The Emerald Valley (65 page)

‘I won't have it!' she snapped. ‘Don't you realise you could have caused a serious accident if you had shed your load! You might have killed somebody!'

‘I'm sorry, Mrs Roberts,' the boy said miserably.

‘And so you should be. This is a responsible firm and we have a reputation to maintain. Did you know that a new transport firm has started up out at Stack Norton? They haven't taken any business from us yet, but if we were to get a bad name, then they might. Next time – if there is a next time – you'll be fired.'

The boy left, red-faced and disgruntled, but Amy could not find it in her to feel sorry for him. She was too sorry for herself.

There are times when I wish I had never started this, she thought. I could be a housewife and mother, putting all my energies into bringing up my family, doing all the things I never have time for now. Instead, here I am trying to do a man's job and letting life pass me by. I'm becoming a harridan, and then I wonder why Ralph goes off and finds a woman who has the time to spend making herself
look
like a woman …

Although the river appeared to have gone down considerably the sky was still leaden and Amy made sure that Herbie had placed the lorries well above the flood-line before she packed up, much earlier than the previous night. She didn't feel like working late again; all she wanted was to get home, spend some time with the girls and Huw and then be alone to wallow in her misery.

But even at home the petty irritations continued. When she cooked supper she discovered she had run out of Bisto and Huw – sent up to the general store on the corner to get some – delayed to play fivestones with some of his pals, so that she had to wait, fuming, and eventually go out to look for him. When she returned, the potatoes had boiled dry; then Barbara came hanging round her skirts sniffing and complaining of a sore throat.

‘I suppose she sat in school in wet socks yesterday – and that cloakroom runs with water,' Amy thought irritably. ‘Now if she's starting a cold it will go through the house – that's all I need!'

‘Can I go down to Rex Parker's?' Huw asked when they had finished eating.

‘Yes, as long as you're back by half-past eight,' Amy told him, thinking it would be sure to be nine o'clock. But Rex was one of Huw's more acceptable friends and she liked to encourage him to keep the sort of company least likely to lead him into trouble.

The girls tucked up in bed, she sat down for a few minutes and lit one of her cigarettes. The days when she had had to smoke out of the front-room window were over – now she smoked when she liked and the habit was growing. But tonight not even that brought her any comfort and when the doorbell rang, she wondered for a wild, wonderful moment if it might be Ralph.

Opening the door, however, she found Oliver Scott on the step. Amy was surprised. He had not called quite so often lately and now he reminded her faintly of a wandering puppy, standing there with a lopsided and slightly guilty smile, rumpling his sandy hair with a big hand.

‘I was just passing, so I thought I would look in and see how you were getting on …'

‘Come in.'

In the kitchen the clothes the girls had discarded were piled in the easy chair, waiting to be taken upstairs. Amy picked them up and plonked them on the table.

‘Sorry about the muddles.'

‘Don't worry about it. Muddles can be nice – they make a room homely.'

‘Do they?' Personally Amy hated muddles, but since they always seemed to materialise round her she had learned to live with them.

‘We never have muddles.' He sounded oddly regretful.

‘Lucky for you!'

It was just as if he had not heard her, as he continued, ‘Grace won't have it. She can be very strict. If I or the girls leave anything lying about, woe betide us!'

Amy was unsure what to say. Though the sentiments were ordinary enough, his tone made them deeply personal. Oliver rarely talked about his wife, she realised suddenly, but when he did there was always this feeling of … what? Unhappiness, almost. It was understandable for him to speak of her sometimes with that edge of irony – nobody could be happy all the time. After a row or even a pettifogging but persistent disagreement, she might have used the same tone to talk about Llew. But Oliver
always
sounded the same when Grace's name was mentioned.

‘If she's so fanatical about tidiness, I think I would be tempted to leave a few things about on purpose to annoy,' she said wickedly, watching him out of the corner of her eye.

‘I couldn't do that.' He sounded so definite that she turned to look at him fully and caught an expression more clear-cut than mere unhappiness. He looked worried, she thought, out-and-out curiosity getting the better of her.

