‘I enjoyed it.’
‘I bet.’ Toby sat beside him. ‘The good news is Frank’s reasonably well and approves – more or less, given a few improvements that need to be made – of what I’ve done so far. So I can start on another lake painting today. The background for the final scene. The wounded Arthur being rowed away by the mysterious ladies after his last battle. Frank’s already sketched the barge and ladies, so it will be just the background. I thought I’d paint the lake from the opposite side of the bank I used for the Lady of the Lake. After that, I’ll have to do some scouting for the last three illustrations.’
‘Only three more to go?’ Harry drove on to the main road.
‘Including my Morgan le Fay, which your sister will sit for. I told Frank about her and he agrees she’ll be perfect. I am going to paint her walking through a wood.’
‘I hope you didn’t tell Frank how you feel about her.’
‘Of course,’ Toby countered. ‘I’ve never kept any secrets from Frank.’
‘If you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep your feelings to yourself when Bella’s around.’
‘The protective brother.’
‘Too true. She’s -’
‘Only sixteen,’ Toby finished for him. ‘I need a ruined castle, so I thought I’d take the train down to Swansea tomorrow and look at what’s left of Swansea Castle. Although my memory tells me that Oystermouth would make a better Camelot.’
‘It’s more impressive,’ Harry agreed.
‘You know it?’
‘We often holidayed there and on the Gower when I was younger. My grandfather’s sister and her husband had a farm there, and we used to rent a cottage from them at Port Eynon.’ Harry smiled at the memory. ‘We all used to go down, my uncles and their families as well as my grandfather and us. We had some great times.’
‘Your aunt isn’t there any more?’
‘Her sons were all killed in the Great War, and she and her husband died shortly afterwards. My grandfather always said they had nothing left to live for.’
Toby fell uncharacteristically serious. ‘I know what it feels like to lose the people you love the most. If it hadn’t been for Frank I wouldn’t have wanted to go on living after my parents drowned. This half-life of brief morning visits that we have now is no life really, but it’s better than none.’ He rested his elbow on the sill of the car and sank his chin in his hand. ‘I’m dreading losing him.’
‘As I am my grandfather,’ Harry said softly. ‘I can’t wait to see your finished book,’ he added in an effort to move the conversation on to a more positive level.
‘Morgan le Fay, Camelot and, for the final one, my meeting between Guinevere and Lancelot. So if you could have a word with the Snow Queen …’
‘No.’ Harry’s refusal was categorical.
‘Meanie.’
‘That’s me. You want the Snow Queen to be Guinevere, ask her yourself. Who are you going to get to model Lancelot?’
‘That’s easy.’ Toby flashed him one of his theatrical smiles. ‘As he was the handsomest man in the world, it has to be a self-portrait.’
‘You take the biscuit sometimes, Toby.’ Harry burst out laughing as he parked the car outside the farmhouse.
‘You joining me, or playing at farming today?’ Toby retrieved his artist’s materials from the back of the car.
‘Painting this morning and farming this afternoon. And I’m not playing.’ Harry opened the boot. ‘I picked up a few things from Alf. I thought I’d have a go at repairing some of the doors on the outbuildings.’
‘You what?’ Toby stared at him in amazement.
Harry showed him a tool box and an armful of planking he’d stashed in the boot. ‘I used to help my Uncle Victor around his farm in the school holidays. He taught me a bit of carpentry.’
‘You’re full of surprises, Harry. You’ll be telling me that you can kill pigs and milk cows next.’
‘I can milk a cow but I’ve never volunteered to kill a pig.’
‘When I’ve finished Le Morte d’Arthur I’ll paint you leaning against a gate, gazing lovingly at a bull and chewing a straw. I’ll enter it in the Academy, and call it Harry as Farmer Giles.’ Toby perched his boater on his head and set off down the hill, whistling.
‘Oi,’ Harry shouted after him. ‘Why am I always the one who carries the lunch basket?’
If Toby heard him, he ignored him. Harry took out the hamper, slammed the boot shut and followed him.
