Finders and Keepers (33 page)

She moved lightly down the stairs in bare feet, careful to stay on the wall side, away from the banister, because the boards creaked on the outside edge of the staircase. Feeling her way in the darkness, she was glad when she reached the kitchen. The moonlight that streamed in through the window and the glow of the range meant it was easier to see shapes among the shadows. She went to the door and slipped her feet into her father's old boots. She clutched her shawl around her shoulders, muffled the latch with her fingers and lifted it. The voluminous, old-fashioned white cotton nightgown, which had once belonged to Diana Adams's mother, flapped at her heels as she darted across the farmyard and into the stable.

‘Anyone here?' Her whisper resounded, alarmingly loud in the darkness. Dolly neighed and she went to her stall. She stroked the horse's neck and the mare snuggled her nose into her arm. She rested her head against Dolly's and then caught a whiff of decay. Crouching down, she ran her hands over the rag she'd tied around Dolly's hoof to hold the poultice.

There was no mistaking the smell. She recognized it from three years ago when her father had been forced to shoot their prize stallion. It was gangrene. And there was nothing she could do for Dolly, herself or her family other than weep.

Chapter Fourteen

‘You won't switch on the lights on your car until you leave the drive?' Diana asked Harry when she re-tied the cord on her pyjama trousers.

‘No.' Harry shrugged on his jacket.

She followed him to the front door and opened it for him. ‘You'll call at the hospital in the morning?'

‘Of course.' He hesitated for a moment. ‘We could go for a walk tomorrow evening, if you like,' he added diffidently, hoping she wouldn't think he had only suggested it because he wanted to make love to her again.

‘Perhaps. Let's take it one day at a time, Harry,' she said softly.

Harry made his way to the car. He drove slowly to the gate. Lights shone in the windows of the upper storey of the castle opposite, illuminating a deserted road. Restless and suddenly beset by an impulse to see the reservoir under the full moon, he turned left and drove up towards the mountain, but he didn't switch on the car's headlights until the Adamses' house was a hundred yards behind him.

He parked in the lane that led down to the reservoir so as not to disturb the Ellises, left his hat in the car and walked down towards the water that flooded the valley floor. The hills, magnificent in daylight, looked even more majestic bathed in moonlight. Their clean, sweeping lines shimmered in the ghostly, silver-grey light. Above the moon, the sky was a deep rich blue-black, pierced by the diamond glints of myriad stars. The water gleamed, still and unbroken, like the surface of a mirror dulled by time, and he imagined it shattering as Toby's Lady of the Lake lifted her arm from the depths and held out Excalibur.

He considered suggesting the idea to Toby. It was ridiculous, the novice having the audacity to tell a professional what to paint. But as he looked down on the quiet scene spread out before him he sensed that he was right. A night scene would make for a more dramatic illustration, and if Malory had written the scene as having taken place in daylight, then it could only have been because the better alternative hadn't occurred to him.

Resolving to bring a torch and sketchbook with him the next fine moonlit night, he took off his jacket, slung it over his shoulder and continued down the hill. The night breeze blew cool against his neck and ruffled his hair. His footsteps crunched over the stone-strewn path and he had the strangest sense that he was somehow violating the place, that the hills resented his presence.

Someone had once told him that the Brecon Beacons had been covered in ancient forest until the advent of the ironworks in Merthyr. The works had created a demand for wood that had resulted in every forest within a thirty-mile radius of the town being stripped bare to feed the furnaces. But now it was difficult to imagine the hills as anything other than the way they were. And never having seen them wooded, the loss didn't seem a desecration.

Rabbits played around him, diving in and out of their burrows, and nibbling grass alongside the sheep. A few ewes lay curled on the ground but more were grazing and he wondered if, like him, they preferred a nocturnal life on fine nights.

When he was almost at the foot of the hill he glanced back at the farmhouse. It was shrouded in darkness and he hoped all five Ellis children were sleeping peacefully. Enjoying the beauty of the night and the quiet scene around him, he thought of his grandfather, as he had been every morning until that day. Unwavering in his resolution to enjoy every pleasure life still offered, even in a sanatorium.