‘Why not?'

His grey eyes, totally devoid of laughter now, flicked up to hers hastily as if to assess her reason for asking.

‘Why not?' she pressed him again.

‘In Grace's state of health, that wouldn't be wise.'

‘What do you mean? Is she ill?' Amy asked, unable to contain herself. ‘I didn't know, Oliver. Is it serious?'

A slight pink flush coloured his cheeks. ‘She's not physically ill, Amy. But her mental stability is balanced on such a fine knife-edge that we don't do anything to upset her if we can help it. This tidiness thing is just one of her foibles. She has always been fanatical about it and now, well, a muddle can wind her up as quickly as anything.'

‘Oh, you mean it gets her in a temper.' Amy had never had any experience of emotional or so-called ‘nervous'troubles.

Oliver ran his fingers through his hair, leaving it standing up like the prickles of a rather curly hedgehog.

‘Not exactly. Snappy, yes. But mostly very,
very
strung-up.'

‘So why don't you just tell her to calm down?'

‘It isn't that simple.' He sat down in the chair where the offending clothes had been, staring into the fire that was sending showers of wood-sparks up the chimney. ‘I said just now that she's not physically ill, but when the other problems are really bad they
make
her physically ill. Worse, she refuses to go out when she's like that – won't speak to anyone, even.'

‘Grace
won't?' Amy, who could remember Grace as the leading light in Ted's old concert party, was flabbergasted. ‘But she was always such a one for …' she broke off. She could hardly say ‘showing off', although the expression had been on the tip of her tongue. ‘She was always such a good mixer,' she ended lamely.

‘That has nothing to do with it, actually,' Oliver explained, as if to a patient. ‘Quite often it is those with the seemingly brightest personalities who suffer most in this way.' His voice trailed away and he spread his hands helplessly on his knees. ‘It's not easy for any of us, Amy. In fact, there are times when I wonder where it will all end.'

‘I had no idea,' Amy said formally, but his dejection – so contrasting with his normal easygoing manner – was eating into her, evoking sharp sympathy which had nothing to do with understanding.

So this was the cause of those sudden moments of unhappiness – the ‘secret sadness' she had detected and dismissed because it seemed just too ridiculous. Grace was no longer the girl he had married – she had become a pale shadow of that vibrant, vivacious creature who had been called more than once ‘the belle of Hillsbridge'.

‘Is it because of her illness that she won't drive, either, Oliver?' Amy asked, remembering the conversation about the car.

‘It's all connected. She won't drive, she won't communicate, even the smallest decision is beyond her – really little things, I mean, such as what we should have for dinner or whether or not she should buy a new dress. And it seems that nothing I can do or say really helps her. I'm a doctor; I spend my life helping people to cope with their ailments, real and imagined, but I can't do a thing for my own wife …'

‘Oliver, I don't know what to say …'

He got up. ‘You don't need to say anything. I shouldn't be burdening you with my troubles, anyway.'

‘Don't be silly. What are friends for?'

His eyes narrowed until they were almost lost in the folds of his cheeks. Then suddenly he reached out to grasp her arms, holding them gently.

‘Oh, Amy, Amy – if only she could be more like you!'

Unexpected tears filled Amy's eyes because she felt so sorry for him. He was a good man, a kind man who dispensed caring and compassion along with the old-fashioned potions and the modern drugs. He deserved a happy family to go home to at the end of a long day. Instead he returned to more problems, all the more enormous because they were personal, and the emptiness of a marriage in which he had become not husband but custodian. She ducked her head, twisting away so that he should not see the tears.

‘Oliver, I must get on. I have so much to do …'

‘I know; I'm going now. This was just a flying visit, since I was passing.' His tone was absolutely normal except for the slightest wobble on the final syllables. The intimacies of the past few minutes might never have been. ‘How's your head now, by the way? Not troubling you any longer, I hope?'

‘Sometimes,' she admitted, ‘but
only
sometimes.'

