The Hills and the Valley (2 page)

It was rotten to have to wear a uniform, though. Barbara looked down at the print frock, the white socks and boringly sensible brown sandals with loathing. If only she could have worn her new green dress with its swirly skirt and decent stockings and shoes! If only she could have looked really nice for Huw so that he could see she was growing up instead of having to come to see him looking like a schoolgirl.

I'm sixteen and I still look about twelve, Barbara thought in disgust.

The steps leading down to the underpass were almost as crowded as the platform had been and smelled of accumulated steam, smoke and grime. A bit like stale egg sandwiches, Barbara thought. A train rattled by overhead, and the station announcer's voice droned distantly and incomprehensibly. Up the steps on the other side she went into the dull grey light that filtered in through the smoke-blackened glass of the high vaulted roof and glanced off the dirty red-brick walls. Suspended from the steel girders was the sign, a large ‘2' in black on dirty white.

Barbara walked along behind the clustered passengers and stood between two wooden benches looking out of the station enclosure along the line for the first sign of the approaching train. Five minutes more and it should be here. What if it was late? She would already have some explaining to do back at school as to why her dental appointment had taken so long. But worry about that when the time came. For the moment just think about Huw …

The minutes dragged by and Barbara counted them off on the enormous clock which was suspended above the platform. Then, when she had begun to think it would never come, she saw it snaking along the line. She moved forward with the surge of humanity, aware of a moment's panic.

In all these people – would she see him? Supposing after going to all this trouble she missed him! Or supposing he wasn't there at all – had been forced to a change of plan perhaps?

And then she saw him, swinging down onto the platform, and wondered how she could ever have been afraid she might have missed him. Tall, broad-shouldered, his dark good looks enhanced by his airforce blue uniform. She began to run, not caring that her boater was being battered as she pushed through the mass of bodies.

‘Huw! Oh Huw! Over here! Huw!'

He turned and saw her. She saw the surprise on his face swiftly followed by a delighted smile and her heart seemed to burst within her.

Huw. She'd have crossed an ocean for him, braved anything to see him – much more than just old Sister Claude. Huw, her adopted brother, whom she had adored for as long as she could remember.

She had been just three years old when he had come to live with them, a scruffy under-nourished boy of eight with a thick but musical Welsh accent and the look of the streets on his dark narrow face.

To the rest of Hillsbridge, the small mining town, centre of the Somerset coalfield, where she had been born, he had been something of a mystery. Why, they had asked with nodding heads and knowing glances, why should Amy Roberts decide to take in a lad like that just because his mother had died of pneumonia while staying in a Hillsbridge boarding house, leaving him orphaned? All very well for her to say simply that he was Welsh, as Llew, her husband, had been and she could not bear to see him sent to an Industrial School along with all the other waifs and strays and boys who were out of control or just plain wicked. All very well for Charlotte Hall, Amy's mother, to explain with a certain amount of bluster that Amy had been a little unhinged by the shock of Llew's death in an accident at the depot yard. It was a peculiar thing, very peculiar indeed, and there was more to it than met the eye – there had to be.

But Barbara had been too young to hear the speculation and she had neither known nor cared that Huw was causing Amy problems and to spare. To her, right from the start, Huw had been a hero, the big brother she had longed for. As a child she had followed him everywhere, running after him like a puppy dog. She had been unaware of how much he had hated both her and Maureen at first, hating them because they were clean and tidy, with bows in their hair and neat white ankle socks, hating them because they had a mother and he did not. She had been deaf to Amy's entreaties to ‘leave Huw alone', for Amy, even as she grew to love Huw, had been terrified he might lead her daughters into trouble. And gradually, as he had settled into his new life, he had begun to grow fond of her and make a fuss of her.

The change had come, though Barbara had been too young to realise it, when Amy had married Ralph Porter. At first, Huw had rebelled against the authority which Ralph had represented, but hard won respect had come, and the bond had been cemented when Ralph had done what Amy, because of her youth, had been unable to do, and formally adopted Huw. Life had settled into a good and easy pattern, the long sunny days of childhood – and they had been the sunnier because Huw was there.

