The Lost Days of Summer (11 page)

As soon as her aunt had disappeared, Eifion came clumping into the kitchen, knocking the snow off his boots and rubbing his cold hands vigorously together. Nell had learned some time previously that Eifion understood English as well as she did herself, though he was shy of trying to speak it to someone he did not know well. To her own secret astonishment Nell realised that she now understood a great deal of Welsh, thanks largely to Bryn, so it was no longer difficult for herself and the farm worker to converse, even though both were careful to pick their words and to speak slowly.

Nell took the porridge saucepan from the range and smiled at Eifion as he unbuttoned his coat and sat down at the table with a sigh of relief. ‘Only porridge today, and as much bread and butter as you can eat, as well as a good mug of hot tea,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Then we’ll do the milking. After that I’ve got to cook our dinner and prepare the high tea, so you’ll have to manage without me then, I’m afraid.’

‘That’ll suit,’ Eifion said briefly. ‘I reckon the missus will be back afore dark, or soon after.’ He scraped his spoon round his porridge dish and pulled his mug of tea towards him. ‘Grand it is to have a paned on a cold morning,’ he said. ‘Did I tell you young Bryn won’t be coming back no more? His mam don’t want him missing out on a berth aboard the
Scotia
because he’s still not fit, so she’s keeping him at home and seeing that he don’t overdo himself.’

Nell had already been told it was unlikely that Bryn would be returning, and, though she had been dismayed at first, the knowledge that she and Eifion now understood one another pretty well had lessened her disappointment. She really liked Bryn and would miss him, but she thought him young for his age and often rather silly. She also knew in her heart that she would probably learn Welsh more quickly when it was a case of necessity.

She murmured that she hoped Bryn would return for a few days when he got leave from his ship, and sought for a new subject of conversation. She had long wanted to know for certain the identity of the man in the photograph on the mantel and addressed her companion casually. ‘Eifion, you know that photograph on the mantel, the one with the man and— Oh!’ She had turned towards the range as she spoke and to her surprise realised that the old brown photograph was no longer there. Instead, a bright calendar advertising a certain brand of cattle cake was in its place. Eifion, however, did not so much as glance at the mantel.

‘What about it?’ he asked, shovelling porridge, and Nell realised that he was so accustomed to the photograph that it had not occurred to him to turn and examine it. ‘That’s Mr Owain, that is.’ He gave her a searching look from under his thick, grizzled brows. ‘Who did you think it were?’

Nell shrugged. She had thought it must be Owain Jones, but when she had asked Auntie Kath, shortly after arriving at the farmhouse, she had received no proper sort of answer. ‘Why do you want to know?’ her aunt had said belligerently, and before Nell could explain that it was simple curiosity her aunt had changed the subject with sufficient finality to make it plain that Nell would not be told anything about it – or not by Auntie Kath, at any rate. Naturally, this made Nell even more curious, and more determined than ever to discover the identity of the man in the photograph.

But now Eifion was looking at her enquiringly, so Nell rushed into speech. ‘Oh, I just wondered who it was,’ she said vaguely. ‘I was pretty sure it must be him.’ She finished off her porridge, drained her mug of tea, and got to her feet. ‘It wasn’t important. My aunt’s husband was a handsome chap, wasn’t he?’

Eifion snorted and got up. ‘Handsome is as handsome does,’ he said sententiously, grinning gummily at her. He switched to Welsh. ‘You might say I were handsome, in my day, like. You might say you was handsome . . .’

Nell laughed. ‘Thanks very much,’ she said sarcastically, taking down her coat and putting it on. ‘You certainly know how to turn a compliment!’ She pushed her feet into her rubber boots and cuddled her hands into the thick mittens her aunt had knitted for her. ‘Come on then; let’s get the cows milked and the shippon mucked out. Then I’ll come back indoors and start on the dinner.’ As the two of them, heads bent, let themselves out of the door and into the blizzard, she raised her voice. ‘I wonder where that old photograph went, though? Any ideas, Eifion?’

‘Dresser drawer,’ Eifion bawled above the howl of the wind. The two of them burst into the shippon, grateful to be out of the whirling snow which, in the short distance across the yard, had clung to their clothing and stung their cheeks. ‘She said something about a new frame . . . it’ll be in the dresser drawer.’

