Prue felt tired as she reached the outskirts of the village and turned in past Mrs French’s house to her own. The curtains were half drawn and the place seemed devoid of any life but she walked to the door and stepped inside without any hesitation. Today was the day she began to get on with the rest of her life. Of that she was determined. It was raining and a strong wind blew but she pulled back the curtains and opened all the windows and took pleasure in watching the curtains billow out in gusts of wind that threatened to soak the wallpaper from the walls. For once, orderliness was less important than the need to freshen the house and blow away all her bad memories.
She stood in the kitchen, wishing she had thought to bring some milk so she could make a cup of tea. She considered asking Mrs French, who she saw returning from church but abandoned the idea. Today she needed no one. Making tea, she drank it without milk, adding extra sugar instead.
A sound upstairs, a rumbling and crashing that startled her so she dropped her cup, paralysed her. She shook like a victim of the ague and wanted to run from the house, but if she did, she knew there would never be any coming back. Forcing herself to stay, she gripped the edge of the table and waited to gather her strength. Today was the day for facing things, wasn’t it?
Slowly she went up the stairs and the wind was making low moaning sounds, sliding between the narrow gaps near the hinges of the window, singing a miserable dirge through the curtains. There was a slapping as another part of the wet curtain flapped against the panes. Three bedroom doors had slammed, and she had to push hard against the force of the wind to open them, one after the other and prop them open. A broken table lamp lay on the floor beside her bed. She went in and stood, looking down on the smooth counterpane.
She bent down and touched the cold bed, then pulled back the covers and plumped the pillow, denting it so it looked as if someone had just risen from its soft comfort. Another crash, this time from downstairs and she flew down, the phantoms of the bedroom chasing her.
The brass poker had slipped on the tiled surface of the fireplace and lay across it with the tongs she used to put coal on the fire. It had not been there when she went away. The police had taken it for examination. She went back up the stairs and gathered the pieces of the broken lamp in her skirt then, picking up the poker, which seemed to burn her hand as she touched it, she threw them all in the ash bin. Closing the windows, she collected her umbrella from the porch and walked back to Amy’s house.
There was only one thing left for her to face and that was Freddie. If she could sit in the same room as him, talk to him like an auntie, then the horrific events of Harry’s death would be laid to rest. She saw the bus pass as she turned the final bend in the road and from the corner of her eyes, saw a soldier alight and help a young woman down, before shouldering his bag, as, with one hand on the girl’s elbow, he guided her across the road.
She stopped as her mind registered the fact that it was Freddie. He seemed to have materialised out of her thoughts. She stood still, her feet wanting to retreat but after a moment, walked up the drive. At the door she glanced at Freddie and gave him a nod of recognition before going to look at Sian. Thank goodness that Sheila girl was with him, that would help to ease the conversation, she thought. But her heart raced with anxiety.
* * *
Amy was tired. Besides the strain of Prue’s visit, the baby had been fractious with a tooth about to come through and she had been reduced to making food for tea time with the wriggling, protesting infant under her arm.
Margaret had tried several times to discuss the idea of the new school proposed by Mrs French, and had been hurt when Amy had asked her to leave the subject until later.
‘Mam. You’re always saying “later” or “now in a minute” or “after” or “tomorrow”!’
‘I’m sorry, Margaret, love, but you can see how difficult it is for me just now.’
‘Best if I do go away, then you’ll have the peace you’re always wanting!’ Margaret grumbled.
Amy put the still-crying baby in her chair, held her daughter firmly by the shoulders, and stared into her dark brown eyes.
‘Peace, I don’t want. An hour or two until Auntie Prue goes I do need. Right? Then we’ll talk. You and me.’
Prue returned as the last slice of bread was buttered and the salad washed. She came through the door in more than usual haste and announced, ‘Freddie’s come and he’s got that Sheila girl with him.’
Margaret ran to greet her brother and Amy groaned and opened another tin of corned beef. Another precious leave ruined by having that girl here, she sighed.
