turns away and rubs furiously at the glass.

  Ieuan grins. ‘Take no notice, mun. I don’t think she’s ever seen an English person before, that’s all.’

  We walk along Heol Mabon until we join the hill they call the Bryn. We cross it and walk down a street called Heol Somethingelse. I couldn’t say it if I tried.

  A rough-haired black dog runs towards us, its ears flat against its head. Ieuan grins, bends over and smacks his hands on his thighs.

  ‘Oh, you’re coming too, are you?’ he says. The dog reaches us and dances round, barking happily. It looks a bit old with its grey snout but it’s acting like a puppy. Ieuan grins. ‘This is Noble.’

  Ronnie drops to his knees, laughing and spluttering as Noble licks his face.

  ‘We need to go this way,’ Ieuan says, waving his hand down the street towards a fence that leads on to sloping green fields. ‘Noble will show us.’

  The dog bounds off.

  Someone’s sitting on the fence, swinging their legs. As we get closer I see the someone is a girl. We get closer still and I can see exactly which girl it is. Worse luck.

  Florence Campbell glares at me as she fiddles with the blue ribbon in her hair. She looks really different without the dirt.

  I glare back.

  ‘You never said she was coming.’ I’m speaking to Ieuan but looking at her.

  ‘Why wouldn’t I come?’ she says. ‘I’m his sister.’

  ‘You’re what?’ I laugh. I can’t help it.

  ‘She is,’ Ieuan says. ‘My mam says she’s part of our family now.’

  ‘Like us and Aunty Gwen and Uncle Alun!’ Ronnie beams.

  ‘Not really,’ I say, but he takes no notice.

  Ieuan looks from me to Florence as if he wants to say something, but he just climbs over the fence and holds out a hand to her. She takes it like she’s a flaming princess or something, and steps down into the field. I don’t know why she’s making out she’s all delicate; she was the best climber in our PT class. Even Miss Goodhew said she was like a rat up a drainpipe.

  ‘Come on, Jimmy,’ Ronnie says, putting his foot on the lowest panel. ‘It’s a foxhole! Don’t you want to see a fox?’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ I say. They all stop to look at me. ‘It’s not that sort of foxhole, it’s an army foxhole – a DFP – a defensive fighting position.’ Ieuan isn’t the only one around here who knows things.

  But Ieuan scratches under his cap and looks a bit embarrassed. ‘Err … this one isn’t, Jimmy. It’s a fox’s home, a den.’ He helps Ronnie over the top of the fence.

  My cheeks burn. I might turn around and leave them to it.

  But where would I go?

  ‘You coming then, Jimmy?’ Ieuan smiles. Then he whistles, and Noble takes a running leap, scrambles over the fence and races away up the mountain. Ieuan follows, Ronnie scampering at his side.

  It’s just Florence Campbell and me, on either side of the fence. She smirks. ‘Who’s the daft one now?’

  Then she’s off too.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE FOXHOLE

  By the time I catch up with them, Ronnie’s wearing Ieuan’s cap again. He’s got it on backwards and looks a real fool.

  ‘Look, Jimmy,’ he says, ‘Florence put it on me this way so I can see!’

  I glance at her.

  ‘Looks sweet, doesn’t he?’ she says, daring me with her eyes again.

  ‘He looks –’ I watch Ronnie, marching proudly up the slope with his little cowlick sticking out of the front of the cap – ‘like Ronnie.’

  Mountains are hot work. I take off my jumper and tie it round my waist. Ronnie sees me and does the same. He’s talking to Ieuan and Florence like they’re proper friends. He’s saying something about bears and they laugh and laugh just like they did outside the chapel. If Ronnie’s got bears muddled with foxes, he’s in for one heck of a disappointment.

  I fall back. It’s like I’m on the outside, not quite a part of what’s going on. I can hear Ieuan telling Ronnie and Florence about the trees and the flowers, the birds and other wild animals, how his grandad used to work on a farm in the next village.

  I miss concrete.

