The Changing Valley

by The Changing Valley (retail) (epub)

  ‘Neither. I’m going away.’

  It was an instantaneous remark. Crowded in by her parents, with the prospect of becoming their little girl once again, and with Gran there to guard her when both parents were out of the house, there was nothing else she could do. To her startled parents, she repeated, ‘I’m leaving Hen Carw Parc and won’t be bothering either of you again.’

  ‘No you aren’t,’ Ralph began, rising from his chair.

  ‘Hush, Ralph,’ Mavis said, then, turning to Sheila asked, ‘What will you do? Where will you go?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when I’ve decided.’

  ‘Not going to Australia to find that Maurice Davies, are you?’

  ‘Of course not, I’m not a fool!’

  ‘Don’t talk to me like that,’ Ralph protested, but Mavis hushed him with a scowl.

  ‘Tell me where you’re going. Perhaps we can help if we can’t persuade you to change your mind.’

  ‘You won’t change my mind.’

  ‘Then come back home for a while, just till you decide.’ Mavis pleaded. ‘Shamed we’d be, if you went off and us not trying to persuade you different.’

  ‘Mam, I really have to go out. Gran wants some Aspros and Amy shuts for lunch.’

  ‘We’ll walk down with you. Come back and have a bite of lunch with us before I open the shop. I’ve got a nice tin of salmon and we could have a bit of salad.’

  ‘No thanks, I’ll come straight back. Go and talk to Gran while I get ready.’ She put on the abandoned coat and brushed her hair while Mavis and Ralph went in to see Mavis’s mother. When they returned to the kitchen, Sheila had gone.

  * * *

  Sheila ran down the garden and out into the fields. Without any idea where she was going she turned down towards Sheepy Lane and was soon behind Ethel Davies’s house. She was about to pass it, not wanting to talk to anyone but the thought that Ethel might have received a letter from Maurice persuaded her to call and so she went through the weakest part of Ethel’s hedge, where, as boys, Maurice and his brothers had pushed their way through to play in the fields.

  She called as she approached the house, watching the door to see if Ethel was about, unaware of the beauty of the long narrow garden with its beds of annuals filling the air with sweet perfume. Paeonies and petunias, sweet williams and sweet peas were all in organised displays between neat patches of grass. Marigolds and nasturtiums had taken over the odd corners and grew in wild profusion and, even from the walls, flowers sprouted and added to the richness of the exhibition.

  Although she was unable to work in the garden because of her arthritis, Ethel’s sons helped to keep it filled with flowers and free from weeds, but Sheila saw none of it: her eyes watched the door and her feet trod the only straight and orderly thing in the garden, the stone-flagged path between the clothes-line posts.

  Ethel sat in a chair near the sink, peeling potatoes. She smiled a welcome as Sheila appeared, pushing the door wider and offering her a chair. ‘There’s lovely to see you, Sheila. Staying for a while, are you? What about some lunch. There’s some cheese, onion and potato pie with salad, how will that be?’

  ‘Thank you, I’d like that.’

  Sheila sat down and watched as, hardly moving from her chair, Ethel expertly reached out to shelves and drawers to set the table before asking Sheila to take from the oven the freshly cooked pie.

  ‘Meat off ration at last, and there’s me still making do with old cheese and onion pie. I can’t get used to the idea that we can order as much meat as we want.’

  ‘Free of ration, we are, but the price still restricts it as far as Gran and I are concerned,’ Sheila said.

  ‘Have you thought what you’ll do, love?’ Ethel asked as Sheila finished her simple meal. ‘About working I mean. Going back to the shop, are you?’

  ‘The salon, you mean?’ Sheila asked. Why did these people always reduce everything to the ordinary? It was a gown-shop or a salon. To call it a shop made it sound like a place to buy groceries, like Amy’s.

  ‘The gown-salon, yes,’ Ethel said patiently. ‘Saleswoman you were and that’s a good position for someone as young as you to have achieved, for sure.’

  ‘I think I’m moving away.’

