The Black Mountains (20 page)

“I don't know so much,” James reiterated stubbornly. “And I think you ought to stop going down there to work, Lotty.”

She set the knife down with a clatter. “ Whatever for?”

“Because whether it's right or not, it's what people are saying. You'll get a bad name for yourself. They'll call you a German lover.”

“That's nonsense!” Charlotte said.

But James went on: “ I want you to give notice. If you write it out, one of the boys can take it down to him.”

“Now?” Charlotte exclaimed. “ You mean today?”

“There's no time like the present,” James said. “I don't want you associating with Germans, Lotty. Nothing's too bad for them. One of the blokes at work was only saying today, his wife's nephew has been hit in the face and lost the sight of both his eyes. And he's just twenty-one. It's terrible, what they'm doing.”

She nodded “I won't argue with that. But it's got nothing to do with Mr Smith. It's a good job I've got there, and good money. And goodness knows, we can do with it, with all our Jack needs.”

She saw James's face tighten and knew that she had said the wrong thing. Only last week, Jack had come home needing a new cap, because the other boys had taken his while fooling about on the railway station, and somehow it had been lost. James had been furious, saying boys like them should know better.

“I don't care, Lotty,” he said firmly. “ There's not much I put my foot down over, but this is one time when I'm going to. Now, write out that notice, or I shall.”

She could see his mind was made up, and she knew it was no good to argue any more. Much as she loved the job, it would have to go, or there'd be more trouble than it was worth. And besides, if this rumour gathered strength, there wouldn't be a job for her to go to much longer. People wouldn't shop at the County Stores if they thought Mr Smith was a German. In fact, there didn't seem to have been as many customers as usual this afternoon.

“All right,” she said. “ But I'm finishing the week out, James. There's a floor down there that wants washing, and I'm not leaving Mr Smith in the lurch.”

James, knowing this was the best he could hope for, remained silent, but there was a strained atmosphere around the table as they ate their evening meal, which the boys didn't help by harking back to the subject of Mrs Smith again.

“I reckon she's got a wireless set in that box thing she sits in,” Ted speculated.

“She could hide earphones in those coils round her ears,” Fred added.

“And what do you think she'd hear in Hillsbridge worth passing on?” Charlotte asked crossly.

What was this war doing to people? she wondered later as she set out down the hill, her notice in an envelope in her pocket. As if it wasn't bad enough that Bert Cottle had been killed, Colwyn Yelling wounded, and the unknown boy blinded, now people were beginning to turn against one another, making mischief where there should be none.

It was a dark night, but fine, and a light in the room above the shop told Charlotte that the Smiths were at home. She did not need to disturb them, however. She let herself in through the backdoor with her own key, took off her coat in the small stock room, and set about filling a pail with water.

As yet she had not decided the best way of giving her notice to Mr Smith, and she thought about it again as she carried the steaming pail into the shop and went back for her broom and scrubbing brush. Under normal circumstances, she would have come out with it straight, but these were not normal circumstances.

“Drat the war!” she said loudly. Why had it had to come along and make complications just when everything had been sailing along so nicely?

When she had swept the floor, she took her pail of water and scrubbing brush and went down on her hands and knees behind the counter.

She began to scrub vigorously, venting her anger on the floor. So engrossed, was she, she did not notice the voices outside, or if she did, she thought nothing of them. And when the first explosive crash came, it made her jump so much that her heart seemed to stop beating.

Automatically she leaped up, but the edge of the counter caught her shoulder, knocking her down again and half-stunning her with shock and pain. She felt water slopping from the bucket around her knees, and still she didn't know what was happening until there was another crash and another, and an awful, nerve-jarring rumble like thunder right beside her. As it died away, she realized it was glass breaking and tins tumbling down.

She struggled to her feet again, and the sound of voices came at her through the broken window—not one voice, or two, but a cacophony of noise rising like an angry tide. As she stood, frozen, gripping the counter with shaking hands, there was another crash and the glass door shattered. At once, the black baize blind billowed out alarmingly. A stone, flying into the shop through the broken down. Then the lamp went out.

Shaking like a leaf, Charlotte edged along the counter. In the glow of the street-lamp she could see a dozen or more men, brandishing sticks, stones and bottles. She drew back, but too late. They had seen her.

“There he is, the German bugger!” someone yelled. “ Let's get him, boys!”

Another stone came hurtling through the window, showering her with fragments of glass, and as she backed away into the dark interior she realized what was happening. The story of Algie Smith being a spy must have spread, and these men had come after him!

Panic flooded through her then, making her go first hot, then cold. They were like madmen—madmen! But she could still get out through the back door if she was quick.

She turned wildly, but her elbow caught the scale and pile of weights, knocking them over, so that they crashed to the floor. She stopped again, a sob catching in her throat. But at that same moment another kind of dread swamped her.

Algie Smith and his wife were upstairs, trapped, and these men were in murderous mood. If someone didn't stop them, heaven only knew what they would do.

Undecided, she stood her ground, as other men followed the first through the window. Tins of treacle, bottles of gripewater and a display of Lux wafers went everywhere, as the men barged their way in.

Then one of the men saw her standing there and stopped in his tracks.

“Mrs Hall, what are you doing here?”

The men behind him were too drunk, or too enraged, to care.

“Come on, out of the bloody way! We want the German bastard. We're going to make him bloody suffer!”

Charlotte took a step backwards and almost tripped over the broom she had left propped against the counter. Automatically she caught at it, holding it out in front of her threateningly.

“You keep away from me!” she cried.

To her surprise, the men stopped, looking at her uncertainly, but at that moment she caught sight of a youth climbing on to the counter and reaching up to swing on the overhead cash railway. Without even stopping to think, she rushed across to him.

“Get down from there!” she shouted, outrage lending her courage. “Get down before I knock you down!”