  Every few minutes one of them turns around: Ronnie to grin at me, Ieuan to wave me on, Florence to scowl like an angry cat. Noble mostly trots along with us but sometimes he races across the fields like a mad thing, his ears and tongue flapping about.

  Ieuan leads us right, to a little wooden gate in the middle of a hedge; only it isn’t a gate because you can’t open it. It’s an odd sort of step. Ronnie balances on the plank that’s sticking out. I rush up to hold him around his middle in case he falls.

  Ieuan smiles at me. Florence doesn’t. Noble hops his front paws up on to the gate that’s not a gate and Ronnie puts his arm around the dog’s neck.

  ‘See down there?’ Ieuan points into the valley. ‘That’s the whole of Llanbryn, that is.’

  Stuck on this side of the mountain are the rows and rows of houses we saw when we first got here. I try to work out which one is Heol Mabon but they all look the same. At the bottom is the railway station; there’s a train at the platform puffing clouds of black smoke. It’s facing towards England. My heart squeezes even more than it did yesterday. I just want to go home.

  Ronnie looks back at me, his eyes bigger than ever. ‘You can’t do this in London, can you, Jimmy? You can’t stand in one place and see the whole of it.’

  ‘No, you can’t,’ I say quietly.

  ‘London must be enormous,’ Ieuan says.

  ‘It’s bigger than Wales, I expect,’ Ronnie says. He looks out over the valley again and all three of us older ones laugh. Florence and me catch each other’s eye and stop.

  ‘What are those lumps?’ Florence asks, pointing at the smaller black hills sitting on top of the mountains.

  ‘Coal tips,’ Ieuan says.

  ‘Like a rubbish tip?’

  ‘In a way. It’s the stuff that comes out with the coal that isn’t needed.’

  ‘And is that the pit?’ She points at the brick buildings and tall, thin chimneys. Huge metal structures stand next to them like giant Meccano.

  ‘It is.’ He looks at the pit the way Dad looks at an engine. ‘I can’t wait to get started down there.’

  ‘Down the mine?’ I can’t keep the surprise out of my voice. Miss Williams said he was going to be a collier, but I didn’t think anyone would look forward to being down there. In those small tunnels and darkness.

  ‘Yeah, not that my mam’s too happy about it – wanted me in the shop, see. To carry on the family tradition. But I can’t spend the rest of my life weighing out butter for all the old dears, mun. I want to dig out coal, especially now there’s a war on. I want to do my bit. Coal will fuel this war – railways, ships, factories, they all need it.’

  Ronnie’s giggling with Florence. ‘He said “old dears”.’

  ‘What do you want to do then, Jimmy?’ Ieuan asks.

  Before I can answer, Ronnie says, ‘He wants to be an engineer. Like our
dad.’

  ‘Dad’s a mechanic, you nitwit.’

  Ieuan smiles. ‘Engineer or mechanic, both good jobs.’ He scratches his head. ‘My father always wanted to run the shop, take over from his father, was never interested in the pit.’

  ‘Is your dad as nice as Phyllis?’ Ronnie asks.

  ‘He was,’ Ieuan says, staring hard at the mine. ‘He died when I was eight.’

  Ronnie takes his hand and I find I don’t mind.

  I look out over the mountain. I’ve never seen countryside like this, not even in pictures. I expected to see green fields, but not chimneys puffing out smoke, and coal tips like black sand dunes.

  ‘We going then or what?’ Florence says. I don’t think she likes me talking to her ‘brother’.

  Half an hour later, we’re not too far from the top of the mountain when Ieuan stops and points to a small mound leading up to some bushes. ‘It’s in there.’

  He tells Noble to sit and wait, which he does. We creep closer. It’s like the entrance to a tiny cave, just big enough for a fox, I suppose. Roots hang down around it and the grass in front has been scratched away. Bare earth shows the way in.

  ‘Do they live in there?’ Ronnie whispers, getting on his knees for a closer look.

  ‘Don’t!’ I pull him away by the shoulder. ‘You don’t know what’s in there!’

  ‘Oooh, what is it, Jimmy?’ Florence laughs. ‘The bogeyman? Are you scared?’