The meal was not an easy one. Prue hardly spoke and Freddie never seemed to stop. Margaret refused to eat anything, still angry with her mother for refusing to discuss what was clearly an important subject. The baby cried throughout and only ceased when the dishes were washed and put away. Then, Margaret, despairing of ever having a moment of her mother’s time, went to do her piano practice and woke the baby again.
To add to Amy’s frustrations, Prue followed her into the kitchen when she went to fetch the coal scuttle and accused her of neglecting the baby who, she said, had been left to cry unattended. Amy bit her tongue. Prue was making good progress and she was afraid of causing a relapse into the unfeeling, uninterested woman of past weeks.
‘Sorry, Prue, but it’s been a busy day,’ was all she said, and Prue seemed content to have made her point.
As they returned to the living room, Sheila held up a cup that had been forgotten, and Margaret took it from her and dropped it. Amy swore, Sheila laughed and it was Freddie who cleared up the mess.
It was not until the taxi came to take Prue away that Amy felt able to sit down. Then she smiled at Freddie and asked how he was, as if he had just arrived. She pulled a protesting Margaret on to her lap and invited her son to tell them all his news.
‘Then,’ she said, ‘I want us to discuss something that concerns Margaret and me.’
To her dismay, instead of all the amusing anecdotes Freddie usually entertained them with, he began to talk about himself and Sheila.
‘She’s been let down badly, Mam, and went back to work before she had really recovered. I – well – I want to look after her, like. I want her to leave Hen Carw Parc and come to live near where I’m stationed.’
‘But Freddie, what will you do for money? You’re only a boy soldier and your money won’t keep Sheila! Four and sixpence a day for goodness sake! And besides—’ she looked at Sheila defiantly – ‘Sheila is married to Maurice Davies. Have you forgotten that? Married she’ll be for a long time yet. It isn’t something you can cancel like the milk, or pretend didn’t happen.’
‘Mam, we know all that. No point going over old arguments. I’ve thought this through and taken advice. There’s a little town near the camp where several of the wives live. Sheila could get a job down there and I’ll be on hand to see she’s all right.’
‘Sick of people looking at me as if I’m unclean,’ Sheila said. ‘And when I don’t tell people about my situation, they find out anyway, thanks to the local gossips, and then I’m accused of being deceitful.’
Amy hardened her heart. She remembered the feeling all too well when she had returned to the village with Freddie a baby and no wedding ring.
‘I understand that, Sheila, but it will pass. There’s bound to be a more exciting bit of gossip soon to make your problems fade into memory. There are few people who can afford to criticise what you did anyway. Most have got a skeleton or two in their cupboards.’ She turned to Margaret. ‘Don’t you worry about any of this, mind. I’ll explain it all later. All right?’
* * *
The discussion went on going round and round the same track no one changing their attitude and Amy felt she would soon fall asleep where she sat. She made the baby’s final bottle and put her down in her cot. Freddie made cocoa for them all, and, when the baby woke again half an hour later, Freddie and Sheila stood up to leave. ‘I’ll be back after seeing Sheila home, Mam,’ he said.
Once they had gone, Amy dragged herself up to change the bed in which Prue had been sleeping. She was undressed when she and Margaret finally began to discuss the proposition of the boarding school.
‘To be honest, love, I don’t want you to go. Growing up too fast you are and you’ll be leaving me in a few years anyway. But it would be a marvellous opportunity for you. A chance to really do something with your music, and if you want to go, then I won’t raise any objections. Now, what have you got to say?’
‘I don’t know, Mam. When I’m here with you I don’t want to leave you, but when I’m with Mrs French she makes sharing with other girls and living away from home seem like a big adventure.’
‘You don’t have to decide yet. Take your time. Just remember that if you try it and you hate it, you can come back home again. No one would force you to stay.’
