Finders and Keepers

by Catrin Collier

‘You could take the poultry, eggs and cheeses though.’ David picked up a couple of fleeces from the back of the car and slung them on top of the others in the storeroom.

  ‘I could, and I will if I’m here next week,’ Harry murmured. He didn’t mind helping the Ellises in an emergency, but he certainly wasn’t volunteering to become their unpaid farm labourer. With his grandfather and Edyth ill, his first allegiance had to be to his family.

  ‘You still owe us something for knocking Martha down in your car. But if you’re thinking of buying us another horse, don’t.’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ Harry said quickly, ‘but if I was, why shouldn’t I?’

  ‘Because Bob the Gob would take it. It’s what he does with every tenant farm. He takes the decent animals and leaves the old and sick ones. Mary and I try to keep the best of our livestock away from the road because he doesn’t wander far from it. But if he sees them, he orders his men to take them.’

  Harry secured the last fleece in the outbuilding. ‘The agent’s taken everything you had of any value, hasn’t he?’

  ‘You know he has.’ David waited until Harry left the storeroom, then closed and fastened the door.

  ‘And he keeps threatening to evict you?’

  ‘There’s no need to harp on about it, Harry.’

  Harry recollected what the shepherd, Dic, had said in the inn. He didn’t doubt the man’s word. And he only had to look around the farm to confirm that the agent had stripped the Ellis Estate of everything that would bring in a few shillings. What he couldn’t understand was why the agent still allowed the children to live on the estate when they had run up such large rent arrears. It simply didn’t make sense.

  Unless everyone was wrong about the man and he was acting out of honourable motives. And far from robbing the Ellises, he was only giving them time to make inroads on their rent arrears. In which case, the time would come when they would clear their father’s debts and could look forward to making enough from the farm to live in relative comfort.

  There was only one thing wrong with that theory. He hadn’t left them any decent animals for breeding stock.

  Chapter Twelve

  Mary left the house and crossed the yard just as Harry was opening his car door ready to leave the farm.

  ‘I assumed you were busy in the house, Miss Ellis, and I didn’t want to disturb you by saying goodbye. And then again, I’m hardly in a fit state to pay a social call.’ Harry ran his grubby and blistered hands through his knotted hair.

  ‘I’m about to wet the tea, Mr Evans, and there’s fresh bread and cheese on the table. You’re welcome to join us if you want to, and have time,’ she added diffidently. ‘As for your state, you’re no worse than the rest of us. There’s no point in dressing in your best clothes to work on a farm, which is something I’m afraid you’ve done. Your fine suit is ruined.’

  ‘It was an old one,’ Harry lied. Mindful of what his grandfather had said about taking everything the Ellises offered, he said, ‘And thank you very much for your invitation. You must have read my mind. I’m parched.’

  ‘Did you make the bread, or did you try to make Martha’s rise?’ David pulled a clump of thorn-infested fleece from his sweater – which was more holes than wool – and tossed it at a chicken.

  ‘Martha’s was fine. It’s so long since she made a loaf she was just worried that it wasn’t rising fast enough.’

  ‘And it’s not solid, like the last time she made one when you were busy in the dairy?’ David enquired sceptically.

  ‘That was the first loaf she ever made, and she’d prefer you not to harp on about it. Show Mr Evans where he can wash his hands. And feed the dogs before you come in. Their food is ready for them in their bowls. I’ll see if Martha has finished setting the table.’ Mary turned back to the house.

  David checked that the door on the outbuilding was securely bolted. He disappeared into the barn and returned carrying a padlock and key. Threading the padlock through the bolt, he locked it and pocketed the key. ‘Just in case the agent or any of his men come snooping around before we have time to sell these on,’ he explained to Harry.

  ‘The agent comes snooping round your yard?’ Harry didn’t know whether to believe the boy or not. There was no doubt that David was paranoid when it came to the agent, angry with the world in general, and surly and suspicious of strangers. But after hearing what the family had suffered during the last few years his attitude was understandable.

  ‘Every time Bob the Gob comes here he notices everything. How many pigs we have, how many calves, what should be ready for market and what will be ready for sale the following month. Sometimes I think the bastard hides in our attic watching every move we make.’