Nell nodded and picked up her milk pail and stool, then went across to Dora, her favourite cow. ‘Here I am, lass,’ she said cheerfully, arranging her stool by Dora’s side and taking a length of twine out of her pocket so that she might tie Dora’s tail to her hind leg whilst she was being milked. Nell did not much like to have a cow’s tail, coated with dung, lashed across her face every time Dora turned round to see how she was getting on.

As the milk began to hiss into the pail, she thought how luck had smiled on her. Under normal circumstances, Auntie Kath would have been in and out of the kitchen all day, making it impossible for her niece to search the dresser drawers and take a good look at the photograph, and to see for herself whether there were books in the forbidden attic. As it was, when Nell went in to cook the dinner, she would have every opportunity both to find the photograph and to search the attic. The man in the photograph appeared to be in his early twenties, yet Trixie had insinuated that there had been a considerable age difference between Owain and his bride. Presumably this must mean that the photograph had been taken a long while before the marriage.

Thinking it over, Nell could not imagine why her aunt had hidden it away in the dresser drawer. So far as she could see, it made no sense. Burying her head in the cow’s warm side, she thought smugly that Auntie Kath could do her best to keep her niece in the dark, but by hook or by crook she, Nell, would find out all she wanted to know. Smiling to herself, she drained Dora’s udder and moved to the next cow. At least she knew for certain now that the man in the photograph was Owain Jones. It’s a start, she told herself.

As soon as the milking was finished she and Eifion mucked out the cows, who could not be turned out in such conditions. Then Nell hurried across the snowy yard to get dinner, leaving Eifion to collect the eggs and check on the sheep.

Back in the warmth of the kitchen, she put potatoes into the sink to be peeled and chose a large cabbage from the vegetable rack. Then she succumbed to temptation and attacked the dresser drawers. The first one was full of papers – bills, receipts, letters and so on – and the second held a variety of tablecloths, napkins and similar tableware. The third, however, proved to contain the photograph, as well as a broken silver frame. So Eifion had been right. The photograph must have been in the frame once, though not in her time.

Nell looked guiltily round her, then picked up the photograph, turned it over and saw, to her disappointment, that there was nothing written on it. It was a pity, but at least she knew for certain now that this was indeed Owain Jones, who would have been her uncle had he not died long ago.

She peeled the potatoes in record time, then chopped the cabbage into a steamer which she balanced on top of the pan of potatoes. She would pop the apple flan into the oven as soon as they sat down to eat their main course, and there was a big jug of milk and some Bird’s custard powder awaiting her attention. Nell smiled wryly. Her aunt had clearly not forgotten the horrible results of her attempt to teach her niece to make a proper egg custard, not to mention the sinful waste of her precious sugar in the process.

As soon as she had got the dinner on the go, Nell went over to the kitchen window and peered out into the snowy yard. There was no sign of Eifion. Nothing moved in the silent scene, apart from the snowflakes drifting lazily down, indicating that the wind had eased. At least Auntie Kath won’t have to tackle fresh snowdrifts on her way home, Nell told herself. She moved away from the window and crossed to the door leading to the hall, glancing up at the clock as she did so. Good! Auntie Kath always served dinner at one o’clock and it was only a quarter past twelve. Eifion was a creature of habit and needed no watch to tell him the time; he would be scraping the snow off his boots at five to one, hanging his coat on the clothes horse to dry at three minutes to one, scrubbing his hands at the sink at a minute to one, and sitting down at the table at exactly one o’clock. Smiling to herself at the mental picture, Nell wondered whether Eifion would retain his greasy tweed cap. He always grumbled if Auntie Kath tried to make him take it off, saying that more heat escaped through the top of a man’s head than by any other route. Nell absolved Eifion of vanity and thought he genuinely believed that his cap should remain on his head for all his waking hours. In fact she had once asked Bryn if his grandfather wore the cap at night, expecting him to laugh and deny it. But Bryn had looked at her owlishly. ‘I dunno; likely he does though . . . keep it on all night, I mean,’ he had said, his mouth quirking into a grin so that Nell was not sure whether he was teasing her. ‘Nain once told me she bought him a nightcap one Christmas. It were wool and a lovely red colour, but he said folk would confuse him wi’ Santy Claus and he weren’t having that.’

