The Hills and the Valley (55 page)

‘Isn't she beautiful?' she said, still feasting her eyes on the little miracle which she had produced.

‘You both are,' Marcus said – and it was true. Propped against the pillows, wearing a new silk bedjacket and with a touch of lipstick to lend colour to her pale face, it was difficult to believe Barbara had so recently been through eighteen hours of labour. ‘What are we going to call her?'

‘I've been thinking about that,' Barbara said. ‘I'd like to call her Hope.'

‘Hope, eh?' He had been thinking more on the lines of a family name – Elizabeth perhaps, or Frances, after his grandmothers. But still … ‘I suppose it's a pretty enough name,' he said.

‘I think so,' Barbara said without explaining her reasoning.

That Hope might be an omen for the future.

Throughout the months while summer became autumn and autumn winter it seemed that Barbara's optimism might be justified. She was engrossed in her baby in a way she had never believed possible and life took on a new meaning. Now that she had Hope to care for the days were no longer endless but full and satisfying. She was a good child who rarely cried and soon she was sleeping through the night and giving her mother a long unbroken rest. Barbara delighted in pushing her out every day while the fine weather lasted, talking to her constantly though she was too young to understand and often calling in to see Charlotte who was now all alone and taking a great delight in her newest great grandchild.

Marcus's good humour, too, appeared to be lasting. It was as if becoming a father had gone a good way to restoring his confidence in himself just as Dr Hobbs had predicted and he even discussed the estates with Barbara in the evenings when they sat with Hope during her wakeful period, instead of sharing the company of his parents as they had done in the days before Hope's arrival.

Only two things marred the halcyon days. The first was that Alec had been reported missing after the fall of Singapore and there was still no word of him.

Charlotte talked a great deal to Barbara about Alec on the occasions when she visited her, recalling the agony she had been through when Ted had been missing in the Great War, and expressing her sympathy for Sarah, her daughter-in-law, who was now experiencing the same torment.

‘It's not knowing that's the worst,' she said, jiggling Hope on her knee. ‘You don't know whether to go on hoping or prepare yourself for the worst. I was lucky. Our Ted came back. I only hope it's the same with Alec.'

Barbara nodded. She did not repeat what Marcus had said to her – that if Alec was in the hands of the Japs he would probably be better off dead. The Japs were even more inhumane than the Germans, he had said, the conditions in the Far East were intolerable, with disease rife and wounds turning septic in the steamy tropical heat. There was no point in worrying her grandmother any more than she was already.

‘The sad part is, if it hadn't been for all that other business I don't suppose this would ever have happened,' Charlotte went on and Barbara knew she was referring to his affair with Bryda Deacon. ‘I saw Joan the other day, you know, and she was asking after Alec. She's still carrying a candle for him if you ask me. You'd think she'd have found somebody else by now, a fine girl like her. But no, she hasn't, and somehow I don't think she will.'

‘It must have been awful to be jilted at the altar like that,' Barbara said. ‘I shouldn't think you'd ever get over something like that.'

‘I don't know what Alec was thinking of,' Charlotte said sadly. ‘Still, there you are, that's life, I suppose. At least you've done well for yourself, Barbara, though I might as well say I had my doubts about whether it was the right thing in the beginning.'

Barbara smiled, but her grandmother's words served to remind her of Huw and the recent worrying news of what he was doing – no longer flying Spitfires and Hurricanes but taking Ansons and Lysanders into France on secret missions.

‘I don't like it one bit,' Amy had said when she told Barbara about it. ‘It sounds terribly dangerous to me. But Huw was so grateful to have been brought out himself and so impressed by the work the Resistance are doing that he wanted to help. And I suppose with a war on all flying is risky. All we can do is pray it's all over soon and Huw will be all right.'

Barbara now silently repeated the prayer she said every night when there was a moon and a sky clear enough to make her think Huw might be flying.

‘I don't think it will go on too much longer now,' she said, trying to be her old optimistic self. ‘Things are bound to be better now the Americans are in.'