  ‘Oh? That’s nice, so long as it’s somewhere comfortable. Living on your own is very expensive if you want somewhere decent, and I’m sure you would.’ Ethel’s deep-set eyes watched the girl, wanting to help but afraid that a wrong word would send her out through the door faster than she had entered. Touchy she was, easily offended. She thinks us a lot of idiots. She smiled to herself. She thinks us incapable of doing anything but what our mothers told us, slipping back to how things were in 1939. If only she could be persuaded to relax and talk.

  ‘Tell me what you hope to do,’ she coaxed. ‘You don’t want to leave here before you have somewhere nice to stay.’

  ‘I’ll be all right. I—’

  The sound of the front door opening wider on the flagstones made Sheila stop talking and look up in relief. She had been saying too much. The less her parents got to hear about her plans the better. Not that she had anything definite in mind, but news spread in this village like a puffed dandelion clock. She stood to go, taking her coat from the back of a chair as Ethel’s son came in. Phil-the-Post took off his hat and bag and threw them on to a chair.

  ‘Cup of tea, Mam. I’m gasping!’ Coming in from the sunshine, he failed to see Sheila for a moment, then he grinned and added, ‘Unless young Sheila’s drunk it all.’ He placed a letter on the table. ‘Letter here from Australia, Mam, perhaps Sheila ought to…’ Too late he saw the frown and the shake of Ethel’s head.

  The letter lay on the white cloth, temptingly close to Sheila, who waited in the hope that Ethel would let her see the contents.

  ‘If there’s an address,’ Sheila said, ‘just so I could let him know about the baby and how I am, he might like to hear—’

  ‘There’s been no address, love. Just a note telling me he’s alive and still looking for work. He doesn’t know about the baby. We haven’t been able to tell him.’ She reached up to a teapot behind which were several envelopes. ‘You can read them if you like, just so you know we aren’t keeping anything from you.’ Ethel opened the new letter and handed them all to Sheila. They would hurt her, not having a word about her or a request for news of his baby, but she had to show Sheila that she was not lying to her, she had to try and persuade the girl to trust her, treat her like a friend.

  Sheila was so excited and tense she hardly took in a word and had to begin again. She really needed someone to read the letters to her so she could concentrate on the words and not have the thought that the paper had come from Maurice’s hands affecting her mind. And then there was the realisation it had been sent not to her but to his mother. That thought hurt her and made the thin paper quiver in her hands.

  The newly arrived letter was brief: only two short paragraphs telling Ethel Maurice was well and at last working in a garage but hoping for something more interesting soon. He sent love to his brothers and to his mother but did not mention Sheila at all. As Ethel had said, there was no address, only the promise that as soon as he was settled in a permanent place he would let them know. Sheila dropped the flimsy note on to the table and walked out.

  She walked towards town without any particular goal in mind but a bus passed her and, although it was not an official stop, Johnny was driving and he drew to a halt for her to get on. In Llan Gwyn she walked away from the shops and, when she reached the school where Delina Honeyman lived, she paused. A glance at her watch told her there was little more than an hour before school closed and she decided to wait.

  A cafe helped her to pass the time and a brief visit to the library where she wrote a letter to Freddie. She posted the letter and stood outside the school to watch as the children ran out, shouting their delight at the freedom, some carrying paintings they had done that day, others hurriedly stuffing cardigans and coats into satchels and small cases.
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  Delina was almost the last to leave and Sheila had almost decided that she was absent from school that day, when she saw her wheeling her bicycle out from the rear of the building and walking towards her. She was pretty, Sheila grudgingly admitted. ‘Her hair a golden mane and eyes of hyacinth-blue’ – she had read the description recently in a magazine story and remembered it.

  ‘Delina, can I have a word?’ Sheila said when it was obvious the girl was going to pass her without a glance.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Delina said politely. ‘There’s nothing I want to hear from you.’

  ‘I wanted to tell you how sorry I am for what happened, now the baby is dead and I’m all alone. It seems so cruel, me having to marry a man who didn’t love me and only used me, and you being all alone, like me.’

  She had chosen her approach well and Delina moved closer. ‘I’m sorry too, Sheila, but you aren’t the cause of me being alone. Maurice was completely to blame. After all, you were very young.’

