The Emerald Valley (28 page)

Charlotte looked at her closely.

‘Well, you don't look too good to me. You can overdo it, you know, then you'll be no use to anybody. You'll end up like that poor woman who was lodging at Mrs Moon's.'

‘What woman?' Amy asked idly, her mind, obviously elsewhere.

‘Some poor soul with a little boy. Put up with Mrs Moon for the night, got took bad and now she's dead.' She set down the tea and stopped short. ‘Whatever is the matter, Amy?'

Amy did not answer; she had turned chalk-white and looked, thought Charlotte, as if she had seen a ghost.

‘Amy!' she said again, more sharply. ‘Are you all right?'

‘Oh, my God!' said Amy. ‘Who was it, did you say?'

‘Nothing to do with us,' Charlotte reassured her. ‘She was Welsh, I heard. Only came for the one night. I don't know what was wrong with her, Peggy didn't say. But our Harry saw a woman with a little boy down by the George the day before, looking for somewhere to put up for the night, and he did say how poorly she looked. So you see, you can't be too careful. You don't want our Barbara and Maureen to end up like that poor little boy, now do you? He'll have to go to Hazebury Union unless they can find somebody to take him, Peggy reckoned.'

Still Amy said nothing, but the look of her was alarming Charlotte.

‘Look, Amy, why don't you stay and have a bit of tea with us?' she suggested. ‘I've got some cold pork that ought to be eaten before it goes bad.'

‘No, it's all right, thank you,' Amy said in a strained voice.

‘It wouldn't be any trouble, and if it would save you having to go home and cook …'

‘No – I'm not hungry, thank you,' Amy said in the same strained tone. ‘Don't fuss, Mam, I'm all right, really.'

‘Well, you don't look all right to me!' Charlotte pronounced.

But there was nothing she could do about it. If Amy wouldn't stay, she wouldn't. She had always been too wilful for her own good, thought Charlotte anxiously.

All the same, she couldn't understand why the story about the woman at Mrs Moon's had upset her so – unless of course she was worried, as Charlotte had suggested, that if she was not careful she might end up the same way.

I don't know, I'm sure, Charlotte said to herself. And long after Amy had left, anxiety about the way things were going for her daughter niggled at her.

In the middle of the night Amy sat bolt upright in bed and knew that at last she had made up her mind what she was going to do.

Ever since Mam had told her about the woman dying, she had been unable to think of anything else – not even the minor triumph she had scored that afternoon by securing a job hauling a load of gravel for one of the local quarries. She had worked hard persuading the quarry owner to give Roberts Haulage a chance and if the job was well done she hoped there would be more – maybe even a short-term contract of sorts.

The thought of the woman had been haunting her all the time, of course. Even when she was talking to the quarry owner it had been there, not in her mind exactly but in her emotions, so that every time she mentioned Llew's name there was a sinking feeling deep inside her and a bitter taste in her mouth. But she had pressed on, determined not to be distracted by the wicked mischief-making of some unknown woman.

And then, this afternoon, Mam had told her the woman was dead. Dead! Of course, she
had
looked terrible now that Amy came to think about it, consumptive almost, but at the time she had been too outraged by her revelations to feel any concern for her at all. Now she was overwhelmed by shock and guilt, and also concerned for the child who might have to be taken to Hazebury Union. Mam had said they were in hopes that some other relative would turn up to prevent that happening, but Amy realised that if the woman had been telling the truth there was no one
to
turn up. She had said she had no one and that Idris, her husband, had been killed in an accident underground.

She must have been in the same boat as me, Amy thought. Only I've got Mam and the rest of the family as well as the house and the business, and it sounded as though she had nothing and no one. And that poor little boy will have to go to Hazebury or somewhere very like it …

Every time she thought of it she shuddered, remembering the skinny frame, the thin urchin face and the blue eyes. Blue eyes – Llew's eyes? Oh no, surely even if the rest of the story was true – and as yet Amy was still desperately trying not to believe it – even given that, he couldn't be Llew's son. Llew's son would be big and strong, like his father. Wouldn't he? Unless of course he had been so starved of good food he had never grown properly. Not having the right things to eat could do awful things to you. Amy had seen what happened to the children of the poor families in Hillsbridge – those whose mothers cut their hair with the aid of a pudding-basin and let them go to school with their feet hanging out of their shoes. Some of them grew strong and wiry, it was true, but the others had one thing after another wrong with them: persistent hacking coughs, scarlet fever, diphtheria, rickets which made their legs go bandy. And even the wiry ones tended to go down with such illnesses as pneumonia as they got older – more than one who had been at school with Amy was now dead and gone – and the others had lost all their looks very early on in life.

