The bathroom had been a bedroom, with little done to change its appearance. There was a white bath on curled feet against the far wall, a wash-basin and toilet against another and a large tiled fireplace, still open and obviously used to heat the room against the chill of winter on a third. The window was near the wash-basin and had curtains, not frosted glass, with towelling curtains decorated with pictures of fish and boats and sea-shells. This would have to be changed, she decided, shivering in the sunless room. It was at the back of the building and would probably be like a refrigerator for half of the year. Yes, she would change – she stopped her thoughts with a groan. Once again she was rushing into something without careful thought, her body deceiving her into believing she had found her future love. She washed her hands and sighed. If only Freddie were home. She would be able to discuss it with him and, although he was only sixteen, he would understand her dilemma and make her see all sides of the situation. She reapplied her makeup and returned down the stairs to the welcome fire.
Billie was sitting in the wooden settle and the children were already at the table. She sat where Mary gestured, beside the place set for Billie. Mary sat at the furthest end of the big table, near the teapot and the loaf of homemade bread, ready to replenish when necessary.
Amy did not eat much. She was tense, and guilt at leading Billie on, and even at allowing her own thoughts to race towards a commitment, washed over her at regular intervals. She sensed his eyes on her and across the table she knew that his sister too was watching her, trying to read the signs and know what had happened during the time she had taken the children to see the lambs.
Mary’s face remained impassive, trying to guess from Billie and Amy if the big ungainly house had discouraged Amy from thinking of it as a future home as she desperately hoped, or whether Billie had persuaded her with talk of the money available to modernise it that the place was a perfect place for her to bring her children. A farm, especially on a pleasant summer’s day, was deceptively beautiful and peaceful. She smiled and laughed with Billie as he talked to the children, and hoped she did not show that she was chilled by the thought of the upheaval and eventual banishment that Billie’s marriage would bring her.
Billie drove them all home, dropping Oliver off before driving out of the village to Amy’s home. ‘Shall I stay while you put the children to bed?’ he asked, but Amy shook her head.
‘I still have work to do. Morgan will be calling in with Prue’s books, which I’m supposed to look through every weekend but never do. And there’s the orders to write out and the accounts not yet done. I’ll be busy till eleven o’clock as it is. Best we leave things for today, Billie.’
‘Won’t you let me help?’
Again she shook her head and he saw the determination in her eyes and lowered his shoulders, accepting defeat. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’ He stood for a moment, wanting to say something more, wanting to end the afternoon on a positive note but unable to find the words. To take the steam out of the situation, Amy asked lightly, ‘Who made your pullover, Billie?’
‘Mary.’ The mundane remark startled him, then he seemed to guess her intention and added, ‘Looks after me well, Mary does. But Amy, it isn’t enough. I want a wife and a family to work for and plan for. Don’t try to talk about pullovers when I’m asking you to marry me.’
He left soon after, with Amy’s promise to meet him soon and discuss how they felt about each other. As soon as the sound of his car faded, there was a knock at the door and Victor stood there.
‘Where have you been, Amy? I’ve tried ringing you and now I’ve waited two hours.’
‘Is something wrong?’
‘Yes, there is something wrong. You’ve spent the day with that rich farmer, Billie Brown, that’s what’s wrong.’
She was angry. ‘What business is it of yours?’ she demanded. ‘I go where I like and with whom I like. You haven’t the right to ask me where I’ve been or criticise my friends!’
‘I can’t help hating it when you go off with that farmer. Amy, love, I know I can’t offer you anything yet, but don’t give up on me, please.’
Amy’s blue eyes darted from his face to the kitchen door, warningly. ‘Margaret is in there,’ she hissed. ‘Now go, I don’t want to stand here arguing with you. I’ve got work to do.’ She closed the door before he could add anything more.
She had not got any further than the end of the hall when the door bell went again. She jerked the door open, intending to give Victor a firm telling-off, and the man who stood there took several paces backwards.
