Summer’s Last Retreat

by Summer's Last Retreat (retail) (epub)

  ‘Can I speak to William Ddole?’ she heard him say and jumping up, gave him a hug.

  ‘Dadda. What do you want with Mr Ddole? He hasn’t complained about me, has he?’

  ‘No, love. It’s a business matter, nothing for you to worry about.’

  Olwen disappeared again inside her pot, determined to be there when he returned from his interview. He was twisting his hat in his long, thin hands and there was a look of concern on his kind face.

  That he did not stop to see her as he left, worried her greatly and as soon as she could, she ran home to find out the cause of his anxiety.

  ‘It seems that William Ddole, for reasons he won’t tell us, is wanting to sell this house and the land,’ Mary told her. Olwen stared at her parents, who, in the few hours since they had known, had aged frighteningly. Mary’s hair, usually so neat and orderly, was hanging out of her scarf giving her a bewildered look, Spider was slumped on the bench seat as if his long, sinewy back had failed him. Baby Dic was wailing his complaint at being ignored, in his basket near the fire. That her mother took no notice of his distress was alarming. Olwen picked up the little boy and cuddled him.

  ‘I’ll talk to Penelope,’ Olwen said when the matter had been discussed fully, every prospect considered. ‘She will help. I’m sure her father can be persuaded that, as this house is a tai unnos, a night house, built by my grandfather, and ours by right, they can’t throw us out of it.’

  ‘Tai unnos rights are not strong against a determined landowner,’ Spider said sadly. ‘A group of paid bullies could demolish it in no time and who’s to argue for it then? And the land that was originally ours was minimal and I’ve gradually extended it as my family grew so what I use for the animals and the crops is not legally mine. No one has ever argued the rights and wrongs of it – until now.’

  The house was a simple dwelling of compacted mud, built with walls two feet thick on a stone base. The bedroom floor was a wattle of woven hazel branches and the roof was straw thatch over gorse. The walls and roof, window and doorway had been built in one night by Olwen’s grandfather with a group of willing friends. As they had traditionally succeeded in completing it and having the hearth made and filled with a fire with smoke going up the chimney before dawn broke, it had been accepted to be his by right for ever. But as Spider had explained, many a tai unnos had been demolished when its position became inconvenient.

  ‘But what can he want with this strip of cliff top?’ Spider asked. ‘There’s no one would want to build a big house here, and besides, the land is too small for anyone of substance to want.’

  ‘Together with the rest of the land stretching back to the stream, it might be worth more than the same land without our little piece,’ Mary said, taking Dic to sleep against her warmth.

  ‘There’s a spring close by and the land is good,’ Spider added. ‘It would fetch a good price, but surely the Ddoles aren’t hungry for the pounds it would fetch?’

  ‘There’s talk that they aren’t paying their debts,’ Mary said. She rocked the baby in her arms, holding him close in a protective way, bent over him, warding off all dangers. Olwen moved to sit near her, an arm across the baby, and Spider sat up as he watched them, straightening his back preparing for battle.

  Olwen walked back to Ddole House in a sober state of mind. She dare not question Florrie, who in any case had little to do with the affairs of the house purse, simply ordering what she needed and taking delivery of it. Bethan would know little more except what she might glean from listening at doors. Dare she impose on Penelope’s friendship and ask her?

  The opportunity arose that same day, as Penelope came into the kitchen to confer with Florrie. Dorothy Ddole had invited seven people to supper and their likes and dislikes were the source of a long discussion. When the decisions had been made, Olwen managed to be outside the door as Penelope passed through it.

  ‘Can I talk to you about something private, Miss Penelope?’ she whispered.

  Penelope nodded and led her into the small study used by her father. She smiled at the girl, hoping for news about Barrass. When Olwen told her that the house on the cliff top was to be knocked down and the family evicted, she put both hands to her cheeks in horror.

  ‘But my father would not do such a thing!’

