The Silent Valley

by Jean S. MacLeod

  'I'd like to come, Tom, but my sister has so little company that I spend as much time as I possibly can with her these days.'

  He made an impatient gesture with his shapely hand.

  'One day won't hurt her, surely? You can give her what's left of today.'

  She shook her head.

  'I'll come another time.'

  They got into the car, and automatically Jane glanced back at the long row of windows which dominated the forecourt of the Home. It would be fatal if Matron saw her driving away with one of the medical staff—especially Doctor Sark!

  'She's standing behind the office curtain!' Tom grinned. 'Pity, even though it can only be one blot on your escutcheon!'

  They laughed, and he set the car at a swift pace through the narrow streets of the old town, out through the west gate to the suburbs sprawling on the hills behind.

  'I'm not taking "no" for an answer this time,' Tom declared when they had reached Heppleton and turned at the village green into the leafy byway which led to Jane's destination. 'I'll be here in the morning, as near ten o'clock as makes no difference, and if you can't possibly get rid of that sister of yours, bring her along too. I'll try to be equal to it!'

  Laughing, they parted. Jane did not think that he would really be there the following day. Tom was given to promises which, somehow, easily became mislaid.

  Walking briskly along the familiar lane, she promptly forgot about Doctor Sark. Her cheeks were flushed again and her eyes bright with excitement as she pushed open the garden gate.

  The house lay back from the road, half hidden in a bower of roses that still bloomed along the trellises, while tall chrysanthemums and Michaelmas daisies hedged the path on either side. She glanced up at the window directly above the front door and saw that the curtains were drawn. Too late to say good-night to Linda Jane tonight!

  Her sister met her in the doorway. Hazel Grantham, who had once been Hazel Calvert, was smaller than Jane, and much fairer, but she had Jane's small, regular features and the same direct glance, although her eyes were a wide, clear blue. Her colouring gave her a slightly doll-like appearance which belied her nature, for Hazel was the efficient housewife, never happier than when she was pottering about a kitchen or presiding over the gate-legged table which now stood set for Jane's evening meal in the bay of the dining-room window.

  'I thought you'd like it in here, Jane,' she said as they went into the room. 'There's still heat in the sun, and we get it in here all afternoon.'

  Jane noticed with some surprise that she was to dine alone.

  'Have you had yours, Hazel?' she asked, changing the shoes she had worn all day for a pair of comfortable slippers.

  There was a moment's hesitation before her sister replied.

  'Yes. I had it with Lindy.'

  'Lindy behaved all right today?' Jane asked, going through to the kitchen sink to wash her hands. 'No more tantrums over the fruit juice?'

  'A minor scuffle, but we came to terms in the end. I'm afraid Lindy responds disgracefully to a bribe!'

  Hazel's tone was preoccupied, her thoughts not entirely on the golden-haired little girl in the room above.

  'Well, what is it? What's the trouble?' Jane asked, coming directly to the point. 'Hasn't the housekeeping quite stood the strain this month, or is it only a leaky gas jet?'

  Hazel smiled, but the smile was still distant, as if she could not quite bring her mind down to mundane things like the housekeeping money and gas jets. Besides, Jane thought, she was a faultless housekeeper. The allowance they had agreed upon was never overstepped. They pooled their resources and apportioned everything out quite fairly, and it was only Hazel who felt that Jane should not remain the breadwinner always. They had talked about that not so long ago, but as things were, Hazel was best at home.

  Jane watched her as she limped through the kitchen doorway with the coffee pot and cups on a tray. The small infirmity was almost unnoticeable except when Hazel had spent most of the day on her feet, the pin in the knee joint working so well that she walked now with ease.

  She laid the tray down on the end of the table.

  'Jane,' she asked, 'would you baby-sit for me for a couple of hours tonight?'

  Jane nodded, a little perplexed by the unexpected request, but perfectly willing to oblige.

  'You know that you needn't have asked,' she said. 'I've come home with every intention of putting my feet up.'

  Hazel said: 'You're always so tired when you have been on duty for such a long spell,' but she was not really thinking about Conyers, or the chronics, or the varying duties which her sister took in her stride. 'Are you still so terribly short-staffed?'