  I hate her laughing at me. ‘Don’t be stupid, I just don’t want him disturbing the foxes, that’s all.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Ieuan says. ‘They’re only in there at breeding time. That’s when they make tunnels and a bigger space to sleep and have their cubs.’

  ‘Cubs?’ Florence has a look on her face I’ve never seen before. Sort of soft.

  ‘Yes, but there aren’t any now,’ Ieuan says, sounding sorry. ‘You’d have to be here in the spring for that.’

  Behind us, Noble growls and barks. He shoots off up the slope after a small grey blur.

  ‘Rabbit,’ Ieuan says. ‘He loves a chase.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Florence moans. ‘Don’t let him catch it!’

  Ieuan smiles at her. ‘Don’t worry, he never does.’ Noble and the rabbit disappear into a hedgerow. ‘I’d better fetch him back though.’ He jogs off.

  Florence looks at the foxhole. ‘I hope I’m still here in the spring.’

  Ronnie grins. ‘Me too, I’d love to see fox babies!’

  I stare at him, a small flame growing bigger and hotter inside me till it’s a fire and I can’t stop the words rushing out. ‘Do you even know how long it is until spring? It’s months and months – ages after Christmas even! Months away from Dad and Nan – is that what you want?’

  Ronnie shakes his head, gulping back tears, and a voice in my head is telling me to shut up, but I keep going. ‘Don’t you know it’s wicked to want a war to keep happening just so you can see a flaming baby fox?’

  ‘I’m not wicked!’ He’s properly sobbing now, and the voice is telling me to give him a cuddle and say I’m sorry, but I can’t make my arms move.

  Florence steps right up to me. ‘I’ll tell you what’s wicked.’ She’s standing on tiptoes, her face close to mine, and I’m shocked by how much she smells of soap. ‘Making out you want to go home because of the war. Truth is you’re just homesick … Missing your mummy, baby boy?’

  A look flashes across her face like she’s just remembered something and her mouth snaps shut. Ronnie flops down on the ground, covering his face with his arms.

  ‘Look what you’ve done!’ I rage at Florence.

  ‘I didn’t make him cry – you did!’

  ‘He’s my brother!’

  ‘That doesn’t mean you can be nasty to him—’

  ‘Well, we all know why you want to stay here until the spring,’ I say. She looks around nervously, as if she doesn’t want Ieuan to hear, but he’s at the top of the field. ‘Even that muddy foxhole is better than your house. Why don’t you go and live in there, Campbell? Why don’t you get back in the dirt?’

  She blinks like I’ve slapped her. I wait for the yells, the swear words – a thump even. But she just looks at me, and I can’t believe it but there are tears in her eyes. And I don’t know what to say, so I grab Ronnie by the arm and drag him away. He doesn’t stop crying till we reach the fence.

  CHAPTER NINE

  FALLING

  It’s not long since breakfast but the sun’s already hot. The valley’s getting brighter; houses show themselves row by row and mist rises off the mountains like steam on washday. Nan always says washday is harder with boys’ clothes to scrub. Well, thanks to Hitler and evacuation, it’s a heck of a lot easier now.

  I can’t find Duff. I’ve been up and down the hill, looked in the swing park and on most of the streets. I even asked some people, but they don’t know who Duff is so couldn’t help. One of the houses had baskets of fruit and veg on the pavement outside so it must be Ieuan’s mum’s shop. Nan says shopkeepers know everything and everyone, but I’m not going in there. Not if Florence Campbell lives there now.

  Three girls are playing hopscotch near the institute. One of them has plaits that bounce around as she hops. Lillian Baker. She might know where Duff is. As I get closer I can see the other girls are the ones who were talking Welsh in Sunday school yesterday.

  ‘Hello, Jimmy,’ Lillian says. ‘Want to play?’

  Play hopscotch with Lillian Baker and her new friends? Not likely. One of them says something in Welsh and the other one nods. So does Lillian.

  She must be faking it; even a super-swot like her couldn’t have learned another language in less than two days! But then she says something back, and it definitely isn’t in English and all three of them giggle behind their hands.

