‘He’s not a stranger.’
His eyes glittered. ‘Then you do know him.’
‘Miss Adams introduced us,’ she revealed in a small voice. ‘He came up to the farm with her.’
‘Why did Miss Adams call on you, and what was he doing with her?’ Bob drew himself up to his full height, crossed his arms across his chest and glared at her.
Intimidated, Mary said, ‘Martha fell and hit her head. Miss Adams called to see to her and he brought Miss Adams in his car.’ She kept back all mention of Harry knocking Martha down and the money he’d given them.
‘Do you know his name?’
‘Mr Evans.’
‘Mr Evans!’ he sneered. ‘And what is Mr Evans doing in the valley? And why is he taking an interest in you?’
‘He has a relative in Craig-y-Nos.’
‘And no doubt time on his hands that he doesn’t know what to do with. Well, your lease doesn’t allow you to entertain people at the farm. You don’t own it, the landlord does, and you should be working to pay off your arrears, not gossiping with visitors.’
Too terrified to argue, although she knew he’d lied to her about the lease forbidding visitors, Mary nodded an obedient ‘Yes, sir.’
‘And I don’t want you going to chapel with him again, understand?’
Mary managed another, ‘Yes, sir.’
‘I’m going into Pontardawe tonight, on business.’ He eyed her suspiciously. ‘Why are you shaking, it’s not cold. You ill?’
‘No, sir.’
‘I’ll be back this way about eleven. Wait for me in the stable.’
Diana opened the door to Harry herself. Dressed in a lounging suit of white silk pyjamas, her fashionably bobbed hair unclipped and hanging loose over her forehead, she looked seductive and desirable.
‘How is my grandfather?’
‘Better than he was this afternoon. As I said in my note, he’s breathing more easily, and if he has a good night I’ll try to persuade my father to let you see him in the morning.’
‘Thank you.’ Harry held out the bottle of surprisingly good, but horrendously expensive Moet et Chandon Mrs Edwards had unearthed from her cellar and two dozen long-stemmed cream roses he had bought from Mrs Parsons. ‘An apology for being late yesterday evening.’
‘You’re completely forgiven, but champagne and flowers are always acceptable.’ She opened the door wider. ‘Put your car in the garage so it can’t be seen from the road. I’ll leave the door on the latch. It’s such a glorious evening I’ve laid out supper in the conservatory at the back of the house. In the meantime I’ll put these in water,’ she took the roses, ‘and this,’ she glanced at the label on the champagne and smiled, ‘on ice.’
Harry hid his car in the garage, closed the door and went into the house. After locking the front door behind him he walked down the central passage that led out of the hall, past half-a-dozen closed doors and into a huge glass conservatory that ran the entire width of the house. Light and airy, it was furnished with bamboo tables, desks and shelves laden with books and magazines. The chairs, sofas and day beds were padded with cushions upholstered in pale-green linen. A profusion of tropical plants grew in Chinese-style china pots scattered liberally over the grey slate floor. He recognized a banana tree, several palms, orchids and elephant grass. All the windows, including the French doors that led directly into the garden, had been opened, but the air was still, oppressively warm and buzzing with the hum of insects.
‘Make yourself at home. You can start by taking off your tie and jacket, it’s warm in here.’ The heels on Diana’s backless slippers clattered over the slates when she carried an ice bucket and the champagne to a table. ‘This will take a while to chill. I’ll get the one I put in the ice box a couple of hours ago.’
Harry took her advice after she left, unbuttoning his collar and loosening his tie. He wandered to the door and admired the garden, laid out in the traditional English style of neat squares of lawn bordered by flower beds.
Diana returned with a second ice bucket and set it on the table next to the champagne. ‘Not up to the standard of the one you brought, but I think you’ll find it palatable.’ She held up an open, frosted bottle of French Chardonnay before pouring two glasses. Indicating the table, she said, ‘Cold supper as promised.’
‘Smoked salmon, potted shrimps, salad and crackers; it looks good.’
