The Hills and the Valley (9 page)

‘We'll get an ice-cream when we've finished our shopping if you like,' Margaret offered and the girls'faces brightened. Ice-cream to them was a rare treat indeed – they could remember having it only once in their lives, when the Salvation Army had taken a group of them on a day trip to Brighton, but they knew they had enjoyed every last melting lick of it.

Margaret led them past the stalls and under the subway that passed beneath the first set of railway lines which bisected the main street. Then, they walked along the pleasant tree-lined road which followed the curve of both the lines and the river to the large square stone building which housed both the Co-operative confectionary shop and the drapers. As they passed the confectionary shop windows Margaret saw the girls'eyes go round again at the sight of the newly baked bread and jam tarts in the window and smiled to herself. Difficult they might be but there was one sure way to their hearts – through their somewhat deprived stomachs!

The drapery shop was busy. Margaret joined the queue and the girls wandered around the shop looking at the goods that were displayed and the card stands advertising Sylko and Cash's name tapes. Once again, they seemed totally awe-struck as if they had never been inside a shop like this one before. When it was her turn she called the girls over and noticed the look of distaste the assistant threw them.

‘Evacuees, is it?' she asked in a loud whisper.

‘Yes.' Margaret had no intention of discussing her charges with Mercy Marshall. ‘I want some vests and knickers to fit them – and some liberty bodices too.'

Mercy pulled the appropriate drawers out of the fitting and spread the garments on the counter – cream interlock vests and knickers and neat fleecy-lined liberty bodices, complete with the buttons for the attachment of suspenders.

‘There we are then – or did you want navy knickers?' she asked with a glance that suggested she thought navy might be more suitable for these two young customers.

‘White,' Margaret said, then thought better of it. There was no knowing what these two would get up to – and no point making washing. ‘On second thoughts perhaps navy would be better.'

Little Marie reached up to the counter, feeling the fleecy-lined liberty bodice with fingers that had somehow become grubby since Margaret had last insisted on her washing them.

‘Don't touch!' Mercy Marshall snapped.

The child withdrew her hand sharply and cowered away as if half expecting to be struck, while her sister glowered and moved away impatiently to continue her examination of the wares at the rear of the shop.

Margaret sized the underwear with an expert eye.

‘I'll take those – two pairs – and those. That will do nicely, Mercy, thank you. Now, what about ankle socks …'

At that moment she was interrupted by an angry shout at the rear of the shop. ‘Hey you, what do you think you're doing? Just you leave my bag alone, you little turk!'

Margaret swung round to see a large red-faced woman rushing towards Elaine. The child moved quickly and a shopping bag full of groceries overturned, spilling its contents across the floor.

‘Elaine!' Margaret called sharply.

The girl turned to run, dodging a customer who was just entering the shop and diving out onto the pavement.

‘Look! Look what she's done!' The red-faced woman was beside herself. ‘My shopping!'

‘Oh, I'm so sorry,' Margaret apologised. ‘I don't know how she managed to do that …'

‘I do!' the woman said angrily, piling groceries back into the bag. ‘There were cakes right on the top – I've just bought them. She was trying to take one!'

‘Oh, surely not!'

‘She was! I just happened to turn round and catch her nicely. Yours, is she?'

‘Well, not really …'

‘One of those evacuees, I suppose. They're going to be nothing but trouble. And that's another of them!' The woman stabbed an accusing finger at Marie, who was cowering behind Margaret. ‘Little savages, all of them. My next-door-neighbour has one and he doesn't even know what the toilet is used for. Did it in the corner of the room, he did. Well, I don't know that I want my cakes after she's been fingering them.'

‘Let me buy you some more.' Margaret was flushed with embarrassment. ‘I'm so sorry, really I am.'

‘It's not your fault, I suppose,' the woman said, slightly mollified. ‘They should never have sent them here amongst decent people that's all.'

Margaret grabbed Marie's hand and led her to the counter. The child looked as if she expected to be punished for her sister's behaviour and her brown eyes were huge in her small pale face.