  ‘I’d keep that language for when you and I are alone together and your sisters and brothers aren’t around,’ Harry advised, softening the reproach with a conspiratorial wink. It wasn’t his place to reprimand David, and he doubted that the boy would listen to him even if it was. But after an afternoon spent working with him, he’d decided that it would be easier to help the Ellises if he could persuade David to alter his opinions on some things, starting with his attitude to ‘book learning’ and Martha’s ambition to read and write.

  ‘If I do, I suppose it’ll save me from another bollocking from Mary,’ David grinned.

  Sensing the boy was testing him, Harry ignored the comment. He followed him to the well at the back of the house.

  David drew a bucket of water, carried it into the scullery and tipped it into the stone sink. He handed Harry a sliver of green carbolic soap and a wooden scrubbing brush, then picked up a collection of bowls from the windowsill and whistled for the dogs as he returned to the yard.

  Harry stooped and plunged his hands into the freezing water. It was so cold it was impossible to work up lather. After a few minutes of futile rubbing, his hands were raw, the dirt that wasn’t ingrained in his folds of skin and under his nails scraped off by the hard bristles. He finished by plunging his face into the bucket, and brushing the water back through his hair. Afterwards he felt fresher but no cleaner.

  He balanced the soap and brush on the edge of the sink for David, took a worn towel from a nail hammered into the stone wall and dried himself. Mary had been right. His cream flannel suit was ruined. Even in the gloom of the half-light that filtered through the tiny, thickset windows in the scullery walls, it looked more grey than cream. Black, brown and grass-stained oily smudges overlapped on the arms and front of his jacket and the knees of his trousers where he had knelt in the pen to gather the fleeces. Burrs, twigs and thorns caught up in the wool had snagged the suiting, dragging and tearing the cloth.

  ‘You didn’t come dressed for work,’ David declared insensitively from the doorway.

  ‘I was expecting to paint.’ Harry took a comb from his inside pocket and slicked his hair back.

  ‘That suit is only fit for the ragbag now.’

  ‘I’ll find one to put it in when I get back to the inn,’ Harry said drily.

  ‘Mary says flannel makes good floor cloths.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’

  The scullery door opened, and Mary looked in. ‘You two coming?’

  ‘Right away.’ Harry noticed that she had slipped a clean white apron on over her patched and faded black blouse and skirt. She had also succeeded in taming her unruly curls and winding them into a knot that she had secured at the nape of her neck with old-fashioned tortoiseshell pins.

  ‘Then hurry up.’ For the first time since Harry had met her she smiled, and to his astonishment he realized that although her mouth was too large, her features too strong and her complexion too dark for conventional beauty, dressed in clean clothes, with neat, tidy hair, she was an extremely striking woman – not a belligerent child. He felt slightly uneasy. She hadn’t looked at all attractive with most of her face hidden beneath the varnished straw hat when he’d taken the family to chapel. He recalled Ianto Williams’s warning: ‘You bring a strange man into our chapel …
You know that Mr Pritchard won’t be happy about this, girl.’

  Was the agent in love with Mary? Was Ianto Williams angry on Bob Pritchard’s behalf because he had mistakenly thought him a rival for Mary’s affections? But Mary and David were obviously terrified of the agent so Bob Pritchard could hardly be courting her.

  And he certainly hadn’t any ulterior motives for befriending the family, but could his attempts to help them be open to misinterpretation?

  David flicked him with water. ‘You going to hang on to that towel all day?’

  Harry handed it over. ‘Sorry, I was miles away.’

  ‘Sleeping on your feet. Like all toffs you’re not used to hard work.’ David dried his hands and led the way into the kitchen.

  The scarred pine table had been laid with five plates and cups, a bowl of sugar and a pitcher of foaming milk. A loaf of bread baked with coarsely milled flour lay sliced on a bed of crumbs on a board in the centre. Next to it stood a square of yellow farmhouse butter on a saucer and a round cheese that had been cut into triangles like a cake. Martha was sitting on one of the benches with Luke on her lap. Mary was standing in front of the stove, her face flushed with heat as she poured boiling water from an iron kettle into a teapot.

  ‘Please sit down, Mr Evans.’

  Harry sat on the end of the bench opposite Martha. She smiled shyly at him and continued to feed the baby with small pieces of buttered bread from her plate.

