Honey's Farm (10 page)

Penny served the meal straight from the stove to the table and sat down to eat. Eline smiled. She had long since abandoned any attempt to act the lady; with Penny there was no need for pretence.

‘I'm going up to Swansea, tomorrow,' Eline said softly. She knew she
must
swallow her pride, make a determined effort to see Hari and ask her where Will had gone.

‘
Duw
, that heathen place, you want to watch out you don't get your purse robbed while you're there, mind,' Penny said, issuing the dour warning without the least realizing that she knew very little of Swansea except what she'd heard from her parents.

‘I'll be careful,' Eline said, suppressing a grimace. Oh, she would be careful all right, careful to ask discreetly about Will's whereabouts, though she had no doubt that Hari Grenfell would see right through her; Hari was nothing if not perceptive.

Eline sighed heavily. Why had she allowed such a situation to develop? She would marry Will tomorrow, give up everything she had worked for if only she could be his wife. But Will was proud and stubborn; he wanted to make his own way in the world, to become a success in his own right, and she couldn't in all honesty blame him for that. The thing she most regretted was her angry, unjust words to him, underlining his own sense of failure.

Eline found it difficult to sleep again that night; indeed, she scarcely seemed to have had any sleep at all since the separation from Will. She lay awake now, eyes wide and dry, looking up at the ceiling, dappled with moonlight, burning to be in Will's arms, to feel his lips on hers. Well, she would not let him go so easily. Tomorrow she would learn where this shop in Cardiff was situated; she would travel the fifty or so miles to see him, if need be.

She sighed and turned her face into the pillow. Who was she trying to fool? She knew that her courage would fail her when it came to actually making the journey. What if he would not see her, had really finished with her for good and all? She pressed her face into the pillow, and the hard, painful tears came at last.

Hari Grenfell welcomed Eline in her fine suite of rooms above the emporium. ‘Please sit down,' she said softly. ‘I'm very pleased to see you, Eline, it seems such a long time since you used to come here and discuss patterns with me.'

Eline sank into an upholstered chair and looked down at her hands. She could not make small talk, not even to be polite, because she felt sick and ill and fear seemed to rob her of words.

‘It's about Will, isn't it?' Hari urged gently. Eline looked up at her and swallowed hard. She seemed to have suddenly become bereft of pride; nothing mattered save learning of Will's whereabouts.

She nodded her head miserably, wondering if Will would have left instructions that his address should be kept secret, but Hari had drawn a sheet of paper towards her and was busy writing on it.

‘Here's the address of the shop in Cardiff,' she said softly. ‘I hope you and Will can make up your differences, whatever they are.' She smiled and her lovely face was illuminated. ‘You are so obviously in love with each other, it seems foolish to be apart.'

Eline suddenly found her voice. ‘I said things, unforgivable things.' She spoke quietly. ‘I wouldn't blame Will if he never wanted to see me again.'

‘When we're angry, we all say things we regret,' Hari said. ‘I'm sure Will knows you didn't mean any of it.'

Had he told Hari about their quarrel, Eline wondered. She felt the urge to confide in Hari; she had always been fair-minded in the past and she undoubtedly cared very much about Will.

‘He won't marry me, not until he's made his way, as he puts it,' Eline said, her voice trembling in spite of her efforts at control. ‘I would live in poverty with him, I wouldn't care about anything so long as we were together.'

‘Will would care,' Hari said gently. ‘He knows what real poverty is.'

Eline looked at her, trying to search beneath the calm expression in Hari's eyes. Hari smiled wanly. ‘William will never forget the time when his family fell sick of the yellow fever, all of them dying in poverty and pain,' she sighed softly. ‘He would not risk putting you through the humiliation of living and possibly dying in such straits.'

Eline thought about Hari's words, digesting in silence what she had said. Will rarely talked about his childhood; as far as he was concerned, his life seemed to have begun when he became apprenticed to Hari Grenfell.

‘Write to him.' Hari's soft words broke the silence. ‘Tell him how much you love him; he needs to know that.'

