The Emerald Valley (26 page)

‘What the dickens is this?'

It was not a serious question – he already had a pretty good idea what it was – but Margaret went into peals of laughter.

‘You're not supposed to know.' She went to snatch it from him playfully. ‘Give it to me, Harry. That definitely goes on the ladies' pile.'

Harry swung the garment out of her reach, jumping up to caper with it held around his own chest.

‘Hey, what do you think? Does it suit me? I'm having this!'

The door clicked open and Harry froze as Gussie came into the room. She looked at him unsmiling for a moment, standing there with the corselette held around him, and he wished the floor would open up and swallow him.

‘Oh, Mrs Young – I …'

She ignored him.

‘Margaret, I wondered if you'd run down to Market Cottages for me when you've finished that. There's a young woman down there who's just had a baby and I've found a couple of really good nightshirts in the last lot of stuff – and some nappies, too. She might as well have them right away and get some use out of them.'

‘All right – we've nearly finished here,' Margaret replied.

‘Good girl.' Gussie stopped in the doorway to look back at Harry with a twinkle. ‘But if Harry's going with you, I really don't think he ought to wear his corselette!'

As they walked down the hill to the town centre, Harry was still smarting with embarrassment at having been caught out playing the fool with the corselette. He felt this was not quite the image he wanted to present to the Youngs, either as a suitor for their daughter or as a serious young prospective member of the Labour Party. In fact, when he came to think of it, he seemed to be making a fool of himself with Margaret on all sides. Why couldn't things go right for him the way they did for other young men – his brothers, for instance? Jim, of course, was too old to compare himself with, but Jack was a war hero and a pillar of the community in the small seaside town where he was a schoolmaster, while Ted had always been able to charm the birds off the trees.

Margaret, however, seemed not to be worried by his lack of
savoir faire
– she walked alongside him with a perky step, laughing and chatting and so totally at ease that he found it difficult to believe he was her senior.

As they reached the foot of the hill he noticed a young woman with a child standing outside the George and looking around somewhat uncertainly. He glanced curiously in her direction. It was unusual in Hillsbridge to see a woman waiting outside a pub – even though it would not be open for several hours yet, it was somehow deemed not to be quite nice, the mark of a woman who was no better than she should be. And this one certainly looked poor, Harry thought – painfully thin, her dark hair screwed tightly into a knot at the nape of her neck and her cotton dress well-worn and washed-out. The child, a boy of seven or eight, was as thin as his mother, with a pert urchin face and a shock of brown hair cut with the aid of a pudding basin. Like her, his clothes looked well-worn and the darns in the elbows of his jersey were apparent even at a casual glance.

The young woman looked towards them and Harry hastily averted his eyes. Then, as he and Margaret drew level, she took a nervous step away from the doorway of the George, planting herself almost in their path.

‘Excuse me!' There was a lilt to her voice that was unmistakably Welsh. Harry had thought she was a stranger in Hillsbridge and her accent confirmed it. ‘Excuse me … I wonder, could you tell me if there's anywhere here where I could put up for the night?'

Besides the lilt there was strain in her voice. She looked and sounded weary – ill, even. Harry and Margaret exchanged glances.

‘You mean you're looking for somewhere to stay?'

‘Just for tonight. I thought the pub … but I didn't like to go in …'

‘Well there's Manor House along the street – they take paying guests,' Harry suggested.

‘And Mrs Moon in Glebe Bottoms takes lodgers,' Margaret added.

The woman bit her lip. She looked, Harry thought, as if she had all the cares of the world on her frail shoulders.

‘Which would be cheapest? I haven't got much money …'

‘Mrs Moon, I should think,' Harry said and gave her directions.

The woman thanked them and hoisted a carpet bag upon to her shoulder with an effort. Then, with a sharp, ‘Come on then!' to the boy, she started off and Harry and Margaret went on their way. But neither could resist glancing at her over their shoulders and Margaret's sunny mood seemed to have been overtaken by anxiety.