She carried the wine over to him and handed him a glass. ‘We need a toast. How about “to a cure for tuberculosis”?’
‘I’ll drink to that.’
‘I’m sorry about today, Harry,’ she said sincerely. ‘We had no way of knowing that your grandfather was about to haemorrhage again. If we had we would never have taken him to the visitors’ room.’
‘The end is close, isn’t it?’ It wasn’t really a question.
‘Like my father, I hate making predictions.’
‘You’ve experience.’
‘None of a case of pneumoconiosis and tuberculosis, but if you insist on pressing me, I’d say weeks rather than months.’
‘Thank you for being honest.’ He sank down on a daybed. She took his wine glass from him and set it together with her own on a side table, before sitting next to him and kissing him.
He kissed her back and wrapped his arms around her. Her breasts were soft, her back firm beneath the silk, but even as his passions rose, misery at his grandfather’s condition gnawed relentlessly at the back of his mind.
‘There’s nothing you can do for him, Harry,’ she murmured, guessing where his thoughts lay.
‘I know.’ He sat forward, leaning away from her.
She stroked his cheek with the back of her finger. ‘The first week I worked in Craig-y-Nos, I walked in on two patients making love in a side ward.’
‘That must have been embarrassing.’
‘It was – for me. She was only seventeen, he was twenty, and both were very close to death. When they saw me, they made no apology. He told me they found the act of love life-affirming. Defiance in the face of the inevitable.’
‘I suppose it is.’ He smiled at her.
‘Shall we try it?’ She rose from the bed and untied the silk rope belt on her trousers. She stepped out of them and her shoes, then unfastened her jacket and allowed it to slide to the floor on top of them. Just as before, the sight of her naked took his breath away.
‘Harry, darling. Sweet, darling Harry.’ She lay on the bed, pulled him down beside her and unbuttoned his flies.
She helped him undress and in a repeat of the first time they had made love, he allowed her to take control, obeying the instructions she whispered in his ear, placing his hands and tongue exactly where she wanted them, on her thighs, her breasts, her nipples, the flat of her stomach, kissing and fondling every inch of her until her back arched in pleasure, and in return, she caressed him expertly, bringing him to an all-too-swift climax.
Afterwards, passion still roused, he made love to her again, and that time he retained control and understood what she had been trying to tell him. That it was possible to lose all sense of grief, and even self, in passion. And when he was immersed in a second, mind-shattering climax he felt that nothing existed outside of the pleasure they brought to one another.
Exhausted, she finally moved away from him and, making no attempt to cover herself, retrieved their wine glasses and handed him his, before nestling close to him.
He summoned up the courage to ask the question uppermost in his mind. ‘What’s going to happen to us when you go back to London, Diana?’
‘In what sense, Harry?’
‘Will you see me again?’
‘If you’re ever in London and want to see me, but that’s not what you’re asking, is it?’ She moved away from him, leaned against the back of the day bed and looked into his eyes.
‘No, I thought …’ His mind searched unsuccessfully for the right words. ‘We haven’t known one another long but …’
‘You haven’t fallen in love with me
, have you, Harry?’ she asked soberly.
‘You’re a very beautiful and intelligent women, no one would blame me if I had,’ he answered evasively, suddenly realizing that although he liked Diana, and enjoyed her company and their lovemaking, his feelings for her were in no way as intense as his grandfather’s description of the passion he’d borne for his Isabella.
‘Harry, do you remember my telling you that I wasn’t always an only child?’
‘Yes.’
‘I had two brothers and a sister. When my elder brother was diagnosed with tuberculosis, my father left his post as a surgeon and re-trained at a chest clinic. He worked hard and, as you know, became one of the foremost consultants on the disease in Britain. But he couldn’t save my elder brother, or my younger one, or my sister.’
