The Hills and the Valley (31 page)

‘How are they managing that?'

‘It's as well not to ask questions like that. But a good chef can work miracles with plenty of fresh produce.'

He drove fast – though not as well as Huw she thought loyally. Whatever problems he had with his leg when walking did not seem to have affected his ability to put his foot on the throttle and keep it there. Barbara held tight to her seat and began to enjoy herself.

The restaurant turned out to be a large old country house. They were shown to a large pleasant room where a huge log fire burned in an open fireplace. Barbara studied the menu, leather bound and tasselled, and chose stuffed mushrooms to be followed by pheasant. Marcus ordered French onion soup and steak. Barbara gasped when she saw the size of it – one person's ration for a whole week, she wouldn't be surprised. She began to understand why Marcus had said it was best not to question where it came from.

He was an easy person to be with, she soon discovered, charming and amusing, with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of stories about his school and army days. But the stories stopped short of what had happened when his unit had found themselves on the run from Hitler's rampaging armies in France. On the subject of the tragic incident which had won him acclaim Marcus refused to be drawn and Barbara respected his reluctance to talk about it and admired his obvious modesty. Many men would have been eager to boast – Marcus preferred to draw a veil over the whole episode.

By the time coffee was served accompanied by a dish of assorted petits fours Barbara was relaxed and enjoying his company.

‘Would you like a liqueur?' he asked.

‘Oh, I don't know …' She had, she thought, drunk rather a lot.

‘I'm having a brandy. Why don't you have the same – or perhaps something sweeter – cointreau or creme de menthe?'

‘All right, I'll have a creme de menthe,' Barbara agreed. She liked the peppermint flavour.

He drew out a silver cigarette case and flipped it open to reveal a row of Black Russians.

‘Have one?'

‘Oh yes, why not?' Barbara said recklessly. Amy smoked – why shouldn't she? But when he lit it for her with his chunky silver lighter she drew on it very carefully. It would hardly be the right image to choke on the smoke.

‘So!' He smiled at her lazily. ‘Are you going to come out with me again?'

In the candlelight he looked very handsome, his fair hair falling in a soft lick over his high forehead, his perfect features highlighted by the shadows all around. She felt a tiny finger of excitement dart within her. Was it the wine and the liqueur – or was it something more? Whichever, she knew she had enjoyed herself more this evening than she had done for a very long time.

‘Is that an invitation?' she asked playfully.

‘You know very well it is. I hope, Miss Barbara Roberts, that you are not about to give me a hard time?'

‘Now would I do a thing like that?'

‘So – will you come out with me again?'

‘Since you put it like that – yes.'

He smiled and drew on his cigarette. Behind the screen of smoke his eyes crinkled.

‘Good. Now we've got that over we can enjoy the rest of the evening, can't we?'

Next morning over a leisurely Sunday breakfast the family questioned her thoroughly.

‘How did you get on?' Amy asked.

‘Fine. I'm seeing him again on Wednesday.'

‘What did you do? You were very late,' Maureen said. ‘I tried to stay awake but I'd already been to sleep for ages when I heard the car.'

‘You shouldn't be so nosey,' Barbara said, hoping Maureen had not been peeping out of the window and seen Marcus kiss her goodnight. She was feeling a little fragile this morning from the effects of the wine she had drunk and also oddly guilty. A whole evening and she had hardly thought of Huw once. Now he was there again, a shadow over her pleasure.

She sipped her coffee remembering the way it had felt when Marcus had kissed her. Not as exciting as the kisses she had shared with Huw. That lovely dreamlike quality had been missing. But it had been pleasant, all the same. An experience she would not mind repeating.

Ralph turned on the wireless and when it had warmed up they listened to the news. More German air raid attacks. More vessels lost in the Atlantic. Allied forces crossing the border from Kenya to Somaliland. Discussions with the new Greek Prime Minister, Alexander Korizis. War – war – nothing but the war. When and where would it all end?

Glad of the diversion from her affairs to more important matters, Barbara helped herself to another piece of toast.

