The Black Mountains (74 page)

As the last of them drifted through the gates, Jack heard the door handle rattle, and taking the key from his pocket with fingers that shook, he unlocked the door.

Stella ran to him, catching at his arm and almost sobbing with relief.

“Jack, they're going! What did you say to them? What did you do?”

Suddenly he was more embarrassed than anything.

“I don't know really…”

Mrs O'Halloran took his other hand, holding it tightly between hers.

“Oh, thank you, Mr Hall! Thank you!”

Only Hal himself stood by the window; almost as shamefaced as the men had done.

“Look what they've done to my garden!” he grumbled loudly. “What the hell did they think they were playing at? Those fuchsias are ruined—ruined—and they were just at their best, too!”

Mrs O'Halloran shook her head to express her exasperation with him, but she was smiling all the same.

“Mr Hall, how can we ever repay you?” she asked.

Jack grinned at Stella. “For a start you can give me a large glass of whisky,” he said.

“I DONT KNOW another man in Hillsbridge who'd do what you did today, Jack,” Stella said. “You were very brave.”

It was an hour later and they were sitting in the back garden in the fading golden light. From here, it was impossible to see the havoc the mob had wreaked on the front garden. Above them, the apple trees were heavy with foliage and young growing fruit, and around them the air seemed to be alive with a haze of gnats—all the peace of an English summer evening that made it difficult to believe that the events of the day had really happened at all.

“Oh, I don't know,” Jack began modestly, then laughed. “If you knew how frightened I was, you wouldn't say that.”

Her eyes held his.

“What's that got to do with it? Only idiots are never frightened. It's much braver to be scared out of your wits and still do what you have to. Isn't it?”

He shrugged. “I don't know. Let's change the subject, shall we?”

“To what?” she asked playfully.

“Us,” he said. “Stella, I've missed you like hell.”

Her face had gone solemn. “And I've missed you.”

“What's all this nonsense about you going to London?” he asked her.

She looked away. “I didn't want to stay around here any more. Not after you … Well, there didn't seem any point.”

“Why?” he asked tentatively.

“Because… oh, Jack, what do you want from me? A declaration of undying love?”

He grinned, wishing it were just a joke. “Yes.”

“Well, you won't get it! It's up to the man to take the risk of being turned down. Or so I've always heard. And to think I said you were brave!”

He smiled briefly. She was right, of course. There was nothing to be gained by sitting back in case he got hurt again, any more than there would have been by shrinking from facing the mob, or chickening out when an enemy aircraft was on his tail. Playing it carefully didn't make it any easier. He'd learned that during the last few weeks, but he should have known it anyway. He leaned over, touching her hand.

“Are you calling me a coward?” he teased.

“Maybe,” she teased back.

“No woman is going to do that and get away with it. I can see I'll just have to take the bull by the horns and ask you to marry me.”

“Go on then. I dare you.”

“All right. Will you marry me, Stella?”

“Oh, Jack,” she said. “I thought you'd never ask.”

The teasing had gone from her eyes now, and he could see them only as a mirror for his own feelings.

What the hell had he been worried about? he wondered. Why should he have thought she would be in the least like Rosa? Love swelled in him, drowning all doubts as if they had never been.

Next day, the very old carts, laden with coal, were trundling along in the streets of Hillsbridge, and the pit wheels were turning once more.

The strike was over. But the town would never be quite the same again. Too many jobs had been lost, and the economic climate in the country was such that there could be no regaining them. The depression that had begun in the disillusioned days that followed the war to end all wars would go on until yet another war, another holocaust, rocked the world.

James was among those laid off when the pits went back to work.

“It's about time you had a bit of a rest,” Charlotte said, but beneath the forced cheerfulness, her heart was heavy. With a chest like his, she knew it was unlikely he would ever work again, and the thought was a miserable one. It made her feel the way she did every autumn, watching the green leaves turn to brown and drift down to the gutters, leaving the branches bare and forlorn, the sadness that grew sharper as the sun lost its strength. She had always hated autumn.

