Creeping low on hands and knees, she crawled to the entrance of Dolly’s stall and into the next one before rising to her feet. Bob Pritchard stood silhouetted in the doorway. He dived towards her and she fell back. Nauseated by his reek, she instinctively pushed him away from her. He caught her by the waist and threw her down on the cobbles in the empty stall. Winded, she watched his shadowy figure loom over her. She closed her eyes when he thrust his hands up her nightdress and lifted it to her neck.
He mumbled, ‘I like it when you fight.’
She retched and fell back weakly. He slapped her hard, across the face. ‘Fight, you bitch.’
‘Please -’
‘“Sir”. Never forget the “sir”, Mary.’ He unbuttoned his trousers and thrust himself into her.
Afterwards, there was only the same degradation, humiliation and self-loathing that she had suffered so many times before. Only this time it was coupled with a desperate desire for an oblivion that would finally end her pain. One even stronger than her sense of loyalty to her family.
Harry was sitting, wondering how best to capture the night shadows that played over the hills, drawing more sweeping and spectacular lines in his imagination than he suspected he would ever be able to translate on to canvas, when he saw someone running down the side of the hill towards the water.
He looked, looked again and rubbed his eyes, wondering if he were seeing a ghost. A girl dressed in an old-fashioned white nightgown, her long dark hair streaming loose behind her, was charging headlong down the hillside directly towards the reservoir. To his horror she didn’t stop at the edge, but plunged in.
Stripping off his jacket and his shoes, he sprinted towards the water, but there was no sign of anyone, only a ripple on the surface that could have been caused by the breeze. He hesitated, wondering for an instant if he had dreamed the entire episode. Then he glimpsed a patch of white floating upwards. Without waiting to see more, he dived in and swam towards it.
When Mary splashed into the water its icy wetness came as a shock, bringing the first realization that she was not locked into a dream.
She recalled lying – broken and spent – on the floor of the stall in the stable after Bob Pritchard finished using her. Listening to his diminishing footsteps as he walked out across the yard and through the archway on to the road. And longing to be clean and cold – cold enough to freeze away the feverish, sweat-inducing memory of the clammy warmth of Bob’s hands pawing at her, so cold she could no longer feel his thighs burning into hers and his fingers tightening around her breasts, so cold …
She remembered clambering clumsily to her feet, going to the door and leaning against it, seeing the back gate in the yard and stumbling towards it. She had abandoned her boots in the stall, but obsessed with cleanliness and wanting to rid herself of all vestiges of the agent’s damp stench that gummed and seared her skin, she had borne the pain of stones cutting into her feet. She had leaned on the gate and gazed down at the reservoir – cool, familiar and beautiful, just as it was in her dreams.
She’d opened the gate, fastened it behind her and run down on tip-toe, gathering speed as she hurtled down the hill. The breeze was fresh, but not chill enough. Her feet hit the ground so quickly and lightly she felt as though she were flying, and now – now the floor of the reservoir yielded, soft and slimy.
It sucked at her feet, gluing them and holding her fast. She struggled, slipped and fell, and her hands and arms were imprisoned as deeply and securely by the mud as her legs. She was left crouching, half in, half out of the water, trapped like a fly stuck to one of the brown arsenic papers that hung from the ceiling of the Colonial Stores in Pontardawe.
Her voluminous cotton nightgown soaked up the water, and even the folds that remained in the air slapped wet against her, hampering her movements. She tried sliding. Backwards proved impossible, but when she pushed forwards, the mud dissolved, the ground disappeared and she lurched, tumbling downwards. There was only time to snatch one short breath before the water closed over her head.
She opened her eyes and found herself in a mind-numbing, milky-grey blackness. Her lungs and ears burned as though they were packed with scalding ice. Frightened, floundering hopelessly out of her depth, she thought beyond herself for the first time since the agent had thrown her to the floor of the stall. She couldn’t leave her brothers and sister to face Bob Pritchard – she couldn’t – He would destroy them as he had destroyed her.