  The door banged open and Matthew staggered in, logs piled high in his arms.

  ‘Here, give them to me.’ David took them from him.

  ‘I didn’t need help,’ Matthew said truculently, emulating his brother’s usual attitude.

  ‘I know you didn’t, but you do need to wash some of that dirt off your face and hands before you eat.’ David dumped the logs in the rough wooden box at the side of the stove, dusted off his hands and sat next to Martha. He tickled Luke under his chin and the baby squealed in delight.

  ‘Don’t,’ Martha protested when he did the same to her.

  ‘Too grown up for tickles now, Miss Hoity-toity?’ David grabbed a slice of bread from the board.

  ‘I have been for years.’ Martha moved Luke on to her other knee and sat up primly.

  ‘Harry and I have brought in and stacked all the fleeces in the little barn, Mary, but I don’t know how we are going to get them to Pontardawe next week.’ David pulled the saucer of butter towards his plate.

  Mary knocked his hand away after she set the teapot on the table. ‘Where are your manners, David?’ She replaced the bread he’d taken on the board. ‘The guest is always offered first choice of food.’

  ‘Why?’ he demanded, his anger flaring. ‘It’s not as if one slice of bread is any better than another. Besides, the food is there; he can help himself, can’t he?’

  ‘It’s not a question of helping himself, it’s a question of manners, and yours are appalling, David Ellis.’

  ‘If they are, it’s down to them who brought me up,’ he bit back savagely.

  Ignoring David, Mary took the bread board and held it in front of Harry. ‘Bread, Mr Evans?’

  ‘Thank you.’ He took a slice.

  David snatched a piece before Mary returned the board to the table. ‘What’s the matter with you, Harry?’

  ‘In what sense?’ Harry asked, wary of getting embroiled in an argument between brother and sister.

  ‘You so idle you’d prefer to see my sister hand you a slice of bread than stretch across the table to get it yourself?’

  Harry didn’t quite suppress a smile, but he knew it was the wrong reaction when Mary glowered at both of them. ‘I’m merely observing good manners, as Miss Ellis said.’

  ‘Mr Evans must think we’re a load of savages.’ Mary held out her hand. ‘Tea, Mr Evans?’

  ‘Please.’ Harry gave her his cup.

  She filled it and passed it back to him before walking around the table and filling her brothers’ and sister’s cups. ‘Help yourself to cheese and butter, Mr Evans.’

  ‘He can take his own butter and cheese and not bread,’ David mocked.

  ‘I think your sister is trying to make me feel at home, David.’ Harry took a scraping of butter and the smallest segment of cheese.

  ‘Why, when it’s not his home?’ David asked Mary.

  ‘Mr Evans is our invited guest. And I don’t have to tell you what he did for us this afternoon. Have you even said thank you to him?’

  ‘Thank you for your help, Harry.’ David had the grace to look slightly ashamed but Harry found it even more difficult to keep a straight face when the boy was being uncharacteristically contrite.

  ‘It was my pleasure, David.’

  ‘You can’t call what we did pleasure.’

  ‘Let’s just say I enjoyed your company and doing a worthwhile job in the open air.’

  Mary finished pouring the tea. She covered the pot with a knitted cosy and set it on the table. Taking the smallest cup from the shelf of crockery, she filled it with milk, placed it before her own plate and took Luke from Martha before sitting next to Harry.

  ‘Did you hear what I said about getting the fleeces down to Pontardawe, Mary?’ David took two slices of cheese.

  ‘Yes.’ Mary settled Luke before tipping the small pieces of bread Martha had buttered for him on to her own plate. ‘But it’s pointless worrying about getting them down there before we have to. Dolly might be better by Wednesday.’

  ‘Our pigs have more chance of growing wings and flying out of their sty,’ David pronounced dourly.

  ‘The wound in her hoof is healing. I dressed it two hours ago when you were out at the pen and it definitely looked better,’ Mary countered defiantly.

  ‘It’s deep; walk her down as far as Pontardawe the way she is and she’ll never walk back. They’ll have to shoot her there,’ David said.

  ‘David mentioned that you have cheeses, eggs and poultry ready to take down to the Colonial Stores in Pontardawe, Miss Ellis,’ Harry put one spoonful of sugar into his tea instead of his usual two.