Perhaps that was what happened to the woman … Amy found it hard to think of her as Sibyl. Perhaps she had been a good-looking girl before deprivation caught up with her. In her mind's eye Amy tried to picture the thin face and screwed-back hair. That had made her look worse, of course; put a little more flesh on her and a bit of colour in her cheeks, let the hair down and she might look very different indeed. Attractive, even.

The thought made Amy feel sick, but for the first time she tried to face it squarely. Was there any truth in what she had said? Had Llew found her attractive? He must have known her, that much was certain. She would never have come otherwise. And – another sick realisation which had come to Amy during the endless pondering – she must have had some contact with him since he had come to Hillsbridge – since their marriage, even – or the woman could not have known where to find him.

No, there had to be some basis of truth in the story somewhere.

But the child … Llew's? That she had not been able to stomach, had not wanted to think about until now, when she discovered that one way or another he was orphaned.

That night, after the children were in bed, Amy had prowled the house, unable to settle in one place for two minutes at a stretch. Before coming to bed she had looked in on them, both fast asleep, and her heart had turned over. They had lost their father, yes, but their lives were still almost as before, their futures secure. But this other child, this boy – Huw was his name? How frightened and lost he must be tonight, with perhaps nothing but an orphanage to look forward to.

In bed she had tossed and turned, unable to sleep. And one thought kept coming to her again and again. She must find out – she must know the truth. But how? There really was only one way, though she shrank from it. She would have to go and see her mother-in-law. Perhaps Mrs Roberts would be able to tell her.

Next morning after she had left Barbara and Maureen with Charlotte, Amy caught a bus from Hillsbridge to High Compton, where the Roberts family now lived in a neat, square end-of-terrace. Since coming to Hillsbridge the entire family seemed to have thrived, with Mr Roberts senior and Eddie both going into the insurance business; Ivor, the next brother, apprenticed as a carpenter; and Megan and Gwyneth, the two daughters, both trained in shorthand and typewriting, with positions in offices in High Compton.

This elevated social standing suited Llew's mother, Annie Roberts, very well. She was, in her way, a snob – labelled privately by Charlotte as the sort she would like to ‘take down a peg or two' – and Amy had never felt totally comfortable with her. ‘She's so correct it hurts,' Amy once told Dolly after an exhausting meal at Llew's home, with serviettes in silver serviette rings and a bewildering array of cutlery including a fish service such as Amy had never set eyes on before – let alone used. ‘I couldn't enjoy what I was eating; I was too afraid of doing something wrong.'

Those days had long since passed, but there was still no warmth in Amy's relationship with her mother-in-law. Despite being Llew's wife and the mother of his two daughters, she still felt Annie would exclude her from the family circle if she could – a girl who had been in service would never quite match up to what she would have liked for her eldest son – and Amy disliked the way she constantly boasted about the achievements of her own family.

As for calling her ‘Mother'or ‘Mam', Amy had never been able to bring herself to do it. ‘Gran'when the children were present, she could just about manage – at all other times Llew's mother remained ‘Mrs Roberts'.

Mrs Roberts'propriety extended also to the way she dressed – a hat and gloves for chapel; shoes and stockings whatever the weather, whenever, she left the house; and house-shoes placed just inside the door for changing into as soon as she came in again. She also changed her attire at least three times a day, wearing a wrap-around pinafore for mornings, a neat apron for afternoons and a smart dress or skirt and blouse in the evenings. Her daily and weekly routine was so strictly adhered to that Amy had no doubt that on a Thursday morning, as this was, she would find Mrs Roberts engaged in ‘doing the bedrooms', and sure enough, when she knocked at the door there was a short wait before she heard footsteps coming down the stairs.

