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‘We’ll think of something. I’ll keep in touch.’

‘And congratulations on your forthcoming wedding, my boy. Sorry to have cast a blight on the proceedings.’

They were a very sombre gathering at supper that night.

‘Bank managers are noted for their damned pessimism,’ Josi said. ‘It’s probably not nearly as bad as he’s made out. All right, it means tightening our belts in whatever ways we can. Proceed with caution. Right?’

Lowri spoke up, ‘And however can we send full cream milk to the market? We use twelve pounds of butter every week and everybody knows that you can’t make butter without cream.’

‘I agree with you,’ Tom said. ‘And I’d like to see Tada’s face if we were sent in damson tart one day without a jug of cream.’

‘Eating well is one of the principles of a good life, it keeps a man healthy and happy and sane,’ Josi said.

‘We’ve just got to think of other ways,’ Lowri said. ‘Now Lottie makes wonderful Welsh cakes in no time at all. Maudie and I are pretty good with sultana scones and cheese scones. We could try to find out what profit we’d make if Maud and Lottie went to the market on Thursday morning. Half a dozen fruit cakes as well. Is that a good idea?’

‘Tom could start painting again. His mother thought he was a wonderful artist.’

‘Every mother thinks her son is wonderful in every way,’ Tom said crossly. ‘It doesn’t mean a thing.’

‘You had the Arnold Webster cup in your school, I remember that. And I know I’ve been amazed at the prices of little watercolours in that Hammond Art Shop in Castle Street. Five pounds for tiny things no bigger than the ones you used to paint for your mother every Christmas.’

They all turned and scrutinised the little watercolours over the sideboard; one of hills with a red brick cottage in the distance, one of a bridge over a stream.

‘I bet you could paint one of those every day. It would do you good, plenty of fresh air. I often think the old barn needs to be recorded before it falls down. It’s sixteenth century so that architect fellow told us. You and Catrin were always painting and drawing when you were children. You were both supposed to have great talent.’

‘There was nothing else to do here when it was too wet to go out. And Mother kept us well supplied with paints and paper. She’d been fond of painting when she was young and in that school in Malvern that Tadcu sent her to.’

‘I bet you could make quite a lot of money if you worked hard.’

‘Nobody would pay for such amateur work. You’ve certainly made me want to have a try again, but I’m sure there’d be no real money in it. Edward and I used to belong to a sketching club at Oxford. We all used to cycle out and find picturesque scenes. He and I thought we were pretty good, I must say, but we were probably no better than all the rest.’

‘Just try it. Catrin’s left masses of good paper and watercolours and brushes up in the attic,’ Lowri said. ‘I think it does sound a good idea. I’d hate to think of you having to be an auctioneer and having to make silly jokes about women’s hats and so on. I don’t think you’d be any good at it, either. Your father would be a natural; flirting with the women and the young girls, but not you.’

Josi looked ruefully at his wife. ‘You’re becoming alto­gether too cheeky young Lowri,’ he told her tenderly. ‘Anyway, a man doesn’t flirt when he has all he wants at home.’

Tom was pleased to note the warmth between them.

‘I’ll give it a go,’ he said, ‘though I don’t think I’ll make any more money than Lottie and Maudie going to the market. I’ll go to speak to that Archie Hammond, anyway. Take him one or two of my latest paintings. I doubt he’ll seriously consider them. And what would he give me for them? He’d want his percentage you can be sure of that. If I work hard I may get two or three pounds a week, I suppose. How much does a teacher earn?’

No one seemed to know much about earning money. Two or three pounds a week seemed a fortune to Lowri; when she was a maid she’d had fifteen pounds a year. Surely you could feed a family on two or three pounds a week? But it was those overheads that worried her, what were they exactly? Anyway, she felt glad that May had gone back to London. There was no need for her to know about their money worries. Though perhaps she would have money of her own.

‘I wonder if May has money,’ she asked innocently. She’d thought of it so she might as well ask, that’s how Lowri was.

‘I’ve no idea. But we could hardly live on May’s money, could we?’

