The Emerald Valley (5 page)

‘Oh Llew, do you really think we could afford a house like this?' she had asked, eyes shining, and Llew, pleased by her response, had replied, ‘Well, it might be a bit of a struggle, Amy, but if I'm going to be taken seriously as a haulage contractor, I think we ought to have a place of our own.'

She had nodded and again the pride had swelled in her. It was hard sometimes to believe her luck – that in that bleak year of 1922, with a generation of girls resigning themselves to being on the shelf because so many young men had been killed in the Great War, she should have caught a man like Llew who was not only good-looking and treated her well, but was also quite determined to get on and make his mark on the world, even if jobs were scarce and money hard to come by.

That was what had brought him to Somerset, he had told her – he and his family could see no prospect of getting work in their native South Wales, so they had sold up and moved, lock, stock and barrel, mother, father, three sons and two daughters. Unfortunately things were no better in Hillsbridge and when he discovered that, Llew had set about planning his own enterprise – his own haulage business.

Amy had known nothing of that, of course, when she first met him, it was something he had confided to her over the months as his dream grew. But all her life she was to tell people that she had known the very first time she saw him that he was different – and not just because he was a stranger in Hillsbridge.

‘He had a sort of presence – you couldn't help but notice him,' Amy described it, her eyes going misty blue as she remembered the night when he had first walked into the weekly dance run by Madame Roland in the room beneath the Picture Palace.

From the time the dances had begun a year earlier, Amy had been an eager patron. After the strictures of war, a new mood had taken the country by storm and the young people were enjoying themselves with a more determined gaiety than ever before. The stars of the silent screen – Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford – were their idols; the new music craze from America, known as jazz, was sweeping across the Atlantic and everyone everywhere wanted to learn to dance – and not only the old-fashioned waltz either. Classes mushroomed in every available hall, with teachers varying from the enthusiastic amateur to the bored professional anxious to turn a quick pound. In Hillsbridge the best of these without doubt was Madame Roland.

Twice a week she swept into town by train, disembarking onto the platform of the S. & D. Railway Station in a cloud of camphor and cheap French perfume that Reuben Tapper, the porter, reckoned ‘could knock you sideways'; the older residents looked askance at her scarlet-painted lips and nails, the length of her skirts beneath her lush fur coat and the height of the Cuban heels on her shoes. The fashion of the day might be to look flat chested and boyish, but Madame Roland certainly did not believe in adhering to that; while most young women flattened their figures by every conceivable means, she accentuated her already voluptuous curves; and while the bob was all the rage as a hairstyle, Madame Roland continued to make the most of her thick black, waist-length tresses.

Because she was such a colourful figure, however, Madame Roland had no difficulty whatever in attracting a clientele for her dancing classes and dances. They came at first out of curiosity, to giggle and be scandalised, but having come they stayed. Madame Roland's were the best dances in Hillsbridge or for miles around and before long they became
the
place to be on a Saturday night.

To Amy – pretty, popular and light on her feet – the dances were the highlight of the week. After a brief romance with Winston Walker, the young solicitor who had defended her brother Ted when he had been charged with manslaughter a year earlier, she was fancy-free again – and playing the field for all it was worth. Long ago she had discovered the power of a demure smile accompanied by a sidelong glance, and though she was not as pretty as her older sister Dolly, Amy had the personality to make men swear she was. They buzzed around her like wasps round a jam-pot – the reason why her romance with Winston Walker had been so short-lived. Amy had liked Winston – he was pleasant, well-set-up and knew how to treat a lady – but the strain of having to continue to behave like one soon took its toll on her affection. Besides, Winston was rather serious for her and much too well-read.

‘We'd bore one another to tears in no time,' Amy had explained to Charlotte, who was very disappointed when the match fell through. ‘There are plenty of nice boys about who like the same things as I do.'

