Finders and Keepers

by Catrin Collier

  Toby tried to appear nonchalant as he left the farmyard and walked to Harry’s car. After checking that the police van was a diminutive dot on the road to Brecon, he looked over the door on the driver’s side and breathed a sigh of relief. Harry had left his keys on the seat. He wished Harry had also left a handbook on how to drive the Crossley. He had seen his friend hit the ignition button enough times to know how to start the engine but he had never driven a car in his life and he was aware that the agent, who was ostensibly supervising the men boarding up the house, was watching him.

  He believed Harry’s story that he had hit the man in self-defence, but the fact that the constable had summarily arrested Harry without further investigation suggested that Robert Pritchard had rather more authority than his position as a rent collector warranted. And he suspected that the man would have absolutely no compunction in getting him arrested by informing the police that he wasn’t fit to drive.

  He waited. His chance came when a bailiff called the agent back into the farmyard. As soon as he disappeared through the arch, Toby jumped into the front seat and started the car. It leapt forward, hitting the back of the trap in front. The horse whinnied and bolted.

  ‘Hey, here, boy! Here, boy.’ A young man jumped off a waiting cart and grabbed the pony’s head, wrestling it to a standstill.

  ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to spook the horse,’ Toby apologized.

  ‘Not used to the car?’ the boy asked, still holding the pony.

  ‘It’s my friend’s.’

  ‘You should always check the engine’s out of gear before pressing the ignition. That’s what my dad says.’

  ‘You know how to drive?’ Toby asked hopefully.

  ‘Tractors. The farmer my father works for has one.’

  Toby thrust his hand into his pocket. ‘I’ll give you half a crown to turn this car around, point it in the other direction and show me what I have to do to get it to Abercrave.’

  The young man glanced over his shoulder. There was no sign of the agent. He held out his hand. ‘You have a deal, sir.’

  ‘That’s right, Mr Evans.’ Toby raised his voice in the hope that Lloyd could hear him above the irritating drone on the line. ‘Harry has been arrested … He is in the police station in Brecon. He asked me to telephone you … No, of course he hasn’t done anything wrong … All he was trying to do was help a family who were being evicted … The man who put the bruises on Harry’s face that you saw today told the police Harry attacked him … Harry said it was self-defence …’ The line went dead. Toby hit the receiver and when it remained dead hung up.

  ‘Two and a half minutes is all we’re allowed, Mr Ross. There’s only one line and the sanatorium takes precedence,’ Mrs Edwards reminded him from the doorway.

  ‘That is stupid. Especially as it took me three hours to get through.’ He glanced at the clock above the bar. It was after nine and he doubted that Harry’s father would be able to do anything to help him immediately, which probably meant Harry would be spending at least one night behind bars.

  ‘Your dinner is ready. Shall I ask Enfys to put it on the table?’

  It seemed wrong to eat when Harry was incarcerated in a cell, but Toby reflected that starving himself wouldn’t help. ‘Please, Mrs Edwards.’ He walked past her and went into the dining room.

  ‘Enfys, Mr Ross is waiting for his dinner,’ Mrs Edwards called into the kitchen as she carried Toby’s customary pint of beer and whisky chaser from the bar. She set them in front of him. ‘Poor Mr Evans, I do hope someone will give him dinner in the police station.’

  ‘I don’t think the police are allowed to starve their prisoners,’ Toby commented grimly.

  ‘Such a nice, polite young man. Thoughtful too, but I warned him not to get mixed up with the Ellises when he was talking to their old shepherd, Dic, in the bar the other night. The family’s bad news, Mr Ross,’ she declared emphatically. ‘They don’t mean to be and can’t help it, bless them, but it’s like people say: the Ellises are cursed and have been ever since David Ellis hung himself. The Lord doesn’t forgive murderers. And he was a self-murderer. It’s not right to take a life.’

  ‘It was their father, not them, who took the life, Mrs Edwards. And if you could have seen them being carted off to the workhouse today, I’m sure you would have tried to help them.’