It was Huw who had taught her to ride a two-wheeled fairy cycle, a thrilling Christmas present when Amy and Ralph had decided she was big enough to graduate from her tricycle – not an easy feat when the only flat lane near their home, Valley View, was full of pot-holes. He had run beside her tirelessly, hanging onto the saddle, and picked her up and dried her tears when she fell off, grazing her hands and knees and scratching the paint on her precious machine. It was Huw who found a way to mend Rosie, her doll, when she lost her head, twisting a piece of wire to hold it on again, albeit a little skewed. And it was Huw who warned off the boys from Batch Row when they wrecked the tree house that she and Maureen had built and furnished lovingly with remnants of Amy's net curtains and some old cracked pieces of china. Much later when one of them had followed Barbara home one night in the dusk and tried to steal a kiss he had caught up with him and knocked him down in the mud, bloodying his nose. The boy had gone home with his tail between his legs; he had not bothered Barbara again.

And all the while the bond between them had grown stronger. When Huw had his first girlfriend Barbara had suffered agonies of jealousy. To see him with that stupid simpering Judy Button whose Uncle Herbie was Amy's foreman and right-hand man, made her burn inside, and only her inner certainty that she, Barbara, was far more important to Huw than Judy could ever be, kept her from actually doing some of the drastic things she longed to do, like pulling Judy's long brown Alice in Wonderland ringlets, or puncturing her bicycle tyres. And eventually her restraint had been rewarded. Huw had come in one night scowling and kicking over the milk bottles which Mrs Milsom the housekeeper had put out rinsed and ready for the roundsman and there had been no more Judy.

The next trauma had been the greatest – when Huw had announced that he wanted to join the RAF. In her heart Barbara had known for a long while that one day it would happen. Huw had always been fascinated by flying, just as his Uncle Jack, Amy's brother, had been. Uncle Jack was now a schoolmaster in a seaside town in South Somerset, but during the Great War he had flown a de Havilland with the RNAS, and when the children went to spend holidays with him he sometimes took Huw gliding – a sport he had managed to take up in spite of losing a leg in the war. Barbara had only to see Huw's face after those trips to know where his heart lay and sometimes when they curled up with late night cups of cocoa, listening to the wireless and toasting their toes at the big open fire in the living room, he would talk to her about it.

But it had been a shock, all the same, when he had actually applied for a five-year Short Service Commission. She had cried bitterly after they had waved him off for the first time to the Civilian EFTS where he was to undergo his first instruction in the art of learning to fly and the house had seemed empty without him.

‘For goodness sake, Barbara, buck your ideas up!' Amy had instructed her when she could no longer stand the sight of her long face and the way she was mooning about the house. ‘Huw has only gone to Desford, not the moon.'

Barbara had said nothing. There was no way of making someone understand how desolate she felt, particularly when they were determined not to understand. Mum doesn't seem to need anyone, she thought. Not Maureen and me, not Huw, not even Ralph. I don't believe she knows what it feels like to really miss someone.

Of course, like most things in life, there were compensations and Barbara discovered them when Huw came home for a weekend kitted out as an Acting Pilot Officer RAF (On Probation). The uniform suited his dark good looks and he cut such a dashing figure that Barbara's heart swelled with pride. She had insisted on being allowed to accompany him to the railway station when he left to do the fortnight's square bashing and drill and discipline which would turn him into a real serviceman, and walking down the road, holding proudly onto his arm, she had been aware of all the admiring and envious glances he attracted. There were those, of course, who snorted and asked in loud whispers: ‘Who does he think he is, anyway? I can mind the time when …' But there would always be people like that, especially in a small town, people who, having achieved nothing themselves, resented the fact that someone else might have done.

They did not bother Barbara any more than they had ever bothered Amy. But as the months slipped by and 1938 became 1939, Barbara realised that storm clouds were gathering on the horizon. At first, she took little notice of the talk of war, for war to her was not real, not something which actually happened in real life. It was a vague threat, no more, to be dismissed in favour of more interesting topics, like tennis and films and the latest music hits. Then one evening she had overheard Amy and Ralph discussing it – and how it could affect Huw.

