The Hills and the Valley (38 page)

Ralph crossed the kitchen, put his arms around her and supported her to a chair. ‘Sit down, my love.'

‘I'm all right,' she said, almost crossly. ‘Don't fuss, Ralph.'

‘You're not all right. You have had a shock.'

‘So have we all!'

‘He'll come home safely,' Barbara said. They all turned to look at her. The glazed expression was still there in her eyes but there was an eagerness too about her face as if by the force of her own will she could make it so. ‘He'll come home safely – I know he will!'

‘Oh please God, I hope you're right!' Amy whispered.

‘He will,' she said fervently. ‘He has to!'

Huw came slowly through the mists of semi-consciousness to the pain which had bounded his world for the past days. Waves of burning pain seemed to envelop the whole of his body as if he were still on fire, trapped in his blazing Hurricane. For a moment he imagined that he was and a scream rose in his dusty-dry throat. Then his senses registered the dimness and the overpowering smell of hay and he checked the scream.

Quiet, you idiot, you bloody fool! Keep quiet can't you!

He lay stock still for every movement only increased the agony. He was lying on a makeshift bed, an old mattress covered with a clean sheet. On one side of the bed was a sheet of rusty corrugated iron, on the other three bales of hay formed the walls of a narrow ‘room'. Beside him on the straw-strewn floor stood a carafe of water and a glass, at his feet an aluminium bucket provided primitive toilet facilities. The dryness in Huw's throat increased, aggravated by tiny particles of hay which he had breathed in and he decided that painful or not he must have a drink.

Slowly, with great difficulty, for both hands were heavily bandaged, he managed to pour some water from the carafe into the glass. As it touched his lips he winced. The burned skin had peeled from them like an overripe peach and now they were raw and tender in spite of the medication which had been spread on them and was now making the water taste bitter.

How many days had he been here – four? five? He was not sure. He had tried to keep count but time had lost its meaning. Here in the barn what little light there was was shut out by the wall of hay, so night and day were almost inseparable and the bouts of semicons-ciousness had made a mockery of his own sense of the passage of time. Sometimes it seemed like only moments ago that he had come floating down with his parachute billowing above him, sometimes years, for it was difficult to remember a time before this pain which bounded his universe on all sides like the walls of hay. He was lucky to be alive, he knew, and luckier still to be free in this occupied country. On both counts he owed a debt of gratitude which he could never hope to repay to the farmer who had found him and brought him here, who was still caring for him regardless of the risk to himself and his family, and to the doctor, a general practitioner from the nearby village, who had treated his burns and given him medication to ease the pain.

His memory of what had happened that night after he had been shot down was hazy, a kaleidoscope of blurred fragments like small sharp clips from a movie. He remembered hearing voices as he lay there in the meadow-grass, tangled still in the harness of his chute, and looking up to see dark shapes silhouetted against the purple sky. The voices were rough, speaking French in a thick country dialect that made them almost impossible to understand, though stunned as he was he caught the odd word.

‘Anglais?'

‘Oui, Anglais …' he had muttered but the effort had been almost too much for him. When they lifted him he had passed out again. The next thing he remembered was being here in the barn lying on the straw-covered floor. Two men were bending over him – the two men who had carried him here, he assumed – but as his eyes came into focus he saw a girl standing in the doorway, a tall slim figure with long loose hair. The older of the two men said something to her in rapid, incomprehensible French and she came over, dropping to her knees beside him.

‘Restez-vous ici,' she said. ‘We you hide with straw. We bring M. le Docteur to help your wounds. M. le Docteur est notre ami – our friend. You stay – we hide you now.'

He only half understood until they began building the bales of hay up around him. It was not so much that her English was imperfect as that he was still incapable of coherent thought. Then, when they had gone and he was alone, he realised the danger. The German pilot would have reported seeing his parachute. Before long they would be combing the countryside for him. When they found nothing they would know someone had hidden him. And if he was discovered here the French farmer and his family would be shot.

