A Sixpenny Christmas (40 page)

She and Ellen went upstairs together and followed Lana into Nonny’s room to collect the presents from the chest of drawers. In time-honoured tradition, Molly would put them beneath the tree in the parlour before anyone else came downstairs in the morning, ready to be handed out after the family had eaten Christmas dinner and listened to the Queen’s speech. She was just about to leave the room, her arms full of interesting packages, when Lana spoke up. ‘What’s that one, Auntie Molly?’ she asked. ‘The one in plain brown paper?’

Molly had opened her mouth to say that it was nothing to do with her when she gave a squeal of dismay. ‘Oh, how awful,’ she said, her voice trembling. ‘It’s Mrs Pritchard’s medication. They handed it to me in this brown paper bag, with a list of instructions. I forgot all about it, and put my parcels on top, then asked you to bring them up here when you had a moment, Ellen. Oh, my God! Mrs Pritchard was supposed to have a dose before she went to bed and another after her first meal of the day. Oh, whatever shall I do?’

The small party arrived at Cae Hic after a relatively smooth journey, for Rhodri, knowing how frail his mother was, had driven with the greatest care. The weather remained extremely cold, and by the time they entered Cae Hic’s farmyard flakes of snow had begun to drift lazily down from the lowering sky. Nonny was anxious lest the sight of the flakes might upset the invalid, but Mrs Pritchard’s face remained calm, except when a remark was addressed directly to her, whereupon the
right side of her mouth would twitch into a little smile. When the car stopped as close to the house as Rhodri could get it, Nonny abandoned her post beside the old woman and ran to the kitchen door. She knew it would be unlocked, did not think the old couple had even got a key, though she also knew that they shot a large bolt across before they went to bed each night, particularly when there were gypsies in the vicinity. Now, she entered the kitchen and saw by the glow from the damped-down fire that there was a lamp standing on the table, hopefully full of oil and ready for lighting, as well as several candles and a tall container of spills. She lit one at the fire and carried it over to the lamp, and then the half-dozen candles in their old-fashioned holders which were grouped on the Welsh dresser. Then she checked that there was no obstacle which might impede old Mrs Pritchard’s progress to bed, for she had promised her parents that she would see the old lady tucked up before doing anything else.

Sometimes, Nonny told herself, it was a good thing to have a small compact house, or cottage rather, for Cae Hic was one-storey, because it meant no stairs. As you entered the big kitchen the main bedroom was on the left and Rhodri’s little slip of a room was on the right. You had to walk through it to reach the dairy, and that was the extent of the house. Nonny decided on impulse that she would advise Rhodri and Mr Pritchard to put the old lady into one of the creaking wicker armchairs to have a rest after the drive. Molly had sent a flask of hot chicken broth in the hamper of goodies she had prepared, and Nonny thought that she would get Mr Pritchard to give his wife some of it in the feeding cup
the hospital had sent home with her whilst she made the bedroom as comfortable as possible. There was a paraffin stove in there which she would light to take off the worst of the chill, and when she had done that she would renew the hot water bottles which her mother had packed around the invalid and put them in the bed. By the time the broth was drunk – it would be a slow business because Dafydd Pritchard was shaky, nervous of doing something wrong for his poor dear wife – everything would be ready for settling the old lady down for the night. After that she would go out with Rhodri to see that all was well on the farm. Rhodri had only joined them at Cefn Farm after he had done all the chores at Cae Hic, of course, but she knew he would want to check everything one more time before seeking his own bed.

Nonny was still making up the fire, riddling the ash and putting on fresh fuel, when the back door was flung open and Rhodri appeared with his mother in his arms, looking as though she weighed no more than a feather.

‘Put her in the armchair whilst her room warms up. I’ve got the kettle on and I’ll refill her hot water bottles so we can get her into a warm bed,’ Nonny said instructively. She grinned at Rhodri. ‘You’ve always said I was bossy; well now you know that bossiness can come in useful at times. As soon as we’ve settled your parents we’ll check the stock. Where’s Spot? He’ll round up any sheep which managed to escape you earlier.’

Rhodri grinned too. ‘Ah well, being bossed by a girl as pretty as you is a downright pleasure; good as a Christmas present,’ he said.

Nonny stared at him. ‘Was that a compliment,’ she asked suspiciously, ‘or were you just fooling around?’