Sighing at the disappearance of her dream for Amy, Charlotte had been forced to agree. In spite of the war there were still plenty of lads in Hillsbridge with the same carefree attitude to life as Amy … and most of them seemed to attend Madame Roland's dances!

On the Saturday night when Amy met Llew, she had gone to the dance with Edie Presley who lived at No. 15 Greenslade Terrace, and the minute they went in the boys started flocking around, asking them to dance and even trying to stake a claim to walk them home.

‘I don't know what I'm doing yet – ask me later,' Amy replied to all these invitations, and it was a measure of her popularity that she was fairly confident that several of them at least would do so.

It had been past ten and the dance in full swing when the unexpected happened. Amy, dancing with Arthur Packer, the bookmaker's clerk, had her back to the door, but she was alerted by Arthur's, ‘Hello, who's that, then?' and turned her head to see two strangers walking down the side of the hall.

At virtually first glance it was clear they were brothers –both had the same fresh boyish faces and brown hair springing from a deep ‘widow's peak', both were neatly dressed in light blue suits. They were of similar build, tall and whippy, but they carried it well, making no attempt to slouch or blend into the background.

Arthur's query, it seemed, had been taken up by the rest of the dancers. Feet slowed, heads turned and the buzz of comment was almost loud enough to be heard over the swelling strains of ‘Chick-chick-chick-chick-chicken, Lay a little egg for me'.

‘Who are they?'

‘Look as if they think they own the place …'

‘Never seen them around here before …'

‘Perhaps they're something to do with Madame Roland …'

The two young men crossed to a corner beside the stage and all eyes followed them. ‘Looking as if they owned the place' was a harsh judgement, but there was some truth in it.

When the music stopped and Arthur escorted Amy back to her seat beside Edie Presley, the two girls added their whispers to the others watching the strangers surreptitiously.

‘They're nice, aren't they, Amy? Do you think they might ask us to dance? Amy –
they're coming over!
'

Two pairs of eyes were hastily averted. They did not want to be caught looking. They lifted their noses in the air, chattering together with just the right degree of assumed animation and pretending not to notice until two blue suits drew level with their line of vision.

‘Would you care to dance?'

‘May I have the pleasure?'

The accents were faintly but unmistakably Welsh. The girls hesitated, wondering how the local lads would receive it if they danced so readily with these rather forward strangers, but as Edie put it later, ‘We didn't want to make them feel awkward, did we?'

‘All right, if you like,' she said, getting up and Amy followed suit, treating ‘hers'to a long and searching look before allowing him to lead her on to the floor.

In spite of his height he was a good dancer. Amy, used to the local lads who were on the whole much shorter, was surprised by the easy gliding way he moved and liked the firm cool way his hand held hers. He was older, too, she judged, than the majority of the patrons – in his middle twenties, if her guess was anything to go by. They introduced themselves and conversed a little, but the talk was more about Madame Roland and the dance than any personal subjects and when she returned to her chair, Amy was not much the wiser about her partner apart from his name.

‘Mine was called Llew Roberts,' she confided, trying not to let the lads see she was talking about them. ‘What was yours?'

‘Mine was Edwin. They're brothers.'

‘I thought so. Did you find out what they're doing here?'

‘They're moving to Hillsbridge. Renting a house up at South Hill. And there's another brother and two sisters.' Edie was justly proud of the information she had managed to glean in five minutes of twirling.

‘But what do they do?'

‘I don't know, I couldn't find out,' Edie grinned mischievously. ‘But I will if they ask us to dance again.'

‘Probably they won't. They'll want to get to know as many as possible,' Amy said. But she was wrong. A few minutes later and the two Roberts boys were back, snapping them up and almost monopolising them to the annoyance of the local lads. And later the two girls were able to compare notes to the effect that the newcomers had each asked to walk them home.

‘Do you think we should?' Edie wondered anxiously.

Amy, who had liked Llew more each time she danced with him tossed her head. ‘I don't see why not.'