She kicked out and utilized every ounce of strength she could muster to fight her way up to the surface. But although she could see the transparent sheet that allowed the moonlight to filter through, no matter how she stretched and struggled, it remained beyond her reach. She gradually sank lower and lower, the weight of her waterlogged gown and shawl dragging her downwards towards the mud on the floor of the reservoir that waited to swallow her.
Her eyes stung, but she bore the pain it cost her to keep them open, so she could focus on the moonlight shining through the squall of air bubbles. She had to breathe there was no air, but she had to …
The cold intensified, flooding her lungs, seeping into her joints and bones, paralysing her. She descended into realms where the water was darker, murkier. A small white light burned in the distance. But before she reached it, the glow flickered and died in the blackness.
Harry ran into the water, but as soon as he kicked the ground from under himself and started to swim, he lost his bearings. He trod water frantically, looked around and wondered if he had really seen a woman run into the reservoir or anything pale floating in the water. He had been thinking about the Lady of the Lake. Had he conjured a figment of his imagination into an illusion that had merely seemed real?
A stream of bubbles broke ahead of him. Was it weed, fish? Was he making a complete fool of himself over a mirage? He dived and swam towards the pockets of air but his trousers, shirt and waistcoat weighed him down and held him back. Wishing he’d had the foresight to take them off before he’d plunged into the water, he was exhausted when he reached the place. The bubbles were still breaking but he could see nothing. Taking a deep breath, he allowed himself to sink, opened his eyes and felt as though he were suspended in an enormous pot of grey ink.
He surfaced and gasped for air. The white spot that had seemed so obvious from the bank was nowhere to be seen. Taking a clump of thorn as a guide and aiming for the area as near as he could remember it, he swam to his right.
Seconds later he broke to the surface. Staying there only as long as took him to gulp in a fresh lungful of air, he dived in again – and again. Just when he’d decided that he must have dreamed the woman, he saw ripples on the water and a flash of movement to his left. Kicking out, he stretched towards it.
His hand brushed against cloth. Knotting his fingers into it, he pulled it towards him and a body gently nudged his. Grabbing it by the head, he broke to the surface and lifted it high. It wasn’t until he held the nose and mouth clear from the water and brushed long tendrils of hair away from the face that he saw he was holding Mary Ellis. Limp, comatose, she looked dead. Praying he wasn’t too late, he gripped her by the shoulders, turned on his back and, careful to keep her head above water, swam backwards towards the bank.
He dragged her over the mud and lay her face down on the grass. His breath rasped, harsh and discordant, as he tried to remember the life-saving classes he had taken in school.
He opened her mouth, water trickled out, and he felt gingerly inside to ensure her tongue wasn’t blocking her airways. He began to massage her back in as close an approximation to artificial respiration as he could recall.
‘Come on, Mary. Try! Please try, Mary,’ he whispered.
He continued to mutter under his breath for what seemed like hours. Refusing to admit defeat, he carried on even when logic dictated he was working on a corpse. When a gush of water spurted from her mouth, he held his breath and waited. Five long mouth-drying, heart-pounding seconds later, Mary spluttered and coughed. He rolled away from her,
leaned on his hands and knees, and vomited up the supper Diana Adams had given him.
Drained by the moonlight, Mary’s face was the colour he imagined death to be. He watched her intently. Then slowly – infinitely slowly – her eyelids flickered and she opened her eyes. When she saw him looking at her she closed them again.
‘What the hell did you think you were doing?’ His voice croaked, thick with shock, bile and the foul taste of stagnant water. When she didn’t answer, he grasped hold of her by the shoulders and forced her upright into a sitting position. ‘Look at me!’
She opened her eyes again but stared silently at the silver path of moonlight that wavered over the water.
‘What did you think you were doing?’
She shook her head, spraying droplets of water in the air.
‘You weren’t thinking of your brothers and sister, that’s for sure,’ he said angrily, shaking at the thought of what would have happened if he hadn’t decided to look at the reservoir in moonlight.
