The Hills and the Valley

by Janet Tanner

  For seemingly endless minutes Huw went on talking. Barbara could hear his voice yet she was strangely unaware of what he was saying. Her face was throbbing badly now where Marcus had hit her, her neck ached from being stretched at an unnatural angle and her head was swimming. I’m going to faint, she thought and then: no, I mustn’t. If I faint, God alone knows what will happen. Hope was still clinging terrified to her legs and she tried to concentrate on willing the child to stay still, quite still …

  In the muzzy blackness she heard Huw say: ‘Look, Spindler, I know you’ve had a rough time but this is no way to make things better. You’re not the first one to get things all muddled up and wrong. It’s what the damned war did to men. But you can get help. Just as long as you don’t do anything bloody stupid. After all, you’re supposed to be a hero, aren’t you?’

  Don’t Huw! she wanted to shout. For God’s sake, don’t bring that up! It’ll send him over the top! But she could not speak. The truth about Marcus’s cowardice was the one thing she had not been able to bring herself to tell him. And now it was too late …

  ‘You did your best for your men, didn’t you?’ Huw was going on. ‘Think about that and …’

  Marcus’s arm tightened around her neck, the muzzle of the gun bit into her temple.

  ‘Are you trying to be funny?’ he barked.

  ‘Of course not. I …’

  Marcus laughed, that same insane laugh that chilled the blood.

  ‘I killed them!’ he screeched. ‘All my men! I killed them! What difference does it make if I kill her too?’

  The faintness passed over Barbara in a wave again; she fought it and saw that Huw had moved. Tensed now, both hands braced against the door jamb, head down, eyes levelled at Marcus.

  ‘I’m the one you want to kill’, he said, enunciating the words clearly. ‘If you want to take it out on someone, take it out on me. But for God’s sake, let her go!’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I’m the one you want. Look at me. I’m here. I’m alive. I’m laughing at you. Go on, Marcus. Shoot me. Shoot me – if you dare!’

  The tension hung in the air. For a moment none of them moved, then Barbara felt the quiver run the length of Marcus’s body. And miraculously the pressure on her throat reduced and his arm was no longer strangling her.

  ‘All right, James, you’ve asked for it! You’ve bloody asked …’ The gun was levelled at Huw, his finger tightening on the trigger.

  ‘No!’ Barbara screamed. At the very moment he squeezed she struck at his arm from underneath and the bullet cracked harmlessly through the ceiling. For a moment, Marcus stood as if frozen by the shock of having actually fired and in that second in eternity everything happened at once. Huw stepped forward, grabbed Barbara and Hope and practically threw them through the open door. Barbara scooped Hope into her arms and stumbling on legs gone weak she ran for the stairs.

  ‘Get out of here, Barbara!’ Huw shouted behind her and she needed no second bidding.

  She was at the foot of the stairs, Huw behind her, when she heard the second shot. She froze.

  ‘Go on – get out!’ Huw yelled at her.

  She dived for the door, down the stone steps onto the drive, then turned around to look for Huw. He was not there.

  ‘Huw!’ she sobbed. Her brain and senses were in total turmoil. Where was he? What was happening in the house? She had to know, yet she could not go back. There was Hope to think about …

  Clutching the sobbing child to her she stared, wildeyed at the open front door. My God, if he had killed Huw … she couldn’t stand it. She honestly could not stand it.

  Where were they? Why was it so quiet? In the trees around the park a rook cawed. It was the only sound now to break the silence. Wordlessly, without sense or meaning, Barbara prayed as she had never prayed before.

  A movement from inside the house. She stood poised for flight. But it was Huw who stood framed in the doorway, Huw who came down the steps towards her, took her in his arms, holding her tight with Hope squashed between them.

  ‘All right, my love?’ he whispered.

  She moved convulsively. ‘Marcus …?’

  He held her steady. ‘It’s all over. He’s dead.’

  She gasped.

  ‘He turned the gun on himself,’ Huw said.

  ‘Oh!’ She tried to break away to go to him. He was, after all, despite all he had done, her husband. Huw prevented her.

  ‘Don’t go in there. There’s nothing you can do.’

  She held taut, then half fell against him.

  ‘Oh Huw – Huw!’

  ‘It’s all right, my love,’ he whispered. ‘It’s all over now. It’s all over.’

  In the trees above the park the rook cawed again.

  The news spread round Hillsbridge like wildfire.

  ‘Have you heard? Marcus Spindler has gone an’shot himself!’ As always Ewart Brixey liked to pass on information in the crudest possible manner – and the regulars at the bar at the Miners Arms were agog for it.

  ‘Never!’

  ‘Marcus Spindler? Go on!’

  ‘He has. It’s in the paper.’

  ‘I saw the paper,’ Stanley Bristow said. ‘It didn’t say he shot himself. It said he’d died in a shooting accident.’

  ‘Same thing, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, no …’

  ‘It’s what they would say, isn’t it? They wouldn’t put it in black and white, not with somebody like him. They wouldn’t dare. But you can take it from me that’s what happened right enough. His wife was carrying on, they reckon.’

  ‘What – Barbara Roberts?’

  ‘Ah.’

  There was silence. The old ones hadn’t forgotten how her mother, Amy Hall, had ‘carried on’ before her, running a business in a man’s world and marrying Ralph Porter. She was respectable enough now, it was true, but all the same …

  ‘I don’t know what the world’s coming to,’ Stanley Bristow said. ‘Give me the old days, before the First War. You knew where you were then.’