‘Our boys won't like it. I could see Arthur Packer looking at you ever so black just now …'

‘Won't do him any harm,' Amy said airily. ‘It'll keep him on his toes.'

And so it was arranged. The Roberts boys, carrying their dancing shoes under their arms, walked Amy and Edie through the centre of Hillsbridge where the lights were turned out at last in the Market Yard and the two pubs, the George and the Miners'Arms, faced one another across the main road, past the livery stables and forge and up the steep and winding Conygre Hill to Greenslade Terrace.

‘You've got a long walk back up to South Hill,' Amy said. ‘You're right the other side of the valley.'

Not that they seemed to mind. Like perfect gentlemen they left the two girls at their doors and to their disappointment made no mention of seeing them again. But the following week they were at Madame Roland's again and once more, to the fury of Arthur Packer and the other local lads, they monopolised the two girls who were undoubtedly the prettiest and liveliest unattached females in the place.

That night Llew asked Amy out and she was far more surprised than he was to find herself accepting.

I don't usually give in that easily; I like to lead them along a bit, she thought.

But Llew had a way with him – and for almost the first time in her life Amy was afraid that if she refused she might not be given a second chance.

After walking out with Llew for a few weeks, Amy began to be aware that she felt quite differently about him from the way she had felt about any of her other so-called ‘young men'. Usually after a few meetings she would grow restless and impatient, longing to try the greener pasture on the other side of the fence. But the more she saw of Llew, the more she wanted to see, and try as she might she could not explain it even to herself.

He was such a contradiction in terms, she thought, and always unexpected. As she had observed the first time she met him, he had a self-confidence and a sense of purpose that seemed to add to his stature, a determination to make things happen – and happen the way he wanted them to. Yet he was also a dreamer. And when he shared them with her, Amy was surprised at the depth and intensity of his dreams.

‘What are you going to do about a job?' she had asked him one evening.

It was a Sunday. Amy had been invited to the Roberts'rented home in South Hill Gardens, and when they had disposed of the ham sandwiches, seed cake and drop scones that Mrs Roberts had put in front of them, Llew had suggested a walk – in the hope, Amy guessed, of being out when the party for evening service at chapel was mustered. It was a pleasant evening and they skirted South Hill Pit and climbed through a V-gate into the fields that sloped steeply – as did most of the green areas around Hillsbridge – down to the valley beneath. The main bowl of the town was away to their right – dust-blackened buildings clustered around the railway sidings and pits, a horseshoe-shaped loop of shops, a church with a tower, and several chapels, and beneath them the valley that linked Hillsbridge with South Compton, the next town, looked peaceful and serene. There were no trains on the two railway lines that ran arrow-straight through the valley, and the overhanging branches hid even the gentle movement of the river. Only a few hens, strutting and clucking in a pen at the bottom of one of the gardens, seemed to be awake.

Sitting there in the shade of the thick hedge, staring into the valley across his drawn-up knees, Llew seemed to be in a trance and Amy, who had faced a barrage of queries from Charlotte about her latest young man and his prospects, repeated her question.

‘What are you going to do about a job, Llew? There's not much work here just now – no more than in Glamorgan, I wouldn't have thought. Since the strike everything seems to be dead.'

‘You're right,' Llew agreed. ‘And if there is a job, I'm not likely to get it with the local lads wanting work as well. Employers are bound to be prejudiced.'

Amy's heart sank. Not only did she not relish the prospect of confessing to Charlotte that Llew was still unemployed, but if he was talking like this there was always the possibility that he might decide to move on.

‘You don't hold out much hope, then?'

‘Not really. But that doesn't bother me,' he replied.

Amy looked round sharply. ‘Not bother you? Whatever do you mean?'

‘I don't want to work for anybody else.' He wasn't looking at her. His eyes were narrowed so that his lashes, thick as a girl's, formed a screen for his thoughts. ‘It's a mug's game, breaking your back to make someone else rich, and at the end of the day you've got nothing to show for it. I can't see the sense in that.'