Finders and Keepers (8 page)

‘We will take your family's wishes into account, but occupancy depends on demand. At the moment we have more applications for beds than we can accommodate. But my father is always prepared to assist old friends. And Doctor Williams is a very old friend.'

Harry glanced through the open door of a walk-in cupboard. Two girls dressed in the all-white uniform of trainees were folding linen inside. They stopped to curtsy to Miss Adams.

‘As you see, all the staff who work on the wards wear masks, Mr Evans. And you will be expected to wear one should you ever visit your grandfather here.' Miss Adams opened the next door they came to and showed him a cheerless room furnished with two iron bedsteads, set at opposite ends of the room, and a pair of scrubbed-pine cabinets. There was nothing else, not even drapes at the windows. The floor-length French windows were wide open. Harry walked through them and out onto an iron balcony that overlooked the terraced gardens.

Far on his left a pond gleamed dull pewter through the leaves of encircling trees, its surface unbroken under a cloudy sky. The river flowed from it, cutting through the shrubberies and flowerbeds that tiered upwards on the opposite hillside as well as towards the house. Hearing footsteps, he glanced directly below and saw beds arranged in rows on the terrace.

‘Fresh air, Mr Evans.' Miss Adams stood alongside him. ‘As I've already explained, it plays a vital role in our treatment here. It is a proven fact that the sun's rays kill bacteria.'

He glanced up at the sky. ‘There's not much chance of the sun's rays killing anything today.'

‘The sky is not always overcast.'

‘And when it rains?'

‘The beds are covered with rubber sheets. The patients remain dry while enjoying the benefit of fresh air, which cleanses, disinfects and strengthens their lungs.'

‘Surely damp air cannot be good for chest patients?'

‘I see you have no medical knowledge, Mr Evans.' She gave him a withering look.

‘The room is rather spartan,' said Harry.

‘All the rooms and wards are minimally furnished so they can be easily cleaned and disinfected.'

‘I may not have much medical knowledge but I do realize that much.'

‘We insist patients' personal property be kept to an essential minimum and everything brought into the sanatorium be subjected to weekly disinfection.'

‘Even books?' He had a sudden image of his grandfather's beloved books disintegrating in a bath of disinfectant.

‘Books are allowed on the understanding that they cannot be passed from patient to patient and that they will be burned when the patient leaves.'

‘Burned!' Brought up to value and cherish the printed word, Harry was horrified by the prospect.

‘Paper harbours bacteria, as can glass, china and cloth. Everything a patient brings within these walls that cannot be disinfected will be destroyed when he or she leaves.'

‘Even personal keepsakes like family photographs?' Harry recalled the photographs that filled every inch of shelf space in his grandfather's bedroom. They went everywhere with him, even when he spent only a single night away. Studio portraits of his beloved wife, Isabella, who had died before his mother had met Lloyd. Family groups of his stepfather and uncles when they'd been boys and young men. Wedding pictures of all three. Studies of him and his cousins …

‘Especially
photographs,' Miss Adams emphasized, ‘because patients tend to handle them more than any other object.'

Harry made a mental note to warn his father to have the photographs copied and not to allow Billy to bring his gold watch, or any of the books he regarded as precious into the sanatorium.

They moved into the corridor.

‘Have you seen all you want to in here, Mr Evans?'

‘Yes, thank you.'

Alerted by voices, Miss Adams opened the door next to the room they had visited.

‘Excuse me, Mr Evans.'

An emaciated dark-haired man, who could have been anything between forty and sixty years of age, was sitting up in a bed made with cotton sheets and a single white cotton blanket. He had no pillows and his back was propped against a laddered metal backrest that had been pulled out from the headboard.

A man, gowned and masked like Harry, stood beside the bed. He was holding a clipboard and the patient was sketching on a sheet of paper pinned to it. Interested, Harry stepped forward, but Miss Adams snatched the board from the young man's hands and turned it around before he could look at it properly.

‘How many times must we tell you that we cannot take any responsibility for your uncle's health while you persist in flaunting our rules, Mr Ross? You know he should lie flat at all times.'