  ‘I would have cried my eyes out, not that it would have done them any good,’ she qualified. ‘But I wouldn’t have done anything to get myself arrested. There’s no quarrelling with the law of the land and Mr Evans shouldn’t have tried, however upset the Ellises were.’

  Toby knew the story he had told Mrs Edwards about Harry arguing with a policeman and being arrested for trying to help the Ellises wouldn’t hold for long. But he couldn’t bear to repeat the foul things the agent had said about Mary Ellis and Harry. He wasn’t sure whether Harry was attracted to the girl or not, but he was prepared to swear – and in court, if necessary – that she wasn’t a prostitute.

  Enfys brought Toby’s meal, and Mrs Edwards looked critically at the roast chicken dinner she laid in front of him. ‘Mr Ross doesn’t want a dinner as dry as that, Enfys. Bring a jug of gravy.’

  ‘It’s reasonably quiet in the bar, Mrs Edwards, so why don’t you sit with me and have a drink. On my account?’ Toby said, not wanting to eat alone.

  ‘Thank you, I will. You can bring me a sherry when you bring Mr Ross’s gravy, Enfys.’ She sat at the table, avoiding the chair Harry usually occupied.

  ‘You’re from around here, Mrs Edwards, you know the way things work,’ Toby said thoughtfully. ‘There has to be something that we can do to help the Ellis family.’

  ‘Nothing I can think of. They’re not the first farming tenants to be evicted and dumped on the parish. And the way things are,’ she grimaced, ‘there are plenty more around here headed the same way.’

  ‘Before he was taken away, David Ellis mentioned that people can take children from the workhouse.’

  ‘If they need workers for their farms, some families round here take the older ones,’ she replied cautiously.

  ‘And the younger ones?’

  ‘Some are adopted by people who have no children. But not many.’ She passed him the salt cellar. ‘Not in an area like this. Times are hard and people have trouble enough feeding their own.’

  ‘Will they be kept together as a family in the workhouse?’ Toby asked.

  ‘Bless you, Mr Ross, I can see you’ve no experience of the poor house. The orphanage wards only take children under sixteen and they separate girls from boys. They won’t see one another or the adults, and Mary Ellis will be put in a block with the adults.’

  ‘Can we get her out?’ Toby asked.

  ‘That depends,’ she said dubiously.

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On whether someone’s prepared to take a girl with her reputation as a maid. Thank you, Enfys. You can go back to the kitchen now. I’ll get Mr Ross’s afters and anything else he wants.’ She took the sherry and gravy jug from the girl and put them on the table.

  ‘What reputation does Mary Ellis have, Mrs Edwards?’ Toby asked bluntly.

  ‘I’ve only heard rumours,’ she replied guardedly. ‘And I’d soon have no customers if I went round repeating everything I heard.’

  ‘The agent said Mary Ellis was “a degenerate in need of moral guidance” but she’s always behaved impeccably whenever Harry and I have seen her. In my opinion she’s simply a nice girl with more problems than anyone her age should have to cope with.’

  ‘I run an inn, Mr Ross. I can’t afford to alienate anyone.’

  Toby glanced through the open door. The passage was empty. He left his seat and closed the door. ‘You have my word, Mrs Edwards; nothing you say to me will go any further than this room.’

  ‘All I will say is that if Mary Ellis has a reputation, it’s the same one as all the wives and daughters of the tenants Bob the Gob collects rent from.’

  ‘If I paid you, would you go to the wor
khouse and offer Mary a job?’

  ‘I would, if I thought that it would do any good. But if she’s been admitted as a moral degenerate they won’t allow anyone to take her out. I’ve known girls with better reputations than Mary Ellis who went in there forty years ago with that label and haven’t been seen in the outside world since.’

  The workhouse nurse walked down a long corridor ahead of Mary. The walls were covered to shoulder height with brick-shaped, dark-green tiles. Above them, the plaster was painted a sickly yellow. The floor was wooden-blocked and the nurse’s rubber-soled shoes squeaked when she halted outside a door panelled in opaque glass. She opened it.

  ‘In here,’ she ordered sharply.

