Finders and Keepers (7 page)

‘In that case, could you put a new tyre on my spare wheel, please? There's no point in trying to repair it,' Harry warned when the mechanic examined the tyre bolted to the side of the Crossley. ‘It's ripped to pieces.'

‘I can see that, sir. I have a tyre that size, but it will take me an hour or more to put it on your wheel and it will cost you sixpence for my time and four and fourpence for the tyre.'

Harry unfastened the wheel and rolled it towards him. ‘I'll pick it up later.' He extended his hand. ‘Harry Evans.'

‘Alfred Edwards, sir. Everyone calls me Alf.' He wiped his hand again on the back of his trousers before shaking Harry's hand. ‘I served a full mechanic's apprenticeship and I've run the garage single-handedly since my father passed on last year, so if you need anything doing to your Crossley while you're in the valley, I promise you now, I'll do a first-class job.'

‘That's reassuring to know.'

‘There's not been much call for car servicing since Madame Patti's time because no one other than the doctor can afford one. And although he sends his ambulance down here, as well as his and his daughter's cars, I spend most of my time making furniture.'

‘You're a carpenter as well?' Harry asked.

‘Not a proper time-served one like my grandfather was, but he taught me a bit. I'm not saying what I make would please the crache, but it seems to suit the farmers round here.'

Harry looked across at the ivy-clad walls of the old pub. ‘You live here?'

‘My mother's the licensee.'

Harry almost asked if she rented out rooms, then remembered he was still four miles from the castle and there might be something closer. He slipped his hand into his pocket.

‘You can pay me when you pick up the wheel, sir.'

‘Let's hope I don't have another flat. If I do, I'll be the footsore one walking back.'

‘It's only four miles, sir.'

‘You're obviously more used to walking than I am.' Harry had never regarded anything above a mile as a stroll. Reflecting how lifestyles influenced attitudes, he climbed into the driving seat, fired the ignition, waved his hand and drove back on to the road.

When he left the last house in Abercrave behind him, grassy, rolling hills, speckled with sheep and an occasional hill farm, rose on his left. On his right, the road sloped gently down to the wooded banks of a river. He followed the twists and turns that led through the few houses that were Penycae. Shortly afterwards, a high wall of dressed stone appeared on his right and above it loomed the towers of Craig-y-Nos.

His parents had taken him and his sisters on holidays around Wales that invariably included visits to castles. For a small country it had a lot to offer: massive grey stone Norman edifices such as Caerphilly and Oystermouth, which remained impressive even in roofless dereliction; smaller fort types like Carreg Cennen and Pennard perched on the tops of hills that afforded sweeping views of the surrounding countryside; whimsical concoctions along the lines of Cardiff and Castell Coch, both raised on Norman foundations with so little regard for the original buildings that it was impossible to see beyond the fairytale visions of William Burgess and the Marquis of Bute's fanciful reworkings.

But even his architecturally-untrained eye could see that Craig-y-Nos wasn't old, not in castle terms.

Half was early Victorian Gothic, its towers – one boasting a clock – capped by pyramids. The other half was turreted, and the two styles sat somewhat uneasily together. Yet there was no denying it was imposing, its four-storeyed façade as solid and substantial as that of an English mansion.

He drove into the walled courtyard and switched off his engine. In front of the castle was an elaborate fountain in the shape of a wading bird perched on four gilded fish, forlorn and covered in green slime. He climbed out of the car and ascended a short flight of steps to the main door, rang the bell pull and listened as it clanged into the silence.

He was debating whether or not to pull it again when the door opened. A blonde girl, who would have been beautiful if she hadn't been scowling, looked suspiciously at him. She was wearing a doctor's white coat over a plain black dress, and had a cotton mask pulled down around her neck. ‘Can I help you?'

Harry removed his hat. He had expected a uniformed nurse or porter, not a slim young girl with a stern expression. Disconcerted by her icy stare he muttered, ‘I hope so.'

‘This is a sanatorium. You are risking infection simply by standing there.'

