The Emerald Valley (27 page)

‘I'm sorry … I'm Sibyl James. I knew Llew in Glamorgan, before he moved here …' She broke off, pressing a shaking hand to her face. ‘I'm sorry … it's such a shock …'

A curtain at the next-door window moved and Amy got out her front-door key.

‘You'd better come inside.'

‘Oh – I don't know … I don't know what to do now …'

The curtain moved again. Amy opened the door, lifted Barbara down and pushed her inside. Then she turned to scoop up Maureen.

‘Come on. We'll have a cup of tea.'

She led the way in and uncertainly the woman and child followed. In the kitchen the woman stood with the carpet-bag still over her shoulder, arms wrapped around her skinny frame.

‘Sit down,' Amy said.

As if her legs would no longer support her the woman did as she was bid.

‘Oh, I'm sorry …' she said again. ‘I shouldn't have come, I suppose. But I was desperate, see? I didn't know what else to do. When … when did he die?'

‘At the beginning of May. He had an accident at the yard.' Amy was filling the kettle, lighting the gas.

‘So that's why I haven't heard. I wrote to him, see? Twice. But he didn't answer. It was so unlike him.'

At the mention of letters Amy jumped and then stood motionless remembering the cream envelopes with the Glamorgan postmarks. Had this woman sent them? It certainly sounded like it. But why – why? And why hadn't Llew told her about the woman? They had always told one another everything …

The woman was rocking back and forth on her chair, moaning softly, and at first Amy was too preoccupied with her own shocked thoughts to notice what she was saying. Then half a dozen words detached themselves from the rest.

‘He always sent so regular, see …'

‘Sent regular?' Amy repeated sharply. ‘What are you talking about – sent regular?'

The woman moaned again, nodding towards the child.

‘For Huw. He always sent money for Huw. After my Idris died, anyway.'

Amy caught her breath. Her fingers were too numb suddenly to hold the matchbox and it dropped to the floor unnoticed.

‘Idris?'

‘My husband. He got killed underground. A stone fell on him. And now you tell me Llew's gone too. Oh
duw, duw
…'

Amy leaned forward, her knuckles white on the scrubbed wood table top.

‘Wait a minute. I'm not following you. Are you trying to tell me that Llew supported your child? And I knew nothing about it? Why should he do that?'

The woman was crying now, her mouth slack, her chin wobbling. She brushed at the deep dark circles beneath her eyes with the back of her fingers and fumbled in the pocket of her cardigan for a handkerchief.

‘You didn't know then? He never told you.'

‘Told me what?' Amy almost shouted at her.

‘About Huw.' She indicated the child who stood scowling beside her. ‘Huw. His boy.'

‘His
what
?'

‘His boy – Llew was his father, see?' The words were tumbling out now, fast as a mountain stream. ‘He and I … well, we acted silly. I was a married woman and I should have know better, but you know how it is …'

‘No,' Amy said, ‘I
don't
know how it is.' Her voice was tight and hard and her headache was worse suddenly, compressing her brain so that she could not think straight.

The woman shook her head impatiently.

‘Llew … Llew and me … don't you see? We … well, they call it improper conduct in court, don't they? Though I've never seen where ‘improper'comes in. Daft, more like. All this trouble for a few minutes'pleasure. But the fact is, foolishness or not, Huw is Llew's boy. My Idris never got to hear of it, God be praised, and he brought Huw up as his own. But now he's gone and I've had to ask Llew to do right by his own flesh and blood …'

As she spoke Amy stood, stunned into silence, unable to believe what she was hearing. It couldn't be happening.

‘I wouldn't ask, only he promised,' the woman whined and something in Amy snapped.

‘I think you'd better leave,' she said, drawing herself up very straight.

The effect on the woman was immediate and shocking. She half-rose, leaning forward onto the table, her eyes wide and imploring, her mouth working.

‘Oh no … please – you must help me! I don't know what to do. I've no money – nothing. I wouldn't ask for myself, but Huw …'

‘I'm sorry,' Amy cut her off. ‘I have no money either and I can't help you. And if you think you can come here making ridiculous claims about my husband, you are very much mistaken. Now get out before I call the police.'