Eline looked at the composed, beautiful woman sitting opposite her, Hari Grenfell, successful, rich and so very kind. She rose to her feet, clutching Will's address like a talisman.

‘Thank you for your help,' she said humbly. ‘I'll write to him at once.'

‘No need to thank me,' Hari said. ‘I care very much about Will, and I know you do too.'

Eline let herself out into the street, leaving the plush richness of the emporium behind her with a feeling of reluctance. She glanced back, seeing the fine window display with a feeling of loss. She realized quite suddenly that she missed the world of shoe-making very much. Why had she left it? Given it all up for a gallery in Oystermouth where she felt loneliness pressing in on her, more and more every day.

Just at the entrance to the emporium, she almost bumped into a slight figure and had apologized in quick embarrassment before she recognized that the young lady standing before her, hugging the hand of a small boy, was Irfonwy Parks.

‘Mrs Harries, sorry to bump into you like that!' Fon said in a rush, the colour flooding into her cheeks.

Eline realized that Fon still felt unhappy at the way her mother had laid claim to Eline's husband.

‘Fon, don't worry, it was as much my fault as yours. What are you doing in Swansea?' Eline spoke warmly; she had always liked the quiet, shy, youngest daughter of Nina Parks.

‘I brought Patrick here for some new boots,' Fon said, drawing the child close to her skirts. ‘He's growing so fast that nothing lasts him very long.'

Eline remembered then that Fon was now a married woman, wife of Jamie O'Conner, the handsome Irishman who had bought Honey's Farm, the very farm where Eline was born.

Fon looked well; her skin held the bloom of a life led in the open air, her eyes were bright, her smile ready, and Eline felt herself envying the girl.

‘How are you enjoying farm life?' she asked, and Fon's smile widened.

‘It's hard work but it's where I belong, with my husband,' she said simply.

Eline wondered that a girl brought up to live at the edge of the sea could adapt so easily to a life of hardship in the fields, of long days, sometimes of sleepless nights when the lambing season came. But then, Fon loved her husband and a woman would do anything for love.

‘No problems, then?' Eline asked, and she saw a frown crease the fine skin of Fon's forehead.

‘There's been some trouble with the cows,' Fon said. ‘Some sickness that made the beasts throw their young too soon, but I think the worst is over now.'

Eline knew the sickness well; it was something most farmers dreaded. ‘You didn't have to slaughter the animals, then?' she asked in concern, knowing what such a loss could mean.

Fon shook her head. ‘Jamie cared for the poor creatures, looked after them as if they were babbies,' she explained. ‘And now they seem to be better. At any rate he's putting them to the bull again, and the first one to recover is in calf already.' She spoke proudly, as though the achievement was shared with her; and so it probably was, Eline thought.

Suddenly, her strivings at the gallery seemed so trivial. Here was Fon facing real problems day by day, alongside the man she loved, and Eline was stuck with selling pictures that merely mirrored life when life was to be lived to the dregs, even though they might be bitter.

Her mind, in that instant, was made up. She would sell the gallery, or at least bring in a manager. She would rearrange her life, give herself something to strive for. She was tired of the blandness of her day-to-day activities, for the gallery practically ran itself; there was no longer any excitement, any challenge left to stimulate her in mind.

‘I'd better be going,' Fon was saying. ‘I've got plenty of work to do when I get back home.' Her face softened. ‘And Jamie, my husband, will be getting anxious.'

Eline watched as Fon led the small boy along the street. She who was going home to where she was needed, to where her presence mattered.

A great loneliness swept over Eline; she was not needed by anyone, she had no-one who would know or even care if she stayed out all day and all night too. Her shoulders were slumped in an attitude of despair as she walked unseeing along the hot pavements to the town.

People – there were people in her life, of course, there were her customers, her neighbours in Oystermouth. There was Penny, who cared for her needs and was concerned with her well-being; but she wanted more than that, she wanted to belong somewhere, to someone, to Will Davies.

‘Will,' she whispered, ‘why did you go away and leave me?'

But there was no answer to her question. There were only the everyday noises of a busy street, a street on which Eline was totally alone.