I can't put them at risk! he thought. But there was nothing he could do. The wall of hay formed a prison and Huw was in no fit state to find the strength to demolish it. He lay sweating and listening, tensing at every sound and gritting his teeth against the waves of pain.

Before dawn they were back, unpacking enough of the straw bales to make a gateway to reach him. The girl stood at the barn door keeping watch while the doctor tended to him, soothing and bandaging. His English was quite good and he kept up a running commentary on Huw's burns.

‘Hands – face – legs – ah, not so bad. We will have you well soon I think. You will not die this time. So long as the German bastards do not find you. Now I give you something to make you sleep. You sleep a few days. Henri will look after you. I will come back and see you again when it is safe. As soon as I can.'

Huw tried to argue but he was unable to form the words properly. Then the injection began to take effect and he became drowsy, drifting into the semi-consciousness that was to make a nonsense of the next days for him.

In his periods of awareness he knew they came to him, sometimes the man, sometimes the girl, who spoke reasonable English. He had no recollection of them making up the bed for him. He only eased out of his stupor one day to realise he was no longer lying on the floor but on a mattress, old and lumpy, but at least offering some comfort to his aching joints. As time passed he realised he was in less danger of discovery but he still worried about it, more for the sake of those who were hiding him than for his own. He had no way of knowing that the German who had seen his parachute had himself been shot down minutes later in another skirmish without ever having time to report that the pilot of the Hurricane he had claimed had survived, or that the farmer had eased his body out of the remains of his flying jacket, charred it still further in his own fire, and deposited it along with his watch and signet ring in the burned out wreck of the Hurricane so that German patrols would believe that he had died with his plane.

Now, closer to reason than he had been since disaster had overtaken him, he lay in the semi-dark and tried to think beyond his pain. He could not stay here forever; he could not continue to expose the farmer and his family, to the danger of having an English flier hidden on their property. He had to get back to England. There was a very good reason why he should get back – and quickly. Only just for the moment he could not remember for the life of him what it was …

A small sound from the other side of the wall of hay attracted his attention and he froze, listening. Then he saw that one of the bales was moving and as it was removed the light came rushing in, hurting his eyes.

‘Hello. You are awake then.' It was the girl. She removed another bale and crawled through. ‘I have some coffee for you and something to eat. Would you like something to eat today?'

She set down a milk churn on the floor beside his bed, removed the lid and dived inside, bringing out a jug of steaming coffee and a box containing bread and butter, cheese and a bunch of grapes.

‘Thank you,' he said. He was hungry though he was not certain he would be able to eat. She emptied the remaining water from his glass and filled it with coffee. The aroma rose temptingly but he knew the hot liquid would sear his lips.

‘We wait until it is cool,' she said, as if reading his thoughts.

Gritting his teeth against the pain he struggled to sit up. She smiled.

‘You are better today, I think. Tell me, what is your name?'

‘Huw,' he said. ‘Huw James.'

She spread a hand across her chest. ‘And I am Yvette. My father found you when you came down boom! from the sky. Do you remember?'

‘Not very well.'

He was looking at her now with eyes clear at last from the fever. A pretty oval face framed by the long swinging hair, huge dark eyes fringed by thick lashes, well defined dark brows, a wide generous mouth. She was wearing a dress of floral cotton and though she had been strong enough to move the bales her figure was trim.

‘I must go,' he said. ‘It's not safe for you while I am here.'

She shrugged. ‘Paw! Nothing is safe these days. Too many of our countrymen give in to the Germans. Not us! We are proud. We still fight for France. We keep you here until you are well then we will find a way for you to go home.'

‘How?'

‘There are some in the village who are also proud. The doctor, Father Leclerc, the priest, and some others. They will find a way. It will be dangereuse, but …'

‘It's you I'm worried about. If they find me here you could be shot. I must go.'

‘You are not well enough. Not yet. You would not last for any time.'