Three days later they received news of Huw's promotion to Flight Lieutenant with the rider that he was now a flight commander on his squadron.

‘Goodness knows he's earned it,' Ralph said. He felt inordinately proud of the lad whom he had first seen as a scruffy coal-black youngster who had slept the night in his coal house after running away from Amy's one long ago night in 1926. It had seemed then he had no destiny beyond being a troublemaker – how wrong that had proved to be! But in his more self-indulgent moments Ralph felt that he could take a little of the credit for the way the boy had turned out. Amy had given him love and kindness and a home, but he had taught him discipline and given him the firm hand he had undoubtedly needed.

‘Flight Lieutenant!' Amy said, every bit as proud, and Maureen practically bounced with excitement.

‘Are you going to put it in the paper? Oh you must! I bet he is the only flight commander in Hillsbridge!'

Barbara said nothing. The letter containing the news had been addressed to all the family – there was no special page for her, no mention of her even, and it hurt.

‘Aren't you pleased, Barbara?' Maureen prodded her and added with a touch of malice, ‘I suppose you're not interested in Huw any more now you have a hero of your own.'

‘Oh shut up, Maureen!' Barbara said.

It was far from the truth. But at least it was a mast to which she could nail her pride.

I'll show you, Huw James, she thought. I'll show you you're not the only fish in the sea. And one of these days you'll be sorry for building up my hopes and then brushing me aside. You'll come running back, I know you will.

But even then the prospect of victory tasted bitter in her mouth and Barbara knew it would be a long, long time before she got over Huw – if ever she did.

On a Wednesday morning in March Harry Hall was at home nursing a bout of influenza.

It was very unusual for Harry to be ill – or to give into it if he was – but on this occasion, shivering and sweating alternately, with every bone in his body aching and his head feeling like a pumpkin he had bowed to pressure from Elinor Vranch and gone home to bed.

‘You are no good to anyone in that state,' she had told him firmly. ‘And what is more you are only spreading your germs around for the rest of us to catch.'

‘She's quite right,' Margaret had said when she came home from school and found him there. ‘The best thing for you is to keep warm and have a good rest. It's overwork that has brought this on if you ask me.'

‘Rubbish,' Harry said and sneezed. ‘Hard work never hurt anybody.'

‘Maybe not. But when you overdo things you lay yourself open to the first infection that comes along. And goodness knows, Harry, you've worked yourself to a frazzle. It's no wonder you're ill.'

Her tone was unusually severe just as Elinor Vranch's had been and Harry wondered why it was that women became so bossy when a man was ill. But he felt too wretched to argue and in any case he knew deep down that Margaret was right. Since his appointment as prospective Labour candidate life had become one hectic whirl and he could scarcely remember the last time he had spent an evening relaxing at home.

Although there was no prospect of a General Election until after the war and, under the electoral truce, it was unlikely the Labour Party would contest the seat even if it did fall vacant, there was always a great deal of work to be done and many meetings to be attended. Added to this Harry remained a councillor at a time when council meetings seemed to run on longer and deal with more business than he could ever remember, and was still employed as Miners'Agent, a job which had become more demanding than ever for the war had thrown up many personal problems for the miners and their families and Harry was expected to deal with them.

‘Harry Hall is a good bloke,' was a remark often heard in the Miners Arms and the Working Men's Club, the chapel schoolroom where the families went once a month to pay over their ‘Club Money'to the representative of the Friendly Society, and the pit cage as it descended to the bowels of the earth. ‘Harry Hall is a good bloke – he'll sort it out for you.'

As far as this went it was fine. Harry Hall
was
a good bloke – but as a result of his popularity and the success of his endeavours on behalf of everyone who sought his help it meant he never had a moment to call his own. From the time he got up in the morning, plotting and planning strategies with his image in the shaving mirror until he fell exhausted into bed at night, his mind was full of all the things he had to do, the causes he had to further, the people depending on him for help.