‘Diana, I am so sorry -’
‘So you see, we do know how you feel and what you are going through with your grandfather,’ she interrupted brusquely, her emotions clearly raw. ‘It’s not easy for a woman to become a doctor, let alone a consultant, but I intend to do just that. And when old age forces my father’s retirement, I will pick up where he left off. You could say that my first and only love is my work. But,’ she smiled, and her eyes glittered with mischief, ‘as you have found out, I am not always faithful to my first love, and I like sex.’
‘I’ve noticed.’ He had meant the remark to sound light-hearted but it fell heavily into the still atmosphere.
‘If I misled you in any way, Harry, I’m sorry,’ she apologized contritely. ‘You are the darlingest, most wonderful boy. Sensitive, good-looking, charitable and sweet-natured. I’m sure that every woman you meet must fall a little in love with you, just as I have done. But I thought you realized when I told you that I had to go back to London that it could never be serious between us. Please don’t tell me that I’ve hurt you, Harry?’
‘You haven’t.’ To his surprise it was the truth.
Taking his glass from him a second time, she leaned over and kissed him. ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re insatiable,’ he protested when she moved on top of him.
‘Can you blame me, when you’re so good at this?’
As they began to make love again, skilfully, if a little mechanically, his mind wandered away from what was happening to his body. He recalled the expression on his grandfather’s face when he had spoken about his Isabella and envied him.
He wanted to be part of a close, loving relationship like the one his parents shared and his grandfather had missed since the death of his wife. And, if he was honest with himself, he was even jealous of Toby, because ridiculous as he considered his friend’s sudden passion for Bella, at least Toby felt something. Diana was beautiful, intelligent and charming, but he wanted more than sex. He wanted to be in love.
If that made him a hopeless romantic, then so be it. He even found it slightly comforting to think that he had outgrown the curiosity that had spurred him into purely physical relationships and was ready for a whole lot more.
Mary lay on the right side of the double bed, looking down towards the uncurtained window that framed a view of the reservoir. She had watched the moon rise over the mountain behind it, and followed its course as it had inched its way higher in the night sky.
She had no idea of the time and no way of finding out, but she guessed that they had been in bed for about two hours. She turned lightly and carefully on the straw mattress so as not to disturb her brother and sister. Luke was sleeping in the middle of the bed, his small fists curled loosely either side of his plump, round face. Martha lay on her side facing him, her hand wrapped loosely around his small body.
She sat up and reached for the shawl that hung over the end of the footboard. Slowly and stealthily she crept through the open door of the bedroom. David and Matthew’s steady breathing came from their bedroom next door when she stole out on to the landing.
She moved lightly down the stairs in bare feet, careful to stay on the wall side, away from the banister, because the boards creaked on the outside edge of the staircase. Feeling her way in the darkness, she was glad when she reached the kitchen. The moonlight that streamed in through the window and the glow of the range meant it was easier to see shapes among the shadows. She went to the door and slipped her feet into her father’s old boots. She clutched her shawl around her shoulders, muffled the latch with her fingers and lifted it. The voluminous, old-fashioned white cotton nightgown, which had once belonged to Diana Adams’s mother, flapped at her heels as she darted across the farmyard and into the stable.
‘Anyone here?’ Her whisper resounded, alarmingly loud in the darkness. Dolly neighed and she went to her stall. She stroked the horse’s neck and the mare snuggled her nose into her arm. She rested her head against Dolly’s and then caught a whiff of decay. Crouching down, she ran her hands over the rag she’d tied around Dolly’s hoof to hold the poultice.
There was no mistaking the smell. She recognized it from three years ago when her father had been forced to shoot their prize stallion. It was gangrene. And there was nothing she could do for Dolly, herself or her family other than weep.
Chapter Fourteen
‘You won’t switch on the lights on your car until you leave the drive?’ Diana asked Harry when she re-tied the cord on her pyjama trousers.
‘No.’ Harry shrugged on his jacket.
She followed him to the front door and opened it for him. ‘You’ll call at the hospital in the morning?’
‘Of course.’ He hesitated for a moment. ‘We could go for a walk tomorrow evening, if you like,’ he added diffidently, hoping she wouldn’t think he had only suggested it because he wanted to make love to her again.