‘You stay with me, Marie,' Margaret said sternly.

She paid for her purchases, stuffed them into her basket and still holding onto Marie in case she should try to run off after her sister, left the shop. There was no sign of Elaine in the street now.

‘Where do you think your sister has gone?' she asked Marie. The child said nothing and in spite of her anger Margaret could not help feeling sorry for her. It wasn't her fault, and she could not think even now that Elaine had actually intended to steal a cake. With everyone being so hostile towards them it was no surprise that she turned and ran.

Back in the Market Square there was still no sign of Elaine and Margaret stood for a moment wondering what to do. It was possible she had gone home. Margaret decided she had better abandon her shopping trip and go home to see, though she had not yet bought any of the weekend essentials. That was going to mean another trip out whether Elaine was there or not. And as for the ice-cream she had promised the girls – well, they could certainly go without that!

Margaret and Harry lived in a large pleasant semidetached house on the corner of Ridge Road where she had lived with her parents before her marriage. Climbing the hill she kept her eyes about her but there was still no sign of Elaine and it was without much hope that she pushed open the gate and walked up the drive. A stitch was starting in her side and she felt tired and breathless. She couldn't bear the thought of having to go back down to Hillsbridge for the shopping.

She rounded the corner of the house dragging Marie with her then stopped, relieved. There sitting on the back doorstep and idly chalking on the path with a sharp white pebble was Elaine. Instantly, Marie wrestled her hand free of Margaret's and ran to her sister. Margaret followed more slowly.

‘So there you are.'

Elaine went on scratching with the stone without looking up.

‘Well?' Margaret said briskly. ‘Don't you think you should explain yourself?'

The thin shoulders merely shrugged.

‘What were you doing touching that woman's shopping bag?'

Another shrug.

‘Were you trying to help yourself to the jam tarts on the top?'

The thin faced upturned to look at her.

‘Would you believe me if I said I wasn't?'

‘Yes,' Margaret said. ‘If you tell me you weren't, I would believe you.'

‘I weren't.'

‘All right,' Margaret said. ‘In that case we'll go indoors and forget about it.'

A slow sly smile spread across the peaky features. The girl said nothing, getting up and turning around so that Margaret could see only the back of her cropped head, and something in her attitude disturbed Margaret.

A thief and a liar – or just a misunderstood child of the slums – which was she? For all her experience with children Margaret was not sure. But for the moment she thought there was little she could do but give her the benefit of the doubt.

The gold and blue days of September slipped by but no enemy planes were seen in the skies above Hillsbridge and after the first burst of activity life returned almost to normal – a normality which seemed somehow incongruous since England was at war and was punctuated more by petty annoyances than by fear or danger.

It was a nuisance to have to think about some sort of a blackout being in place before lighting a lamp when darkness fell, particularly since the shops had sold out of any sort of suitable dark materials since almost the first day; a nuisance not to know for sure what timetable the buses and trains were running to – if they were running at all, and a nuisance to have to register with a coal dealer to be sure of a supply of fuel through the winter months.

The quiet that reigned in the town was strange, too, for all the works'hooters and sirens were silenced by order; the fire hooter would be used only as an air raid warning siren and there could be no room for confusion; if a siren sounded people must be in no doubt what it meant. But since there were no air raids the silence was uncanny, reminding folk uncomfortably of the days of the General Strike. There had been no sirens then, either, and the unnatural quiet had ushered in a time of great hardship.

‘Trouble is, my missus don't know when to expect me home for my dinner any more,' Ewart Brixey said to the group of regulars gathered in the Miners Arms. ‘She always listened for the hooter and put the taters on.'

There was a general murmur of agreement. Whatever the reasoning behind it the people of Hillsbridge did not like a change of routine.

‘Talking of sirens, have you seen th'ick evacuee girl who's stopping with Ethel Bennett down at Pit Cottages?' Tommy Clements enquired, taking a pull of his pint of beer. ‘She's a bit of all right and no mistake!'

