The Hills and the Valley

by Janet Tanner

  ‘They should have gone out to the field – they could have had roast rook if not roast lamb!’ Ewart chortled and the conversation turned away from the Latcham family. But when they had finished their pints and left the Miners Anns, Alec was still thinking about Bryda and seeing her face both pretty and happy as he vaguely remembered her and thin and marked as it had been tonight.

  He didn’t like it. There was not a thing he could do about it – it was none of his business if she had married a man who took his temper out on her in that way. But as he pedalled home along what the locals still referred to as ‘The New Road’it worried him all the same.

  Chapter Four

  It was quite dark by the time Margaret left the school where she taught. There was no moon tonight and as the dark November air hit her she shivered, turned up the collar of her coat and pulled her woollen cap further down over her ears.

  Not a night to be out and the prospect of having to walk the two miles home from Sanderley was far from inviting. But there was nothing for it. Since petrol rationing had been introduced Margaret had refused to allow Harry to come and fetch her as he sometimes used to do when she was late – the coupons were far too precious and their little supply might be needed for an emergency.

  Not that she was late too often these days. Most out-of-school activities had ceased with the dark evenings and Margaret was usually able to leave soon after the children and get home in the greying dusk. Tonight, however, she had had no alternative but to stay late. There had been a staff meeting and with all the new wartime regulations there had been a great deal to discuss. Margaret had sat with the other two teachers huddled around the temperamental coke stove in the cramped little office which Tom Freke, the headmaster, rather grandly called his study, drinking mugs of tea and wondering how much longer it would take to get through the endless list of items Tom had drawn up on his agenda – a review of procedure in the event of a daytime air raid, how Christmas would be celebrated at the school this year, and a rundown on how the evacuee pupils were settling in.

  This last item had made Margaret think again of her own two ‘vackies’, Elaine and Marie. They were no longer at Sanderley school with her – the committee had deemed it unsuitable to expect two children, and ‘townies’ at that, to walk the two miles each way and they had been found places at Hillsbridge Board School. Fair enough in many respects, except that it meant they were usually home before she was, but Margaret had devised a hiding place for the back door key beneath a flower pot in the coal shed, and they were able to let themselves in and have the kettle on the boil by the time she too arrived home.

  It was on evenings like these that it was inconvenient, though, and as Tom Freke’s voice droned on, detailing dates and times for the Christmas parties, Margaret’s mind had wandered to the two girls who would, she knew, be in the house on their own unless Harry had been able to get off early. They could go on and have their tea, of course. Knowing she would be late this evening she had cut bread and butter this morning before she left home, sandwiching it together with a thick layer of her mother’s homemade blackberry and apple jelly to hide the fact that the butter was no more than a scrape and wrapping it up in greaseproof paper before putting it in the breadbin to keep fresh. And there was seed cake too, also homemade, and they were perfectly capable of boiling the kettle to make a cup of tea. The fire worried her a bit. It was well banked up to last through the day while they were all out and she hoped they would not try to poke it to life. A coal rolling out onto the hearth rug could easily cause a fire. She had told them not to touch it, of course, but they were not the most obedient of girls, particularly Elaine.

  Left to her own devices Margaret was fairly sure that Marie could be quite a lovable child. She was sunny natured and did as she was told – when Elaine was not there to incite her to do differently. But Elaine was altogether another kettle of fish. She was cheeky and ill-mannered and it sometimes seemed to Margaret that to ask her to do something was to make quite certain she would refuse to do it, either by deliberate disobedience or by sly evasion. She was, Margaret thought, one of the least likeable children she had ever encountered.

  And that was not all. For Margaret was beginning to suspect that she might also be dishonest.

  At first, she had been unwilling to believe such a thing was possible. When she had mislaid the moiré band which Harry had given her the first Christmas she had known him and it had turned up amongst Elaine’s few pathetic bits and pieces in the girls’room, she had thought that Elaine had merely borrowed it to try it on because it was pretty and then been afraid to admit it. Then, the first time she found herself with ten shillings less in her purse than she had thought she had, she told herself that she must have changed the note to buy some item or other which she had forgotten about. But when a couple of shillings she had left on the mantlepiece went missing she had seriously begun to wonder. They had been there when she went to school in the morning she knew; she had taken them out of her purse purposely not to spend them. But that evening when she went to get them to feed them to the gas meter they were no longer there.

  ‘Did you take some change off the mantlepiece?’ she had asked Harry.

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Oh nothing. I thought I left some there. I must have used it to pay the baker,’ she said, but she knew she had not and the incident in the Co-op drapery shop when the woman had accused Elaine of trying to steal cakes from her bag had come back to Margaret. She had been willing to try and make excuses for the child then. Now she was not so sure.

  It was a worrying thought that a girl living under her roof might be stealing from her and Margaret was not sure what to do about it. Should she set a trap for her so that at least she would know whether she was mistaken in her suspicions or not? She shrank from the idea. It seemed a thoroughly inhospitable thing to do on the basis of two missing shillings and a ten shilling note which she might or might not have spent herself. Besides, Margaret was not sure that she wanted to know if Elaine was a thief. With doubt removed she would have to do something about it and the flimsy relationship she was building with the girls would be damaged beyond repair. Not that there was much of a relationship with Elaine, if she was honest, but at confrontation time Marie would certainly take her sister’s part and any hope of a bridge with the younger girl would be gone for good.

