Finders and Keepers (28 page)

‘So he can tell us what we already know?' David sneered. ‘Wounds take longer to heal in old animals.'

‘Then she is getting better?' Harry glanced at the wheelbarrows balancing in the back, and slowed the car so the speedometer barely registered, before turning through the arch into the farmyard.

‘Park over there.' Ignoring Harry's question, David pointed to the building next to the barn. ‘We store the fleeces in there.'

‘Mary,' Martha shouted from the open doorway of the house, ‘Matthew won't get water for me to wash the vegetables and the bread I've made won't rise.'

‘Matthew what?' Mary blinked hard and looked around in confusion, and Harry realized she'd fallen asleep in the few minutes it had taken him to drive to the estate.

‘You go and see to the children, Miss Ellis.' Harry pulled on the handbrake. ‘David and I will unload the fleeces.'

Mary staggered as she stepped out of the car.

‘Go into the house like Mr Evans said, Mary.' David followed her and opened the door to the outbuilding. ‘We won't have to carry the fleeces so far if you turn the car around, Mr Evans.'

‘Call me Harry, and I'll do it.'

‘Wait until I pull this water trough out of the way, Harry. That way you can back in even closer.'

It took ten trips and five hours of backbreaking labour to clear the sheep pen of fleeces. By the time David and Harry had dumped the last of them into the car, it wasn't only Harry's waterproofs and the leather seat that were dirty. His hands were black and oily, his white flannel suit filthy, and everything around him – including, he suspected, himself – stank of sheep, a peculiar odorous mixture of greasy unwashed wool, not unlike unwashed bodies, and pungent animal sweat combined with farmyard manure. And to add insult to injury, when he was driving back from the pen they'd emptied, he noticed another three pens, all closer to the road than the one they'd emptied, and all piled high with fleeces.

‘Don't we have to take those as well?' he asked David.

‘Those are Bob the Gob's.'

‘And these aren't?'

‘If he knew about them they would be, but we wouldn't survive if we didn't keep something back to pay for our goods. That's if we can get them to Pontardawe in time for the market next week.'

‘How is Dolly really?' Harry ventured.

‘I'm not a bloody vet.'

Harry was learning to ignore David's defensive hostility. ‘No, you're not,' he agreed calmly, ‘but you're a good farmer who knows his animals. You must have some idea.'

David watched him as he parked the car in the yard and turned off the engine. ‘You won't tell Mary.'

‘I won't, but the chances are if you know, she does too.'

‘The only thing Dolly's fit for is the knacker's yard.'

‘When would you have to get the fleeces to market?'

‘The buyers will be in Pontardawe on Wednesday. Mary has a load of ripe cheeses and a couple of dozen birds ready for killing to take down as well as eggs. But if you're thinking of offering to help us, there's no way that you can take the fleeces in the car.'

‘Not without making ten trips and that would take all day.' Harry winced. His back muscles had contracted painfully when he stepped out of the car. He'd considered himself reasonably fit, but half a day of physical farmwork had shattered that illusion.

‘You could take the poultry, eggs and cheeses though.' David picked up a couple of fleeces from the back of the car and slung them on top of the others in the storeroom.

‘I could, and I will if I'm here next week,' Harry murmured. He didn't mind helping the Ellises in an emergency, but he certainly wasn't volunteering to become their unpaid farm labourer. With his grandfather and Edyth ill, his first allegiance had to be to his family.

‘You still owe us something for knocking Martha down in your car. But if you're thinking of buying us another horse, don't.'

‘I wasn't,' Harry said quickly, ‘but if I was, why shouldn't I?'

‘Because Bob the Gob would take it. It's what he does with every tenant farm. He takes the decent animals and leaves the old and sick ones. Mary and I try to keep the best of our livestock away from the road because he doesn't wander far from it. But if he sees them, he orders his men to take them.'

Harry secured the last fleece in the outbuilding. ‘The agent's taken everything you had of any value, hasn't he?'

‘You know he has.' David waited until Harry left the storeroom, then closed and fastened the door.