‘Poor thing, she looked awful! Do you think I should have taken her up home and asked Mum if she had room to sleep her? We could have managed it. There's the little spare room off the landing …'

‘She'll be all right with Mrs Moon,' Harry assured her.

‘I suppose so.' Margaret looked far from convinced. ‘I wonder who she is and what she's doing here?'

‘I don't know, but we'd better get on and deliver this stuff for your Mum,' Harry said, changing the subject. ‘Whoever she is, she's got nothing to do with us.'

‘I suppose not,' Margaret agreed, trying to put the woman and her child out of her mind. A mystery they might be, but as Harry had said, they had nothing to do with her.

Amy had spent most of that day at the yard, checking through ledgers and work-sheets and trying to sort out with Herbie some kind of blueprint for the future of Roberts Haulage.

Not that Herbie was much help. He tried to be, granted, but Amy could tell he had no confidence whatever in her as his new employer, and his slow, painstaking way of talking to her about the business was almost as off-putting as the out-and-out opposition her plans had received from others – notably her own family.

‘I don't think you should attempt it, Amy. It'll be too much for you and you'll only make yourself bad,' Charlotte had said. ‘Besides, what are you going to do about the children? You can't have them running about with lorries loading and unloading. It wouldn't be safe.'

Amy had turned on her most pleading expression.

‘I was hoping you might help me out there, Mam. I know you love having them …'

‘Yes, I do, sometimes. But every day … And it might be to much for your father.'

‘Don't bring me into it, Lottie,' James had wheezed from his bed in the corner of the living-room. ‘They cheer me up. I'm cut off enough as it is, cooped up here. And Barbara likes giving her grampie his medicine, don't you, my duck?'

Barbara climbed up on to the bed to prove her agreement and Charlotte, deserted by her ally, had been forced into retreat.

‘Well, if it's helping you out, Amy, I suppose I could. But what people will say – you down at the yard and doing a man's work – I don't know!'

‘I don't care what they say!' Amy declared.

It was not quite true, for she did care. But it made no difference anyway. She had made up her mind that the business should survive and she had no intention of giving up just because people might talk.

Predictably, some of the strongest opposition had come from Eddie Roberts.

Denied his chance of taking over his brother's business, he too was determined to ‘have his say'on the subject of Amy's venture.

‘It's downright ridiculous,' he told her. ‘You don't know the first thing about it.'

‘Nor did Llew when he started.' Amy's chin was high, her mouth a tight determined line. ‘Nor do you, if it comes to that.'

‘But we're men.'

Amy tossed her head. ‘And what has that to do with anything?'

‘A great deal, I should say.'

‘I can't see why. As regards the paper-work, I'm as able as any man once I find my way around it. And anything I don't understand, I shall change and do it my way. As for the manual work, I shall take on an extra hand as soon as I can afford it.'

‘You won't be
able
to afford it,' Eddie said nastily.

‘Oh, and why not?'

‘Because you're forgetting something. To get work you'll have to deal with men. And men won't deal with a woman.'

‘We shall see about that,' Amy said, wishing she felt as confident as she sounded.

‘You won't be able to go into the places where they do business. A lot of deals are talked over and made in the pub. And that will be out so far as you're concerned.'

‘When they see what a good business I run, they'll come to me,' she declared.

Eddie laughed scornfully and she turned on him.

‘Leave me alone, Eddie. I've got enough to do without quarrelling with you.'

‘I'm not quarrelling. I'm only trying to help.'

‘Well, I can do without your help. I haven't forgotten how you were hoping for a share of Llew's estate. Thank goodness the law is fairer than you, that's all I can say.'

Eddie reddened. ‘I wouldn't have taken your money, Amy. Surely you don't think …'

‘I don't know what I think. But if
you
think you're going to talk me out of doing this, I can tell you you're wasting your breath.'