She began to tremble, and small, grating cries tore from her throat. He crawled over the grass, retrieved his jacket and shoes and returned to her. Anger abated, overwhelmed by pity, he wrapped his jacket around her, and cradled her in his arms the way he had comforted his sisters when they had hurt themselves as toddlers. He smoothed her wet, tangled hair away from her face, and allowed her to shed hot, salt tears onto the shoulder of his sodden shirt and waistcoat.
A wispy, grey-blue cloud passed over the moon and drifted on. A fox called to its mate on the hillside. Half-a-dozen sheep, startled by an unfamiliar noise or the advent of a predator, bolted over the mountain above them.
‘We’re both soaking wet, Mary,’ he said at last. ‘We’ll catch cold if we carry on sitting here.’
She looked at him as if he were a stranger.
Realizing she was in shock, he took his jacket from her, untied her shawl, lifted it from her shoulders and wrung it out before replacing his jacket on her shoulders. It had absorbed some of the water and was damp, but it was still drier than her nightgown. Rising, he held out his hand and helped her to her feet before picking up his shoes.
The walk back up the hill was slow and uncomfortable. Their wet clothes chafed, and the breeze cut through the cloth, raising goose bumps. Physically shattered and emotionally drained, neither spoke until they reached the back door.
‘Will you be all right now?’ he whispered when she depressed the latch.
She nodded.
He gripped her arm, preventing her from entering the house. ‘Really?’
‘I was keeping some of my father’s trousers and shirts for David,’ she murmured dully. ‘They’ll be too small for you but if you put them on I could dry yours before you go back to the inn.’
His first instinct was to return to his car and drive back down the valley as fast as he could. But the image of her floating, more dead than alive in the water, had branded itself on his mind. He remembered what Mrs Edwards and the shepherd Dic had said about her father hanging himself in the barn, and he knew he’d never forgive himself if she harmed herself after he left.
‘I’d like dry clothes, thank you.’ He followed her into the kitchen, closed the door behind him and went to the stove. Its warmth permeated his saturated clothes, and he stood, watching the water vapour rise gently from his shirt and trousers while she disappeared upstairs. She returned ten minutes later dressed in her black skirt and blouse, a towel wrapped around her head. She handed him a pair of worn and patched men’s moleskin working trousers and a thick blue workman’s shirt.
He took them, went into the scullery, stripped off his sodden garments, wrung them over the sink, bundled them together and dried himself as best he could in the towel he found there. Mary had been right about the trousers. They were wide enough but the legs ended six inches above his ankles. The shirt didn’t reach his waist and the cuffs flapped at his elbows. Feeling like an orphan who’d outgrown his institution uniform, he returned to the kitchen. Mary was sitting on the bench closest to the fire. Still deathly pale and shaking, she was staring into the flames but jumped up when she saw him.
‘If you give me your clothes, I’ll dry them for you.’ She went to the rope that lowered the drying rack from the ceiling.
‘There’s no need.’ He dropped the bundle on the doorstep before closing the door. ‘I’ll give them to the maid to wash when I get to the inn.’
‘What will you tell her?’
‘That I felt like a midnight swim in the reservoir. Sorry, bad joke. I’ll tell her I slipped and fell in when I was walking around it, looking for a vantage point to paint it.’
‘In the middle of the night?’ She returned to the bench and sank back down on to it.
‘Some of the most beautiful paintings are of night scenes. Take a look at your Christmas cards when you get them at the end of the year.’
‘No one sends us Christmas cards. They wouldn’t, would they, seeing as how we can’t read.’ There was no bitterness in her declaration.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think.’ He sat on the other end of the bench and, like her, stared into the flames. It was easier to watch their flickering than face the despair etched into her dark eyes. She continued to sit motionless only a few feet away from him, yet he felt as though a chasm had opened between them.
‘Why were you there?’ Even her voice sounded remote.
‘I was thinking about a painting. Trying to decide what colours to use to capture the moonlight on the water.’ He glanced across at her. ‘It’s just as well that I was. Did you mean to drown yourself?’