‘Let me see, how long is it now since the accident … ?' It was just like a professional visit now, Amy thought wryly.

‘I think I shall survive, doctor,' she joked and for just a moment his mask slipped again.

‘I'm sure you will, Amy. You
are
a survivor,' he said.

During the next two weeks Oliver Scott did not call on Amy even once. He's embarrassed because now I know a great deal about personal matters which he would have preferred to keep to himself, she thought.

After the torrential rains the weather had turned fine. There were clear days when the sun was warm once the early nip had melted from the air, and the leaves – those not brought down prematurely by the high winds – made splashes of red and gold against the heavy azure sky. It was Indian summer at its best, and in more ways than one it was the lull before the storm.

Half-term for the schools was kept at the beginning of October, and this year Jack had offered to have Huw for the week's holiday.

‘It's a bit cold for the beach, but I'm sure we can still find plenty for him to do,' Jack wrote and Amy had accepted the invitation eagerly on Huw's behalf. It would be good for him to have a change of scene and, knowing her brother, Amy felt sure he would give Huw a holiday to remember. Why, he might even take him up in one of those new-fangled engineless aeroplanes, or ‘gliders' as they were called. Gliding was the very newest sport and Jack, with his love of flying, had been one of the first to take it up.

‘Crazy, I call it,' Charlotte had said irritably. ‘After his experiences in the war, I should have thought he would have been only too glad to keep his feet on terra firma!'

But she accepted that Jack, a grown man if he was still her son, would do exactly as he pleased.

‘I should put your foot down and say that Huw can't go up, if I were you, Amy,' she advised, but Amy just smiled. If Jack were to take Huw up it would probably make his holiday, she thought.

Jack and Stella arrived in Hillsbridge on the Friday evening and stayed the night with Mam in Greenslade Terrace.

‘We were invited to stay with Grace and Oliver, but quite honestly I don't think Grace is up to it,' Stella confided to Amy when they called to collect Huw on the Saturday morning.

‘I'm sorry to hear that,' Amy said, wondering whether Stella would think it odd if she failed to ask what was wrong with Grace, or whether the very fact of asking would give the game away that she knew the truth.

‘It's her nerves,' Stella went on confidentially. ‘She's never been properly right since Frances was born. I saw it happen to others when I was nursing, but I never expected it to happen to Grace. She was always such a bright, outgoing sort and it must be dreadful for her.'

‘And for Oliver,' Amy said.

‘Well, yes. The trouble is that it's always the relatives who get the sympathy when someone's suffering with their nerves,' Stella maintained. ‘Always a case of “poor so-and-so has such a picnic with his wife”, while nobody spares a thought for how ill she may be feeling. It's a popular assumption that the victim could pull herself together if she chose, but it's not as simple as that, believe me.'

‘I expect you're right,' Amy said, but privately acknowledged that she came within that category herself. She could hardly find it in her to spare sympathy for Grace, who had everything and yet was seemingly unable to appreciate how lucky she was.

Jack and Stella left with Huw fairly early on Saturday morning so that they would be back in time to make the most of his first day, while Amy took Barbara and Maureen for her weekly visit to the market. Unless it was pouring with rain she never took the car on Saturday mornings – the walk had become almost a ritual.

At the top of Porter's Hill she glanced to her right automatically. The house was out of sight from here, but even passing right by it, Amy had not seen Ralph since the night of the floods and assumed he was still in Gloucester. But she looked all the same, because she was still irresistibly drawn to any contact with Ralph.

Sometimes during the intervening weeks she had thought about her decision not to quote for the long-haul journeys and regretted it. Herbie might have been mistaken in what he had said, yet she could have severed all contact with Ralph because of it. Besides which, she would have liked the challenge and comfort of the extra work. Several times lately she had heard the name of the new Stack Norton transport firm mentioned and, though she had not noticed any falling-off in business because of it, she was aware that at some time or other competition might have to be faced – if not from them, then from anyone else who might decide to buy a lorry and set up a company.