  ‘With that John Maddern telling him how to make money he would!’ Olwen said rudely. ‘The rumours are that your father can’t pay his debts and the houses will go until he has made enough to put himself right with his debtors.’

  ‘Olwen. You must not talk to me like that.’

  ‘And why not?’ Olwen scolded, her hands on her hips. ‘How can you expect me to say nothing while your family is threatening to put mine out in the cold winter weather, with nothing between them and the loss of their home but you saying it won’t happen?’

  ‘I’ll talk to my father, I promise,’ Penelope said, but there was fear in her heart that her pleading would not be enough to alter his mind. She knew only too well how impossible it would be to continue without finding some money from somewhere.

  Turning the knife, Olwen added, ‘Want us to end up like Barrass, do you? Homeless and driven out of the place where my father has lived and his father before him. On the road we’ll be, Barrass with us, and your family to blame.’

  Olwen realized she had gone too far, had spoken rudely to the girl who she was employed to serve and who was in no way to blame.

  ‘Miss Penelope, I’m sorry. I forgot who I was talking to. I should never have spoken like that. Please, will you forget it? I won’t be that rude again, I promise.’

  ‘Go now, and I’ll talk to you when I have seen my father.’

  Olwen went back to her work but for once, her speed was less than Dozy Bethan’s.

  * * *

  Penelope did not talk to her father. Taking Bethan with her, she went to call on John Maddern. John had settled into the house previously rented by Henry Harris, and, as it was her first visit to him in his new home, she carried salt and holly to ward off evil from the house, plus a gift of small cakes made by Florrie and a bottle of wine. When they arrived, the door was open and Bessie Rees was scrubbing the yard with a long-handled broom.

  ‘Mistress Ddole! Come inside do.’ Bessie rubbed her dirty hands on her sacking apron, then untied it and threw it to one side as she showed the visitor into the small but neat living room. ‘My oh my, Mr Maddern will be disappointed. Gone to talk to that Kenneth-the-Post, he has, with some letter for delivery to the Swansea office. There’s a man for writing letters! Never a week goes by without he has letters to give to Kenneth.’ She prattled on as she tilted the huge black kettle to pour boiling water onto a pot of tea leaves. When the tea was poured into a delicate and tiny cup, she handed it to Penelope proudly.

  ‘Ever seen anything so pretty before? Came from London by the stagecoach they did, along with all manner of fine things. Whoever marries him will be the envy of everyone, with a husband able to provide such stuff.’

  Penelope let her chatter, hardly needing to add more than the occasional word, while she looked around the room. It was well furnished indeed, with a fine long-case clock in one corner rumbling before it chimed the midday hour. China and pewter ornaments filled the mantelshelf and cluttered the window sills. There were pictures of dreamlike scenes of beautiful countryside. The staircase was wooden, and under it was oak panelling which Penelope suspected was a door.

  ‘What is in there?’ she asked when Bessie finally paused for breath. ‘Surely not a room?’

  ‘Oh no. That is where poor dear Henry Harris kept his things, papers and the like.’

  ‘Now used by Mr Maddern, of course.’

  ‘Well, no. I didn’t tell him, like.’ The woman looked guilty. ‘I told him there was nothing but a stone wall, made to support the stairs for fear they would give under the weight of a man.’

  ‘And that isn’t true?’

  ‘Kept things there, he did, and I think that they should remain his secret. Supposing he
is dead, the man has still lived, he doesn’t suddenly vanish together with all memory of him and I wouldn’t like people to laugh and think—’

  ‘The key, Bessie.’

  Knowing she was bested by looking into Penelope’s cool and determined eyes, she gave up her efforts to keep the man’s secret and said, ‘There ain’t one, you just pull by here…’ Bessie bent down and pulled at the edge of the panel and the understairs was revealed. To Penelope’s disappointment there was nothing inside but a small wooden box. Bessie and Bethan carried it into the room. It had no key and Penelope slowly opened it, with Bethan peering over her shoulder, and Bessie standing, wiping her hands nervously and unnecessarily on her skirt.