She kissed her daughter and went to bed after calming the baby once again. She tried to stay awake until Freddie came home but failed.
* * *
Freddie walked back to the shop with his mother the following day then returned home to cut lawns and plant more bulbs in the borders and under the trees. At four-thirty, when Amy was home and preparing the evening meal, he came in, bathed, and set out to meet Sheila.
They walked around the town for a while, Freddie enthusing to her about how contented she would be once they were together, Sheila half listening and planning how she would spend her next pay-packet. She looked into shop windows, studying the clothes on display while pretending to be absorbed in his words. Freddie took her silence for unhappiness and swore to himself to make up for every sad minute.
‘If you want, later on, when I’m finished with the army we could share, like man and wife. Only if you want to, mind. There’s another world outside Hen Carw Parc. We could live anywhere you like.’
‘London?’ she asked.
‘If you want to, but I’d rather settle somewhere small, I want us to have a garden, see, where I can grow flowers and a few vegetables.’
‘Sounds lovely,’ she lied. ‘So – caring.’ She almost burst out laughing at the satisfied expression on his young, earnest face. Freddie was not her idea of the man to spend the rest of her life with, but she held on to him, knowing that for the moment he was all she had. She put her arm through his and pressed herself against him.
‘Freddie, let’s go to the pictures,’ she said, and as he hesitated, mentally counting up his money to see if he had enough, she added in a whisper, ‘Back row.’
* * *
Dawn had been missing from school quite a lot and Timothy noticed that when she did come, she was dressed in clothes that were often dirty and un-ironed. Her hands and face were in need of a wash too, and her legs were sometimes caked in mud and half-healed scratches that remained for several days without evidence of being attended to. He sent a note to her father but there was no response, and decided to discuss the situation with Evie.
She was out when he and Oliver got home from school that evening and there was a note telling them she had taken an extra driving lesson and would be back at six o’clock. So it was to his son that he spoke to about Dawn Simmons.
‘Do you talk to Dawn much, Oliver?’ he asked as Oliver spread treacle on to a thick slice of bread.
‘Yes, when she’s at school, and sometimes at Gran’s.’
‘Do you know why she is absent so much? I really ought to report her poor attendances.’
‘She doesn’t like school very much and she feels a bit cross when she’s asked to take things that her father can’t afford to buy for her, or that he forgets to do. So if it’s a day for swimming lessons, she doesn’t come because she hasn’t got a swimming costume.’ He said all this through a slippery and difficult sandwich and Timothy found himself watching the attempts of Oliver’s teeth and tongue to prevent the shining golden river of treacle from sliding on to his plate.
‘You had better hurry and clear that away before your mother sees you,’ Timothy said, hiding a smile. ‘That is not the way to eat a sandwich.’
‘Dawn says she often has a treacle sandwich for her breakfast. I just wanted to try one, Father,’ Oliver reported.
‘I see, and your mother being out gave you the opportunity.’
Oliver was silent for a while, savouring the last crumbs.
Timothy watched him, then asked, ‘Can you think of any way we can help Dawn? Would she accept some sports things outgrown by other pupils, do you think?’
‘No. Her dad punches anyone who offers help. He even hit George. Granddad, I mean.’
When Evie returned, Timothy asked her for suggestions to help the little girl but Evie was unsympathetic.
‘She and her father are unclean and common. Fisticuffs is his answer to everything. I don’t even like her playing with Oliver. Of course, Mother encourages her in spite of my requests to send her packing! I don’t feel we have to do anything except report the situation to the relevant authorities.’
Going to school early the following morning, Timothy met Delina and asked her if, living on the council houses, she knew Dawn Simmons.
‘Yes, I do, and I have also had the misfortune to meet her ill-mannered father.’ Delina felt an unreasonable guilt as she said it, a disloyalty which she tried to ease by adding, ‘He has many problems of course and that must account for his prickly manner, but he is not an easy man to deal with.’