  That’s it. I’ve had enough of this flaming village. Duff’s nowhere to be found and Lillian flaming Baker’s talking about me in Welsh!

  I stomp off up the Bryn and across the streets to the sloping field. But instead of going the way Ieuan showed us yesterday, I go a different one. My own way. Cutting left across the fields where he headed right, I come to a stream. I take off my shoes and socks and wade across. The water rushes around my ankles and my feet slip on the smooth stones.

  The sun and the grass dry my bare feet as I walk towards a gate further up the mountain. I climb it, balancing on top and holding out my arms to feel a breeze through my shirt because it’s sticking to me, like Ronnie’s sticking to Mrs Thomas.

  There’s a huge tree across the field all on its own – a really good climbing one. It’ll be cooler there. The sun is behind it and the branches are a fuzzy blur of brown and green.

  I jump down and put my shoes and socks back on. About two-thirds of the way across the field, I come under the tree’s huge shadow and look up. There are good knots in the trunk, making footholds and handholds for me. At the bottom, I launch myself; my fingers make claws to grip the bark and up I go. Reaching and climbing, reaching and climbing.

  About halfway up, I stop to sit in a curve where the thickest branch meets the trunk. Something about being up here, hidden away from the world, makes me feel better. How can Lillian Baker and Florence Campbell fit in so easily when I just feel lost? Even Ronnie’s getting on with it and making friends. He’d probably be fine here without me, in this horribly new place where everyone knows each other and being called Jones is somehow funny. But all I have is him, my daft little brother who forgave me straight away for being so horrible to him at the foxhole. I lean my head back and look up at the light flickering through the big, jaggedy-edged leaves. It’ll be autumn soon and they’ll start to fall, but I won’t see it. The war will be over – people say it won’t last till Christmas – and I’ll be out of Wales and back in London by then. Please let it be soon.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been up here, but the sun’s moved quite far across the sky. And I’m hungry. I suppose I’d better go. I twist around on the branch and slip backwa
rds. Rough bark scratches the backs of my knees, my stomach’s going to leave my body, and all I can see are branches and sky. My arms whirl and flap like a mad bird and I’m falling, falling. I reach out, grab hold of the tree and cling on, breathing hard, my heart pounding against the trunk. It’s definitely time to get down.

  I edge along the branch and hang like a monkey before dropping to the ground. I land awkwardly, my knees buckling, my arm flying out sideways as I try to save myself. My hand slides along the ground and into a gap in the tree trunk. It’s a bit like the entrance to a wigwam and perhaps even wide enough for me to fit inside – not that I would try: small spaces make my head spin. I pull back and my fingers stroke something smooth and hard.

  I rub the dirt off my scuffed hand, then grip the edges of the hollow and squint inside. It’s quite dark and I can’t make out much, but when my eyes start to adjust, a shape forms. On the ground just inside the tree is something round and dirty, about the size of a small football with three holes on one side. I reach in and hook my fingers through the holes to lift it out. Now it’s in daylight I can see what it is.

  And I feel like I’m slipping off the branch all over again.

  A human skull.

  My fingers are inside its eye sockets, touching the underside of the head – where the person’s brain used to be.

  I don’t know how it got here, or whose it is, but I know it’s real.

  I try to shove it back inside the tree but my fingers shake and it falls to the ground, rolling into the long grass. I force myself to look. It lies there, watching me without eyes.

  I don’t want to put it back. I don’t want to pick it up again.

  I run.

  From the top of the gate, I look back just once at the tree, the tree that has a skull lying next to it.

  I keep running, down the mountain, not seeing where I’m going, just glad to be getting away.

  I come to a footpath and race on, my lungs burning. I only stop when I come to a little stone wall. I lean on it while I get my breath back, my head down. Still panting, I look up to see rows of headstones. I’ve run to a graveyard. For a second I think I’ve run all the way down to the chapel, but I didn’t see gravestones there. This is a church with a big, square tower like on a castle. It’s huge, almost as tall as the Oxo Tower. It frowns down on me like it’s trying to work out if I’m a sinner.