  It was filled with pages of pressed flowers. Each bundle showed the progress of a season, starting with the first snowdrops, daffodils and celandines, and including silk-like welsh poppies and lacy fumitories, going right through the year with all the grasses and flowers of summer, to the bronzed leaves of autumn.

  Penelope knelt down and sifted carefully through them, too involved in the beautiful collection to wonder why Henry thought it necessary to keep his work a secret.

  ‘He was afraid people would laugh at the idea of a man doing something so feminine,’ Bessie explained. ‘You won’t tell, will you? He wouldn’t like people to laugh at him.’

  ‘I can’t imagine anyone laughing,’ Penelope said, getting more comfortable on the carpeted floor. ‘I wonder if John will let me have them?’

  ‘Have what, Miss Penelope?’ John Maddern appeared in the doorway. ‘And what, may I ask, are you doing sprawled on my floor?’ He stepped towards her and as Bessie and Bethan scuttled out of the room, offered her a hand to rise, but she pointed to the pages of dried flowers and said,

  ‘John, aren’t they beautiful? Please forgive my impertinence in finding them. May I take them home and study them?’

  ‘I would have given them to you before if I had thought you might be intrigued by them.’

  ‘You knew about them?’

  ‘I searched the house thoroughly when I first came, hoping for some information that would help your father,’ he said. ‘Now, shall we put them back in the box and I will send them over to you before the day is out.’

  He went to close the panelling, but Penelope stopped him.

  ‘Isn’t it smaller inside than out, by a little?’ she asked. She bent down and all but disappeared under the wooden stairs. She backed out and pointed. ‘I do believe there is something else to find.’ She stood and allowed John to look.

  He called for Bessie to bring a taper and went in and stared around the small cupboard space thoughtfully, then disappeared as he knelt down, throwing strange shadows. Penelope stood waiting for him, her eyes constantly drawn back to the pressed flowers still spread over the rich carpet. Eventually he came back out and he was smiling.

  ‘There is indeed something else. The supports to the first stairs are hollow and in them are some papers. Will you please excuse my manners if I ask you to go at once and tell your father to come here? I don’t want to involve the servants. Thanks to your sharp eyes, my dear, I think we have discovered Henry’s other secret.’

  * * *

  Penelope walked home in excitement, thinking more of the wonderful collection of wild flowers than the possibility that John and her father might be able to find the missing money. She planned to ask her father to buy her some books in which she could store the flowers, and began to consider how she would arrange them. Bethan rarely chattered so they were both silent until they reached the house.

  Florrie and the other servants were outside, all perched on barrels, boxes and window sills. Some had even climbed drainpipes and were balancing on the low roofs of outbuildings. David was sitting on the eaves of the stables with an armful of stones which he was throwing down.

  ‘What is happening?’ Penelope asked.

  ‘Rats, I suppose,’ Bethan said in her slow voice. ‘Collins-the-Rats is back.’

  Then she saw them. The ground was moving in a sea of brown backs, undulating waves of fur changing direction as if under the orders of a drill sergeant, as they tried to escape the stones and sticks of the servants. Ignoring the calls to keep away, and leaving Dozy Bethan sitting on a window sill with the others, her feet raised inelegantly to avoid the pests, Penelope ran to find her father. He was marching up and down his study in a rage.

  ‘Father, I have just seen a plague of rats and – Father, what is it?’ Immediately she was filled with fears for her mother. ‘Is my mother – well?

  ‘She has had a terrible shock, my dear, and I am in the mood to kill Collins-the-Rats for causing it.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He didn’t get his money – I – er – forgot to pay him last time he came, I understand. This time, he was impatient and when I did not pay him he was very rude so I told him he would not ever be paid nor would he work for me again. He came this morning shouting impertinently for his money. When I refused, he opened the sack he carried on his back and emptied several dozen rats out in Florrie’s kitchen.’

  The request for her father to visit John was forgotten and she ran up to her mother’s room.