‘He's flying fighters now,' Amy was saying. ‘That means he would be right in the thick of it, doesn't it?'

Barbara stood stock still in the doorway.

‘Yes, I'm afraid it does,' Ralph replied.

There was a silence, then she heard Amy sigh.

‘Oh well, let's hope it won't come to that.'

‘I'm afraid that's a pretty vain hope,' Ralph said. ‘If you want my opinion, Chamberlain did nothing but buy time when he went to see Herr Hitler and came back waving his piece of paper. It won't last, Amy. It can't. Hitler has his sights set on far wider fields than his own and sooner or later we're going to have to use force to stop his little game.'

Another silence.

‘Let's hope it's later rather than sooner,' Amy said after a moment. ‘The thought of another war makes me feel sick inside. I can still remember the last one too well. My brother Fred was killed in France and the boy Dolly was going to marry. And our Jack lost his leg when he was shot down and was lucky to get back alive. Oh no, I can't believe we'll go into all that again in a hurry.'

‘We shan't have any choice,' Ralph said and the matter-of-factness of his tone chilled Barbara. She knew about Uncle Jack's leg, of course, and she had heard of an Uncle Fred and the others who had been killed, though it had meant nothing to her. Now, for the first time, she thought of them as young men, not so very different to Huw, and a sensation of prickly fear crept over her skin.

Throughout the months of spring and early summer her anxiety ebbed and flowed with each turn in the tide of news from Germany. Then familiarity began to breed contempt and by midsummer, when everyone said war was inevitable, Barbara was feeling quite bullish. If Adolf Hitler was the monster everyone made him out to be then he had to be put in his place – and who better to do it than Huw and the other young men like him? They would soon teach him a lesson he wouldn't forget! Barbara thought.

But as she ran towards him across the platform at Bristol Temple Meads railway station that June morning, laughing her welcome, all depressing thoughts of war were far from her mind.

Huw caught her by the arms, swinging her up and round, then holding her back to look at her. ‘Barbara! What on earth are you doing here?'

She laughed. ‘Surprised to see me?'

‘You can say that again!' He hugged her. ‘Shouldn't you be at school?'

‘Yes. I'm playing truant.'

‘Barbara! You don't change.'

‘Nor do you,' she said proudly.

‘I thought those nuns might knock some sense into you.'

‘No chance. Surely you didn't think we'd let you come to Bristol and not make the effort to get in to see you?'

He glanced at his watch. ‘I'm not going to be able to stay long, I'm afraid. But what do you say to grabbing a quick cup of coffee?'

‘Lovely,' she said.

The station buffet was muggy, smoky and stale. Beneath a glass counter sandwiches curled sadly and at one end a tired looking woman was dispensing mud-coloured tea from an urn. Barbara followed Huw to an empty table and waited, wriggling her nose at the fumes from the overflowing ashtray, while he fetched two cups of coffee. The tired looking woman seemed to brighten considerably while serving Huw and Barbara, and smiled to herself. Trust Huw! But then, he did look so handsome, she would have defied any woman to keep a long face when he was around.

He came back carrying two cups of coffee and set them down on the table, pushing the overflowing ashtray aside.

‘Sugar?'

‘No thanks.'

‘Of course, I forgot. You're watching your figure, I suppose.' He stirred two spoonfuls of slightly tea-stained granules into his own cup. ‘So – what's been happening at home?'

‘Not much. At least, nothing different. Mum is still busy with her businesses and Ralph is still busy with his. Maureen is an unbearable little swot and …'

‘You shouldn't talk about your sister like that,' he admonished teasingly.

‘Why not? That's what she is. Oh, I know she's clever and she'll probably do very well, but I mean … She's always got her nose in a book. And the nuns single her out as a model student. Yuk!'

He laughed. ‘What about you?'

‘What about me? I'm still at school because Mum and Ralph insist I get a good education. I don't know why they won't let me leave. They might just as well and then I can get on with what I want to do.'