The Changing Valley

by The Changing Valley (retail) (epub)

  ‘I’ve a camera of my own. Why should he believe I used yours?’

  ‘Don’t bother then!’ Dawn ran off, ignoring Nelly’s entreaties to wait.

  Oliver went home and Nelly paused, listening for a while with concentration to make sure all was quiet. Then she squatted behind a clump of bramble bushes and slipped her knickers down. She groaned as she heard the click of Dawn’s camera.

  Dawn ran home grinning widely and took out the packets of photographs she had taken so far, selecting a few to show her father and hiding the rest under her pillow. It was very expensive, this photography lark, and she didn’t want him to ask where she found the money. A few shillings she had found on Ethel Davies’s back-kitchen table, and the milk money left out along the road, had given her sufficient to continue for a while. She rolled up the completed film ready to take to be developed and licked the fixing label.

  * * *

  Sheila watched for the postman every morning, although she knew it was far too soon to hear from Maurice, even if he had written back immediately. She daydreamed about the reply she would eventually receive, how impressed he was at the idea of her and Delina being friends, and how he regretted leaving her like he did. He would ask for her forgiveness and promise to love her for ever.

  Despondently she left the dream and watched as Phil went into the garden next door, his bicycle propped against the privet hedge, the bag hanging on the handlebar. Voices reached her across the dividing hedge and she watched for him to pass her gate, pushing his bicycle, hating him for no other reason than that he could not possibly have the letter she longed to received.

  Her hopes rose ridiculously as he came up her path and popped a few envelopes through the letter box. She ran to pick them up off the coconut mat and her hopes, foolishly risen, plummeted. Of course there was no letter from Australia. But did there have to be one from Freddie? Irritably she tore it into several pieces and threw them in the bin.

  Really, she thought, I’m as silly as Delina, not opening Maurice’s letters. But she refused to feel regret at the loss of the boring chatter that Freddie would have written. She went on with the housework she had set herself. At eleven o’clock, when she and Gran usually had a cup of tea and a biscuit, she thought again about the letter. Could this one be different from the others? No. She pulled the morning paper towards her and resolutely refused to think of the torn and unread letter in the bin. She had wiped the baked beans off the letter from Maurice, but there would be nothing in the scribble from Freddie that would make that unpleasant chore worth while.

  At lunchtime, when she took a poached egg and some bread and butter in for her grandmother, she sat with her meal, feeling so bored that the temptation to throw the plate across the room was almost worth the mess she would have to clear up. Instead of throwing the egg, she went out to retrieve Freddie’s letter. What she read made her sit up in surprise.

  ‘I am being moved to a camp in the West Country,’ it said. ‘Why don’t you join me?’ The letter went on to explain how easily he could find her a room and a job. ‘I’ll be able to spend some time with you and we’d be together, you wouldn’t be on your own ever again, and I would be able to look after you.’

  The idea was so surprising that she spent the rest of the afternoon contemplating the image of having a room of her own, free from interference and the criticism of her parents, who were still complaining about reports of her being in The Drovers on her own one lunchtime, and without having to look after Gran. Even with visits from Freddie to suffer, it sounded like heaven.

  She was tempted to write straight back and agree to go, but she didn’t have a stamp and there was no way she would buy one from Amy and let her know she was writing to her precious son. Tomorrow she would decide. She would sleep on it and answer him tomorrow. She would go into Llan Gwyn and buy the tuppenny-halfpenny stamp from there.

  She was restless and at six o’clock, when they had eaten and the dishes were draining beside the sink, she slipped on her coat. The evening was not very pleasant but she had to get out. At least it was not raining. Calling to her gran to tell her she was going for a walk, she went out of the front door and down the hill towards Sheepy Lane.

  Where could she go? She couldn’t discuss this with Ethel, and her parents would be horrified at the suggestion of her joining Freddie, a sixteen-year-old boy, while she was still married to Maurice. His desertion of her seemed less important to her parents than the opinion of the local people, she thought resentfully. No one puts me first. Except Freddie, she had to admit. She sighed. In all the world he was the only one to care.