  The first thing that struck Mary when she entered the enormous bathroom was the stench. A nauseating mixture of stale sweat, dirt, carbolic soap, urine and faeces. A row of six sinks filled the long wall opposite the door. Two toilets stood side by side on the short wall to her right, and two baths, also set side by side, filled the remaining space. One was half full, and clumps of dirt, hair and lice floated, black islands on a sea of crusted grey scum.

  ‘Strip off, bag your clothes and shoes.’ The nurse opened a cupboard and handed Mary a linen bag. ‘Then get into that bath and start scrubbing.’

  ‘In that?’ Mary stared at the bath in horror. ‘The water’s filthy.’

  ‘That’s what you get for being the last admittance today.’ She took a grey Welsh flannel smock from the cupboard and hung it on a peg. After glancing at Mary’s feet she placed a pair of wooden clogs on the floor beneath it. ‘Get a move on,’ she snapped. ‘I haven’t all day.’

  ‘I will not get into that water.’ For the first time Mary was glad that her brothers and sister weren’t with her. If they had been, she would never have found the courage to refuse to obey someone in authority lest they suffered for her defiance.

  The nurse whirled around. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I will not get into that water. It is full of dirt and vermin.’

  ‘I know what you young farm girls are like. Dirty to bed and dirty to rise. You’ve probably never had a bath in your life. Well, you’re going to have one now. The rules state that everyone who comes into the workhouse has to have a bath before being issued with a uniform and that is exactly what you are going to do.’

  ‘I bathed every day at home, including this morning. We have a stone sink large enough for a grown-up to lie down in.’

  ‘You bathe every day, where?’ the nurse jeered.

  Mary tensed herself and bit her lip. Until that moment she hadn’t allowed herself to think further than the next few minutes. That way it had been easier to fool herself that her situation was temporary. That tomorrow morning she would wake up back in her own bed next to Martha and Luke with the boys sleeping in the room next door. She recalled something Mr Pritchard had said about a woman whose children had been taken to the orphanage: She’ll probably never see them again in this life.

  David had been right in what he had said to Harry. He and Martha were accustomed to hard work. A farmer looking for free labour would soon snap them up. And that would leave Matthew and Luke all alone with strangers who wouldn’t care for them.

  ‘You don’t want to start your life here by drawing the wrong kind of attention to yourself,’ the nurse warned. ‘We’ve ways of dealing with young girls who try to get above their station. You’re here because you’re worse than a penniless, pauper degenerate, Ellis. You’re a debtor! The lowest of the low, and if the master gets to hear of your refusal, make no mistake, you will be punished – and severely. Now get in that bath.’

  Mary shook her head, backed away and whispered, ‘No.’

  ‘What’s going on in here, Staff?’ The ward sister, wearing an apron and veil that crackled with starch, entered and looked from the nurse to Mary.

  ‘This new inmate is refusing to get in the bath.’

  ‘Are we running a hotel or a workhouse, Staff?’ The sister’s voice was high-pitched in indignation.

  ‘A workhouse, Sister. I have informed her of the rules.’

  ‘Not firmly enough, by the look of it.’ The sister addressed Mary. ‘Strip off and get in that bath, girl.’

  ‘There are fleas and lice in it.’ Mary pointed to the water.

  ‘One bath of warm water is to be drawn for morning admissions, one for evening. You are the last admission this evening and you will get in it.’

  ‘Please, allow me to let out the water and scrub the bath and I will wash in cold,’ Mary pleaded.

  The sister crossed her arms over her thin chest and pursed her lips. ‘You think we don’t know what you are up to, Ellis? You want a cold bath so you can catch bronchitis, or even better, pneumonia. That way you won’t have to work and contribute to your keep. You’d rather do what you and your family have done all your lives – run up debts and expect others to keep you.’

  ‘No -’

  ‘You will address me at all times as “Sister”. Strip and get in that bath. Now!’

  Mary was trembling but she stood her ground. ‘I will not get into dirty water.’

  ‘Then on your own head be it.’ The sister stepped back into the corridor and called, ‘Porters!’

  Two burly men in khaki coats appeared. ‘Sister?’