‘I've brought my grandfather's clinical notes. Doctor Williams from Tonypandy recommended this place to my family. He has spoken on the telephone to Doctor George Adams.' Harry hoped the name would get him further than the doorstep.

‘If you'll follow me to the waiting room, I'll see if Doctor Adams is expecting you.'

‘I'm not sure he is, but I'd be very grateful if he could spare me a few minutes.'

She showed Harry into a stone cell set to the left of and just behind the front door. Bare and devoid of chairs, it was a tiny anteroom to a lavatory. The air had been warm and heavy outside the building; inside it was freezing. Harry was rubbing his hands together to keep his circulation flowing when the blonde girl returned.

‘Doctor Adams is extremely busy, but he is prepared to offer you five minutes.'

Harry followed her up a second short flight of steps, across a corridor and into an office-cum-drawing room. A desk and filing cabinets had been placed in front of the window but there were also paintings on the walls and chintz-covered easy chairs and sofas grouped around a fireplace filled with a summer arrangement of dried flowers.

‘Mr Evans?' A thin, balding man left the chair behind the desk and approached him, but didn't offer his hand.

‘Doctor Adams?' Harry dropped the hand he had extended when the doctor made no effort to shake it.

‘I spend my days caring for highly infectious patients, Mr Evans. We have many rules; the one most strictly enforced is to keep all physical contact to an absolute minimum, especially with those who are healthy, yet reckless enough to visit here. Take a seat.' Dr Adams indicated a chair set in front of his desk before returning to his own. ‘I have spoken to Doctor Williams. He said you'd be bringing Mr William Evans's clinical notes?'

‘I have them here.' Harry handed over the envelope he had picked up from Dr Williams's surgery that morning. He sat in silence while Dr Adams studied them.

‘You and your family do realize that Mr Evans's condition is terminal?' The doctor set the notes on his desk and looked Harry in the eye.

Harry felt as though he were condemning his grandfather to death. ‘Yes.'

‘Clinically we can do little for him.'

‘Doctor Williams warned us of that,' Harry said seriously. ‘But he also said that you might be able to make him more comfortable. We were all with him when he haemorrhaged so we know how ill he is. But we also know how over-crowded the isolation ward in the Graig Infirmary is and how over-worked the staff are there. They can do nothing for him. We had hoped to look after my grandfather ourselves. When Doctor Williams said that wasn't possible, my uncle asked him to recommend a good hospital or sanatorium. He told us that Craig-y-Nos offered the best care in Britain for patients suffering from lung disease.'

The doctor sat back and pressed his fingertips together. ‘If we can do anything for your grandfather, and I offer no promises, the best you can hope for is that we make his final days easier and possibly less painful than if he were in an isolation ward in a general hospital.'

‘We understand that, Doctor Adams.' Harry struggled to keep his emotions under control.

‘Your father is Lloyd Evans the MP?'

‘He is.' Harry had learned from experience that the higher the social class, the less likely a person was to be well-disposed towards a Labour MP.

‘Rank and privilege count for nothing here, Mr Evans. Death is a great leveller.'

‘I don't doubt it.' Harry decided it was time to be assertive. After all, it wasn't as though they weren't prepared to pay – and pay handsomely – for the doctor's expertise. ‘Please, will you take my grandfather as a patient?' he asked directly.

The doctor shouted, ‘Come' at a timid knock on his door.

The door inched open and a scrap of a girl, as dark-haired and dark-eyed as a gypsy, and dressed in a maid's uniform that was far too large for her, crept in carrying a tray set with a teapot, single cup and saucer, milk jug, sugar bowl and a plate of rock cakes. The tray seemed almost as large as her and she was straining to hold it.

‘Put it on the table in front of the fireplace, Martha.'

The girl did as she was told, curtsied and backed out of the room.

Both Harry's school and his mother had employed twelve-year-old maidservants during the war when there had been an acute shortage of labour. But Martha looked no more than eight or nine years old. Harry was tempted to ask her age but, aware that Dr Adams might see his question as a criticism, didn't want to risk irritating him any more than he already had.