Late that afternoon, Mary left the house carrying two cups of tea. She offered one to Harry. He rose to his feet, rubbed the small of his back and took it from her.
‘It’s good of you to fix that door, Mr Evans. We used to keep the chickens in that building until the bottom half rotted away and the foxes got in.’
‘I enjoy small jobs like this one, and the door only needed patching; the top half is still sound.’ Harry sat on a mounting block next to her.
‘It’s a pity David is out haymaking. You could have shown him how to do the job properly. As you probably guessed,’ she looked ruefully at the roughly patched doors and windows in the yard, ‘he tried his hand at carpentry but because we never had any money for wood or nails, he had to use whatever he could scrounge around here.’
‘He did well, considering. And I haven’t bought anything,’ he assured her. ‘I’m only using the off-cuts from Alf Edwards’s furniture-making that he had earmarked for firewood.’
‘You’re sure you haven’t paid out any money?’ She glanced at him, saw him looking intently at her and lowered her gaze.
‘I’m sure.’ It wasn’t exactly a lie. Harry had told Alf to put everything he had taken from his workshop on to his bill at the inn. ‘Mr Ross is going into Swansea tomorrow, but I will be up to take your produce to market after I have visited my grandfather in the morning. Will you come into Pontardawe with David and me?’
‘No, someone has to stay at the farm.’
‘You don’t leave here very often.’
‘Only for chapel since Mam and Dad died,’ she admitted.
‘If David would take care of the farm, you could come to Bristol when I take Matthew and Martha to the zoo.’ He sensed her hesitating and added, ‘I need someone sensible to help me take care of them.’
‘I know you are trying to be kind, Mr Evans, but it wouldn’t do for you to get too friendly with us.’
‘Why ever not?’ he asked, looking into her eyes.
‘Because you will visit us only as long as it suits you while your grandfather remains in Craig-y-Nos. Someday you’ll leave here for good, and Martha and Matthew already like you –’
‘And I like them,’ he interrupted.
‘But you are from a different world, and when you go back there Martha and Matthew will miss you. Living here as we do, we don’t meet many people, so the people we do know tend to be far more important to us than we are to them. I don’t want Martha and Matthew to be disappointed.’
‘I promise you, they won’t be. And even after I move away I will continue to visit them.’
‘You say that now while you are here, and I have no doubt that you mean it – now. But when you go back to your family and your home you will forget about us.’
‘Mary, how can you think so little of people?’ he asked.
‘I may not have left the farm very often in the last two years, Mr Evans, but I did go to Swansea and down the valley before then. I’ve seen the houses people like you own, and the way you live.’ She finally met his steady gaze. ‘You may not mean to, but you will forget about us, Mr Evans.’
‘I won’t, Mary.’
‘Yes, you will.’
Not wanting to get caught up in a pantomime argument, he asked, ‘What do you mean, “people like me”?’
‘People who dress in Sunday clothes every day of the week, go shopping with no thought as to how much they spend, have servants to clean up after them and drive cars. You’re rich, we’re poor, and Dad always used to say that rich an
d poor are different breeds. Trying to mix them would be like trying to keep fighting dogs and preening cockerels in the same pen.’
‘Mary, you’re a person, I’m a person. You want your brothers and sisters to be happy, which is exactly what I want mine to be. You work to that end and …’ He recalled just how little work, other than the academic type, he had done in his life and fell silent.
‘You’re educated, Mr Evans. You know all there is to know about books and learning. All I know about is skivvying.’
‘That’s for now, Mary. You have to believe that better times are around the corner for you and your family,’ he persisted optimistically.
‘I saw my mam and dad working harder than anyone should have to, and all the while they waited, hoped and prayed for better times, Mr Evans. But no matter how they fought to improve themselves and this place,’ she looked around the farmyard, ‘things only became worse.’
‘That’s not to say the same will happen to you.’
‘It already has, Mr Evans.’
‘You still have the farm and one another.’
‘For the moment.’ She rose to her feet. ‘The milk churns need scouring.’ She held out her hand for his teacup. He gave it to her. She turned her back on him and walked into the farmhouse.