‘Perhaps. Let’s take it one day at a time, Harry,’ she said softly.
Harry made his way to the car. He drove slowly to the gate. Lights shone in the windows of the upper storey of the castle opposite, illuminating a deserted road. Restless and suddenly beset by an impulse to see the reservoir under the full moon, he turned left and drove up towards the mountain, but he didn’t switch on the car’s headlights until the Adamses’ house was a hundred yards behind him.
He parked in the lane that led down to the reservoir so as not to disturb the Ellises, left his hat in the car and walked down towards the water that flooded the valley floor. The hills, magnificent in daylight, looked even more majestic bathed in moonlight. Their clean, sweeping lines shimmered in the ghostly, silver-grey light. Above the moon, the sky was a deep rich blue-black, pierced by the diamond glints of myriad stars. The water gleamed, still and unbroken, like the surface of a mirror dulled by time, and he imagined it shattering as Toby’s Lady of the Lake lifted her arm from the depths and held out Excalibur.
He considered suggesting the idea to Toby. It was ridiculous, the novice having the audacity to tell a professional what to paint. But as he looked down on the quiet scene spread out before him he sensed that he was right. A night scene would make for a more dramatic illustration, and if Malory had written the scene as having taken place in daylight, then it could only have been because the better alternative hadn’t occurred to him.
Resolving to bring a torch and sketchbook with him the next fine moonlit night, he took off his jacket, slung it over his shoulder and continued down the hill. The night breeze blew cool against his neck and ruffled his hair. His footsteps crunched over the stone-strewn path and he had the strangest sense that he was somehow violating the place, that the hills resented his presence.
Someone had once told him that the Brecon Beacons had been covered in ancient forest until the advent of the ironworks in Merthyr. The works had created a demand for wood that had resulted in every forest within a thirty-mile radius of the town being stripped bare to feed the furnaces. But now it was difficult to imagine the hills as anything other than the way they were. And never having seen them wooded, the loss didn’t seem a desecration.
Rabbits played around him, diving in and out of their burrows, and nibbling grass alongside the she
ep. A few ewes lay curled on the ground but more were grazing and he wondered if, like him, they preferred a nocturnal life on fine nights.
When he was almost at the foot of the hill he glanced back at the farmhouse. It was shrouded in darkness and he hoped all five Ellis children were sleeping peacefully. Enjoying the beauty of the night and the quiet scene around him, he thought of his grandfather, as he had been every morning until that day. Unwavering in his resolution to enjoy every pleasure life still offered, even in a sanatorium.
But then he reflected that his grandfather had found his Isabella and his purpose in life. He had dedicated almost every minute he could to the miners’ struggle. He hadn’t always succeeded in what he’d set out to do, but at least he’d put every effort into trying, which was what he had to do if he was ever going to realize his ambition to become an artist.
He pictured his paint box and mentally mixed and matched the colours in it to the scene around him. Lost in his task, he sank down on to the ground and visualized the painting he would create and show to his grandfather – and Edyth – when he next saw them again.
Mary heard footsteps cross the yard. They halted at the entrance to the stable. She lifted her head and listened. The harsh sounds of heavy breathing were accompanied by the sour stench of beer mixed with whisky and male sweat. The agent had come, just as he’d said he would and she’d prayed he wouldn’t.
‘Where are you, bitch?’ He stumbled and tripped over the uneven cobbles at the entrance. ‘Where are you?’ he shouted before falling a second time and setting the metal on the bridles and harnesses that hung on hooks behind the door ringing against the stone wall.
She recoiled and flinched, unable to bear the thought of him touching her, not just then, but ever again.
‘Are you here, bitch? Because if you’re not I’ll go into the house and roust your brothers and sister from their beds.’
The threat was enough to force her to answer. ‘I’m here, sir.’
‘Stop squeaking like a bloody mouse and show yourself.’
Finders and Keepers Page 25