But then he reflected that his grandfather had found his Isabella and his purpose in life. He had dedicated almost every minute he could to the miners' struggle. He hadn't always succeeded in what he'd set out to do, but at least he'd put every effort into trying, which was what he had to do if he was ever going to realize his ambition to become an artist.

He pictured his paint box and mentally mixed and matched the colours in it to the scene around him. Lost in his task, he sank down on to the ground and visualized the painting he would create and show to his grandfather – and Edyth – when he next saw them again.

Mary heard footsteps cross the yard. They halted at the entrance to the stable. She lifted her head and listened. The harsh sounds of heavy breathing were accompanied by the sour stench of beer mixed with whisky and male sweat. The agent had come, just as he'd said he would and she'd prayed he wouldn't.

‘Where are you, bitch?' He stumbled and tripped over the uneven cobbles at the entrance. ‘Where are you?' he shouted before falling a second time and setting the metal on the bridles and harnesses that hung on hooks behind the door ringing against the stone wall.

She recoiled and flinched, unable to bear the thought of him touching her, not just then, but ever again.

‘Are you here, bitch? Because if you're not I'll go into the house and roust your brothers and sister from their beds.'

The threat was enough to force her to answer. ‘I'm here, sir.'

‘Stop squeaking like a bloody mouse and show yourself.'

Creeping low on hands and knees, she crawled to the entrance of Dolly's stall and into the next one before rising to her feet. Bob Pritchard stood silhouetted in the doorway. He dived towards her and she fell back. Nauseated by his reek, she instinctively pushed him away from her. He caught her by the waist and threw her down on the cobbles in the empty stall. Winded, she watched his shadowy figure loom over her. She closed her eyes when he thrust his hands up her nightdress and lifted it to her neck.

He mumbled, ‘I like it when you fight.'

She retched and fell back weakly. He slapped her hard, across the face. ‘Fight, you bitch.'

‘Please -'

‘“Sir”. Never forget the “sir”, Mary.' He unbuttoned his trousers and thrust himself into her.

Afterwards, there was only the same degradation, humiliation and self-loathing that she had suffered so many times before. Only this time it was coupled with a desperate desire for an oblivion that would finally end her pain. One even stronger than her sense of loyalty to her family.

Harry was sitting, wondering how best to capture the night shadows that played over the hills, drawing more sweeping and spectacular lines in his imagination than he suspected he would ever be able to translate on to canvas, when he saw someone running down the side of the hill towards the water.

He looked, looked again and rubbed his eyes, wondering if he were seeing a ghost. A girl dressed in an old-fashioned white nightgown, her long dark hair streaming loose behind her, was charging headlong down the hillside directly towards the reservoir. To his horror she didn't stop at the edge, but plunged in.

Stripping off his jacket and his shoes, he sprinted towards the water, but there was no sign of anyone, only a ripple on the surface that could have been caused by the breeze. He hesitated, wondering for an instant if he had dreamed the entire episode. Then he glimpsed a patch of white floating upwards. Without waiting to see more, he dived in and swam towards it.

When Mary splashed into the water its icy wetness came as a shock, bringing the first realization that she was not locked into a dream.

She recalled lying – broken and spent – on the floor of the stall in the stable after Bob Pritchard finished using her. Listening to his diminishing footsteps as he walked out across the yard and through the archway on to the road. And longing to be clean and cold – cold enough to freeze away the feverish, sweat-inducing memory of the clammy warmth of Bob's hands pawing at her, so cold she could no longer feel his thighs burning into hers and his fingers tightening around her breasts, so cold …

She remembered clambering clumsily to her feet, going to the door and leaning against it, seeing the back gate in the yard and stumbling towards it. She had abandoned her boots in the stall, but obsessed with cleanliness and wanting to rid herself of all vestiges of the agent's damp stench that gummed and seared her skin, she had borne the pain of stones cutting into her feet. She had leaned on the gate and gazed down at the reservoir – cool, familiar and beautiful, just as it was in her dreams.