  ‘Ah, them Spindlers have got it coming to’em,’ Ewart went on, quaffing his beer. ‘Things will be different now we’ve got a Labour government, you mark my words. The pits will be nationalised soon and we’ll see how the Spindlers like that. They’ll have their wings clipped then, I’da know.’

  ‘And you’ll probably end up living in Hillsbridge Hall, Ewart,’ Tommy Clements joked.

  They all laughed. It was an amusing prospect. Things had not changed that much. They could not imagine that they ever would.

  ‘Well, Babs, I’m very glad you found the time to come and see your Gran before you go off to – where is it?’ Charlotte poured tea into her best china cups and set one down in front of Barbara and another before Huw as they sat at the chenille-covered table in her kitchen.

  ‘Cyprus, Gran – and of course you know I wouldn’t go without coming to see you!’ Barbara said.

  ‘Cyprus. My goodness me. I hope it will suit our Hope there. I hope it won’t be too hot for her.’

  ‘She’ll love it, won’t you Hope?’ Barbara smiled at Hope, who was sitting in the centre of the floor, turning out her great grandmother’s handbag for the hairpins which she loved and which were always to be found at the bottom. Miraculously, she seemed unscathed by her terrible experience when her father had finally gone berserk – thank God for the resilience of children, Charlotte thought.

  ‘Anyway, after the cold weather we’ve been having, it will be lovely to be warm!’ Barbara said, and smiled at Huw.

  It was difficult for her to stop smiling at him these days. She could hardly believe that at last, at long last, they were going to be together. She would not have cared where it was just so long as she could be with him. But Cyprus sounded like heaven on earth.

  ‘Well, I just hope I’m still here when you get back,’ Charlotte said.

  ‘Oh Gran!’ Barbara reached out and took her hand. ‘Whatever are you talking about? I don’t like to hear you say things like
that.’

  ‘You never know,’ Charlotte said seriously. ‘I’m not getting any younger, Babs.’

  ‘You have years and years yet and you know it.’

  Charlotte smiled. The prospect of dying held no fears for her now.

  ‘I don’t know, Babs. But when my time comes I shall be ready. I’ve been lucky really. I’ve seen all of you settled – not just my children, but my grandchildren too. There’s our Fred and Bob safely home, our Alec going to marry Joan, and you …’ Her eyes softened. Barbara was the favourite of her grandchildren, there was no denying it. She was glad she had lived to see Barbara truly happy. ‘No, since your grandpa died I feel I’m just biding my time really. I’ve had my life.’

  ‘Gran!’ Barbara scolded her. ‘We’ve come to share our happiness with you, not talk about dying!’

  ‘I know.’ Charlotte patted her hand, then moved away decisively to put the cosy on the teapot. ‘And I am happy, really I am. Now – tell me all about Cyprus!’

  They stayed with her for a pleasant half hour, but when they got up to go she was not sorry. Much as she loved to see them she did get so tired these days.

  In the doorway she hugged them all and kissed Hope.

  ‘You’ll be a big girl when you get back, my love. Gran won’t know you!’

  ‘We’ll send you photographs – lots of photographs,’ Barbara promised.

  ‘I shall look forward to that. Well …’

  ‘Bye, Gran.’

  ‘Bye, my love.’

  They got into the car and drove off, waving until they were out of sight. Charlotte sighed and shook her head. The world was such a small place these days – Ted in Australia and now Barbara off to Cyprus. She would get out Jack’s old atlas in a minute and look to see exactly where it was. But an island on a map would mean little to her. In all her life she had scarcely been outside Somerset, never mind England. It was almost impossible for her to imagine foreign climes.

  She paused for a moment in the doorway of her home. Beneath her the valley spread out, grey in the afternoon, the market hall and the horseshoe of shops, the pit chimney and headgear, the church tower. A cloud of smoke rose from the railway line where a train shunted to merge with the grey sky and from one of the factories where wagons were made a hooter sounded four o’clock, proof, if any were needed, that Hillsbridge had returned to normal after the enforced silence of wartime.

  On the opposite side of the valley the ranks of houses ran like long grey fingers and beyond them she could see the batches, girdled with fir trees on their lower slopes, rising like the black guardian mountains she had always thought them to be.

  As she stood there it seemed to her that she was transported back in time to the day when she had first seen them, standing with her arm tucked through that of James, a young bride surveying the town that was to be her home. It was so long ago now, so much had happened, and yet it seemed like only yesterday. ‘I think it’s wonderful!’ she had said – and so it had been. With all the anxieties and heartaches, with all the hard work and worry, with all the losses and crosses, she knew she would not have changed any of it.

  She half turned to look along the Rank where she had lived ever since that day and noticed her door ajar behind her.

  ‘Good Lord, I’m letting in all this cold!’ Charlotte said to herself. ‘And I reckon if I’m lucky there’s still a cup of tea left in that pot.’

  With an impatient, if slightly rheumaticky movement, Charlotte turned her back on the valley that had seen all her triumphs and sorrows, went back inside the house and shut the door.

  Copyright

  First published in 1988 by Century

  This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world

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  ISBN 978-1-4472-3516-3 EPUB

  ISBN 978-1-4472-3517-0 POD

  Copyright © Janet Tanner, 1988

  The right of Janet Tanner to be identified as the

  author of this work has been asserted in accordance

  with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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