Chapter Sixteen
‘Good God, Mrs Edwards, what’s going on here?’ Toby asked when he and Harry walked into the inn that evening to find the place so jam-packed with strangers they could barely get inside the building. The bar was heaving, the dining-room door was open and every place was taken at the table.
‘You blaspheming, Mr Ross, that’s what’s going on,’ Mrs Edwards said sternly.
‘Sorry.’ Toby gave her an apologetic smile.
‘The wool market’s being held in Pontardawe tomorrow and the merchants have come to buy fleeces. I’m serving my best dinner: choice roast Welsh beef, peas, carrots, roast and boiled potatoes, with apple tart and clotted cream to follow. But you’ll have to wait until the second sitting for yours. We would have kept you a seat at the first if I’d known what time you’d be here,’ she admonished.
‘That’s all right, Mrs Edwards,’ Toby said cheerfully. ‘The second sitting will give us more drinking time.’
‘After washing and changing.’ Harry looked around when Toby carried his things upstairs. ‘Are there any wool merchants here now, Mrs Edwards?’
‘We’ve four staying the night.’
‘Could you introduce me to one of them, please?’
‘A wool trader, Mr Evans?’ She eyed him suspiciously.
‘Yes, please.’ Harry had an idea. He wasn’t sure if it was feasible, but if it was, it would result in the Ellises having some money to put into their pockets and solve just one of their many problems.
‘How many fleeces did you say they had?’ Mr Hawthorne, the wizened, overdressed wool merchant to whom Mrs Edwards had introduced Harry, enquired in a high-pitched, squeaky voice.
Harry did a rough calculation. He and David had made six trips from the pen to the farm and the first time he had loaded the back of the car he had counted twenty fleeces. ‘About a hundred and twenty, give or take.’
‘Tell me again why they can’t bring them down to market?’
Harry picked up the man’s glass as well as his own, and held them up to Alf, who nodded as he served customers at the bar. ‘They had to shoot their only horse the day before yesterday because it had gangrene. They are living hand to mouth and can’t afford to hire another, not even for a day.’
‘Times are hard. Very hard.’ The man took the brandy Alf set in front of him and sipped it through his teeth. ‘But I won’t buy fleeces unseen.’
‘I am not expecting you to. I could drive you up there now, so you can check the quality.’
‘Seeing them is no good. If I wanted to buy them I’d have all the problem of transporting them to the station.’
‘Supposing I paid a carter to take them,’ Harry offered.
‘Why would you do that?’
‘Because I know the family and I’d like to help them, but they are very proud. They wouldn’t allow me to pay a carter. But if you bought the fleeces, they’d have to go along with any arrangements you made to shift them. Please, Mr Hawthorne,’ Harry pleaded, ‘they’re little more than children.’
‘I won’t go on any wild-goose chases,’ Mr Hawthorne countered. ‘And I won’t pay for any carting.’
‘I’ve already told you that I will. But you have to swear you won’t tell them that I’m footing the bill.’
‘All right, I’ll look at them.’ The merchant pushed his empty glass towards Harry. ‘But you’ll have to arrange a carter first, in case I like what I see.’
‘If you don’t, I’ll have to pay him a cancellation fee,’ Harry protested.
‘And if I do, and you can’t arrange for carting, I will have wasted my time to no purpose.’
Hoping that Alf knew a friendly carter, Harry took Mr Hawthorne’s glass. ‘The barman’s so busy I’ll take these up myself. Brandy, wasn’t it?’
‘Double,’ the wool merchant replied unsmilingly.
Mr Hawthorne left Harry to park the car when they returned to the inn and, having dined at Mrs Edwards’s ‘first sitting’, he made a beeline for the bar. Harry secured the doors on the barn, washed his hands in the scullery and went into the dining room where Toby was sitting alone, toying with a bowl of apple pie and clotted cream.
‘The wanderer – or is it merchant? – returns,’ Toby commented.
Before Harry could think of a suitable retort, Mrs Edwards bustled past him.