  Reaching the junction of Hywel Rise and Sheepy Lane she walked up to the woods. The trees were in full leaf and very beautiful, but she was unaware of them. She recalled with half-remembered fear as well as excitement the place where Maurice had first forced her to make love. Why had it all gone wrong? Why couldn’t it have been a real love story like in her magazines, instead of a closeted passion which had been forgotten the moment Maurice had met Miss High-and-Mighty Delina Honeyman?

  She stood silently under the trees, listening to the sounds of the birds and wishing Freddie were with her. Better Freddie than being alone, despised by all the village for ruining Maurice’s life and sending him away from his home and family. She sighed again. Why did everyone side with Maurice? It was her who had suffered most. A husband thousands of miles away preventing her from finding someone else, the agony of the baby’s birth and death. What had Maurice suffered compared with that?

  Disconsolately she wandered to where the marks of a motorbike could be clearly seen heading for the hill below which was Billie Brown’s farm. She looked down at the farm nestling in the fold of the hills, then detoured to climb over the castle ruins before wandering back home.

  * * *

  The following morning she went into town on the nine o’clock bus, the letter from Freddie in her pocket. She had debated the pros and cons of going to live near him through much of the night and at first the idea had seemed perfect. No interference and no over-anxious parents were the main things in its favour. But then she had begun to think about Freddie in uniform and with no money. His friends, all in uniform with no money; herself, stuck in some boring job in a small town with no new clothes and no fun.

  There had been very little fun in her life and it seemed ridiculous to walk into a situation where she would have little chance of an escape to better things. She did not really know what she meant by ‘better things’, only that Freddie was not the way to find them. She put the letter, telling him she would not be coming, into the letter box and listened to it fall with a sigh of relief. How nearly she had fallen into a trap, taking a slight security and giving up her freedom for it.

  She had dressed with care, making the best of the few decent clothes she had. The iron had thumped away for an hour before she was satisfied that the black slim-line skirt and the polo-necked silky blouse were as neat as she could make them, her stiletto heeled shoes polished and the single run in her nylon stockings carefully and neatly repaired.

  A pleasant hour was spent at the hairdresser’s where her hair was washed and set in a loosely waved style which she knew framed her face attractively. It was money she and Gran could not easily afford but, by economising for a few days on food, she would be able to cover its loss. After a cup of tea in the local hotel (the smart new Sheila would not consider a cafe) she spent a while repairing her makeup, adding a little more mascara than usual and stepped out with confidence to get her old job back.

  There had been a new girl taken on in her place, but seeing Sheila, dressed, made up and so obviously returned to her usual good health, the manageress was tempted. Sheila had not been well liked by the rest of the sales staff but she had been very good at her job and customers still asked for her when they came to buy for a special occasion. Sheila came out after twenty minutes leaving a guilty manageress and a sobbing, sacked, fourth sales girl. She had started to pick herself up again and had no one, not
even Freddie Prichard and certainly not her parents, to thank for helping her.

  At the bus stop she pushed herself to the front of the queue, the women with their bags of shopping seemingly too surprised to stop her. The first bus that came was for Hen Carw Parc, and she ran up the stairs to the front seat, still smiling over her success. The conductor, with a fully loaded bus to attend, failed to reach her and ask for her fare and she pocketed the money with satisfaction. Another good augury. Things were definitely going her way.

  She was so delighted at the way her day had gone she hardly glanced along the road when she alighted, and a tractor, about to overtake the parked bus, which was still spilling out its passengers, had to stop with a suddenness that made Billie shout, ‘Damned fool! What d’you think you’re doing,’ Billie glared at her. ‘Look where you’re going, you idiot!’

  ‘Travelling too fast, you were!’ Sheila looked at the other passengers for support. ‘Could have killed me. Shaking like a leaf, I am, and me with the hill to walk up.’

