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The two women were so close that Helen could have reached out and touched them had they been there in the normal way but experience had shown her that if she opened her eyes they would cease to exist and they could have no awareness of their auditor sitting on the plinth of the war-memorial obelisk. She was not of their time. Their conversation was trivial, local gossip, trouble with a neighbour’s goat, a sick child, and of interest only because it had taken place some eighty years earlier. Helen was the Helen Walters of ‘Us Girls’ which catered for the clothing needs of the over- sixties woman. It was an idea that had come to her when she had found herself in this age-group and, while still interested in clothes, had had difficulty in finding anything really flattering. Fashion seemed to be blind to anything but youth and stick figures and yet we live in a world with an aging population. Surely this was a growth market. It was not only the young women who wanted to look nice and that could often mean no more than wearing what was personally appropriate. Larger women had dress shops to meet their exclusive needs. Why shouldn’t older women have something similar? The ‘Us Girls’ title was based on the premise that women remain girls to the end of their life. She still thought of herself that way. She had taken over a failing dress shop that styled itself a boutique while trying to be all things to everyone. She had practically given its stock away. Her new staff had been over-sixties. A rule that continued. They must never be saleswomen. They needed to have good taste when it came clothes, a genuine interest in people, be absolutely honest in their advice, be someone that you would not hesitate to ask for advice, and they must be extremely tactful. It is easy to tell a woman that she looks super in something but not so easy to convince her that a garment really does her no credit particularly when she has set her mind to it. They had to be practical psychologists. The garments stocked were carefully classic and timeless with the planned obsolescence of fashion firmly rejected. The whole object was to have a woman walk out with something that enhanced her looks and, hopefully, would continue to do so for some years to come: maybe give her an added spring in her step. The putting of sales secondary might have seemed a sure road to disaster but it had not proved so. Few businesses can have achieved the same level of customer loyalty and repeat sales. It came to be that a woman trying on a garment in one of the changing rooms would come out and seek the appraisal not only of the staff but of other customers, even complete strangers. Some would pirouette with almost childish exuberance, dignity in abeyance, and strut an imaginary cat-walk. There developed a club atmosphere of women helping women and any criticism tended to be taken in good part as being meant constructively. Larger premises had become necessary but that was as far as Helen had been prepared to go. She had been advised strongly on a number of occasions to open branches elsewhere, make the most of her idea before someone else did, but she had asked herself, “What for?” Her own needs were more than adequately met and she had no living relative to pass the business to. She had never married and while that gave her no cause for regret, having no daughter, another Helen, did. She was the sixth in a line of eldest or only daughters named Helen. The result of her reluctance had been a rash of blatant copies with none anywhere near as successful as the original. Others had even taken Helen’s concept and franchised it but she didn’t mind. If older women benefited that was all to the good.

There had never been a road into this valley and Helen, in denims and strong boots, had walked up a stream-bed through a narrow cleft to reach it. The boots were off and her socks dried beside her in a rather wan morning sun. It was a bleak place lacking soil and with crowding hills that severely limited the hours of direct sunlight. It must have been hell in winter. Only one thing could have persuaded people to live here. Gold! A prospector, Jasper Bro, had followed traces of alluvial gold up a tributary from the main river, into the sub-tributary that passed through the cleft, to find the quartz reef from which it had eroded. He had sold his mining rights to big-money-interests overseas. Quartz mining with its necessary stamper battery and refinery requires a great deal of start-up capital and particularly so in this case. It was the lure of another new find that interested him anyway. The first problem had been access. The cleft was the only possible means of entry into this narrow valley and the stream occupied the whole bottom of the cleft. With the stamper battery and refining plant needing to be situated beside the main river some miles away, a rail link had been necessary. This had been built on trestles above the stream with parts of the rock wall having to be blasted away to allow the passage of the rather small tank locomotive and its trucks. Quite a large town had sprung up with shops and various other businesses, a school, boarding houses, a dance hall, churches, lodges. It had even had a band rotunda for like every other town of its time it had had its own brass band. Now there was nothing left to see but this obelisk and a few tumbled headstones in a wilderness graveyard. Souvenir hunters had long since found that there were no more pickings. Helen’s grandparents and mother had lived here. Her grandfather, one of the skilled Cornish miners chosen by the over-seas principals to work the difficult seam, had died in that war that was to end all wars. Alone in the world, Helen’s roots had become important to her. She had a photograph of the town’s departing menfolk, proud in their new uniforms, parading down the main street. That photograph showed a surprisingly large town. Her grandfather had been somewhere to the rear but she had a stiffly-posed-in-uniform studio photograph. She had seen his name at the Menin Gate among those Dominion troops whose burial place is unknown and been present in the evening when the buglers of the Ypres Fire Brigade sounded “The Last Post”. She had gone to Belgium for those very reasons. She had been both moved and exasperated.–‘Men and their bloody wars!–His name was also on this obelisk with all the others who had died from here. On learning of his death, her grandmother had sold the house to work, and room with her young daughter, Helen’s mother, in one of the boarding houses. In a few years it was to prove fortunate that she had sold the house. The reef became difficult to work and gold prices slumped so the mine closed and the town’s reason for being disappeared. Houses and businesses were immediately worthless. There was a rash of fires but insurance companies are far from stupid. Her grandmother had died shortly after this leaving her mother to be raised by a family friend. Her father she knew little about and could scarcely remember. He had been adopted back in the tight-lipped days. Walters was the name of his adoptive parents and she had been unable to discover his true parentage. He had been killed in the second-edition of the European war. She had sat first in this same spot about ten years previously having just picked her way carefully up that same treacherous stream, wet to her knees as today, and with her boots and socks off as now. She had closed her eyes to enjoy a similar sun and heard the town come to life. Open her eyes and there was nothing. Close them and there was bustle all around, the crunch of hooves and iron tires on gravel. The fussy little ore train had rattled up on its long gone trestles and the plaintive wail of its whistle had hurled itself backwards and forwards from crag to crag. It had been the same on her subsequent trips. Sometimes town’s-people stood nearby and talked as was now the case. At other times someone would share her seat on the obelisk base. Usually it was small boys who insisted on whistling which seemed to be a common practice of the time but even when they were silent, she could recognize their presence and their approximate age. She had been drawn here the first time by simple curiosity but she had been driven since by a compulsion that she could not explain. She could only be dropping into a very narrow time slot. This memorial had been erected in 1921 and the town had died just a few years later. It was unsettling to have this hindsight cum foresight that disaster was so near and be unable to tell anyone. Not even those who meant so much to her. They would still be living here and, even if she could not help them, it was her continued hope that she might at least hear their voices. She was sure that she would recognize them immediately. The two women moved off, still talking, and were almost out of earshot when a hand touched Helen’s shoulder. “Are you unwell Mrs.Trethowen?” Helen opened her eyes. It was Elsie Brommers their towns most vindictive gossip. And she must be unwell, must have taken a turn of some sort for why else would she be sitting here in this embarrassing state of dishevelment? And why of all people did it have to be Elsie who approached her? Elsie’s show of concern would be—-as it always was—-fishing! It was unwise to tell her anything. AND YET!! Helen had the feeling that there was something that she should be telling everyone, even the likes of Elsie. Something that she had been made privy to. BUT WHAT WAS IT?