Charlotte snorted. She had less faith than most people in the ‘Yanks'. Too flashy for her liking, they were, with their chewing gum and their parcels of butter, chocolate and nylons, and their belief that they could put the world to rights the minute they wagged their little fingers. But at least it was true that Hitler now had most of the civilised world to contend with.

‘Let's hope you're right, Babs,' she said, shifting Hope to reveal a wet patch on her skirt. ‘Now, I reckon you'd better change this baby's napkin if you don't want World War III starting right here in my kitchen!'

As winter set in Barbara continued to push Hope out whenever it was fine enough, covering her thick fair hair with a woolly bonnet and muffling her in blankets up to her chin. She was amused at the way the baby's button nose turned into a little cherry and she refused to pay any heed to Lady Erica's warning that Hope should not be out in the cold.

‘Fresh air is good for her,' she argued. ‘She's never had so much as a sniffle yet and I don't believe she will.'

By the middle of November Hope was settling down to a pattern of three feeds a day with a late top-up at about eleven at night and Marcus sprung a surprise on Barbara.
The Desert Song
was playing at the Theatre Royal in Bath the following week and he had got tickets.

Barbara was ridiculously excited at the prospect. It was so long since she had been anywhere and though she had been too engrossed in Hope to care, now that an outing had been arranged she could hardly wait. When the day arrived she laid her clothes out in good time and washed her hair. She was giving Hope her feed when Marcus arrived home earlier than usual and she sat on the nursing stool in the bedroom with Hope at her breast, chattering with him about his day as he changed from the tweed jacket he wore for work to a dark suit and pristine white shirt.

Once Hope had been settled – something which took a little longer than usual as she seemed to sense something different in the air – they were able to leave for Bath. Driving through the city Barbara was shocked by the devastation the air raids had caused – beautiful churches reduced to piles of rubble and houses with only one wall left standing, chimney breasts exposed, torn wallpaper flapping forlornly. She remembered that Uncle Eddie Roberts had died in one of the houses and shivered. She hadn't liked Uncle Eddie – she had been brought up to regard him with mistrust – but it was still unpleasant to imagine him lying dead beneath a hail of masonry, his clothes torn off him by the blast.

Her morbid thoughts were soon forgotten in the theatre, however, when the orchestra struck up, the smell of greasepaint wafted out into the auditorium and the curtain rose.
The Desert Song
was such a romantic show, the tunes were hauntingly beautiful and Barbara fell instantly and deeply in love with The Red Shadow. Marcus had bought her that rare treat, a box of chocolates, but they lay untouched on her lap as she was carried away, along with the heroine, into the desert.

When it was over, they ate in a small but exclusive restaurant close to the theatre and with the aura of romance still surrounding her Barbara was transported back to the days of their courtship when Marcus had seemed as glamorous to her as the Red Shadow himself. It was as if the traumas of their married life had never been and as she looked at his face, golden and handsome in the candlelight, something melted inside her.

‘Happy?' he asked, leaning across to take her hand, and she nodded.

‘Very happy. It was a wonderful evening. I don't want it to end.'

‘It's not over yet,' he said and the promise in his eyes made her heart lurch. Perhaps tonight was going to be one of those rare occasions when he made love to her without aggression to motivate him. Small tingles ran through her veins and she curled her fingers, round his. Suddenly she could not wait to be alone with him.

The dreamy sensation lasted whilst he paid the bill and as they walked back to the car, hand in hand, she felt she might be floating on air. Driving back through the city she hardly noticed the bomb scars and she relaxed against the soft leather seat humming the words of one of the songs from the show:

Blue heaven and you and I
And sand kissing a starlit sky,
The desert breeze whispers a lullaby
With only stars above you
To see I love you …

She hardly noticed a car overtaking them at high speed until Marcus swore.

‘Crazy idiot! What does he think he's playing at?'