She bit her lip but didn’t move her head.
‘You don’t know?’
She remained silent.
‘I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw you running into the water. Afterwards it wouldn’t have taken much to convince me that I’d dreamed it, or seen a ghost. I almost gave up before I found you because I thought I’d imagined the entire episode. What possessed you to run straight into the water?’ When she didn’t answer him, he tried another direct question. ‘Can you swim?’
She looked down and shook her head vigorously before whispering, ‘No.’
‘Mary, I know things are bad on the farm and for your family at the moment, but if you let me, I promise I will try to help you.’
She finally lifted her head and the anguish in her magnificent black eyes unnerved him. ‘If you knew just how bad they were, Mr Evans, and how bad I am, you wouldn’t want to help us.’
‘Yes, I would,’ he contradicted her.
‘Even if you wanted to help us, there’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing anyone can do -’
The latch on the door that led into the hall lifted and David walked in. He had pulled his muddy work trousers on over a blue-and-white striped flannel nightshirt.
‘I thought I heard voices.’ He glowered at Harry. ‘What are you doing here with my sister in the middle of the night?’
‘Visiting.’ Harry’s flippant remark fell leadenly into the charged atmosphere.
‘Mr Evans helped me, David.’
‘How?’ David crossed his arms across his thin chest and looked from Harry to Mary.
Harry glanced at Mary but she refused to meet his gaze. ‘I was sitting down by the reservoir, thinking of ways to paint it –’
‘In the middle of the night?’ David broke in incredulously.
‘Yes, in the middle of the night.’ Harry turned to David. He sensed that Mary had lifted her head and was looking at him. ‘I saw her run down the hill and straight into the water.’
‘What?’ David turned to his sister.
Mary didn’t offer a word of explanation. Harry looked at his watch in the firelight and realized it had stopped at two-thirty, presumably the time he’d entered the water, but he still sensed seconds ticking into minutes. ‘One of my sisters used to walk in her sleep when she was small. Mary had the same odd look of not being aware of her surroundings, so I waded in after her and fished her out.’
‘Yes.’ She took the towel from her wet hair and shook it out as proof.
‘You’ve never walked in your sleep before.’ David went to the fire box, picked up a log and dropped it on the flames, sending a shower of sparks flying up the chimney.
‘I suppose there’s a first time for everything.’ Realizing that he could barely keep his eyes open and he still had to drive to the inn, Harry rose to his feet.
‘You’re going?’ David asked.
‘It’s hardly the time to pay a social call.’ Harry looked intently from David to Mary. ‘You will look after her?’
‘Of course I will, she’s my sister,’ David snapped defensively. ‘Why did you do it, Mary?’ he demanded, unwilling to allow the matter to drop.
Mary gave Harry a quick, conscious look. ‘Like Mr Evans said, I was asleep. I didn’t know what I was doing. But I checked Dolly last thing, and I think she has gangrene in her hoof.’
‘You think?’ There was real fear in David’s voice.
‘I’m sure,’ Mary said reluctantly. ‘And you know what that means.’
‘We’ll have to shoot her.’ David gritted his teeth and clenched his fists. ‘But that still doesn’t explain why you were sleepwalking.’
Mary looked away from Harry and back at the fire. ‘I dreamed that I was running down the valley to fetch the vet. Now that we’ve paid his bill, we can ask him to call and look at her.’
‘And throw good money away?’ David snapped. ‘There’s no need to call him. We’ve both seen enough animals with gangrene to recognize the smell. If you’re right, I’ll shoot Dolly in the morning.’
‘The agent’s taken father’s gun,’ Mary reminded him.
‘Only one of them. There’s another in the attic.’
‘You hid it?’
‘I don’t tell you everything I do. And the way things are we might need it,’ he muttered grimly.
‘If we do, it will only be for shooting sick animals and vermin,’ Mary warned.
‘Do you want me to shoot the horse for you?’ Harry volunteered.
Finders and Keepers Page 26