She'd opened the gate, fastened it behind her and run down on tip-toe, gathering speed as she hurtled down the hill. The breeze was fresh, but not chill enough. Her feet hit the ground so quickly and lightly she felt as though she were flying, and now – now the floor of the reservoir yielded, soft and slimy.

It sucked at her feet, gluing them and holding her fast. She struggled, slipped and fell, and her hands and arms were imprisoned as deeply and securely by the mud as her legs. She was left crouching, half in, half out of the water, trapped like a fly stuck to one of the brown arsenic papers that hung from the ceiling of the Colonial Stores in Pontardawe.

Her voluminous cotton nightgown soaked up the water, and even the folds that remained in the air slapped wet against her, hampering her movements. She tried sliding. Backwards proved impossible, but when she pushed forwards, the mud dissolved, the ground disappeared and she lurched, tumbling downwards. There was only time to snatch one short breath before the water closed over her head.

She opened her eyes and found herself in a mind-numbing, milky-grey blackness. Her lungs and ears burned as though they were packed with scalding ice. Frightened, floundering hopelessly out of her depth, she thought beyond herself for the first time since the agent had thrown her to the floor of the stall. She couldn't leave her brothers and sister to face Bob Pritchard – she couldn't – He would destroy them as he had destroyed her.

She kicked out and utilized every ounce of strength she could muster to fight her way up to the surface. But although she could see the transparent sheet that allowed the moonlight to filter through, no matter how she stretched and struggled, it remained beyond her reach. She gradually sank lower and lower, the weight of her waterlogged gown and shawl dragging her downwards towards the mud on the floor of the reservoir that waited to swallow her.

Her eyes stung, but she bore the pain it cost her to keep them open, so she could focus on the moonlight shining through the squall of air bubbles. She had to breathe there was no air, but she had to …

The cold intensified, flooding her lungs, seeping into her joints and bones, paralysing her. She descended into realms where the water was darker, murkier. A small white light burned in the distance. But before she reached it, the glow flickered and died in the blackness.

Harry ran into the water, but as soon as he kicked the ground from under himself and started to swim, he lost his bearings. He trod water frantically, looked around and wondered if he had really seen a woman run into the reservoir or anything pale floating in the water. He had been thinking about the Lady of the Lake. Had he conjured a figment of his imagination into an illusion that had merely seemed real?

A stream of bubbles broke ahead of him. Was it weed, fish? Was he making a complete fool of himself over a mirage? He dived and swam towards the pockets of air but his trousers, shirt and waistcoat weighed him down and held him back. Wishing he'd had the foresight to take them off before he'd plunged into the water, he was exhausted when he reached the place. The bubbles were still breaking but he could see nothing. Taking a deep breath, he allowed himself to sink, opened his eyes and felt as though he were suspended in an enormous pot of grey ink.

He surfaced and gasped for air. The white spot that had seemed so obvious from the bank was nowhere to be seen. Taking a clump of thorn as a guide and aiming for the area as near as he could remember it, he swam to his right.

Seconds later he broke to the surface. Staying there only as long as took him to gulp in a fresh lungful of air, he dived in again – and again. Just when he'd decided that he must have dreamed the woman, he saw ripples on the water and a flash of movement to his left. Kicking out, he stretched towards it.

His hand brushed against cloth. Knotting his fingers into it, he pulled it towards him and a body gently nudged his. Grabbing it by the head, he broke to the surface and lifted it high. It wasn't until he held the nose and mouth clear from the water and brushed long tendrils of hair away from the face that he saw he was holding Mary Ellis. Limp, comatose, she looked dead. Praying he wasn't too late, he gripped her by the shoulders, turned on his back and, careful to keep her head above water, swam backwards towards the bank.

He dragged her over the mud and lay her face down on the grass. His breath rasped, harsh and discordant, as he tried to remember the life-saving classes he had taken in school.

He opened her mouth, water trickled out, and he felt gingerly inside to ensure her tongue wasn't blocking her airways. He began to massage her back in as close an approximation to artificial respiration as he could recall.