She opened her eyes to see tail lights disappearing around a bend in the road and smiled. Marcus liked to think of himself as a fast driver and hated to be overtaken. Then suddenly there was a screech of tyres followed almost immediately by a crash and a terrible tearing sound of metal on tarmac.

Her dreamy mood shattered. At once she was stone cold sober and trembling. Marcus was braking but they were now into the bend themselves and as the car shot to a stop so abruptly that she had to steady herself against the dashboard, the muted lights picked up the dark shape slewed across the road.

‘He lost it! Bloody fool – he lost it!' Marcus's voice was high-pitched. His foot was on the accelerator again and he was pulling the wheel to the right, passing the crashed car which lay on its roof. She thought he was going to pull in in front of it, then suddenly realised he was not going to stop.

‘Stop!' she screamed at him. ‘Marcus – stop!'

He did not reply. He was past the crashed car, accelerating away.

‘Stop!' she screamed again and reached over for the handbrake. The car lurched a little as it bit and as if her intervention had brought him to his senses he slowed, pulling into the side of the road.

‘We can't just drive off!' she cried. ‘That man must be hurt!'

Marcus sat silent and tense, holding onto the steering wheel.

‘Back up!' she ordered.

He made no move, simply stared straight ahead like a man in a trance. She reached over to shake him and felt his arm rigid beneath her touch.

He was not going to do anything. She realised it with a mixture of horror and disbelief. Marcus the hero was going to leave a man in a crashed car, injured, maybe dying. And she could not be a party to it.

‘Wait here then,' she said.

She got out of the car. Her legs were like jelly as she ran back up the road. It seemed she lived a hundred years in those few moments for she, too, was terrified at what she might find. But she knew she had to do whatever was necessary. She could not live with herself if she did not.

The car, a boxy Morris, was on its roof. Glass was scattered all over the road; it crunched beneath her feet. She could see the driver half in, half out of the windscreen. Her breath caught painfully.

The engine had cut out but the wheels were still spinning and steam gushed from the shattered radiator in a thick hissing cloud.

She wrenched at one of the doors. It was jammed. Panic stricken she ran around to the front of the car.

‘Are you all right?'

It was obviously a foolish question. The driver lay, blood streaming from his face and head, and he made no reply.

Her mind was chasing in frantic circles now. She had to get help, but how? They were miles out in the country. And she could expect no help from Marcus – he may have driven off without her for all she knew. She ran around to the other door, trying it, and to her immense relief it gave a little. She wrenched at it harder and it jarred open a fraction. She felt about inside. There was no way she could free the driver by her own efforts and she was not even sure she should try. She knew it was possible to cause worse injury by moving someone without medical knowledge. But if she could find something to make him more comfortable and perhaps stem the bleeding …

She found a cushion and a car rug, got them out and placed them under the driver's head where it lay on the road, after knocking out some more of the sharp shards of shattered glass. What now? She was just trying to remember where the nearest telephone box was when she saw more lights coming along the road from Bath. She leaped up and ran into the road, waving her arms wildly. For a moment she thought that it, too, was going to pass by, then to her relief it slowed to a stop. She ran around to the driver's side.

‘There's been an accident,' she said breathlessly. ‘I think the driver is badly hurt. Please – oh please – can you help?'

There were two servicemen in the car and they immediately took control. The driver executed a neat three-point turn to drive back to Bath in search of assistance, the passenger got out and approached the crashed vehicle with Barbara.

‘Cor – bit of a mess, ain't it?' he commented. ‘Were you in it?'

‘No, I – we – came upon it.' She was unwilling to draw attention to the fact that her husband had done nothing to help.

They stayed with the injured driver until help arrived, some ten minutes later, in the shape of an auxiliary ambulance. He had begun to come around a little, making moaning sounds, and Barbara was glad of the soldier's company. Then, as the injured man was being loaded into the ambulance, a police car arrived, bell clanging.

Barbara gave her name and address to the policeman and told him all she knew of what had happened.

‘Where's your husband now then?' the policeman asked, looking puzzled.