  ‘And with no experience of men.’ Sheila was glad she had come out in a hurry and not changed from the dowdy brown skirt that was too long and the loose blouse which disguised her large breasts.

  ‘Have you heard from him?’ she asked as Delina pushed her bicycle alongside her to the curb. ‘Maurice, I mean.’

  ‘No.’ Delina said firmly. ‘At least, yes I have in a way. There was a letter arrived yesterday but I put it straight into the ash-bin.’

  ‘Best place too.’ Sheila began to walk away. ‘Well, that’s all I wanted to say.’ She looked back as Delina mounted her bicycle, then wandered off to get the bus home.

  Later that night, when it was dark enough for her not to be easily recognised, Sheila crept around the side of Delina’s house and carefully lifted the lid off the ash-bin. She found the letter in a puddle of baked beans and, wiping it off on the grass, joyfully took it home.

  * * *

  Delina was restless after Sheila had spoken to her. The brief conversation had brought the memories flooding back. She had deliberately pushed all thoughts of the fiasco of their wedding plans away from her. But the wedding dress her family had bought for her was still wrapped in blue tissue, hanging in the wardrobe with the white sandals, and the apple-blossom head-dress was still tucked away in a drawer. She took them all out and looked at them, running her fingers across the beautiful material, placing the head-dress on her soft golden hair. Would she ever feel the same about someone else, or had the experience frozen her for ever?

  After she had helped her mother clear away the dishes, she went to where she had parked her bicycle. She was restless and, although she had preparations for school to do, she wanted to ride for a while to try and clear any thoughts of the marriage-that-nearly-was out of her mind.

  She free-wheeled down Hywel Rise, enjoying the breeze on her body cooling her, feeling it cleansing her of the day’s rush and emptying her mind of worries. She saw the cat as a blur of black rolling across the road and before she could react a child ran out in pursuit of it. She shouted and pulled on her brakes at the same time, but the gravel on the road succeeded in unseating her and she fell beside the bicycle, the wheels still spinning. She jumped up and began to shout at the girl who stared back defiantly and began to shout for her father.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Dawn Simmons. Don’t you think you should look before running out into the road?’ Delina said, her voice restrained, her eyes darting anxious looks at the door of Dawn’s house, dreading another encounter with the ill-mannered Tad.

  She picked up the bicycle which was scratched and twisted, and straightened it out by holding the front wheel between her legs and tugging on the handlebars. Dawn had disappeared and as Delina remounted and tried out the machine for damage, a shadow covered the road in front of her and Dawn’s father stood there.

  ‘You careless, unfeeling woman. Not only almost running my daughter down, you don’t even ask if she’s harmed. What d’you think this is, a race-track?’

  ‘I assure you I was not the one at fault, Mr Simmons,’ she said hotly. ‘Your daughter ran out after a cat and gave me no chance. It was fortunate for her I do not use the road as a race-track or she might have been hurt. As it is, I am the one to have been hurt.’ She looked down to where a trickle of blood was moving slowly down her shin. Tad appeared not to see.

  ‘A cat?’ he said. ‘We don’t have a cat. Dawn? Did you see a cat?’

  ‘No Dad, we haven’t got one, have we?’

  ‘But she did!’

  ‘Was there a cat, Dawn?’

  ‘No, Dad.’ Dawn did not even blush.

  ‘So, if you come this way again make sure you ride with care and consideration for others.’ Tad turned sharply away from her and walked back inside, leaving a grinning Dawn watching her. Delina burst into tears and, pushing hard on the pedals, rode off down the hill, leaving a gathering of interested onlookers to discuss the affair with few facts and lots of imagination.

  * * *

  Sheila read the letter Maurice had written to Delina with dismay. He really had loved Delina, she thought, as she read his pleading request for her to join him in Australia. There was an address, something he had not given his mother, believing no doubt that Ethel would have felt obliged to pass it on to Sheila if she had asked. But the crumpled, bean-soaked paper was easily read and Sheila sat down to write to him.