Margaret, who had started teaching at the Church School at the beginning of the Autumn term, complained that she scarcely ever saw him and when she did he was too tired to notice she was there.

‘We'll never get around to starting a family at this rate,' she had said one evening when he had collapsed into bed almost two hours after she had retired herself.

‘I don't think it would be a very good idea anyway with this war on. Who wants to bring a child into a world like this?' he had mumbled in reply, heaving the blankets over his chin.

‘That's no answer,' Margaret said. She had been dozing and was now feeling sleepy and loving. ‘By the time the war is over we might be getting too old. Couldn't we just …'

But it was useless. Harry was already asleep.

When the'flu hit him he had fretted and fought it, then given in thinking: ‘I can't help it. They'll all just have to go hang for a day or two.' But as he began to recover he became restless again, working at a pile of papers at the dining-room table contrary to doctor's orders and in spite of feeling so weak that even turning a page was an effort.

He was busy this morning ploughing through the notes he had made for a man who wanted to appeal against conscription when there was a knock at the back door.

Harry swore to himself, propped the papers in such a way that he weuld be able to find his place easily again on his return, and went to answer it. Probably the baker he thought, pleased to find someone at home and wanting to be paid. The regular baker's boy had been called up and was now in the desert with the Eighth Army and the new one, a useless lad who could not even handle his delivery horse properly, was nothing but a nuisance. Harry decided he would give him a piece of his mind.

But it was not the baker. It was Mrs Franklin from next door.

Since moving into the house Harry had had little to do with the Franklins. Doug Franklin worked at the Co-op Dairy, so he was not one of Harry's flock and he and his wife Betty were strict chapel-goers who ‘kept themselves to themselves'. Margaret was on fairly friendly terms with Betty, Harry knew, but his own contact with them had been limited to calling out ‘Good day!' when he saw them over the garden fence and he was surprised now to see her standing on the doorstep with a coat pulled on over her pinafore.

‘Morning, Betty,' he greeted her.

‘Oh.' Betty peered past him into the kitchen. ‘Margaret not at home, is she?'

‘I'm afraid not. She's at school. And she'll be late this evening, too. She has a staff meeting,' Harry said, thinking it was odd that Betty should have expected to catch Margaret in the middle of a working day.

‘Oh,' Betty said again. She was a sharp-featured woman with a bustling manner but today she appeared vaguely at a loss.

‘She should be home by six o'clock or so,' Harry said, preparing to shut the door. The wind was whistling in, making him feel cold though he had been sure he was well on the way to being better. But Betty showed no signs of being ready to leave.

‘Perhaps I could have a word with you then, Harry,' she said.

Harry began to feel annoyed. He had enough problems on his plate without taking on the ones that Betty Franklin wanted to discuss with Margaret.

‘Can't it wait?' he asked. ‘I'm off work sick. I'd ask you in but I don't want to pass on my'flu to you.'

Betty showed no signs of being put off.

‘It's all right, I
never
get'flu,' she sad in the self-satisfied tones of one who is certain of her superiority over a whole army of germs. ‘I'm sorry to bother you, Harry, but I feel I must talk to you right away.'

‘You'd better come in then,' Harry said, admitting defeat.

She followed him into the kitchen.

‘Well?' he said determined to retain some control of the situation.

‘I hardly know where to begin. It's very embarrassing …' She hesitated, then went on all of a rush: ‘It's those two vackie girls of yours. Now I've seen a lot and said nothing. It's not my place to interfere, though personally I feel they need a lot more supervision than you and Margaret are able to give them. I've tried to make allowances, of course. They are a handful, I know. But this time …'

‘Where is all this leading?' Harry asked, getting more annoyed.

‘They came round to my place last night. Wanted to know if I could give them anything for a Sale they're having at their school – some sort of Bazaar in aid of the Comforts Fund. I told them I'd see what I could find. They came again this morning. I left them in the kitchen while I went upstairs to get the few knick-knacks I'd looked out for them. A couple of ornaments that belonged to my mother, it was. Rubbish, really, but they seemed pleased enough and went off with them.'