  Perhaps if she is taking things it is just because she’s unsettled and unhappy, Margaret thought. Their lives were in such a state of upheaval, finding themselves among strangers in a strange place with even the friendly cows in the fields looking like monsters from another planet and their home and their mother way out of reach. Perhaps when they settle down a bit she’ll stop behaving in this way.

  She dared not mention her suspicions to Harry. He would, without a doubt, believe the worst and be very angry. He was already against her having them and trouble of this sort would be just the ammunition he needed to insist they should be found a new billet. But Margaret did not want that. Though she knew that there was a great deal of sense in what he said and she should not be trying to hold down a job and look after two problem girls in her condition, she was reluctant to admit defeat. She was, after all, trained in teaching children if not actually bringing them up. She should be able to handle problems like this one.

  Margaret turned out of the school yard and started along the road that led from Sand erley to Hillsbridge. It was a straight road and mercifully in this direction mainly ran downhill. At first, it led through the outskirts of Sanderley and Margaret glanced longingly at the houses she passed. It was already dark and no chinks of light showed at the windows but she knew that behind the blackouts the families would be gathered around their fires, having their tea. Perhaps in some of them mothers would be feeding babies, as she would soon be doing. In spite of the cold wind which seemed to be blowing right through her coat, Margaret felt a glow of warmth and excitement and momentarily forgot the problems of her ‘vackies’. For as long as she could remember sh
e had loved babies – even as a little girl she had liked nothing better than to push out the neighbours’prams – and as soon as she and Harry were married she had begun to long for one of her own. At first it had not been practicable. She had needed to work both to justify her training and to add her income to Harry’s to set up home. But soon she had been unable to bear the thought of putting it off any longer and the months of waiting and longing had begun. How endless they had seemed! Sometimes Margaret had despaired of ever encountering the first tell-tale signs. Suppose I can’t have a baby, she worried and the thought had started a deep despair inside her. So often babies came when they were not wanted – what supreme irony it would be if she, wanting one so much, was never able to conceive. Never to feel new life moving within her. Never to hold her own child, and Harry’s, in her arms. Never to bury her face in a small, sweet smelling bundle or examine tiny perfect hands and feet and know that they belonged to her child – hers!

  But now these fears had receded to the world of shadows. The longed for baby was a reality. She remembered with a thrill the first time she had felt it move – nothing more than a faint tick that might almost have been her own heart beating with excitement. But when it had come again she knew it was not and she had pressed her hands to her still flat stomach and caught the glow of happiness, holding it, cherishing it. Now, at least, her slim boyish figure was beginning to become rounder, her breasts fuller, her waist was thickening. And when the baby kicked as she lay in bed at night she would take Harry’s hand and press it to the spot whispering: ‘Did you feel that? Did you feel it?’

  Now, walking along the dark pavement which reached to the point where a crossroads marked the perimeter of Sanderley, she was aware of a slight crampy discomfort and slowed her pace from brisk to moderate. Exercise wouldn’t hurt her. Dr Carter had assured her on that point or she would not still be walking the two miles each way daily. But she had no intention of exerting herself. She would do nothing which might pose even the smallest risk to the baby. If she was cold she could always warm up over the fire when she got home. And an extra five minutes would be neither here or there to Elaine and Marie.

  As she thought of them again the rosy glow of happiness which anticipating the arrival of the baby had brought faded again. In some ways she almost wished that Harry had had his way in the beginning and found a new billet for them. Having them there when the baby arrived would pose problems and nothing would be quite the way she had planned it. She had thought it would be just her and Harry and the baby, now unless the war ended unexpectedly or their mother came and took them back to London there would be Elaine and Marie too. But it was too late to worry about that. She’d cope. She had to.

  Margaret reached the crossroads at the end of long straggling Sanderley, crossed and began walking along the straight road that would lead her out into the country before dropping over the hill into Hillsbridge. The road ran between fields and on either side it was overhung with trees, trees which had now lost most of their leaves but which whispered and creaked in the biting wind. The leaves that had fallen lay like a carpet on the roadside and in places had drifted into sodden mounds. Margaret avoided them as best she could but in the pitch dark it was not easy and she cursed herself for having forgotten her torch. Not that it would be much good – the lighting restrictions extended to torches too. Harry had covered the bulb with tissue paper for her as the regulations insisted but even that tiny light must not be directed at the sky or the ground and carrying it at the right angle for two whole miles was tiresome.