  'So desperately so that Matron -has seen fit to put me into the theatre.'

  Jane had tried to sound matter-of-fact, but she had not been able to control the edge of excitement in her voice or hide the gentle pride in her eyes.

  'Oh, Jane, I knew you'd get it one day!' Hazel's preoccupation with her own affairs had been dispersed like mist before the sun. 'I'm so glad—so proud for you! Really—we ought to celebrate this.'

  She hesitated, and Jane said quietly:

  'I'm doing that tomorrow. I'm too foot-sore to attempt anything in that line tonight, so off you go and leave me to baby-sit in peace. You know I'll enjoy it.'

  She could not say why she had suddenly thrust Tom Sark's invitation between them. Something like self-defence had motivated her, the faintest suggestion of disloyalty when she considered Hazel's hastily made plans. There had been no mention of the visit to the cinema, or whatever it was, the evening before, and suddenly she knew that Hazel was going out with a man. She had been full of some inner joy of her own for weeks back, some deep, enriching experience which shut Jane out for the moment.

  Strange, bitter jealousy stabbed at Jane's heart, but in the next instant she was ashamed. Why shouldn't Hazel be taken out? She was free. Her husband was dead.

  Four years ago George Grantham had been killed in a road accident, and it was only now that his young wife seemed to be taking up the threads of life again with anything like her former spirit. Hazel had a right to happiness, Jane thought. She would not stand in her way. It had been foolish—childish on her part to strike back with the announcement of her intention to accept Tom Sark's invitation for tomorrow. She did not particularly want to go with Tom. She would have been content to spend her day in the garden with Linda Jane.

  'I won't be late.' Hazel appeared in the doorway in her best coat. 'But don't wait up. Go to bed if you feel tired, Jane.'

  There was a shining quality about Hazel tonight which banished any suggestion of tiredness of her own part, although she had been up since seven and had probably worked about the house all day. Love, Jane thought—love and happiness combined! It made a wonderful difference. Was Hazel in love again?

  She cleared the table, trying to thrust the crowding memory of the past behind her, but it persisted. Had she been wrong? Had she made the one inexcusable mistake? 'To break faith—that's the unforgivable thing!' She could still hear Stuart's voice, harsh with bitterness, as he uttered the words. It came to her across the years as plainly as if it had been uttered there in the room beside her. Why was she thinking about him so repeatedly tonight? Wasn't it that never a day passed without her thinking of him at one moment or another? Be straight with yourself, Jane, she demanded ruthlessly. Look this thing in the face. You never have and never will love anyone as you loved Stuart Hemmingway back in those old, carefree student days before life cropped up to mock your loving and thrust its harsh demands between you. You'll never live down the injury you did, never be able to forget the look in a pair of grey eyes when anger and disillusionment had taken the place of love.

  She was not asleep when Hazel parted with her escort at the front door, but she had gone to bed. She lay tensed in the room next to Linda Jane's, listening to a man's deep-toned voice out there among the shadows of the porch, remembering that last night when she and Stuart had walked the narrow path b
eside the river and she had told him so decisively that she couldn't marry him. They had come back to the house and he had said good-bye to her in the porch, stiffly, resentfully, not even holding her to kiss her in a final outburst of passion. He had shut himself away behind a cold barrier of bitterness and distrust, and that had been the last time she had seen him.

  Hazel was up early next morning, a light in her eyes that there was no mistaking. She made no demur when Jane said that she was going out at ten and might be away all day.

  'I'll have something ready for you when you get back,' she promised. 'And, Jane,' she added dreamily, 'would you mind very much if I asked—someone to tea?'

  'Why should I?' Jane was stuffing a fine woollen scarf into her capacious shoulder bag in case it was chilly by the sea. 'Do I know him?'

  'No, I don't think you do,' Hazel said. 'Will you be back in time to be introduced?'

  'I may be.' Jane stooped to drop a kiss on Lindy's fair curls. 'Be good—both of you! I'm going to the coast with Tom Sark, by the way.'