Eddie had given up then, though Amy felt uncomfortably sure it was only a temporary respite. When he wanted something Eddie was like a terrier with a bone – and he wanted Llew's business.

I'll show him, Amy thought. I'll show them all!

But saying was a great deal easier than doing, as she soon discovered. Herbie could drive one lorry for the time being, with young Ivor Burge as mate, and eventually she hoped to take on another driver. But at present there was next-to-nothing to do. The contracts with the colliery companies on which Llew had relied were worthless as long as the miners'strike lasted, and she had little idea as to how to go about obtaining new business. But at least the grant of administration had been received, so she was free to do things her own way and the first step, she decided, was to go through the books and discover who Llew had dealt with in the past so that she could contact them and seek out new jobs.

That was what she had been doing that afternoon, making a list of likely customers; tomorrow she would make a start on trying to persuade them to do business with Roberts Haulage.

For the moment, however, she had reverted to her other role as mother to Barbara and Maureen. From the yard, she had walked up to Greenslade Terrace and, at Charlotte's insistence, stopped for a welcome cup of tea before starting out on the long trek home.

It was a warm, almost muggy afternoon and the sky was overcast for the first time for weeks, so that Amy thought there might be thunder in the air. As she pushed the pram, with Barbara dragging alongside, she realised she had a headache coming on and she sighed with impatience. She hated it when she had a headache; not only was it unpleasant, it also meant she didn't have the energy or concentration for all the things she had to do. Sickness was a luxury she could not afford.

Ahead of her on the hill she saw the figure of another woman with a child, dragging up the long climb. She looks about the way I feel, thought Amy – worse if anything, for even with the pram Amy was making ground on her. As the hill flattened out, however, she was still too far ahead for Amy to be able to see who she was. Then she turned into one of the gateways of the houses on the road.

It almost looked as if she went into my gate! thought Amy idly. She couldn't have, of course. It must have been next door. I wonder who she is?

Barbara was pulling on the pram, slowing Amy down, so she lifted her up into the little dickey seat and they covered the last few hundred yards at a much faster pace.

Then, as her house came into view, Amy almost stopped short in surprise. She had been right in thinking the woman with the child had turned into her gateway – they were standing at her front door and knocking on the knocker!

After the initial shock Amy began to hurry again, almost as if she thought the pair might disappear in to thin air if she didn't catch them quickly. Her first thought as she went up the path towards them was how ill the woman looked; her second was to wonder if they had not made a mistake and gone to the wrong house. But as she approached the woman turned towards her, a look of what appeared to be guilt making her thin features even more pinched.

‘Did you want me?' Amy asked.

‘Well, not exactly …' The accent was Welsh, the tone almost apologetic. ‘I was looking for Mr Roberts. Mr Llew Roberts?'

‘Mr Roberts.' Inexplicably Amy felt weak inside. ‘What do you want him for?'

The woman hesitated. ‘Does it matter? I just want to see him.'

‘I'm sorry.' Amy's voice was hard.

The woman pulled her cardigan defensively around her thin body. ‘You're Mrs Roberts, I suppose? I heard he was married. I won't keep him long, I promise, but I must see him.'

‘It's not possible,' Amy said, warding off the woman's protest. ‘He's not with us any more.'

‘You mean he's left you?' A curious, unreadable expression pinched the woman's careworn features.

‘No.' Amy took a deep breath – it still hurt to say it out loud. ‘He's dead.'

The woman blanched; all the colour drained from her already-pale cheeks and she seemed to sway on her feet. ‘
What?
What did you say?'

The look of her disconcerted Amy and when she spoke her voice was correspondingly sharp.

‘He was killed. There was an accident. So I'm sorry – your journey has been wasted.'

‘Dead!' The woman was trembling visibly, shock written all over her. ‘So that's why I haven't heard from him! Dead! Oh
duw
– I didn't know …'

It was Amy's turn to blanch. There was something she did not understand here … something she didn't like …

‘Who are you?' she demanded.

The woman made an effort to control herself.