‘Oh, it’s you, Morgan. Called for the books have you? I haven’t done more than glance at them,’ she apologised, handing them to him. ‘But I’m sure everything is fine in your capable hands.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Prichard.’ He backed nervously away and almost ran down the drive, causing her to smile. ‘Getting to be an old nag, I am,’ she said to Margaret. ‘Shouting at poor Uncle Victor just because I’ve got a lot to do.’
Amy did not sleep well that night. She was restless and wide awake, trying to read, trying to think about the following day’s work, and making imaginary lists of things she should do. Then, at three o’clock, she rose and made a cup of tea. She sat looking out of the window and watched dawn break, the trees in silhouette at the top of the hill behind the house, the sky changing from grey to yellow to pink and finally to blue as she sat there.
Sian woke and she took her downstairs to feed her, sitting in the semi-dark, with the window wide open and the chill clean air of the morning flowing around her. Sian, wrapped in a soft, fluffy woollen shawl was cosily pressed against her, but the fresh air made the little nose red and Amy reluctantly put her back in her cot. She felt the need to cuddle the baby, the need to feel someone close and dependant. The phone was in the hall and for a while she was tempted to ring Billie, to talk to him and hear his voice telling her he loved her, but she did not.
She sat back in her chair and allowed her thoughts to drift luxuriously. First to the big farmhouse and the image of living there with no accounts to do and no orders to write out. The remainder of the order, which she had not done on the previous evening, brought Victor to mind. Sadness filled her. How could she think of marrying Billie when there was Victor?
They had spent so little time together, with nothing but a few brief stolen kisses and a touch of hands when they were certain of not being observed, then the breathlessly wonderful nights together after the robbery. She wondered if it was the illegality of loving Victor that made him so much more exciting than Billie. The kisses she had shared with Billie had been disappointing until she had brazenly shown him how. The remembered kiss from Victor at Christmas, with half the village in Ethel’s house looking on, had given her more of a thrill. Something had grown between them, unbidden, unwanted but undeniably strong. Some wicked fairy must have been present at my birth and mixed up love and passion so I’ll never straighten out my love-life, she thought wryly.
Sian cried and she remembered how gentle Billie was with her, taking the tiny child in his huge hands as carefully as he would hold a butterfly wing. She pulled at her hair in frustration. Why couldn’t she accept what Billie was offering her? In many countries women were not allowed a choice but told who they would marry. If that were the case, Billie would be the choice in place of Victor on all counts; availability and prospects, and, she realised honestly, for his great and genuine love for her.
After she’d settled Sian, she ran a bath and as she scrubbed her legs and arms with a small brush, she enjoyed the punishment, and then the soreness and the glow when she finished. She compared her small warm bathroom to the chilly barn of a place in the farmhouse, and the thought of decisions to come still troubled her when she and Margaret set out for the shop an hour later.
Later that day, while she and Mavis counted the takings and tidied the shop before leaving, there was a knock at the shop door. ‘Milly Toogood I bet!’ Amy groaned. ‘Go and let her in, Mavis. She’ll bang the do
or down else!’
But it was not Milly. Mary stood there, in brown overall and Wellington boots, a battered hat on her head. She smiled at Mavis and asked if Amy was in, and as Amy stepped forward and invited her inside, answered, ‘No, I won’t come in, but I’d like to talk to you sometime. How about lunchtime tomorrow? I’ll be finished with the milk and there’s a break before the second milking.’
‘Of course. Shall we go to my house, or would you prefer somewhere in town?’
‘The Drovers will be all right. We can have a drink there.’ Puzzled, Amy agreed. It was odd for a woman to suggest meeting in a public house, but perhaps it was simply convenient. She turned to Mavis as they re-closed the door. ‘Now I wonder what she wants to talk to me about?’
‘Billie?’ Mavis said, her head, birdlike, on one side.
* * *
Nelly cleaned for Mrs Dorothy Williams a friend of Mrs French once a week. The Williamses lived in a large house on the outskirts of the village and when Nelly arrived to begin her work she found the distraught woman pulling out the contents of the drawers and cupboards as if she were searching for something. The grey hair, usually held back in a neat bun, was straggling out from her head and the dress of grey wool was stained and streaked with dust.