He backed away from her threshing broom, and, still holding on to the wire railway and its pulley, he fell backwards to the floor. As he fell, there was a sickening sound of tearing plaster and splintering wood, and slowly the cash railway separated itself from the ceiling. One by one its wires fell, draping themselves around the men in the shop and dangling drunkenly from the corners of the wooden cage that was Mrs Smith's lofty office.

Charlotte watched in horror and disbelief. Her beloved cash railway was ruined! Ruined! Never again would the wooden cups hum along the wire. Never again would it return exactly the right amount of change for her to hand to a waiting customer.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, the lot of you!” she cried. “ Grown men, are you? Well, if you want to fight Germans, go and join the army. Or does it take twenty of you to get one man and his wife? Get out! Get out before the bobbies get here and arrest the lot of you!”

And to her amazement, they went. Ashamed, suddenly, they turned and shuffled away, some through the window, stuffing their pockets with tins and bottles as they went, some through the shattered glass door. Sergeant Eyles, who had rushed to the scene with as many burly constables as he could muster as soon as he heard the disturbance, arrived at just the right moment. He was able to round them up, and take them back to the police station.

When he heard the police outside, Algie Smith, who had been hiding with his wife in the stoutest wardrobe they owned, braved it down the stairs, and found Charlotte sitting on an overturned box in the wrecked shop. She was shaking from head to foot, perspiration dripping down her face and into the hands that were pressed tight against her mouth. Beside her lay the broom, its head nesting against her soaking feet.

“Are you all right, Mrs Hall?” he asked anxiously. “I didn't dare come down. I thought they wouldn't hurt you…”

She brought her face out of her hands with a jerk, looking at the wreckage all around her, the scattered tins and boxes, all awash in the water that had spilled from her pail, and the broken glass. Then she drew her breath in sharply.

“They swung on the cash railway!” she said, her eyes dark and brooding. “ They've broken the cash railway!”

NEXT MORNING, the men who had been caught leaving the shop were brought up before the magistrates and sentenced to seven days' hard labour. Half the town were incensed by this, and the Smiths, fearing another attack, stayed only long enough to do an inventory on the stock left in the shop before getting on a train back to London, never to be seen in Hillsbridge again.

Charlotte, although shaken, would have defied James and insisted on going down to help them clean up the mess, but next morning her ankle was so swollen she could not get her shoe on, and she guessed she must have twisted it during the confrontation without even realizing it.

By the time she was able to hobble down the hill, the windows of the County Stores had been boarded up, and the flat above remained unoccupied. She stood on the pavement outside for a moment, and there was an ache of emptiness inside her. The loss of the cash railway had got through to her as nothing else had. Trivial, it might be, compared with the terrible things that were happening in France.

But for Charlotte, involvement in the war had begun.

One evening in early December, a concert party was in full swing on the rickety wooden stage in the Victoria Hall. Horace Parfitt, whose antics had kept the people of Hillsbridge entertained for twenty years and more, had already performed his country-yokel act in battered hat and smock, and been rewarded by enthusiastic cheers from the audience, and now Grace O'Halloran was charming them with a selection of music hall favourites, her sweet, clear voice carrying easily through the vaulted windows to the square below.

“She's a cracker and no mistake!” Horace commented as he changed his smock for the Victorian lady's evening dress he needed to wear for his next act. “ I'm surprised you haven't been after her, young Ted me lad.”

Ted Hall laughed, but before he could reply, Stanley Bristow, who ran the concert party, had spoken for him.

“If I know you, you're after her yourself, you wicked old goat! I heard about the extra practice you wanted to put into that turn you're going to do with her. “A Hole In My Bucket”, indeed! It's a hole in something else, if you ask me!”

“You'm jealous, Stanley. Jealous, that's what you be!” Horace returned good-naturedly, and Ted chortled quietly to himself as he left them and crept out into the corridor that led around to the back of the stage. Horace and Stanley never stopped teasing one another. Their banter went on backstage at every concert party and every rehearsal, and occasionally Ted suspected there might a touch of irritation behind their chaff. But since Horace and Stanley had been together in concert parties since before he was born, he didn't suppose it was likely to blow up now. Whatever their differences, the two men had certainly been right about one thing. Grace O'Halloran was a very attractive girl.

He climbed the steps to the stage and craned his neck to watch her. He wasn't sure why he hadn't made a play for Grace. Besides her looks, being O'Halloran's daughter, she had a sort of class about her—an aura of remoteness and self-assurance that made her different from any of the other girls he knew. But he was sure he could win her heart if he really tried. More than once she had looked at him in a way that had seemed to tell him so, her lips slightly parted, head tilted to one side, while her eyes narrowed tantalizingly behind the sweep of long lashes. But something had always held him back from taking up the invitation. Perhaps it was it was a secret fear that Grace, with her teasing ways, might discover that he was less experienced with women than he liked to pretend. But when she looked as delectable as she did this evening, he considered it a chance almost worth taking.

A burst of clapping interrupted his thoughts, and Ted realized that Grace had finished her turn.

“You're on, sir,” she whispered as she passed him, and he tipped his black topper on to the back of his head, waiting for the pianist to bang out the introductory notes of ‘ Burlington Bertie'.

For twenty years, Stanley Bristow's concert party had been the favourite entertainment in Hillsbridge. Not even the coming of the picture house had affected its popularity, and now that the proceeds were going to the war effort, the crowds flocked in more eagerly than ever. They cheered Ted's ‘Burlington Bertie'just as they cheered all the acts, stamping their feet, whistling and calling for more, and Ted felt on top of the world. Nothing, not even the thrill of watching a horse win when you'd staked your last pound on it, could beat this intoxicating moment. He took his last bow and came off stage to find Grace watching him from the top of the steps.