  She wrote first about the baby, long sentences about the loneliness and the devastation at losing their child. She went on to remind him of the sex they had shared, the skills he had taught her and which she missed so very much, there being no one else with whom she wanted to share such bliss. She implied that she and Delina were friends and that it was Delina who had given her his address. Then she explained that Delina had found someone new and it was she, Sheila, who held for him undying love. She pleaded and grovelled and begged him to send for her and told him repeatedly that she forgave him for running out on her, insisting she understood how devastated he had been.

  ‘Put it all in the past where it belongs,’ she pleaded. ‘Let me come out to share your life,’ and she signed the letter ‘your ever devoted and loving wife, Sheila.’

  She closed the envelope quickly before she changed her mind about sending it. Childish it might be and with sentences that wouldn’t be out of place in some of the romantic stories she enjoyed reading, but he surely could not fail to be roused by it. The next day, she posted the letter in Llan Gwyn, in case Phil-the-Post noticed the addresses when he emptied the post boxes.

  * * *

  In Hen Carw Parc in 1954 it was frowned upon for a woman to go into a public house alone. To appear respectable, a woman needed to be accompanied by a man. Amy frequently broke the unwritten rule and Sheila was about to do the same. She was restless after writing to Maurice, wondering how long she would have to wait for a reply, if he ever did respond to it. Surely he wouldn’t ignore the news about the loss of the baby who, unknowingly, had caused so much trouble? Ethel had heard from him but had been unable to write to tell him what had happened. It was fitting, Sheila thought, that he received the news from her, his legal if unwanted wife.

  She had gone over in her mind the words she had used and wondered if she could have made it more dramatic. She had tried not to sound accusing but intended to make him feel a sympathy for her and admiration for the way she had coped, alone. She daydreamed about how she would casually mention hearing from him, showing the letter to Delina and to Ethel, without allowing them to know the contents. Whatever tone he responded in, she would let it be known that he had contacted her. That was a pleasure in store even if his reply was cold and brief. They would see the envelope and know he had written to her.

  She ordered a shandy and sat down near the empty grate to sip it. It was lunchtime and there were few customers except those waiting to see Griff to hand him their bets and for the lucky ones to receive yesterday’s winnings. A bunch of flowers in a copper bucket filled the stone hearth and dropped yellow pollen on to the dusty surface
of the grate. She pulled out a marguerite daisy and began pulling out the petals as a child would: he loves me, he loves me not. But who, she wondered, loved her best? Maurice who had flown from her bed rather than become her husband, or Freddie Prichard, who in spite of his youth, loved her deeply enough to ignore her past mistakes?

  Two of Freddie’s friends came in and she called across to them. ‘Hello Pete, hello Gerry, where are your bikes? I didn’t hear you drive up in your mad-cap way.’ She would not normally bother to talk to them, for they were almost as young as Freddie but far too immature for her taste. They were red-faced with black hair which they plastered down with grease, bristles showing uneasily amid spots. She shuddered: how could they step outside their door looking like that? But she was in need of company and did not object when Pete Evans came to sit next to her. He pulled out a flat, folded roll of pound and ten-shilling notes which he waved in front of her eyes.

  ‘Want a drink?’ he grinned, then, as Sheila opened her mouth to ask for a vodka, which she thought sounded mature and worldly, he pushed the wad back into his pocket and, standing, said, ‘If you want one you can get your own.’ He laughed and rejoined Gerry at the bar.

  Sheila gave them both an icy stare and looked around the room for someone with whom she could share her disgust. In the far corner, half-hidden by the flowers, she saw Constable Harris and as he looked at her, she raised her eyes skywards in a gesture of disapproval. Constable Harris just nodded and went back to the paper he was reading.

  Archie Pearce left Griff and stood near the two boys, accepting the pint they offered him with surprise.

  ‘Were you two boys out late last night?’ Archie asked, his lips rimmed with foam. ‘Don’t sleep too well these nights and I thought I heard a couple of bikes like yours zooming around the lanes and down the main road. You two, was it?’

  ‘No, man, our bikes is out of service and have been for a week or more.’ Pete leaned over so he could see the policeman and said, ‘Hear that, mate? Mystery bikes roaming the countryside and at night too. Perhaps they’re the burglars you’re supposed to be searching for, looking for likely places to burgle. Should be looking for them, shouldn’t you mate?’