  ‘He did?’ The revelation earned David another glare.

  ‘I could take them down in the car for you. I have to go down to the shops next week and Wednesday is as good a day as any.’

  ‘The produce won’t bring in as much as the fleeces.’ David finished the food on his plate and took another piece of bread.

  ‘I don’t know anything about produce prices, but we both agreed that there is no way that I can take the fleeces down to Pontardawe in my car.’

  ‘If Dolly isn’t fit to cart them, we’ve no choice but to offer them to the agent.’ Mary held the cup in front of Luke. She kept a tight hold of the bottom while he lifted it to his mouth and drank.

  ‘Bob the Gob won’t offer us any more for that extra pen of fleeces than he will for the three we’ve left for him to pick up. But he will ask where we got them from, because they’re proof that we’ve a damned sight more fleeces than we’ve admitted to having sheep.’

  ‘David -’

  ‘I’m sorry I swore,’ he cut in irritably. ‘But there’s no need to give me another lecture. Just the thought of that man makes me curse.’

  ‘Can’t you sell your fleeces anywhere other than Pontardawe?’ Harry laid the cheese on top of the bread he’d buttered and cut it into four triangles. It was only after he’d done it that he noticed the others had cut their bread into squares.

  ‘Like where?’ David snapped.

  ‘I don’t know, there must be other markets beside Pontardawe.’

  ‘There are,’ Mary said. ‘Swansea, Brecon, Ammanford – but we’d have the same problem of getting our fleeces there.’

  ‘There are no farmers nearby who would cart them for you?’

  ‘They’re all in the same …’ David looked away from Mary, ‘position as us. Every farm within two miles of this place is owned by our landlord and their rents collected by Bob the Gob. He’s taken every horse capable of pulling a cart except Dolly.’
r />   ‘And you can’t hire a horse for a day?’ Harry asked, trying to be helpful.

  ‘With what?’ David questioned acidly.

  Harry recalled the ten pounds he’d given Mary but said nothing.

  ‘We don’t have any money to hire a horse, Mr Evans,’ Mary spoke quietly. ‘The ten pounds you gave us went to pay an old vet’s bill,’ she explained, as if she’d read his thoughts. ‘It’s been owed since last winter and he warned us no matter how much we needed him, he wouldn’t come here again until we paid it.’

  ‘I could lend you -’

  ‘We couldn’t possibly pay you back or take anything else from you.’ She looked fiercely at David, daring him to contradict her.

  ‘Was the ten pounds enough to pay the bill?’

  ‘No, we had to put two pounds we couldn’t afford towards it.’ David bit into his bread and cheese as if he were punishing it.

  ‘I was hoping that the money we’d get for the fleeces would see us through until the autumn stock sales. We’ve always managed to sell a few calves and pigs that we’ve kept from the agent. But the problem is ours, not yours, Mr Evans,’ she said firmly. ‘And thank you for helping David get the fleeces into the little barn. We couldn’t have managed without you.’

  ‘You would have, it just would have taken you longer.’ Wanting to help, but feeling as though Mary had closed off every avenue, Harry changed the subject. ‘This cheese is good. The best I’ve ever eaten, Miss Ellis.’

  ‘It’s from an old family recipe.’ Mary turned her attention to Luke, who was alternately sucking a piece of bread and a stick of cheese.

  Harry glanced around the table. The room might be bare, but it was as spotlessly clean as when he had first visited the farmhouse. And Mary Ellis and the children may be living hand to mouth on the slimmest of budgets and the simplest of food, but the cheese really was excellent. And although coarse, the bread was light. Their clothes left a great deal to be desired, but so did his after only one day of working on the farm.

  It would be so easy for him to solve their problems by going to the bank in Pontardawe, drawing some money out of his account and buying them another horse. But his grandfather was right; it wasn’t easy to help people. The Ellises might be poverty-stricken but they were also proud, and the last thing he wanted to do was take away the one thing they had left beside the Ellis Estate – their self-respect. It would destroy Mary Ellis to accept any more ‘charity’ from him. And if David was right, his gesture would be pointless anyway, because the agent would only commandeer the animal the minute he saw it, as further payment against their rent arrears.