‘Don't shout at Toby, Miss Adams. He tried to stop me …' The effort of speaking brought on a coughing fit and the patient sprayed the blanket with bright red droplets of blood.

The ward sister left her desk, pushed past Harry and ran to the bed. She slipped her hands behind the man's back and, while supporting him, helped Miss Adams to return the backrest into the frame before lowering him on to the bed.

‘I was only sketching,' the patient whispered when he could finally speak again.

‘I saw what you were doing, Mr Ross.' Miss Adams looked to the ward sister. ‘How long has Mr Toby Ross been here?'

‘Five minutes, Miss Adams. And I warned him not to tire his uncle.'

‘There will be no further visitors for Mr Ross today or tomorrow.'

‘Yes, Miss Adams.'

Diana turned to the visitor. ‘I will ask my father to curtail your visits to your uncle altogether if you continue to encourage him to disobey the rules.'

Meekly he muttered ‘Yes, Miss Adams.'

‘Out, now!' She held the door open.

‘I'll see you later, Frank.' The young man glanced at Harry when he left the room, but Harry failed to decipher the expression beneath the mask.

‘Could you leave the board on the window sill so I can look at it, Miss Adams?' the patient pleaded.

‘Sister will put it and the sketch in the cupboard in the sluice room, which is kept locked. When Doctor Adams considers you well enough, they will be returned.' Miss Adams folded back the blood-stained blanket. ‘Re-make Mr Ross's bed with clean linen, Sister.'

‘Yes, Miss Adams.'

Harry noticed the same tone of resignation in the sister's voice as the patient's. The Adamses were clearly in control of every aspect of the staff's lives as well as the patients'.

‘Are you in pain, Mr Ross?' Diana asked in a marginally softer tone.

‘No.'

‘Are you certain?'

‘I said no,' he repeated hoarsely.

Miss Adams left the room when the trainees arrived with clean linen. She joined Harry and Toby Ross in the corridor.

‘He insisted he wasn't tired, Miss Adams -' Toby began.

She cut him short. ‘You will not be allowed to see your uncle again until the day after tomorrow, Mr Ross. And then only if he is well enough to receive you, and you adhere to the rules we enforce for
his
benefit. You will also leave the door to his room open so the sister can supervise your visit.'

‘Could I possibly look at the sketch, Miss Adams, just for a moment?' he begged.

To Harry's amazement Miss Adams held out the board. Toby Ross studied it, pulled a small book from his pocket, scribbled down a few notes and a tiny rough sketch.

‘Thank you, Miss Adams.' There wasn't a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

‘You do realize that our only concern is your uncle's health, Mr Ross?' she said earnestly.

‘Of course, and so does he. But you also have to understand, Miss Adams, my uncle's health depends on his art. He cannot survive without it.'

‘Which is the only reason we haven't banned you permanently from Craig-y-Nos. Goodbye, Mr Ross. Don't forget to leave your mask and gown in the dirty linen bin.' She turned to Harry. ‘Shall we continue our tour, Mr Evans?'

Mary worked solidly through the morning. She couldn't stop the occasional thought of Bob Pritchard arising while she scrubbed, scoured, cleaned and churned, but she could, and did, drive it out instantly, because she knew that if she didn't, she'd go out of her mind.

The agent had taken at least 80 pounds' worth of livestock and produce for a 40-pound payment they'd never see in cash, and reduced their rent arrears by only 10 pounds because of ‘interest payments'. She suspected that next quarter their arrears would be back to 120 pounds – if not more – because no matter how much produce and money they managed to scrape together to give to him, he never reduced their debt to less than 100 pounds.

Bob Pritchard made a show of marking everything he took from them in his book, but she knew he was aware that, like their parents, neither she nor her brothers and sister could read. She suspected he was cheating them, but she didn't dare challenge him. Not when he had the power to throw them out of the only home they had ever known.