‘Whatever are you doin’?’ Nelly asked, as she tied the dogs to the fence and went through the back door, removing her coat as she did so. ‘Why didn’t yer tell me we was spring cleanin’. I’d ’ave come earlier.’
‘Not spring cleaning, Nelly. I want to scrub everything and get the taint of intruders out of my house.’
‘Yes, I ’eard about the burglary. Any clues to who done it?’
‘None so far, except that they probably came through the garden.’ She threw a pile of tableclothes down to join the pile already on the floor. ‘The police found a few leaves that they thought must have come from the hedge.’ She shuddered as she tipped out some tea towels from a drawer. ‘I can’t bear to think of a stranger’s hands rummaging through my things. I spent these past days at my sister’s, waiting to have the courage to do this.’
‘Should ’ave called on me, I’d ’ave seen to it while you were away.’
The two women spent the day sorting out the contents of the kitchen, scrubbing the shelves and replacing the washed items in their respective places. The living room was cleaned and polished as well as the small study used by Mr Williams for his hobby of stamp-collecting. These were places where the thieves looked for the money which they eventually found in the sideboard under a pile of papers.
‘Ach y fi,’ wailed Mrs Williams, ‘I can’t bear the thought of them touching all my things. How will I ever feel safe again?’
‘Thank Gawd they didn’t go upstairs,’ Nelly said as she straightened the last rug.
‘Oh, they wouldn’t, would they? The money was downstairs and the police thought they would have looked here first.’
Nelly thought it highly likely that the intruders searched the bedrooms but denied it, thinking it pointless to worry the woman any more.
‘Too risky to go upstairs,’ she said authoritatively. She was glad she had hidden the clump of mud from a man’s shoe that she had found in the small bedroom.
The result of all their labour was a house smelling of soap and lavender polish and two very tired people who, when Mr Williams came home from his office, were invited to have a drink and relax before Nelly caught the bus home.
It was almost five-thirty when Nelly and the two dogs walked up her lane. She limped rather badly, her hips an almost constant source of pain. They had been made worse by the kneeling and rising, bending and stretching deep into cupboards and high up walls to wash the picture rails and pelmets free of imaginary finger marks. She could understand the distress of finding the place had been entered by unknown people. Like poor old Archie, it would be a long time before Mrs Williams felt at ease again in her home. Over Nelly’s arm were two coats, given to her by Mrs Williams before she left. They had been in the hall cupboards and would never be worn by their owner again, who swore they smelt of a stranger’s touch.
At the bend in the lane, Nelly heard voices and for a moment her heart leapt at the thought that she too had unwelcome visitors, but the sight of a lorry reassured her and she hurried to see who it was. The dogs ran ahead of her, barking, their tails wagging enthusiastically.
‘Fat lot of good you are, Bobby an’ Spotty,’ Nelly laughed to let whoever it was know she was coming.
‘Come on, Nelly, I want your autograph,’ a voice called and she saw that the lorry bearing the name of a local builder’s merchants had begun to unload the materials needed to install her new bathroom. A bath lay on the path near the back door and a toilet was standing under the apple tree with an assortment of pipes and fittings spread around like futuristic flowers on the lawn.
‘’Angon, I’m comin’.’ She pushed her way with difficulty past the lorry and went through the gate, leaving the dogs fussing around the driver and his mate who were trying to lift a door and carry it down the path.
Nelly turned her back to her door and gave it a shove, and she was catapulted into her living room and sent staggering across to the couch.
‘I keeps fergettin’ that George ’as fixed that damned door,’ she explained to the startled men. ‘Stay an’ ’ave a cuppa, why don’t yer?’
‘Thanks.’ The two men sat down at once on the chairs outside the back door.