And then he remembered in a blinding flash just why it was so urgent for him to get back to England. Never mind these people who were hiding him, never mind the war. He had unfinished business in England. And it concerned Barbara.

‘I must.' He tried to rise, was unable to and fell back on the mattress.

‘You are not well enough,' she said. ‘Later. For now you must stay here. Now,' she tested the coffee with her little finger, ‘this is cool. Drink some.'

She lifted the glass, guiding it to his mouth and slowly, painfully, he drank.

She was right of course. He would not make it out of the barn, never mind out of France. For the moment he was as much a prisoner as if he was in German hands. There was nothing he could do but wait while they nursed him back to health. Never in his life had Huw felt so helpless.

‘Thank you,' he said. And felt the drowsiness creeping up on him once more.

Preparations for the wedding were speeding ahead now. There was so much to be done and in such a short time! But Amy was glad that she had something to take her mind off her anxieties about Huw.

There had been no word of him since that telephone call which had devastated them all, not the smallest snippet of information as to whether he was alive or dead. Amy kept her hopes pinned on the fact that someone had thought they saw a parachute after his plane was hit and she half expected to hear that he was a prisoner of war, but as the silence stretched on she began to wonder if perhaps that parachute had been just a piece of wishful thinking on the part of Huw's Number Two. It could take much, longer of course before there was any official notification that he was in enemy hands. Or there was always the possibility that he was being sheltered by some French family. But occupied France was overrun by German patrols and in the Vichy sector those who would be willing to risk their well-being for the sake of a British pilot were few and far between. Collaborators would be only too willing to turn him in in return for being left alone to get on with their lives. The alternatives did not bear thinking about – that Huw had gone down with his crippled plane, or that he had been so badly wounded that he had died anyway – and Amy tried not to allow herself even to consider them. But they were there all the same, dark shadows which took shape in the long hours of the night and rose to haunt her.

She was glad now that she had given in to Barbara over the wedding for she dreaded to think how Barbara would be taking this interminable wait, the awful uncertainty, without the constant round of activity which the coming wedding created. All very well for her to state confidently that she was sure Huw would be all right. Amy had seen the dark circles beneath her eyes when she got up in the mornings and knew that Barbara's thoughts were running on much the same lines as her own.

It was a nightmare, this whole thing, a nightmare from which she was unable to wake, yet they scarcely mentioned it even among themselves. The official family line was: ‘Huw will be all right. Huw will be back.' To discuss it, even with hope in their hearts, might somehow weaken the defences. If one of them admitted to even a moment's despair the first crack might appear; the fragile dam would be breached.

So life – and preparations for the wedding, which was to be the biggest seen in Hillsbridge for many years – went on as if everything was the same as usual and that terrible phone call had never happened.

For Barbara the crack in the dam appeared the week before the wedding.

It was a warm evening with the threat of thunder turning the skies into a deep purplish haze above the fields and thick high hedges and she and Marcus had decided to go for a walk. They could not go too far for Marcus's leg would not allow that and in any case Barbara was tired. It had been a long day with last fittings for her dress and those of her bridesmaids – all family heirlooms which had required alteration by the dressmaker – and when that was over Amy had insisted that she should accompany her to the Denbury Court Hotel where the reception was to be held.

In spite of the Spindler's offer of a marquee in the grounds of Hillsbridge House, Amy and Ralph had decided that they should be undisputed hosts for the reception and Denbury Court, a grand country hotel in its own grounds, some six miles out of Hillsbridge, was the only place suitable for accommodating the society guests who had been invited. This had caused a slight panic for there was talk that Denbury Court was to be taken over as a POW camp, but this had not been confirmed and it seemed that the reception suite would be available for the wedding breakfast, although the waitresses and staff were more likely to be women from the nearby village instead of the usual highly trained staff of which Denbury Court boasted. Amy had driven out with Barbara to inspect the suite and make sure there would be a room where Barbara could change into her ‘going away outfit' – a plain but very chic navy blue dress and jacket which they had bought by pooling every clothing coupon they could lay hands on.