  The bus moved away and people began to disperse as Billie climbed down from his tractor. He walked up to her, towering above her, his brown dungarees and the cowboy shirt blocking her view of the road.

  ‘All right, are you?’

  ‘No thanks to you!’

  ‘If you want, I’ll walk up and see you safe home, or will you go to your parents? Not far, are they? Only in the flat above the shop.’

  ‘No, I’m all right.’

  She began to cross the road, looking ostentatiously right and left several times. As she reached the other side she called back. ‘You want to watch out for burglars, by the way.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘I was in the woods yesterday and saw the marks of motorbikes, stopped where they could look down on your place.’

  ‘Told the police, have you?’

  ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘I’d forgotten until you nearly ran me down.’

  ‘Can you show me?’

  ‘If you like.’

  She walked up Sheepy Lane and Billie went to the tractor and drove slowly past her, waiting at the point where the lane turned westward to pass Nelly’s cottage. He stopped the noisy engine and walked with her to the furthest edge of the trees where she had seen the tracks. Close beside him, she bent down and pointed a varnished finger-nail to where the tracks could be seen. Looking up at him, widening her eyes in a way she knew excited men, her face admiring, she said, ‘I expect you can learn a lot just by looking at these silly tyre marks, can’t you? They don’t mean a thing to me. I just thought you ought to know.’

  She slipped on an imaginary stone and his arms reached out to save her from falling. Laughing, she moved away from him, inwardly amused at the sudden interest in his dark warm eyes. Really, men were so predictable. A bird, frightened into flight by the sudden movements, squawked in alarm and obliterated the sound of a camera shutter.

  Leaving Billie to study the tyre marks, Sheila walked home, well contented with her day. She had a job, she was still able to attract men and what was more important, she still enjoyed the sensation. Even the reactions of an ugly old man like Billie, who was forty if he was a day, made her feel more alive and reminded her that life was potentially full of exciting things.

  She wondered if Gran would mind having fish and chips tonight. She didn’t feel like cooking and the walk down to the village would show people her newly recovered confidence and make them realise that Sheila Davies was fit and well and raring to go.

  * * *

  The school was so quiet that Timothy felt a strange unease as he worked at setting up the display paper for the children’s photographs. The windows were open and the soft evening breeze touched the papers on his desk and made them dance. A sparrow settled on the sill to watch him work, with its head on one side as if questioning the display. Timothy watched its jerking movements and smiled. That would make an interesting photograph, he thought.

  He covered a length of recently denuded wall, the pictures he had taken down all in a neat pile for the children to claim and take home. In every classroom the teachers were preparing displays ready for when the parents came to see the photography competition: there would be a representation of work from every child. The hall Timothy had wanted to do himself.

  The blue backing paper was almost fixed and he picked a photograph up from a pile on the desk, holding it against the paper to judge the effect. Footsteps sounded hollowly in the empty building and, still holding the photograph at arm’s length, he smiled as Mrs French came into the hall. ‘Do you think this colour will be suitable, Mrs French?’ he asked.

  ‘Perfect, Mr Chartridge,’ she smiled, ‘but I hope you have enough room for them all. It seems that every child in the school has entered the competition.’

  He turned over a few of the entries and held up some of his favourites for her to see.

  ‘Lots from Dawn. A number taken at Mumbles, but none of the trains, or even the horse-pulled coach. They’re all of people. Very interesting.’ Then his face froze and he hurriedly screwed up the picture of Nelly peeing in the woods and threw it into the waste-paper bin. He must remember to remove it when he left and make sure, once he got it out of school, that Evie didn’t see it. He was tense as Mrs French looked through the rest of Dawn’s entries.

  ‘She does have an eye for a picture,’ she said and he agreed lugubriously. ‘This one of a child staring down with disbelief at his fallen ice cream,’ Mrs French went on, ‘and this one showing laughing, dancing children. And this…’

  Timothy started with alarm, wondering what she had found and was only partly relieved to see it was a picture of a child with only one shoe on, crying for attention, only his mother’s lower half in view, dragging him behind her, unaware of his distress.