‘I'll tell you what I will do, Mr Evans. I'll let you decide whether or not your grandfather should come here.' Dr Adams picked up a bell from his desk and rang it. ‘Miss Adams can show you our private rooms and tell you about the treatment we offer. She is taking a short break from her studies at medical college to further her training here, and although not yet qualified, knows more about lung disease than the average medical practitioner.'

The door opened and the young blonde woman who had shown Harry into the sanatorium stood in the doorway.

‘Show Mr Evans the private rooms, and explain the treatments we can offer a patient with tuberculosis and pneumoconiosis.'

‘A patient suffering from both?'

‘A prospective patient.' Dr Adams picked up a newspaper from his desk.

Sensing that he had been dismissed, Harry murmured, ‘Thank you, Doctor Adams.'

‘My clerk will advise you of our fees and admittance procedure should you decide we have anything to offer your grandfather. If you wish, Miss Adams will take you to his office after your tour. You can give him the details as to when we might expect to receive him. Mr Evans will need a gown and a mask, Diana.' Dr Evans sat on the sofa, picked up the teapot and poured himself a cup of tea, leaving Harry no choice but to follow Diana Adams out of the room.

‘The prospective patient is your grandfather?' Miss Adams opened a cupboard in the corridor and handed Harry a white cotton gown and mask identical to the ones she was wearing.

‘Yes.' In all respects bar one, it was true, and Harry saw little point in explaining his complicated relationship to his stepfather's father.

‘So he must be,' she glanced at Harry, ‘sixty years of age or thereabouts?'

‘Sixty-five.' Harry wondered how his grandfather would react to being treated by a female medical student. He also speculated on the relationship between the doctor and Diana Adams. Were they father and daughter? Uncle and niece?

‘That is rare. Not the pneumoconiosis – we are treating several miners with the illness – but the tuberculosis. The vast majority of patients who contract the disease are under thirty. But then, your grandfather's lungs would be weakened and susceptible to bacteria.'

‘Do you have many patients with both conditions?'

‘Your grandfather would be the first.' She halted in front of an iron lift cage and pressed a button.

‘You have an electric lift,' he commented in surprise.

‘As you see. We couldn't run a sanatorium in a building of this layout and size without one. It wasn't purpose-built.'

Her condescending tone irked him even more than Dr Adams's had, because she looked even younger than he was. He couldn't resist biting back.

‘Even people in Pontypridd have heard of Madame Patti and her home at Craig-y-Nos, Miss Adams.'

Unabashed, she continued to lecture him in the same patronizing tone. ‘This was the first private residence to have electricity in the country. When Madame Patti lived here, it used to take forty tons of coal a day just to generate the power that was needed to heat and light the rooms. However, she had conservatories and a winter garden that has since been dismantled and taken to Swansea. Given that we have no use for tropical plants or exotic birds, and fresh air plays a vital part in our treatments, our present usage is somewhat less.' The cage descended; she opened the metal grille and stepped inside.

Much as he resented her talking down to him, Harry thought of his grandfather and curbed his sarcasm. He held up the mask. ‘Is this really necessary?'

‘Not if you want to exhale your potentially lethal germs over patients weakened by disease. Or are prepared to risk inhaling tubercle bacilli, without what little protection that mask affords.'

He tied the mask around his neck, and when she pulled up her own mask, he followed suit, covering his nose and mouth. Hoping to inject a friendlier tone into their discussion, he said, ‘Doctor Adams mentioned that you've taken a break from your medical studies to work here.'

‘His assistant resigned without giving notice. Given my father's workload, I felt I had no other option but to fill the breach. I will be returning to London to continue my studies as soon as he has found a replacement.'

So she was his daughter. The lift juddered to a halt on the top floor and Miss Adams opened the cage door. They stepped out on to a landing furnished with a desk and chair. A masked woman – dressed in the dark blue dress and white starched veil, cuffs and apron of a nursing sister – sat behind it.

Diana Adams nodded acknowledgement and walked on. ‘The private rooms are all on this floor in the old servants' quarters. They were considered to be the most suitable to take two beds.'

‘We'd prefer my grandfather to have a room to himself.'