‘Oh! Oh!' the woman sobbed and the boy stepped forward, putting a protective arm around her. Amy, her head throbbing unbearably, glanced down at him and met his eyes, glaring defiant blue fire at her. Immediately she went cold. Blue eyes with that dark hair? Unusual. And Llew's eyes had been blue.

No! Stop it! she screamed silently to herself. Don't think it for a moment – it's not true!

Venting her feelings, Amy marched to the back door and threw it open. ‘Go on, get out of my house!' she ordered. ‘Take your sob stories elsewhere. I've got troubles enough of my own.'

The woman's eyes implored her for a moment. Her face was still ravaged by tears, but she made no effort to wipe them away. Then she straightened, hoisting the pathetic carpet-bag onto her shoulder and pulling the darned cardigan tightly around her as if it was the only protection left to her.

‘All right, I know I'm not welcome here and I shouldn't blame you really, only I do. Because if Llew was here, he wouldn't let Huw suffer. He always promised that if anything happened between me and Idris he would see Huw was all right. And he did. Sent regular. He was one up in the world on us, see? But now … well, I can see you don't want to know. So we'll just leave you to your nice house and your fine clothes and all the things you've got because it was legal-like with you and Llew. And I hope God forgives you for what you're doing to us!'

Amy could no longer control the trembling. It was so violent even her teeth were chattering with it and her head seemed to throb in time. ‘And I hope He forgives you for what you've done to me. Now get out – and don't come back.'

They went, the woman without a backward glance, holding on to the shattered remnants of her pride as she hung on to her threadbare jacket; the boy, his face contracted into a tight scowl beneath his pudding-basin haircut, glaring at her over his shoulder and managing to collide with his mother's heels as he did so.

Amy slammed the door after them, pressing her full weight against it as if she was afraid that anything less would allow the door to open again and re-admit them.

‘Oh, my God, oh, my God!' she whispered over and over again as the waves of shock and distress washed over her.

‘Mammy? Mammy? What is it?' Barbara, who had been hiding like a mouse in the larder, came running out crying and even Maureen, sitting in the middle of the rag rug, began to wail.

‘Nothing. It's all right, children. Everything's all right.'

Amy scooped them both close to her, trying to eclipse the image of that ghastly woman and her child by the warmth and wholesomeness of their plump little bodies.

But she could not. That Welsh voice was still there in her ears, and the look of the two of them seemed imprinted indelibly on her vision. And the things the woman had said! Terrible things – ridiculous things! It couldn't be true that Llew had had an affair with a woman like that! She was a scarecrow – thin and scraggy as last week's neck of mutton – and she must be able to give him getting on for ten years. As for claiming that Llew had supported the child … well, that was even less believable. He couldn't have done it without Amy knowing … could he? And if he could, he wouldn't … would he? But she couldn't forget those letters with the Glamorgan postmark, one which had fallen into the washing-up water and the other which she had picked up from the bedroom floor and Llew had snatched away from her. All too clearly now she seemed to hear his voice, impatient, panicky, perhaps: ‘Give it to me! That's mine!'

No, he certainly hadn't wanted her to see it.

‘Twice I've written and not heard anything,' the woman – Sibyl, was that her name? – had said. Twice. Two letters addressed in a childish, unbusinesslike hand. One a few weeks ago and one on the day Llew had died.

But what had happened to that first letter? Amy wondered suddenly. Llew had taken it from her that morning, yet it had not been returned with his clothes and it was not amongst the papers in his office. Could it be that someone who was in the know had deliberately removed it to stop her from finding it? Or had Llew himself destroyed it so that there was no danger of Amy learning the truth?

‘No!' Amy sobbed, twisting her head against the panels of the door, her arms encompassing Barbara and Maureen. ‘No – I won't believe it. It's lies – all lies! And you can make anything seem the way you want it to. Anything! Llew wouldn't … he couldn't!'

Behind her the kettle began to whistle imperatively and trying to get a grip on herself, she put the children away from her.