‘Amy – good gracious, what a surprise!' Predictably, Mrs Roberts' smile was less than welcoming, for she disliked her routine being interrupted, but she had no option but to add, ‘You'd better come in.'

Amy followed her into the prim living-room where the china figurines were set exactly equidistant along the mantelpiece and family portraits hung symmetrically around the walls. Instead of the usual chenille cloth, a cut-glass vase in its own bowl graced the table, but it was empty. Mrs Roberts did not care for flowers in the house – they made too much mess.

‘Well, Amy, to what do we owe this visit?' Mrs Roberts asked, motioning for Amy to sit down in one of the over-stuffed arm-chairs with the lace-edged antimacassars.

‘I want to talk to you … about Llew,' Amy said, obediently perching herself on the edge of the seat.

Instant tears filled Mrs Roberts'blue eyes.

‘Oh, I don't know that I can. It upsets me so,' she demurred.

‘I'm sorry, but it's important,' Amy persisted, ‘I want to go back to when you lived in Wales. Did you ever know a woman called Sibyl James?'

She knew at once that she had touched on a sore point. The tears vanished and Mrs Roberts'face hardened.

‘I couldn't say, I'm sure.'

‘Please think, Mrs Roberts. A woman in her thirties – thin, dark. And she had a husband who was a miner – an Idris James.'

‘A miner!' Mrs Roberts'lips tightened. ‘We never had more to do with the miners than we could help.'

Amy ignored the implied insult. ‘But did you know anyone of that name?'

Mrs Roberts brushed an imaginary speck of dust from the arm of her chair. ‘I might have done, I suppose.'

Amy felt the skin on the back of her neck begin to prick. There was something; Mrs Roberts did not want to talk about it and her silence was as telling as any words. But with so much at stake, Amy had to press her for more.

‘Did Llew know her?'

For a moment there was no sound in the room but the ticking of the mantel clock. Then Mrs Roberts gesticulated impatiently.

‘Oh, all right, if you really want to know I should think everyone in the Rhondda Valley knew Sibyl James. She got a real name for herself – and not one any decent woman would want, I can tell you. Why her husband put up with it, I can't imagine. A quiet sort he was, not in our class mind you, but never one to get himself in trouble. But for some reason he saw fit to go and join the Army when the war started and she was left to her own devices. Of course, that was just what she wanted.'

The palms of Amy's hands were damp and she rubbed them against her skirt.

‘And what about Llew?' she asked quietly.

Mrs Roberts clicked her teeth, distressed.

‘Llew was just a boy at the time. He had a delivery round for the grocer's – used to be out there on his bike with the orders. Well … it started. Llew should have known better, of course, but a woman like that knows how to get round any man, let alone a young impressionable lad. And of course, he was so good-looking …' Her eyes filled with tears again and she blinked them away. ‘As soon as I found out what was going on I put a stop to it, naturally. That was the end of his delivery round, as you can imagine.'

Amy was aware of a glimmer of hope. ‘And that was all there was to it?'

Mrs Robert's face hardened. ‘No, it wasn't. He must have gone on seeing her on the QT. A couple of years later it was – nearly the end of the war – and I found out he'd been with her again. Well, I was beside myself. I went straight out to see her and I told her straight that if she didn't leave him alone, I'd have the law on her. And that's when she had the brass-faced neck to say what she did.'

Amy felt weak. All this in Llew's past and she knew nothing of it.

‘What did she say?' she asked.

Mrs Roberts moved impatiently.

‘What do you want to bring all this up for? It's over and done with, years ago. Why don't you just leave it alone?'

Amy swallowed. ‘Because it may not be over and done with,' she said. ‘She told you she was going to have a child. Is that what you don't want to tell me, Mrs Roberts?'

‘Well, I never heard such nonsense!' Annie Roberts was bristling, her hands now constantly brushing at the arm of the chair. ‘To say a thing like that about our Llew! I told her there and then, it cut no ice with me. It was just wickedness on more wickedness. A lot of evil lies. There she stood, as brazen as you like, accusing my boy of being the father of the baby she was expecting. I told her she'd have to prove it in a court of law and I'd like to see her do
that
, and she said so long as her husband accepted the child as his she wouldn't bother to prove anything. I couldn't believe it, that any woman could be so downright wicked. And I told her so, straight.'