  Her thoughts having gone full circle, Margaret once more directed her mind to the problems Elaine was causing. This morning there had been a new development. Margaret had been unable to find a brooch she wanted to wear, a pretty little bar pin set with a tiny horseshoe. It was not in the jewellery box on her dressing table where she always kept it and a quick rummage through her clothes in the wardrobe had failed to turn it up still pinned to a dress or blouse. Instantly she had become suspicious whilst desperately trying not to be. When had she worn it last? Perhaps she had lost it then. Or put it somewhere silly when she had taken it off – the corner of a drawer or one of the odd cardboard jewellers’boxes which had come with presents and been stored in case she should one day need them. Or perhaps it had fallen down the back of her dressing table. All day, at odd moments, she had racked her brain trying to come up with an answer – any answer which would mean that she did not have to question Elaine and perhaps learn that the girl had been prying in her bedroom when she was not there.

  Margaret sighed and managed to avoid a pile of leaves. Behind her she heard a car coming across the flat and edged closer into the side of the road. There had been a lot of accidents involving pedestrians since the lighting regulations had come into force – with half their headlights blacked out it was difficult for drivers to see people walking. Again Margaret wished she had her torch. If she had she could have turned to face the oncoming vehicle and he would have seen the pinprick of light, though it was also forbidden to shine torches in a way which might blind drivers.

  The car was coming fast now – no, not a car, it sounded more like a motor cycle engine. Margaret relaxed slightly. A motor cycle wouldn’t drive as close in to the side of the road. Another moment and it would be past her and gone. As it approached she half turned towards it.

  And then it seemed everything happened at once.

  Later, Ewart Brixey was to explain to Sergeant Button as clearly as his shocked mind would allow, ‘I was coming across the flat on my motor bike and sidecar and suddenly I saw something in the side of the road. I slammed on my brakes and there must have been leaves on the road. I just lost it, Serg, I couldn’t do a thing. The bloody bike went haywire. It weren’t my fault – honest to God it weren’t.’

  But to Margaret in that moment the apportionment of blame was something which scarcely mattered. She was aware only of a flash of intense, paralysing fear and a sense of inevitability which was somehow suspended out of time. Then, there was the numbing shock of something striking her, a peculiar weightless sensation as she flew through the air and the sickening thud as her body hit the cold wet road.

  The silence was broken by the angry hum of the engine still-running, impotent like a trapped bumble bee, and the descending whirr as the spinning wheels slowed and stopped. But Margaret was aware of nothing. Nothing but a blackness, darker than the night, which hovered for seemingly endless seconds and then descended, relentlessly, until she was lost within it.

  Amy was at home, working on a pile of accounts at the dining room table, when the telephone rang. She had never lost the habit of bringing work home with her for she always felt guilty just sitting and listening to the radio, as if she was somehow wasting precious time and she had never been one to knit or sew. And with the efficient Mrs Milsom still in residence there was no need for her to bother her head about household chores.

  Besides, what had once been a habit was now a boon. As Ralph had suggested she should, Amy had managed to get some Government contract work and that added to labour shortages meant there was never enough time to complete all her paperwork while she was at the yard.

  When Ralph was not out on his ARP warden duties he sometimes worked in the evenings, too, and they would sit in companionable silence occasionally discussing a problem and always rounding off the evening with a glass of whisky.

  ‘I hope the war doesn’t mean we can’t get a drink or I shall grind to a halt!’ she said one evening.

  Ralph had merely laughed. ‘Do you good to do without. You’re too fond of the bottle for your own good, my dear.’

  Amy had been outraged.

  ‘I don’t drink much! Just a little to relax me and help me sleep. I’m no worse than you, anyway.’

  ‘A man is allowed to like whisky – a lady shouldn’t,’ he had teased and Amy snorted her disgust. She had never stuck by the rules of what a lady should or should not do. If she had she would not be where she was today.

&nbs
p; Tonight, however, it was still too early to have started on the whisky and Amy was fortified merely by a cup of coffee. Ralph was out at an ARP training session and when she heard the telephone begin to ring she cursed softly at the interruption and called out to Barbara to answer it. A moment later the door opened and Barbara popped her head in. She looked pink and anxious.

  ‘Mum, it’s Uncle Harry. He wants to speak to you.’

  Amy was surprised. Harry rarely rang simply for a chat.

  ‘What does he want I wonder?’ she mused.

  ‘I don’t know. He sounded funny. I think there’s something wrong …’

  Amy went into the hall and picked up the telephone. ‘Hello Harry.’

  ‘Amy – something has happened. It’s Margaret.’

  ‘Margaret!’ Her first thought was the obvious one. ‘You mean the baby?’

  ‘No. She’s had an accident. Walking home from school. She’s been knocked down.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ Amy said. She was suddenly shaking all over, transported back through time to another accident. ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘I don’t know. They’ve taken her to hospital. I’m going now.’

  ‘You want me to come with you?’

  ‘No – no need for that. I’m taking her mother with me. But we’ve got these two damned girls here. They haven’t had anything to eat yet and I don’t like to leave them. Do you think you could …?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’ll be right there.’ Amy was trying to think as she spoke. ‘I’ve got the car – and some petrol. I’ll be with you in five minutes.’

  ‘I won’t wait if you don’t mind, Amy. Just as long as I know you’re coming.’

  ‘Of course. You get off, Harry. And Harry …’ she paused, her voice breaking slightly, ‘I hope everything will be all right.’

  ‘Yes. Thanks. I don’t know how long I’ll be, Amy.’