‘There now – go and find something to do, Barbara. Mammy's going to make your tea. Everything's all right now.'

A little tremulously Barbara went, and Amy set Maureen down on the rag rug once more. Automatically she fetched the teapot, warmed it and poured boiling water onto the tea leaves. The aroma was familiar and steadying, even lifting her headache momentarily, but inwardly she was still a jelly of churning thoughts and emotions.

Everything was all right, she had told the children. But dear God, was it never going to be all right again! She couldn't stand it any more – just one thing on top of the other, endless shocks and turmoil. What next? What next?

As she poured the tea the kitchen was illuminated suddenly, startling her, then as thunder rolled overhead she identified the source of the illumination – lightning. The sky outside the kitchen window darkened without her noticing and now a flurry of rain began, splattering forcefully against the panes. A thunderstorm. She had never cared much for thunderstorms. As a child Mam had comforted her by saying it was the people in the sky moving their furniture about and even when she had become a grown woman, she had been glad of Llew's arms around her through the worst of the storm. But now she had neither Mam nor Llew and the thunder seemed as nothing compared with the storms she had been through in the last months.

‘Raining! Raining! Pram getting wet!' cried Barbara, running back into the kitchen and Amy, remembering the pram left outside the front door, was jerked away from her emotional ponderings to more mundane matters.

As she ran to get it in, she spared one brief thought for the woman and her child. They would be caught in the storm, no doubt.

Too bad, thought Amy. They're not my responsibility and that woman has no one to blame but herself. Coming here and making trouble. I hope she gets pneumonia!

Then, with an attempt to return to normality, she went back to the kitchen to make the children's tea.

Hillsbridge was buzzing and for once, in that summer of 1926, the talk was not of the strike.

‘Have you heard the latest?' Peggy Yelling asked Charlotte, popping her head around the kitchen door. ‘Some woman lodging with Mrs Moon down in Glebe Bottoms has been and died!'

‘Is that right?' Charlotte, never a great one for gossip, had little interest in Mrs Moon or her lodgers, dead or alive.

‘Yes. She came the day before yesterday with a little boy, knocking on the door and looking for somewhere to stay. Mrs Moon let her have a room; then that same night she was took bad. She didn't get out of bed yesterday, it seems, and Mrs Moon knew she wasn't well, but never realised just how bad she was. Well, she never did have much sense, did she? Anyway, last night she heard the boy screaming and went in to see what was wrong and there she was – breathing her last! Mrs Moon got the doctor to her then, but it was too late. She was gone. It just goes to show, doesn't it – if you take in strangers you never know what you're letting yourself in for. I mean, it's no joke, is it?'

‘No joke at all,' Charlotte agreed. ‘What's going to happen to the boy, Peg?'

Peggy shrugged her plump shoulders.

‘They'll take him to the Union, I suppose.'

‘Hazebury?'

‘I suppose so. Until they can find out if there are any relations that can take care of him. It's no place for a lad though, is it, down there with all the funny folk?'

Charlotte glanced at Barbara and Maureen, playing at dolls' tea-parties in the scullery, and shuddered.

‘No, you're right there. It's awful to think of it. Where are they from, Peggy? Does anybody know?'

‘I couldn't say – though they reckon she was a Welshie.'

‘A Welshie, was she?' Charlotte stopped, remembering how Harry had come home a couple of afternoons ago and said that he and Margaret had met a woman and child in town looking for lodgings; she repeated the story now to Peggy.

‘That must have been her, I'll bet you a shilling!' said Peggy triumphantly, glad to have another smidgin of information about the mystery woman. Not that Peggy was really a gossip, more that as midwife and ministrant to the dead in her own small area at least, she did like to know all the ‘ins and outs', as she put it. ‘Well, all I can say is, I hope somebody to do with them turns up, for the sake of the poor little lamb.'

‘Yes, we must hope so,' Charlotte agreed.

A couple of hours later, when Amy came for the children and Charlotte made their customary pot of tea, she was concerned by how pale and drawn her daughter looked.

‘Have you been doing too much, Amy?' she asked.

‘No more than usual,' Amy said, a little snappily.