“At least our Jim's been taken on again,” she said, determined to look on the bright side. “ What he'd have done with the children to bring up if he'd been out of work for long, I don't know.”

“Talking of children, I suppose we shall have to be thinking about our Harry soon, and what he's going to do,” James said, and Charlotte looked at him in surprise. It was so unlike James to be the one to do any planning for the future it made her a little uneasy.

“We've no need to worry just yet,” she said briskly. “ He's bound to stay on at school for another three years now they've changed the law. But perhaps it would be a good idea if I was to go and see Mr Davies to see if he can get him a scholarship. I shouldn't like him to think we'd done less for him than we did for Jack. He might not be so clever, but he's no fool for all that.”

“No, he's a sharper, though he tries hard to pretend he's not,” James said, and Charlotte nodded. He was right, Harry was a sharper—he would do well. And so might they all, if they'd had the chance…

She shivered. Would it never be completely exorcised, that guilt? Would it be with her to the end of her days?

“I still can't get over our Jack, though,” James went on, shaking his head.

It had been the talk of Hillsbridge when Jack had announced his engagement to Stella O'Halloran, and no one had been more surprised than James. It was hard enough to believe that he was going to be related by marriage to Hal—the boss—and when he stopped to think that he would be related to Dr Oliver Scott as well it made his mind boggle. And Jack had fixed himself up with a job, too. In September he would be taking up a position at a school in Bath, and he and Stella were busy looking for a house.

“What I can't understand is why the boys are settled, and the girls still on the shelf!” he went on.

Charlotte smiled. “They aren't on the shelf. I think our Dolly will make up her mind for this one. And Amy—well, it wouldn't surprise me if she didn't marry up the scale, too. Mr Walker, who defended Ted, was very taken with her, you know.”

James spat impatiently into the fire. “Our Dolly's been engaged quite long enough. It's time she got on with it. And as for Mr Walker, he's far too old for Amy. He must be thirty, if he's a day.”

“You can't pick their husbands and wives for them,” Charlotte said. “I've learned that. Although…” She broke off, a small smile playing around her mouth as she remembered how she had broken up Jack's affair with Rosa. “Maybe sometimes you can give things a bit of a helping hand, or otherwise!”

Outside the scullery door, Nipper began to scratch and whine, and she got up to let him in. He was getting old now and couldn't see too well, but he was contented enough, and always managed to find the energy to greet Ted enthusiastically when he came home, which, these days, seemed to be more and more often. Three weeks ago, he'd been home, and he was coming again this weekend, and from the tone of the letter she'd had from him this week, Charlotte thought it sounded as if he might be going to stay for longer than usual. She supposed the difficulty in getting a job could be a reason, for although Ted would be no more likely to find employment here than anywhere else, at least he would have a roof over his head that he didn't have to pay rent for, and three meals a day placed on the table in front of him.

As she came back into the kitchen with Nipper padding softly at her heels, James rose, re-tying the silk muffler in the neck of his shirt.

“Well, Mother, I think I'll just walk down to the pub for half an hour. Our Jim said he might look in, and I've got a few cabbage plants I want to give him.”

Charlotte smiled. Some things never changed.

“Get off with you then,” she said.

As the door closed after him, she went to the cupboard, and took out the Royal scrap-book Jack had kept for her when he was a boy. Then she carried it over to the window where it was light, and sitting down on the hard-backed chair, began lovingly to turn the pages. It was all there, the story of an age, between the dog-eared covers. And although she knew it almost by heart, it never palled. There was the picture of the King and Queen in their coronation robes, and one of the king and the Prince of Wales reviewing the fleet just before the war. And even a picture of King Albert of the Belgians, who had fought with his people in the trenches when his country was invaded, had been included.

In the failing light, Charlotte sat poring over the book. These were her memories. Nobody could take them away from her.