‘Oh no. I was only thinking of hats and stockings and so on, her personal things.’

Josi pulled her to him and bit her ear lobe. ‘How much do you spend every year on stockings and hats and so on?’ he asked her.

‘I had new shoes last year and they were five and sixpence.’

‘Great Heavens, no wonder our finances are in this state. These women will be the ruin of us. Thank goodness Catrin has found a rich fellow. Doctors are always rich. Do you think he’d lend us money if it were a real emergency?’

‘I hope it doesn’t come to that,’ Tom said. ‘Let’s go to bed. Finances were never my strong point. I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve still got some debts to certain wine merchants in Oxford. All the same, I’m pretty sure they’re all much richer than I am.’

‘Even I can see the flaw in that statement, but on your conscience be it,’ Josi replied, but without undue concern.

The next morning Tom got the framed pictures down from the wall of the dining room as well as the two larger ones from the sitting room.

‘Isn’t that one Catrin’s?’ Lowri asked him.

‘Is it? Never mind, it looks like mine, green upon green, and I’m sure Catrin won’t mind. Now I have to wrap them all in newspaper and…’

‘Only dust them properly first,’ Lowri said. ‘Look, I’ll get a damp cloth and get the smears off the glass.’

‘I think perhaps the smears improve them. I don’t want anyone to study them too closely.’

‘They’re wonderful,’ Lowri said with passion in her voice. ‘Especially Catrin’s,’ she added when she got to the door.

Graham called for Tom on Friday morning, promising to wait for him outside the shop until he’d finished negotiations.

Naturally Mr Hammond was not as enthusiastic as the family, but he did say he would accept three of the eight paintings Tom showed him. ‘I’ll send the larger one to our Chelsea showroom,’ he said. ‘I’m only now a very small part of the Loseley and Hammond team, we have branches in Henley-on-Arden and Stow in the Cotswolds. I’ll let them set the price; it will be far more than I would dare ask here and you, of course, will receive seventy-five per cent of the amount realised.’

‘And have you any idea what that might be?’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if they might ask ten or twelve guineas. Of course I shall only ask three or four guineas for these two. I think you have more talent than most water colourists, but unfortunately my clients won’t recognise that. Yes, by all means show me more. I’ll accept one or two and perhaps even send another to London if it’s as good as this one. There is also a dealer I could recommend in the Hayes in Cardiff, a Lewis Arthur Morgan. He and I have a good working relationship. I try to interest him in my new clients and I’ll mention you to him.’

‘Thank you. My brother-in-law, Dr Andrews, is waiting for me now, so I’d better make a move. I expect to have a motor car of my own quite soon, which will make me independent.’

‘Excellent. I wish you well.’

‘He seemed a decent sort of bloke,’ Tom told Graham as he joined him in the car.

‘Why didn’t he take all the paintings then? He doesn’t seem very enthusiastic.’

‘He’s sending one to their gallery in Chelsea and he thinks it may get ten or twelve guineas.’

‘Very good. Straight home now, or have we got time for a drink in The Bell?’

‘By all means. A celebration drink, yes by all means.’ Suddenly Tom felt that he knew what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. He didn’t want to be a teacher or an auctioneer, he wanted to be an artist. He felt like an artist. He felt he wanted to paint every hill and tree they passed.

‘I’m going to be an artist,’ he told his father when he got home.

‘Good. But being an artist is no good in itself. Being a succesful, famous, rich artist is the challenge.’

‘I’ll be all of those things, you shall see.’

He felt so sorry that he hadn’t gone to an art school instead of to a university. If he’d have suggested it, his mother might have given way, she thought both her children showed great talent in drawing and painting. Instead of that, he had done exactly what his headmaster had suggested without thinking where it might lead. He had certainly never wanted to be a lawyer. It was Catrin who had set her heart on art school and might have got there if it hadn’t been for the war which had made her turn to nursing instead. He was ashamed of how strongly he had opposed Catrin’s wish to go to the Slade, having read about art students who cut their hair to look like men, and believed in free love. Poor Catrin, he had got his wish. She had married and settled down but might she still be hankering after a different sort of life, one full of romance and danger? He hoped with all his heart that she was feeling at least fairly happy, fairly resigned to the routine of her life in the country.