‘And he keeps threatening to evict you?'

‘There's no need to harp on about it, Harry.'

Harry recollected what the shepherd, Dic, had said in the inn. He didn't doubt the man's word. And he only had to look around the farm to confirm that the agent had stripped the Ellis Estate of everything that would bring in a few shillings. What he couldn't understand was why the agent still allowed the children to live on the estate when they had run up such large rent arrears. It simply didn't make sense.

Unless everyone was wrong about the man and he was acting out of honourable motives. And far from robbing the Ellises, he was only giving them time to make inroads on their rent arrears. In which case, the time would come when they would clear their father's debts and could look forward to making enough from the farm to live in relative comfort.

There was only one thing wrong with that theory. He hadn't left them any decent animals for breeding stock.

Chapter Twelve

Mary left the house and crossed the yard just as Harry was opening his car door ready to leave the farm.

‘I assumed you were busy in the house, Miss Ellis, and I didn't want to disturb you by saying goodbye. And then again, I'm hardly in a fit state to pay a social call.' Harry ran his grubby and blistered hands through his knotted hair.

‘I'm about to wet the tea, Mr Evans, and there's fresh bread and cheese on the table. You're welcome to join us if you want to, and have time,' she added diffidently. ‘As for your state, you're no worse than the rest of us. There's no point in dressing in your best clothes to work on a farm, which is something I'm afraid you've done. Your fine suit is ruined.'

‘It was an old one,' Harry lied. Mindful of what his grandfather had said about taking everything the Ellises offered, he said, ‘And thank you very much for your invitation. You must have read my mind. I'm parched.'

‘Did you make the bread, or did you try to make Martha's rise?' David pulled a clump of thorn-infested fleece from his sweater – which was more holes than wool – and tossed it at a chicken.

‘Martha's was fine. It's so long since she made a loaf she was just worried that it wasn't rising fast enough.'

‘And it's not solid, like the last time she made one when you were busy in the dairy?' David enquired sceptically.

‘That was the first loaf she ever made, and she'd prefer you not to harp on about it. Show Mr Evans where he can wash his hands. And feed the dogs before you come in. Their food is ready for them in their bowls. I'll see if Martha has finished setting the table.' Mary turned back to the house.

David checked that the door on the outbuilding was securely bolted. He disappeared into the barn and returned carrying a padlock and key. Threading the padlock through the bolt, he locked it and pocketed the key. ‘Just in case the agent or any of his men come snooping around before we have time to sell these on,' he explained to Harry.

‘The agent comes snooping round your yard?' Harry didn't know whether to believe the boy or not. There was no doubt that David was paranoid when it came to the agent, angry with the world in general, and surly and suspicious of strangers. But after hearing what the family had suffered during the last few years his attitude was understandable.

‘Every time Bob the Gob comes here he notices everything. How many pigs we have, how many calves, what should be ready for market and what will be ready for sale the following month. Sometimes I think the bastard hides in our attic watching every move we make.'

‘I'd keep that language for when you and I are alone together and your sisters and brothers aren't around,' Harry advised, softening the reproach with a conspiratorial wink. It wasn't his place to reprimand David, and he doubted that the boy would listen to him even if it was. But after an afternoon spent working with him, he'd decided that it would be easier to help the Ellises if he could persuade David to alter his opinions on some things, starting with his attitude to ‘book learning' and Martha's ambition to read and write.

‘If I do, I suppose it'll save me from another bollocking from Mary,' David grinned.

Sensing the boy was testing him, Harry ignored the comment. He followed him to the well at the back of the house.

David drew a bucket of water, carried it into the scullery and tipped it into the stone sink. He handed Harry a sliver of green carbolic soap and a wooden scrubbing brush, then picked up a collection of bowls from the windowsill and whistled for the dogs as he returned to the yard.

Harry stooped and plunged his hands into the freezing water. It was so cold it was impossible to work up lather. After a few minutes of futile rubbing, his hands were raw, the dirt that wasn't ingrained in his folds of skin and under his nails scraped off by the hard bristles. He finished by plunging his face into the bucket, and brushing the water back through his hair. Afterwards he felt fresher but no cleaner.