‘I put fresh gravy on your dinner, Mr Evans, because it dried in the oven but that’s hardly surprising. It is nine o’clock.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Edwards.’ Harry sat down, reached for the salt and sprinkled it over the potatoes and peas. She was right; his dinner was dry, but he could hardly complain.
‘So, you persist in getting more and more involved with the Ellises.’ Toby pushed aside the dessert he’d hardly touched, and reached for his whisky chaser.
‘I happened to meet a wool merchant.’ Harry cut into his beef.
‘Happened?’ Toby enquired sceptically.
‘All right, I asked Mrs Edwards to introduce me to one,’ he conceded between mouthfuls of charred beef and powdery, crunchy potato that had been mashed and creamy an hour before.
‘And then asked Alf to introduce you to a carter.’ Toby sat back in his chair. ‘Word’s out, Harry. How long do you think it will be before the Ellises find out what you’re up to? I’ve already heard one of the farmers say that Mary Ellis has done well to catch the eye of a toff who can afford to pay her bills.’
‘What farmer?’ Harry spoke quietly but there was an undercurrent of anger in his question.
‘Does it matter? You can’t stop people from thinking what they want.’
‘I can, if it’s damned lies!’
‘Harry, even I’m beginning to wonder what attraction the Ellises hold for you. At first I accepted that you felt guilty about knocking Martha down, but now?’ Toby shrugged.
‘I feel sorry for them.’
‘Pity is the worst of all emotions, especially if you’re on the receiving end,’ he pronounced with all the bitterness of someone who’d experienced bereavement early in life. ‘And although we haven’t known one another that long, I’d prefer to think that you’re not the type who needs to dole out largesse to the underprivileged to feel good.’
‘Is that what people are saying?’
‘The ones who aren’t assuming the worst about you and Mary Ellis, yes.’
Harry dropped his knife and fork on top of his blackened roast potatoes. ‘The last thing I want to do is destroy her reputation.’
‘I believe you, but not many would around here.’ Toby finished his whisky and picked up his beer glass. ‘So, was it worth ruining your dinner?’
‘Pardon?’ Harry picked up his fork again and poked at a slice of beef that had b
een baked as solid as shoe leather.
‘Did you manage to sell the Ellises’ fleeces?’
‘Hopefully, if everything goes according to plan, David Ellis has sold their fleeces,’ Harry corrected. ‘Alf introduced me to a carter who’s fully booked for market day, but he offered to pick up and take the fleeces to the railway station first thing on Thursday morning for three pounds, which I think is fair because it includes wages for himself and a helper.’
‘And which you agreed to pay?’
Realizing a denial was futile, Harry said, ‘I gave the wool merchant three pounds to settle his bill. Mr Hawthorne told me that he has agreed to buy the fleeces at a price that suits him and the Ellises.’
‘You didn’t do the negotiating?’
‘I stayed in the car while Mr Hawthorne went into the farmhouse. David Ellis might be young but he knows the value of his goods. I can’t see him being rooked.’
‘So everything has gone exactly as you wanted it to.’
‘No, it hasn’t,’ Harry snapped, ‘because it appears that the entire valley knows what I’ve done. And I had hoped to keep my part in it quiet.’
‘You’re involved with the Ellises up to your neck, Harry.’ Toby shook his head disapprovingly. ‘And tomorrow you’re going to drive David to Pontardawe so they can deliver their dairy produce to the Colonial Stores.’
‘How did -’
‘Matthew told me. He spent the afternoon watching me paint the lake while you played carpenter in the farmyard.’
‘I offered to take the Ellises’ produce and poultry down to Pontardawe because they have no other way of getting their goods to market,’ Harry said pointedly.
‘And when you and your car are no longer here? How do you expect them to transport their produce then?’
‘I don’t know.’ Harry was honest enough to accept that part of his anger was rooted in the knowledge that Toby was right. Not only in questioning his motives for helping the Ellises, but also the effect his help would have on the family long-term. ‘All I know is that I am here, able and willing to help them now,’ he muttered defensively.
‘I wish you could see that you’re not doing them any real favours, Harry.’
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