She stirred the fire into a blaze, throwing on a few sticks to liven it and turned the swivel carrying the black kettle over the heat. As it began to hum she set out cups and saucers and took a fruit cake from a tin. She went out and released the chickens from their run to wander around the garden, and while the kettle boiled, chatted to the men.
George arrived as they were about to go inside and help themselves to the cake she offered, delaying them further. When they finally went in the men stopped in the doorway and stared at the table. The cake was rapidly disappearing as two hens pecked furiously at it and the two dogs stretched up and rolled their tongues around the table, reaching the spillage and leaving a pattern of wet curved licks on the wooden surface.
‘What about a biscuit instead?’ George said calmly, lifting the hens off and throwing them, complaining, out of the door. The dogs looked guilty and settled in a corner, rolling their eyes in a pleading way that made them all laugh.
‘Always like this, is it?’ the driver asked and Nelly nodded.
‘Ain’t never dull, is it George?’
The gate opened and clacking heels came down the path. Nelly looked out and saw Evie coming, intent on a quarrel, her head bent, her eyes frowning in anger.
‘Bloody ’ell, what ’ave I done now, George?’ Nelly whispered.
‘I might have guessed it was you, Mother,’ Amy said.
‘’Course it’s me. Who else d’you expect?’
‘I mean causing chaos. I’m trying to drive around to the council houses and the lane is blocked. You giving the workmen tea is why.’
The driver stood up, his cup rattling against the saucer in his haste. ‘I’ll shift it at once, Mrs.’
‘Fer Gawd’s sake, let ’im finish ’is tea, Evie,’ Nelly grumbled. ‘What’s so urgent you can’t spare a minute?’ She turned to the driver. ‘Finish yer tea, gives yer indigestion, she does.’
‘I don’t know how you can find time to waste, I have plenty to do.’ She turned to the driver who was hesitating, wondering which woman to obey, changing the weight from one foot to the other as he decided to stay, then go. Seeing the look on Evie’s face he decided to go.
‘Just give us half a minute and we’ll be out of your way, Mrs.’ He handed the cup to Nelly, ‘Pour me another while I move the lorry, will you? Lovely that was.’ He winked. ‘Especially the cake.’ He left with his mate to guide him as he manoeuvred the lorry in the confined space.
‘While I’m here, Mother,’ Evie said, ‘will you have Oliver to sleep here next week?’
‘Sleep he
re?’ Nelly was surprised. It was difficult to persuade Evie that the place was sufficiently clean to allow the boy to eat something, but to sleep here? Nelly slowly moved in the hope of Evie not noticing the mess of cake where the hens had held an impromptu picnic. ‘Of course ’e can sleep ’ere. But why?’
‘Timothy and I have to attend a dinner. It’s council business and we’ll be back late. Amy usually helps but she will be out that evening and Netta Cartwright will be going to see Prue Beynon, so-—’
‘So I’m yer last ’ope?’
‘I’ll have to come and see the room you’re giving him first, of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘Make sure it’s clean enough and that his bed covers are sufficient.’
‘Of course.’ Nelly’s dark eyes glittered with anger. When it suited them Evie and Timothy didn’t mind the boy coming to the cottage, but when it could be avoided Evie made it quite clear to everyone that her mother did not reach her very high standards.
‘Want the police to check, do yer? Make sure we ain’t harbourin’ no criminals or makin’ illicit booze in the shed?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mother.’
George, who could see how the anger was rising in Nelly, intervened and said, ‘We’ll be delighted to have him. Nelly and I will make sure everything is just as you want it. You won’t have to worry about a thing.’
‘I don’t expect miracles!’ Evie snapped. ‘I just want to know he’ll be safe.’
George put a restraining arm on Nelly’s arm as Evie walked back up the path but he couldn’t gag her.
‘An’ you shouldn’t be drivin’ in daft stiletto shoes like them, Evie. You ain’t even passed yer test yet!’
‘Timothy is in the car with me, Mother. You know I wouldn’t disobey the law.’
‘An’ where’s young Ollie now then? Who’s with ’im this time? Sure ’e’s safe, are yer?’
The Changing Valley Page 21