He balanced the soap and brush on the edge of the sink for David, took a worn towel from a nail hammered into the stone wall and dried himself. Mary had been right. His cream flannel suit was ruined. Even in the gloom of the half-light that filtered through the tiny, thickset windows in the scullery walls, it looked more grey than cream. Black, brown and grass-stained oily smudges overlapped on the arms and front of his jacket and the knees of his trousers where he had knelt in the pen to gather the fleeces. Burrs, twigs and thorns caught up in the wool had snagged the suiting, dragging and tearing the cloth.

‘You didn't come dressed for work,' David declared insensitively from the doorway.

‘I was expecting to paint.' Harry took a comb from his inside pocket and slicked his hair back.

‘That suit is only fit for the ragbag now.'

‘I'll find one to put it in when I get back to the inn,' Harry said drily.

‘Mary says flannel makes good floor cloths.'

‘I'll bear that in mind.'

The scullery door opened, and Mary looked in. ‘You two coming?'

‘Right away.' Harry noticed that she had slipped a clean white apron on over her patched and faded black blouse and skirt. She had also succeeded in taming her unruly curls and winding them into a knot that she had secured at the nape of her neck with old-fashioned tortoiseshell pins.

‘Then hurry up.' For the first time since Harry had met her she smiled, and to his astonishment he realized that although her mouth was too large, her features too strong and her complexion too dark for conventional beauty, dressed in clean clothes, with neat, tidy hair, she was an extremely striking woman – not a belligerent child. He felt slightly uneasy. She hadn't looked at all attractive with most of her face hidden beneath the varnished straw hat when he'd taken the family to chapel. He recalled Ianto Williams's warning:
‘You bring a strange man into our chapel … You know that Mr Pritchard won't be happy about this, girl.'

Was the agent in love with Mary? Was Ianto Williams angry on Bob Pritchard's behalf because he had mistakenly thought him a rival for Mary's affections? But Mary and David were obviously terrified of the agent so Bob Pritchard could hardly be courting her.

And he certainly hadn't any ulterior motives for befriending the family, but could his attempts to help them be open to misinterpretation?

David flicked him with water. ‘You going to hang on to that towel all day?'

Harry handed it over. ‘Sorry, I was miles away.'

‘Sleeping on your feet. Like all toffs you're not used to hard work.' David dried his hands and led the way into the kitchen.

The scarred pine table had been laid with five plates and cups, a bowl of sugar and a pitcher of foaming milk. A loaf of bread baked with coarsely milled flour lay sliced on a bed of crumbs on a board in the centre. Next to it stood a square of yellow farmhouse butter on a saucer and a round cheese that had been cut into triangles like a cake. Martha was sitting on one of the benches with Luke on her lap. Mary was standing in front of the stove, her face flushed with heat as she poured boiling water from an iron kettle into a teapot.

‘Please sit down, Mr Evans.'

Harry sat on the end of the bench opposite Martha. She smiled shyly at him and continued to feed the baby with small pieces of buttered bread from her plate.

The door banged open and Matthew staggered in, logs piled high in his arms.

‘Here, give them to me.' David took them from him.

‘I didn't need help,' Matthew said truculently, emulating his brother's usual attitude.

‘I know you didn't, but you do need to wash some of that dirt off your face and hands before you eat.' David dumped the logs in the rough wooden box at the side of the stove, dusted off his hands and sat next to Martha. He tickled Luke under his chin and the baby squealed in delight.

‘Don't,' Martha protested when he did the same to her.

‘Too grown up for tickles now, Miss Hoity-toity?' David grabbed a slice of bread from the board.

‘I have been for years.' Martha moved Luke on to her other knee and sat up primly.

‘Harry and I have brought in and stacked all the fleeces in the little barn, Mary, but I don't know how we are going to get them to Pontardawe next week.' David pulled the saucer of butter towards his plate.