‘And she's got a young'un, so you mind your p's and q's,' Ewart warned.

The evacuees – ‘vackies'as they had come to be known – were still a talking point in Hillsbridge and yet another source of annoyance. The children, like the two Margaret and Harry Hall had taken in, were branded ‘a lot of little savages'and the women for the most part were worse, walking the streets with their hair full of curlers, pushing to the front of the queue in the Co-op grocery shop and talking loudly in their Cockney accents which the locals described scathingly as ‘th'ick awful twang'.

‘What you going to do about that motor bike o'yourn, Ewart?' Walter Clements, Tommy's father, asked, changing the subject. ‘You'll have to lay'un up now that petrol's being rationed, won't'ee?'

Ewart, the proud possessor of a handsome old Norton and sidecar, aimed a glob of phlegm at the spittoon.

‘I shouldn't think so, Walt. Not yet anyway. I can get enough for what I want. It's them with motorcars that'll be having trouble.'

‘That's one good thing about this war,' Stanley Bristow said and they all turned to look at him. Stanley had always been a taciturn man; these days he said even less than he had used to.

‘Oh, what's that then, Stanley?'

‘It'll bring back the horse,' Stanley prophesied. ‘All them as got rid of their horses and carts in favour of motorised transport will be wishing they never had, that I do know.' He sipped his beer and added sagely: ‘You don't need no petrol for a horse.'

The other men exchanged looks and smiles through the haze of smoke.

Stanley had once been the owner of the livery stables and he had never got over the fact that the government had requisitioned his horses in the First War. It had broken his heart, some folk reckoned, and was the cause of him being such a pessimist in his old age.

This time, however, there was something in what he said. You didn't need petrol to keep a horse going. Perhaps there would be those in Hillsbridge who would wish they had less fancy means of transport before much longer – and for the most part they were the people for whom the men in the bar at the Miners Arms had little time – the nobs.

‘You'm right there, Stanley,' Walter said, voicing the feelings of the men round the table. ‘The roads will be a lot better when there's less traffic on'em.'

And on that sentiment they drained their glasses and set them up for another round before walking home through the clear dark night.

There was someone in Hillsbridge, however, who was less than pleased with the imposition of petrol rationing – to whom it could spell ruin if it bit really hard.

‘As if I didn't have enough problems, now I've got to worry about keeping the lorries I've got left on the road!' Amy Porter said to her husband when the rationing was announced. ‘I've lost three of my best men to the armed forces, the War Office want two of my lorries and now to cap it all I have to apply for coupons to get my petrol! Honestly, Ralph, I don't know how I'm going to keep going.'

‘It'll sort itself out, Amy. As I understand it you can apply for a supplementary allowance as long as you can show that it's for necessary haulage. You might even be able to do work for the Ministry. There's bound to be a lot of stores and equipment to be moved when things really get going.'

Amy experienced an uncomfortable jab of
déjà-vu.
She seemed to remember Llew saying something similar to her in the dark days of the General Strike. She had been horrified then at the prospect of profiteering and had quarrelled with him about it. But that had been in the days when Llew had been running the business and she had been sufficiently on the outside to be able to afford scruples. And of course the situation had been quite different. Then, it had been blacklegging to carry goods that trades unionists would not; now it would be in the national interest.

‘What about you?' she asked. ‘How is it going to affect you?'

They were talking, as they so often did, as they prepared for bed in the big pleasant room which overlooked the valley. Only tonight there was no view of the soft, dark, starry sky above the ridge of batches that Amy loved; the window was covered from corner to corner with a heavy old chenille tablecloth which Mrs Milsom had unearthed for the purpose.

As always Ralph had beaten her into bed. He would lie propped up against the pillows watching as she removed her make-up at the dressing table mirror and brushed her honey gold curls, never impatient because he enjoyed seeing the ritual and too often it was the only time in their busy lives when they were alone together.