  She had passed on the information with a feeling that Hazel was making rather too much of a mystery of her own affairs, hanging a strange new cloak of reserve, of a sudden, over her actions, but Hazel did not offer any further confidences and the sound of a familiar car broke up their thoughts.

  Tom Sark pulled up at the gate and greeted Jane eagerly. He was wearing flannels and an old college blazer and looking amazingly debonair as he sat at the wheel with his fair hair neatly parted and flattened close to his head, and there was a sparkle in his eyes which sent her spirits up again.

  'I so rarely see you out of a cap and apron that this is something of an event,' he told her. 'Your eyes are greyer than I thought,' he went on mischievously. 'Dark grey with green lights in them, like the sea on an unpredictable day!'

  'There speaks the professional charmer!' she chided, getting in beside him. 'It's much too early in the morning for compliments, Doctor Sark.'

  'It's no use!' he groaned disconsolately. 'You never have taken me seriously, Jane!'

  'Did you ever want to be taken seriously?' she asked doubtfully as they sped away, by-passing the town and travelling swiftly southwards towards the widening Channel.

  Surprisingly, he said:

  'There are disadvantages about both extremes. Today we're going to make a pact, Jane. The usual hearty badinage is out.'

  She glanced at him, her face sobering. Handsome to a marked degree, there was still something lacking about Tom to which she had yet to put a name. He was the gay companion, the ever-ready comrade of adventure, and she had rarely seen him without a mocking gleam in his blue eyes, but today he appeared different for some reason. It seemed that he wanted to talk, that before the day was over he would have put their easy friendship on an entirely different footing.

  'Have you always lived in Norchester, Jane?' he asked. 'Always had—roots in the same place?'

  'Yes, I've lived all my life here,' she answered.

  Tom drove silently for several minutes before he said:

  'I've never told you very much about myself, Jane. When I first came to Conyers I wasn't quite sure whether I could settle or not. Sometimes I think I'm not the settling kind.'

  She waited, not quite sure of what was coming, while he stared at the road ahead with an intensity which suggested that he might have forgotten her for the moment. It was so unlike him to confide in anyone that she felt slightly uneasy wondering where the conversation might lead.

  'I—can't remember ever having had a family,' he said. 'I was brought up by an aunt—my father's sister-in-law, I suppose—who later adopted me.' His long supple fingers tightened over the wheel and she saw that his lips were tightly compressed. 'Don't think I'm—belittling the effort she made,' he went on staunchly. 'No one could have been more kind to me, but I learned when I was quite young that I didn't quite belong.'

  And resented it, Jane thought, pity welling in her as she glanced at the stubborn chin and taut, indrawn mouth. Children at school could be unconsciously cruel, repeating gossip picked up at the family dining-table. He must have considered himself outside a charmed circle in spite of all that was done for him, but why should he be telling her all this now?

  'I want to take you to Crale,' he said abruptly. 'I want you to meet Ada Sark. She's a remarkable woman. I think you'll like her.'

  Jane felt uncomfortable for no very definite reason.

  'She may not be expecting me,' she protested.

  'You don't need to be "expected" when you go to see Ada,' he assured her. 'She welcomes all and sundry at any hour of the day or night! She says it keeps her young and uninhibited. There won't be any suggestion of intrusion, Jane,' he added more seriously. 'Say you'll come!'

  'If you really want to go ‑'

  She had acquiesced uncertainly. The widening mouth of the Severn had brought them near to their destination, with the blue Mendips strung out across the horizon and the steep cliffs of Devon rising sheer out of Bridgwater Bay. It was a day steeped in sunshine and haunted by the cry of gulls, and Jane knew that the sea held the same deep spell for her companion as it had always done for herself.

  'I come here whenever I can,' he said, parking the car where they had an uninterrupted view of a tiny bay. 'It's coming home, I suppose, in a good many ways, though sometimes I'm not grateful enough to admit it.'

  She put an impulsive hand on his sleeve.

  'Don't wait till it's too late,' she begged. 'There's nothing so soul-destroying as regret.'