‘I’m aware that there’s a problem but I don’t know how best to handle it,’ Timothy admitted. ‘She’s coming to school unkempt and I think the father is ill, or at least unable to look after her for some reason; she has never been as bad as these past few days. I telephoned a few people,’ Timothy went on, ‘and no one has seen him for several days. D’you think I should go there and offer help?’
On an impulse that she regretted for the rest of the day, Delina said, ‘I’ll go after school and try to see him, although I can’t promise to be successful. I’ll call and tell you what happens.’
With a relief he could not hide, Timothy thanked her and went into school feeling that a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. The last thing he wanted was a fight with a parent. He did not consider the risk to Delina, presuming that even someone with a reputation for outbursts, like Tad Simmons, wouldn’t harm a woman.
* * *
All through lessons and the break periods Delina alternated between reaching for the phone to tell Timothy she had changed her mind, and wanting to see Tad again. This was at least a reasonable excuse to call and there might never be another. There was within her a genuine concern for the girl too, and she knew that if, for some reason, she was not being properly cared for, then Tad would lose her. Holding the thought that it was because of Dawn she was facing that rude and aggressive man again, she walked slowly up the lane that evening, pushing her bicycle, and stopped outside his house.
She knocked the door and waited an age before knocking again. There was still no reply and she forced herself to go inside the kitchen and call. This time Tad’s voice answered her and she went further into the house. Its bareness made her sad: no carpeting and no ornaments or extra touches that a woman would bring. A cupboard door hung ajar and she saw one solitary tin of baked beans and a packet of biscuits inside.
She called again and this time the voice asked who she was and what she wanted. Delina walked into the hall and called upstairs in the direction of Tad’s voice.
‘It’s Delina Honeyman. I wanted to see Dawn. Can I talk to you for a moment, please?’
She heard the sound of someone walking across the floor above her and then Tad appeared at the top of the stairs. She was shocked by his appearance. The man was obviously ill. He came down, hanging on to the banisters and taking each step with obvious difficulty.
‘You shouldn’t have come down,’ she gasped. ‘Go back into bed and I’ll go and phone for a doctor.’
‘No, don’t do that. I’ll be all right in a day or so. But as you’re here, you could get some food for Dawn. I haven’t
been able to get any money from the post office and we’re short of a few things.’
He stopped half way down the stairs and as he swayed, Delina ran up to support him, guiding him back to his bedroom. She sat him on the edge of the bed and he explained that he hadn’t felt well enough to go to work for a few days.
‘I believed each day that I would be better the following morning, but it’s taken longer than I thought.’
‘Look, I won’t fetch the doctor if you really don’t want me to, but I must do something. Where is Dawn? I can at least get her fed and bathed, and see to her clothes.’
He fell back on the bed and she hastily covered him up, left a note for Dawn and went to buy what she could carry, before Amy’s shop closed.
For three days she called on the way to and from school and made sure Dawn was neatly dressed. After further discussions with Timothy, she bought the sports equipment Dawn needed to take part in the school activities as well. On the third day, when she went after school, Tad was up, shaved and dressed.
‘Thank you for your generosity, Miss Honeyman. I don’t know how we would have coped without your help.’ Delina smiled.
‘It’s what anyone would have done. There’s plenty of people only too happy to help where it’s needed, you know.’ She stepped towards the door. ‘Well, by the look of you, you won’t be needing my help any more. So, well, I’m glad you’re fully recovered.’
‘Please stay a moment,’ Tad said, ‘Dawn will be here in a while and she wants to thank you too. She’s promised me not to mitch from school any more and if she keeps that promise, then I owe you an even greater thanks.’
‘It’s been a pleasure.’
‘It’s been a rare pleasure for me too, anticipating your calls.’ Tad said. ‘I – I hope you won’t forget us now there’s no real need to visit us. I – we’ll miss your visits.’ Dawn came in wearing one of the dresses that Delina had bought when she realised how few the girl had.
The Changing Valley Page 35