  ‘Mother, are you all right? Don’t worry about the rats, David and some of the others will soon rid us of them.‘

  ‘It isn’t the episode of the rats that upset me, daughter.’ Dorothy’s voice was strong, and she stood upright and unsupported at the window, looking down over the stables, pigsties and storehouses to the distant hills. ‘It’s how I have been so stupid. I have lived for more than forty years and spent it being stupid.’

  ‘How can you say that, Mother?’ Penelope went to hug her, but Dorothy pushed her away.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me of our precarious situation? Why wasn’t I told that money was short and creditors were lining up for their money?’

  ‘I – did not know for certain, Father was away and – and I thought it pointless to worry you until he came home, believing it to be but a temporary situation due to the sudden death of Henry.’

  ‘It went back further than your father’s recent visit to London.’ Dorothy’s eyes, deep-set in the skull-like thinness of her face, glared accusingly at her daughter. ‘You allowed me to arrange expensive parties, to order three new horses, dresses I can hardly be expected to use, so bad is my health, and a new carpet for the drawing room and curtains costing more than most cottagers have to live on for many a year. You said nothing as I restocked the pantry and ordered grain-seed and the like, sent the blacksmith’s account sky high with repairs and new lights and a dozen unnecessary things. All the time knowing we hadn’t the money to pay for any of it.’

  Penelope bowed her head, then she looked her mother firmly in the eyes and asked, ‘You think because of this that you have led a useless life? It is the husband’s responsibility to deal with finances. Yours to give him the kind of home he desires. That you have done and he would have no complaints.’

  She helped her mother back to bed, finding her rigid with barely suppressed anger. Giving her a spoonful of the medicine which Doctor Percy had delivered to her almost daily, she tucked her under the covers, and seeing the fire was burning low, went with the promise to send Bethan up to attend to it. She went down, thinking only of the sad state of her once lively and strong mother, sad that her father had been made to admit the difficulties they were undergoing. She still forgot the message for her father.

  * * *

  Dorothy lay on the bed but her eyes were wide open and sleep no longer a possibility. She had watched as Bethan built up the fire, stared as the flames flickered and grew and eventually wrapped themselves around the new coals and reddened them to a heat-giving glow. She was useless. Even in such disaster as poverty facing them, she had not been considered able to help. They were treating her as if she were already dead. She forced herself to look around the room, taking in everything she had not looked at properly for years, wanting to see the room in which she had spent so many ho
urs during the past months, to soak in its beauties and its ugliness. She turned her head and studied the small chest between the two windows on the opposite wall. It was in need of a polish. The picture above it was a little off centre. She raised herself as if to go and straighten it but sank down again. It was really too much trouble.

  She tried to relax. Doctor Percy had warned her that she must conserve her strength. But for what, she asked herself? For more days spent like this one, uselessly existing? Costing money they no longer had. She closed her eyes at last, to squeeze out the very first tear of self-pity.

  As her lids dropped, blocking her view of the room, she saw at once pictures of the small boy walking off into the snow, and the child backing away in terror from her horse’s legs. What a selfish life she had led, best there was no more of it.

  The decision to rise from her bed forced remaining reserves of strength into use, the mind refusing to accept the body’s weakness. Taking a coat from the cupboard, she as soon allowed it to fall. It was too heavy for her to lift, let alone wear, its weight would drag her to the floor before she left the room. Taking instead a lighter, thinner jacket, she pulled on boots, shuddering at the thinness of her legs in them, and went to look out of the window.

  The excitement of the rats was over, the house was back to its normal quiet. With an ironical smile she paused to straighten the picture before going down the stairs and out through the back door into the cold air. She walked slowly until she reached the corner of the stable yard, then mustering all her strength she walked to where David was laying out a row of rats, counting them with the pointed stick which he had used to dispatch them.

  ‘David, my horse. And hurry if you please.’

  He looked startled but jumped to obey her, saddling her favourite bay. She could not lift herself on to its back, even with the use of the mounting block, and he hesitantly asked if she should wait until she was stronger.