‘Of course,’ Rhodri said soothingly, and it was not until afterwards that Nonny realised he had not answered her question at all.

Having settled the old woman in one of the fireside chairs, with Mr Pritchard encouraging her to drink the broth from the spout of the borrowed feeding cup, Nonny and Rhodri began to gather together a couple of pillows and a number of blankets. Nonny opened her mouth to ask about sheets and pillowcases, then closed it again. She remembered her mother telling her that bedlinen was an unaffordable luxury so far as a good few small hill farmers were concerned. ‘And anyway, getting straight between the blankets is a lot warmer, if not quite as hygienic,’ Molly had told the young Nonny when her daughter had returned from spending a happy day ostensibly helping Mrs Pritchard to do her weekly bake and make the beds but probably, Molly had thought, proving more of a liability than an asset.

So now Nonny made no comment on the lack of sheets but helped Rhodri to pull two chairs together, add a stool and spread two sheepskins in place of a mattress, and then smiled at her host when Rhodri asked whether the homemade little bed would do her. ‘And it is little, indeed,’ he said rather ruefully. ‘A good thing it is that you aren’t a strapping wench because if you were your legs would be hanging out at one end and your head at the other.’

Nonny giggled. ‘What you’re trying to say is I’m an undersized weakling,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Now, I know I said we’d arrive back at our place before breakfast, but I think we should be practical, and that means checking
the fuel in the Aga and building up the fire and damping it down so that when you return here after breakfast to do your chores tomorrow the kitchen at least will be warm.’

‘Right,’ Rhodri said briskly. ‘A good thing it is that we’ve really only the one room; Mam and Da thought a parlour was swanky, seeing as how there’s only the three of us.’ He cast a contented glance round the big, old-fashioned kitchen, still earth-floored, the walls whitewashed, the Aga casting out a most welcome warmth to supplement the heat from the fire. Rhodri indicated the glowing flames. ‘I reckon you’ll be snug as a bug even if you are sleeping in a kitchen instead of a bedroom, and taking your morning
paned
in an earthenware mug instead of a nice china cup.’ He cocked an eyebrow at her. ‘Don’t tell me you’ll miss the parlour; if we had one it would only be two fires to light instead of one.’

Nonny saw that he was grinning, also saw something she had never suspected before: Rhodri was not exactly ashamed of the way he and his parents lived, but in some strange way he was wishing things were different, that the Pritchards had the same sort of lifestyle as the Robertses.

So, bearing this in mind, she, too, glanced around the big kitchen. ‘I shan’t regret anything,’ she said firmly. ‘I’ll sleep like a log once I get into bed, but don’t you think we’d best drink our cocoa and have a couple of biscuits before just checking the stock? It was a cold drive and I reckon we could all do with a hot drink.’

Rhodri nodded and went over to the stove where the kettle was hopping its lid. He made four cups of cocoa,
then produced a bottle of something from a cupboard by the sink and proceeded to pour a tot of what was obviously alcohol – brandy, Nonny thought, wrinkling her nose with distaste – into the first two cups. He was about to do the same to the remaining two when Nonny shot out a hand and stopped him. ‘No thanks; cocoa will be enough for me,’ she said firmly. ‘And as for your mother, she’s on some pretty strong medication and mustn’t drink spirits.’

‘Right you are. But I wasn’t trying to get you drunk, you know, just to warm you up,’ Rhodri said rather reproachfully. ‘As for Mam, as you can see I’ve not even made her a full drink. She’s supposed to take her medication before she goes to sleep. I’m not sure whether it’s nasty, which most medicines seem to be, or quite nice, but if it’s nasty she’ll appreciate a mouthful of cocoa to take the taste away. I’ll make certain that the mug she gets only contains cocoa, however, Miss Prim.’

As Nonny had suspected, it took some while for Mrs Pritchard to finish the broth, so she heartily agreed with Rhodri when he went through to the bedroom and stood the mug of cocoa down on the bedside table, telling his father not to let his mam drink it until after her medication. ‘It’s not a full mug – less than a quarter, in fact – but enough to take the taste away if the medicine’s nasty. And whilst she finishes the broth and you get her medication down her Nonny and I will take Spot and check that the beasts are all safely settled down for the night. You do know the medicine when you see it, Da? I believe she has a different sort mornings and evenings.’

His father grunted assent. ‘Go you off, the pair of you,’
he said gruffly. ‘Take the big electric torch by the back door and don’t let Spot scare the sheep.’