His work had changed. The colours were deeper, they were no longer as innocent. From the new paintings, one had the feeling that the countryside held menace, shadows were dark, skies were threatening. Lowri wasn’t entirely happy at the result of the first morning’s work. ‘They’re not pictures I’d want to live with, somehow. They make me think of bad days and uneasy dreams.’ Josi felt the same. ‘Listen, lad, you’ve got to sell these pictures. You’ve got to listen to your public, that’s Lowri and me. We think you’ve lost something. Perhaps you’re trying too hard.’

But Mr Hammond was delighted with what he’d done. ‘You’ve reached a new dimension,’ is what he said. ‘You’ve looked at the countryside, my boy, here or in France. These are mature works. There’s a brooding quality about them which the critics will seize upon. These paintings of hills, meadows, rivers, dark clouds, convey a deep melancholy and unrest which suggest 1917. With these and more like them I think you’ll make your mark. On, on, my boy.’

‘Yes, Mr Hammond liked them,’ was all he told Lowri and Josi that night, but he was filled with hope and determination. He now felt he had something to live for.

The following week, May still in London buying her trousseau and visiting relatives to invite them to her February wedding, something very strange happened to Tom. It was a cold, bright day and he was well wrapped up, but instead of taking out his pad and his watercolours, he pulled out some large sheets of paper and some charcoal and started to draw scenes he remembered from the trenches. His concentration was so deep that he missed the bell rung for dinner and Josi came out to see if something had happened to him. He could hardly bear to leave his drawings, couldn’t say much to anyone during the meal, was only anxious to get back.

‘He’s drawing some of the war scenes that are still in his mind,’ Josi told Lowri.

‘And in my nightmares,’ Tom added.

‘Well done, lad. Whether they sell or not, I feel you’re doing something really worthwhile.’

‘Dreadful things they are,’ Josi told Lowri after Tom had gone back to work. ‘Dreadful, dark things, all black with some patches of dark red; blood I suppose and some red petals strewn here and there. But mostly bodies, living and dead, some of them a horrible greenish colour. A corpse being sucked into the mud. Terrible things. Nothing anyone would like to look at, let alone pay good money for.’

At the end of the week, Tom was rather concerned at the prospect of showing Mr Hammond what he’d been doing, but he needn’t have worried. Mr Hammond was so impressed that he said he was going to ask Mr Loseley, the head of the firm, to come down to have a look at his work.

‘He’s already promised to visit to look at one or two other things I’m interested in. Try to produce one or two of these again next week so that I’ll have half a dozen to show him if he comes the following weekend. If he’s as imp­ressed by these as I am, he might accept some for an exhibition of war paintings he’s arranging for the spring. That would really get you started. Thomas Lloyd Evans. I think you told me that Lloyd is your second name. I think Tom Evans sounds too abrupt. And names are important. Tom Lloyd Evans? T Lloyd Evans? What do you think?’

‘I’ve written Tom Evans on this batch. That’s my signature. I think it sounds good.’

‘Very well. My latest protégé, Tom Evans. My latest find, Tom Evans.’

‘I think I found you as a matter of fact, but we won’t quarrel about that.’

‘Lieutenant Tom Evans MC. Yes, you see I’ve been researching your background. Llandovery College and Jesus College, Oxford, I believe.’

‘That’s right. Came down without a degree though and I’m convinced my MC was awarded simply because I lost my leg and not for any particular gallantry. I think it’s best that we stick to art, don’t you?’

‘Not at all, young man. You paint and I’ll do the marketing. Is that a deal? I’ve been in this business for forty years, my lad. Trust me. Half the paintings we sell will be for that MC. People will want an authentic part of the action. Trust me, young man.’

‘I’m also the proud owner of a new Daimler motor car. Is that of importance?’