  ‘I have an hour or two. Shall we make a start on the display?’ Mrs French offered and they began sticking the photographs on to the paper, grouping them into subjects. The name of the photographer was written on the back of the pictures and Mrs French noted that he only used three of Dawn’s, putting the rest aside.

  ‘A pity they can’t all be shown. They’re very good,’ she said, but Timothy tightened his lips and did not reply.

  ‘How is Dawn getting on at school? Is she settling down now?’

  ‘Not really. She’s a difficult child who revels in causing embarrassment and irritation.’

  ‘Her attendance?’ she coaxed.

  ‘Poor. She’s out of school more than she’s in. Every week there’s at least one note saying she has a cold or a cough or is “unwell”.’

  ‘The handwriting, it is her father’s, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’re wondering if she writes them herself? I wouldn’t know. The writing is small and a bit childlike and there are spelling mistakes but her father is only a factory hand, with no education. It would seem unremarkable that he does not write a good hand,’ he said pompously, unaware of how wrong he was. ‘I do see rather a lot of notes and you’d be amazed at the number of children who try to outwit me.’

  ‘I have them too, for music lessons,’ Mrs French laughed. ‘When the weather is good there are enough colds and coughs and sprained wrists to constitute an epidemic!’

  While Timothy went to the cupboard for more drawing pins, Mrs French took out the crumpled photograph and, recognising Nelly and what she was doing, found it impossible not to smile. When Timothy returned, she held the photograph out to him and offered, ‘Shall I take this and dispose of it for you? I think we ought to make sure Mrs Chartridge doesn’t see it, don’t you?’

  The children began to arrive for the concert rehearsal and Mrs French sat at the piano. She felt so merry that she found herself searching for an excuse to laugh, and the rehearsal was one of the most enjoyable the children remembered. She thought the photograph of Nelly in the woods might be worth keeping to look at just before the concert, for its cheering effect. Her jolly mood had certainly added a sense of fun to the singing.

  Chapter Thirt
een

  Amy was haunted by Victor. He appeared at the shop and at the house more regularly than ever before. Wherever he was delivering he managed to pass through the village and spend a moment with her, his eyes full of reproach if she mentioned Billie or the farm. He was unable to say or do anything to persuade her to refuse the farmer’s proposal: he had nothing to offer, not even his freedom to love her. No money, except what he was secretly saving, and that was for the gold watch he had promised her, to replace the one that had been stolen. How could he ask her to love him and not Billie?

  The evenings were long and it was rare that a day passed without him calling at the house, usually on the pretext of weeding her garden, but, as Billie made sure there was nothing to do in that area, he would just pick idly at a few recalcitrant daisies and talk to Amy or Margaret. He knew Amy wanted him and also knew she had meant it when she had told him the brief affair must end. One day, he threw down the trowel he was using and stormed into the house. He flopped into a chair and muttered, ‘Why don’t you marry Billie and put me out of my misery?’

  Startled, Amy asked. ‘Is that what you want?’

  ‘You know it isn’t!’

  ‘Then why…?’

  ‘I hate every moment of my life when I’m not with you, Amy, and I dread every moment when I am with you, expecting to be told to go. I survive each day on the crazy hope that Billie will drop dead, or you’ll find out something about him that will make you forget the idea of being his wife.’

  ‘Mr and Mrs Brown,’ Amy mused. ‘Amy and Billie, yes, I must confess I like the sound of it.’

  ‘And I can’t blame you, love,’ Victor said sadly. ‘Why waste your youth hovering around when you can have a man, a decent man, damn him, who wants to give you everything. A home, a loving husband, a place of comfort for Margaret and Freddie. But I want you to know that I love you and as soon as the boys are eighteen, I’m leaving Imogine, whatever you decide now. You aren’t breaking up my marriage. My marriage ended when I was in court for stealing. Since then my life has been nothing, apart from loving you.’