Rhodri laughed at the idea that their aged and experienced sheepdog could scare anything, then he and Nonny muffled themselves once more in their outer clothing. Rhodri checked that the fire had been damped down, then pushed open the back door and came to an abrupt halt. He turned to stare at his companion, eyes narrowing as they both stepped into the farmyard and into the whirling snow. ‘When did this start?’ he asked through the woollen scarf muffling his mouth. ‘Good thing the beasts are all in; the horses prefer to be out, but because I suspected that the weather might change for the worse I brought them in with the cows. It’ll make it easier to check them; easier to keep foxes and badgers from pestering them too.’

Nonny opened her mouth to point out that to the best of her knowledge badgers were solitary creatures, not interested in farm stock so far as she knew, but got out no more than a few words before snow filled her mouth. Instead she punched her companion in the biceps and laughed at his pretended yelp of pain. ‘Have you closed the poultry house yet?’ she asked. ‘It’s one thing to keep the beasts in their stalls but I should think the hens will have gone stir crazy if you shut them up whilst it was still light. It sometimes seems to me that hens get as much of their grub pecking away between the cobbles as they do out of the meal bucket.’

‘Ah, it’s clear to see that you come from a big farm and meself from a small one,’ Rhodri pointed out. ‘On market days and such, if we can persuade Mam to leave the farm and come into Wrexham or Ruthin with us,
then we close the poultry in before we leave, which is quite early in the morning. We scatter corn all over the floor and even in the nesting boxes, and searching it out and squabbling for possession of every grain keeps the hens happy until we’re able to release them into the yard in safety.’ Rhodri chuckled. ‘I’ve heard you say often and often that if you decide to marry one day it will be to a farmer; most of us hill farmers are in a small way, so unless you drop lucky you’ll have a lot of learning to do. My mam knows how to make a ha’penny do the work of a penny and sixpence do the work of a shilling . . .’

‘So do I!’ Nonny said indignantly, having to raise her voice against the increasing shriek of the wind. ‘So do Mum and Dad, because even if they’re finding things a bit easier now, when they first came to Cefn Farm it was a hand to mouth existence. In fact, Mum was only saying the other day that if it wasn’t for the kitchen garden and the home-grown vegetables and fruit we wouldn’t be having the sort of Christmas she’s got planned.’ She laughed as they dodged into the cowshed, warm and sweet with the scent of the cows’ breath and their milk. ‘She used to say the Christmas after I was born was a sixpenny Christmas because none of the presents she and Dad bought cost more than that, but of course I was only a matter of days old, so I didn’t care one way or the other. Well, children don’t count the cost of what they’re given, do they? I can remember Chris and myself getting as much fun out of the cardboard box Mum had brought the groceries home in as we would have if it had contained the pedal car that we both wanted.’

‘Did you ever get a pedal car?’ Rhodri asked, curiously.
‘I never did, but I had a bicycle when I was quite young. When the Yanks went home, anyway. Apparently they abandoned heaps of bicycles – couldn’t very well take them home to the States – and an uncle of mine who had worked at one of the USAF airfields asked if he could have one of the smaller ones for his nephew. I’ll grant the Yanks this much: they were generous to a fault, so I got my rusty old bicycle and they gave my uncle a whole quid to get it put right. Of course we put it right ourselves, me and Da, and the quid went into the kitty, so’s if I got a puncture or needed new batteries for my lights they were paid for, so to speak.’

In the dim torchlight, Nonny grinned at her companion. ‘How do you think me and Chris got our bicycles? I suppose you thought they came straight from the cycle shop?’ she said derisively. ‘They didn’t. Chris was thirteen when the Post Office issued new bikes for their staff in what they described as “difficult rural areas”. That’s why his has got that huge basket on the front. And I got mine at about the same age when Auntie Ellen saw an advert in the
Echo
for a lady’s bicycle going cheap. Ten bob it cost, and it’s taken me all over the place with only a couple of punctures when I expected too much of it.’

Rhodri laughed and took her hand in a light clasp. ‘And I was brought up in a dog kennel, given nothing but tea leaves to eat and rainwater to drink,’ he said teasingly, and Nonny saw the flash of his teeth as he grinned at her. ‘Come on, let’s bolt for the back door. The snow’s not easing off at all. I think we’ll have a full blown blizzard by morning.’