  He sat staring through the windscreen for a full minute, gazing at the sea, and then he snapped open the car door and got out.

  'Come on, Jane, before we go completely morbid!' he advised. 'I'm going to walk you right along the front!'

  Even at that time of the year there were people strolling along the short promenade, but they soon outpaced the other walkers, climbing high on the cliff, where the view was magnificent. Jane looked across the blue water to the hills of Wales, the Brecon Beacons clear in autumn sunlight, and when she turned Tom pointed out the green length of the White Horse Vale to her, lying far behind them. She felt isolated in a new world of wind and sunlight, content to be there, content to let the problems of Conyers and the future fall behind her as she stood on the narrow pathway above the sea.

  Tom came close, imprisoning her arms from behind.

  'Jane,' he said, 'you're part of all this! You and I should come here more often.'

  She could feel his warm breath on the nape of her neck, knowing that he was about to kiss her, and even as she tried to free herself he had tilted back her head and pressed his lips possessively against hers.

  Shaken by the unexpected contact, she faced him, her cheeks gone suddenly pale.

  'I wish you hadn't done that,' she said. 'Not here.'

  He laughed then, dismissing her protest.

  'Jane, you're out of another world! But I love your loyalties and your quaint ideals just the same!' He drew her close. 'Jane—marry me,' he demanded.

  She drew back, aware of the underlying sincerity in the precipitate proposal, liking him, yet knowing that there was only one answer to give him.

  'It wouldn't be any use,' she said dully. 'I couldn't give you the things you want, Tom.'

  The laughter died in his eyes and the banter went out of his voice as he said:

  'Surely I should be the best judge of that? I'd work, Jane, harder than I've ever done before,' he promised. 'I'd even stay on at Conyers and let Matron continue to keep a sobering eye on me! We could come here and sail in the summer weather. You'd like it, Jane. You've told me you would!'

  'Liking, and marrying someone on the strength of it, isn't enough,' Jane told him in a small, constrained whisper. 'Tom—I'm sorry! I had no idea you felt this way or I wouldn't have come.'

  She saw something die out of his eyes.

  'Forget it,' he said, 'at least for today. You haven't really given me an answer, of course. At least, not one that I can accept as final!'


  Jane wanted to protest, but she knew Tom too well to make the attempt. He was adept at sweeping aside the unpleasant, the situation he did not want to face.

  He drew her hand through the crook of his arm, marching her back towards the straggling row of houses along the water-front.

  The promenade was almost deserted now, with only a solitary figure standing beside the iron rail, gazing seawards, as they approached along the narrow road. Something about the woman's erect back and stiffly-held head was suddenly arrestingly familiar to Jane, and then Agnes Lawdon turned and walked straight towards them.

  Her surprise was as great as theirs, but not nearly so obvious. Jane saw the momentary dilation of her pupils and the swiftly controlled movement of her lips before she acknowledged them stonily.

  'Doctor Sark—Sister?' she said. 'Crale appears to be a popular place at this time of year.'

  Before either of them could answer she had moved on, coldly hostile, completely disapproving of their companionship.

  'Of all the pieces of sheer bad luck!' Tom grinned. 'Don't worry too much about it. It can't make any difference to your appointment now, and she really hasn't any right to interfere in off-duty hours.'

  'Matron's fair enough in that respect,' Jane said slowly, 'though I still feel that she minds about this sort of thing. Doctors and nurses shouldn't be too friendly—not when they have to work together!'

  'And I'd say "rot"! to that!' He drew her hand firmly through his arm again. 'Matron would like one's profession to mean everything, cancelling out love and all the rest of it, if need be!'

  'It can mean a lot,' Jane answered thoughtfully. 'Matron knows that I'm keen on my work, and she's always been— indulgent where you are concerned.'

  'Indulgent! That may be a nice way of putting it, but you'll have to think of another word, Jane. At times I've almost felt her contempt.' He glanced back at the receding figure on the cliff path. 'She's a strange woman. I don't think anyone will ever really get to know Agnes Lawdon. She's been visiting my aunt for as long as I can remember, but she still remains an enigma to me.'