His threats weren't idle. He had made them to their neighbours and carried them out. Their stockman Albert Jones and his wife Lizzie, who had worked for her father in better times, as well as two other families who had been their closest neighbours, had been evicted from their cottages by bailiffs called in by Bob Pritchard. They had been thrown out on Christmas Eve when the snow had been lying six inches thick on the ground. The agent had even boasted that they would have had an eighteen-mile walk to the workhouse if it hadn't been for his generosity in providing a cart to take them there. And after they'd left, he had supervised the removal of their possessions and furniture, sending everything to Brecon before boarding up the windows and doors on their houses.

‘Didn't you hear me calling?' Bob moved into the doorway of the dairy, blocking out the light.

‘No.' Mary dropped the handle of the butter churn and instinctively backed away.

‘I'm late because I had to go to Sennybridge to oversee the eviction of a family who were eighty pounds in rent arrears.' He smiled coldly when he saw his announcement had the effect he'd intended. ‘Where are your brothers?'

‘They've driven down to Pontardawe to pick up our goods.'

He approached; she retreated. He slammed her back into the stone wall, she cried out. He yanked the string from her hair, sank his fingers into her long black curls and pulled her to the door. Once there, he pushed her across the yard and into the house. There was no point in crying out because there was no one to hear and Mary knew better than to struggle or complain.

Stepping into the kitchen ahead of her, he dragged her through to the passage and into the hall at the front of the house.

‘That family I was telling you about in Sennybridge. The wife cried like a baby when they took the children away on a separate cart. They may all be going to Llanfaes Workhouse but she knew that the women's wards are in a different block to the children's, and the young ones are usually taken as servants by farmers before the old, because there's more work in them and they're easier to train. It's unlikely she'll see them again. And if she does, it won't be for years, if in this life.' He punched her in the small of her back and she fell, face down, on the stairs. ‘Is that what you want for your brothers and sister?'

‘No!'

‘Don't ever tell me that I didn't give you a choice.'

She rose to her feet and walked up the stairs. He followed and shoved her into the largest bedroom.

‘Undress! Down to your skin, you filthy bitch. I won't touch you if you haven't washed.'

She turned her face to the wall, kicked off her broken boots and unbuttoned the working shirt that had been her father's. Dropping it to the floor because there was nowhere else to put it, she unfastened the cotton skirt that, along with her combination underclothes, had belonged to her mother. Like all of the family's clothes, they had been bought in 1919, the last year her family had been free from debt.

‘Only sluts don't wear stockings,' he jeered.

‘I can't afford them,' she whispered, acutely aware of him staring at her naked back.

‘Don't plead poverty to me. I know how much goes from this farm in the direction of Craig-y-Nos and the shops in Pontardawe. Lie on the bed.'

Trembling, she folded back the top sheet and patchwork quilt she had helped her mother stitch. He unbuttoned his trousers, dropped them along with his drawers and heaved himself on top of her.

Spittle drooled from his fleshy lips, dribbling over his double chin on to her neck, as he fondled her breasts with one hand and thrust the other between her legs.

She closed her eyes and steeled herself for what was to come.

‘Fight,' he commanded.

She kept her eyes tightly closed.

‘Fight!' He pinched her nipple and she cried out. ‘I'll hurt you more if you won't fight.' When she failed to move, he lowered his head and sank his teeth into her breast. Tears started into her eyes but she remained still.

He closed his hand around her throat. ‘Open your eyes.'

Terrified by the pressure of his fingers on her windpipe, she did as he commanded.

‘Keep them open. If you're too cowardly to fight, the least you can do is look afraid.' It was the last thing he said before he raped her.

Chapter Four

Mary turned her back to Bob Pritchard and her face to the wall when he had finished using her. The straw mattress crackled as he shifted his weight and left the bed. She heard the whisper of wool and linen when he buttoned his trousers and straightened his clothes.

‘If you want to carry on living here, you should try harder to please me, Mary.' He grabbed her chin in his hand and wrenched her head until she faced him. ‘Look at me when I speak to you!'

She opened her eyes but focused inwards, anywhere but on him.

‘And you'd better have more livestock ready for market next quarter than you had this one. I'll call in the next time I'm round this way to see how you're getting on.' He released her and she turned back to the wall. The door creaked when he opened it. ‘Did you hear me?'