‘You’re kidding me,’ Nell had said uncertainly, but he had assured her it was the gospel truth he was telling her, then changed the subject.

Now Nell, ascending the stairs, suddenly got a mental picture of Eifion in a pointed red woollen hat and choked on a laugh, then dismissed the thought and began to run up the flight. She knew it was silly to hurry, because her aunt could not possibly get back from Valley station until four or five that afternoon, and if the unheard-of happened and Eifion came in earlier than usual, there were a thousand reasons why she might have gone up to her room in the middle of the day. There was no reason why she should feel guilty, imagining that any moment a voice would hail her, demanding to know what she was up to.

Ever since she had arrived at the farm, she had longed to explore it properly, for despite having been there for many weeks she had still never visited some areas of the huge house. The parlour, with its stiff brocade curtains, cabinets full of rare and beautiful china, elegant furniture and huge oil paintings, held no interest for her, nor did the still room with its shelves packed with bottled fruit, pickles, chutneys and salted beans and peas. The bedrooms other than her own and her aunt’s were of course plainly furnished and boringly like one another.

No, it was the attic which interested her. If Auntie Kath had not more or less forbidden her to mount the ladder-like stairs and look round the attic she might never have thought of going up there, but forbidden fruit is always the more tempting – Auntie Kath should have remembered Eve in the Garden of Eden, Nell thought – so she had long ago made up her mind that as soon as her aunt left the house for a long period she would take advantage of her absence to climb the narrow stair, push open the trapdoor and see for herself just what the attic contained.

The fact that her aunt had done her best to discourage exploration by saying that the attic was dangerous had not had the desired effect. Nell had listened to Auntie Kath’s description of woodworm, death watch beetle, rats, giant spider webs and inch-thick dust without emotion; truth to tell, she had not believed a word of it. But she had known better than to show disbelief. She had giggled, then shivered. ‘It sounds like the Sleeping Beauty’s palace,’ she had observed. ‘Perhaps there’s an old woman up there, spinning away and turning the cobwebs into magical garments. Perhaps I ought to take a look.’

‘Perhaps you ought not to go poking your nose into what don’t concern you,’ her aunt had snapped. ‘Sleeping Beauty indeed! You’d be well served if you found yourself in trouble, ’cos my Owain told me years ago that the floor was rotten. He always reckoned that anyone who didn’t know the worst patches might get a broken leg, or worse.’

So which of Auntie’s horror stories am I to believe, Nell asked herself now as she approached the narrow wooden stair which led to the attic. I can’t say I believe in rats because I’m sure I would have heard them scuttling, and as for death watch beetle, someone once told me that the reason they’re called that is because of the constant tick, tick, tick they make whilst nibbling rotten wood. And if there are woodworm chewing away at the beams and boards there soon won’t be any house left anyway, because most of it is wood.

So I shall go on regardless, Nell told herself, and so saying she mounted the rest of the stairs and pushed open the heavy trapdoor, revealing a huge room which, contrary to her fears, was anything but bare and empty. It was simply crammed with every unwanted item which had been too good to throw away, yet was no longer wanted in the house below. Furthermore, she could see that the floor was sound. In fact, when she sniffed the air, a familiar odour came to her nostrils. She looked around and saw that mothballs had been scattered pretty freely, whilst even the most cursory glance convinced her that the great beams supporting the slate roof were as sound as the boards of the floor.

Nell took a deep breath; someone, and it must be her Auntie Kath, had been up here within the past few months to spread the mothballs, so she must be well aware that the floor was safe and the beams untouched by either woodworm or death watch beetle. So why, for heaven’s sake, had she told . . . well, fibs to dissuade her niece from exploring the attic? And it was obvious now where Owain Jones’s books had gone. Not to the rector, or the schoolmaster; in fact, they were here. Big and little piles, they called to Nell as though they had voices of their own, entreating her to pick them up, dust them off, and read them.

Nell scrambled right into the room. She saw that a huge old sofa with horsehair stuffing leaking from one of its cushions stood against one wall, and to Nell’s joy there were four windows, so the torch which she had pushed into the pocket of her overalls would not be necessary. She gave a quick look round, then crouched to peer out of the windows, which were at knee level. The two nearest her overlooked the farmyard and the other two, which she could not approach directly without first clearing a path through the attic’s myriad contents, must look out over the snowy countryside.