It did not take Eline long to put her plans into action. Her first task was to find a suitable person to take over the gallery, and this turned out to be much easier than she'd anticipated. She had for some time been aware of the admiration of Calvin Temple, who patronized her gallery frequently, not always buying, but on occasion taking a few of her paintings up to London to sell there.

Calvin Temple was tall and personable, not shy of showing his admiration for Eline as well as for her gallery. When he next came into the gallery, Eline approached him with a warm smile and invited him to take some tea in her private rooms.

Calvin bowed over her hand, and the light in his eyes showed his pleasure. When she had made the tea, Eline outlined her idea, and Calvin's handsome face broke into a smile.

‘You mean you want me to run the gallery for you?' he asked, with such surprise that Eline wondered if she'd overstepped the bounds of propriety. She had believed that, given the opportunity to run the business, in any way he saw fit, Calvin would jump at the prospect.

‘It's only a suggestion,' she said quickly. ‘If the idea doesn't appeal to you, then of course you are not obligated in any way.'

He sat in the sunny workroom of the gallery, the china cup appearing ridiculously small in his large hands, looking at her with unmistakable warmth in his dark eyes.

‘Mrs Harries,' he said with enthusiasm, ‘I should be delighted to work with you.'

Eline shook her head. ‘You will be working for yourself, Mr Temple. I shall be nothing more than a sleeping partner.'

By his smile, Eline knew that she had used an unfortunate phrase. To his credit, he said nothing, but she couldn't mistake the twinkle of merriment in his eye. At any other time, Eline might have been flattered by his obvious admiration, but now she felt she just wanted the whole business of the gallery over and done with, so that she could get on with making the best of the shambles her life had become.

‘You will be here to let me down gently, should I make mistakes?' Calvin asked easily.

Eline's level gaze didn't falter, but she felt suddenly needed for the first time in a long time. ‘Do you think you will – make mistakes, I mean?' Eline asked, uncertain of her ground in the light of his apparent amusement.

‘I don't think so,' Calvin said thoughtfully. ‘But I confess myself ignorant of running a gallery.'

‘But the important thing is, surely, that you know how to sell paintings?' Eline asked, moving from her chair to stand at the window. She gazed out at the sea, at the plethora of boats bobbing at the moorings. Everything here at Oystermouth looked so peaceful, so enchanting, and yet now, with Will gone away, it was a place of emptiness for her. But she would go to him, beg him to forgive her; she was determined on it.

‘I have no doubts on that score,' Calvin said firmly. ‘I have studied paintings all my life; I grew up as the son of one of the best, most famous artists in England.'

‘You did?' Suddenly Eline saw Calvin Temple with fresh eyes. She took in his immaculate linen, his fine-cut coat and the hand-made shoes; and the colour came to her cheeks. Calvin was clearly not, as she'd supposed, a gentleman fallen on hard times. Instead, she realized, he was comfortable, to say the least.

‘I'm sorry,' she said quickly. ‘I hope I haven't insulted you by offering you work, work that I see now is far beneath your station in life.'

‘On the contrary,' Calvin said, ‘I'm honoured at the trust you put in me. I need something to fill my time, and this gallery is just the thing. Apart from which, I love looking at paintings.'

Eline turned to him and smiled. ‘I know. That's why I thought of you when I began to look for someone to run the gallery. I'm afraid I didn't realize that you were a well-to-do gentleman.'

Calvin's smile was disarming. ‘That was part of your charm, my dear Mrs Harries. Yes,' he continued, ‘running the gallery will be right up my street. I might not be able to paint like my father, which is my great misfortune, but I can recognize talent, even when it is only in the bud. That, I think, is my strength.'

‘You'll do it, then?' Eline asked. ‘You will take over the gallery, as from, let us say, a week tomorrow?'

‘So soon?' Calvin asked. ‘And what will you do?' His question might have sounded impertinent, prying even, but he spoke with such gentleness and such a real need to know that Eline unbent enough to tell him the truth.

‘I don't feel fulfilled here,' she said softly. ‘Oystermouth has many unhappy associations for me. I think it's time I moved away, found something completely different to do with my life.'