IT WAS a warm Sunday afternoon in August, and Rosa Clements was singing to herself as she crossed the field behind the post office and general stores at Withydown.

Six months ago she had moved in here, helping in the store and sharing the flat above with Mrs Cray, the elderly widowed owner, and she was happier than she had ever been in her life. She had a certain status here that she had never had before, and the people who came into the shop treated her as they found her, instead of looking down their noses at her as the people of Hillsbridge had done. Three miles was far enough to leave a reputation behind, and Rosa was attractive enough in both looks and manner for her new acquaintances to give her the benefit of the doubt.

As for her living quarters, Rosa had never known such luxury. She had a room of her own, filled with furniture that had always been treated with respect, instead of the battered junk she had been used to. The jug and basin that stood on her wash-stand did not have a single crack in them, and the design of pale pink rosebuds and darker, fully blown roses pleased her. Even the mirror was still perfect, so that when she looked at her face, it did not impose blemishes that were not really there. Without doubt, the greatest luxury of all was the inside privy, or W. C. as Mrs Cray called it. Sharing the flat posed no problems. Mrs Cray was good-natured and easy-going, and she liked Rosa. Best of all, she never questioned her as to where she was going in her own time. If she had, Rosa would have forgotten all the other advantages and left, because to her, nothing in the world was more important than her freedom.

Most evenings, when the shop had been tidied and she and Mrs Cray had eaten and cleared away their evening meal, she went for a walk along the lanes or across the fields, and it was the same at weekends, too.

Yes, she was happy, and her only aching regret, still, was Ted.

She had done her best for him in court, and she had expected nothing in return. But the day after the trial, when the Halls had invited her around for a cup of tea, she had thought for a minute that things might be different. There had been something in the way Ted had looked at her that had given her the idea, a brief glance that had set her heart singing and the blood pumping through her veins in an excited torrent. And a feeling of closeness, too, as if he, like her, was remembering some of the things they had shared. Afterwards, when he had gone away again, she had told herself it was nothing but wishful thinking. It was a long time since she had been so sure that he would one day be hers, and looking back it seemed just a dream, wonderful, but childish.

But for all that, she still clung to the conviction that no one but Ted would do for her. She had tried to forget him with Jack, and that had been disastrous. Now, if she could not have Ted, she was determined to make a life without a man.

Briefly, that August afternoon, her mind went back to the days when she had first learned for sure the truth about her father and run away—from Jack, from Hillsbridge, and everyone who had known her. She had gone, for a while, with the fair, thinking that if they were really her people, she belonged with them and the roving life. But it had not worked out as she had hoped. She had found the close-knit family atmosphere even more claustrophobic than the four walls of a house, and in spite of what she knew about herself, she had almost looked down on the gypsies who might, or might not, be her blood-related kinfolk. She left them even before the court case, finding work as a live-in maid, and when on one of her visits to see her father and brothers, she had decided to apply for the job in the post office at Withydown, it had been like coming home in more senses than one.

Now that she was only three miles away, it seemed she went back to Greenslade Terrace less often. Walter was married again, to Molly Hamblin, and he never seemed as pleased to see her as she would have liked. Perhaps because he knows he's not my father, she thought, with the extra sensitivity that the knowledge had brought to her.

They no longer needed her, and now that she was back in the countryside that had the familiar smell of Somerset—that indefinable combination of corn and coal-dust, green grass and pit-chimney smoke—she needed them less, too.

And so she hardly ever saw Ted. He was away, too, still getting the wanderlust out of his blood, and their visits rarely coincided. But the last time she had been in the rank she had seen him, and she had turned away, as shy as if she were a young girl again. That was the result of thinking about him too much!

But that summer afternoon, as she climbed the stile into the lane, he was still on her mind, and as the front of the post office and general stores came into view, she started. The man standing on the pavement in front of the shuttered window might almost have been Ted! His back was towards her, but the set of his shoulders and his thick, fair hair…