  ‘Strip her, put her in the bath and scrub her. With the brushes we use for the floor.’

  ‘Please, no, I’ll get in -’

  ‘You had your chance. You refused.’ The sister nodded to the staff nurse. ‘Afterwards, take her to the ward. Tell the sister there she is to be put on scrubbing duty and bread and water for three days. That should teach her manners.’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  The sister glanced at the linen bag. ‘And there’s no need to keep her clothes or boots. She won’t be going anywhere. Incinerate them.’

  David sat curled on a tiny high windowsill of the workhouse dormitory. It wasn’t late – eight o’clock or thereabouts, he guessed, from the sun sinking over the narrow sliver of hill that was all he could see. He, Matthew and twenty-two other boys had been marched into the room half an hour earlier by a man who had locked his fingers into his curly hair and pulled hard when he hadn’t called him ‘Sir’.

  Sir had given them five minutes to change out of the institution uniforms of grey flannel shirts, short trousers, grey woollen underwear and socks, and into sackcloth nightshirts. Afraid of what Sir would do to Matthew if he didn’t do as he was told, David had complied along with the other boys.

  When they had all changed, Sir had ordered them to stand, barefoot, eyes closed at the foot of their beds while he had gabbled a hasty, unintelligible prayer. Finally he had ordered them into their beds and, after leaving strict instructions that they remain in there until they were woken by the bell at six, locked them in for the night.

  Ignoring the whispered warnings of the other boys, he had climbed out of his bed as soon as he heard the key turn. It was the first time that he had slept behind a locked door, and he felt like a hen in a coop waiting to be slaughtered. He remembered what the agent had said about Mary leaving him and the others in the house and going to the stable – not that he had believed him: They could have burned to death in their beds.

  Well, he and Matthew were in the orphanage wing of the workhouse, supposedly being looked after by their ‘betters’, and they were in more danger of being burned to death than they had ever been at home. Home. Hoping no one was watching him, he wiped the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand, smearing his face with stinging salt water.

  He gripped the thick iron bars in front of him that covered the glass window pane and, using all his strength, tried to pull them apart. They didn’t give a fraction of an inch. He continued to gaze at the small slice of sky and hills, and wished he were free – but only if the rest of his family were too.

  He looked down at the two dozen beds in the room. Matthew’s was directly below him. Even in the subdued light that came from the small windows he could
see that his brother’s eyes were closed, but his shoulders were shaking and he knew he was crying. A piercing wail echoed faintly from another part of the building. He couldn’t be certain but he thought he recognized Martha’s voice and he blanched at the thought of her misery – and Luke’s.

  It had taken him half an hour of the journey to the workhouse to quieten the toddler. But the moment he had stepped down into the yard outside the building, his brother had been snatched from his arms by the woman who had sat next to the driver. Luke had howled like a dog when she carried him away, and in between howls had held his breath for so long that his face had almost turned black. But when he had run after the woman and tried to comfort Luke, two men had beaten him back.

  He wondered if Luke was still crying, or if he had finally worn himself out enough to sleep. He might be as frightened as the rest of them but at least he was too young to understand what was happening. He shivered when he thought of Mary. He hated this place but he suspected the adult block was worse. Bob the Gob had called her ‘a moral degenerate’. He didn’t understand what the words meant but he knew they were bad. Everything Bob Pritchard had ever said or done to them had been bad.

  So much for him being ‘the man’ of the family. He hadn’t been able to stop the bailiffs from evicting them and he had been forced to stand back and watch Luke and Martha being taken away from him to the babies’ and girls’ parts of the workhouse.

  When he had asked that he and Matthew be allowed to keep their own clothes, not only he but also his brother had received painful clips around the ear, and he’d realized that if they couldn’t control him by beating him, they’d do it by punishing his brother.

  ‘Please, Harry… Please, Harry …’ He murmured his friend’s name over and over again as if it were a prayer. Harry was the first adult apart from Diana Adams who had tried to help his family since his parents had died. He’d never understood why. But whatever Harry’s motives, he was their only hope of getting out of the workhouse. But would Harry even dare try now that he had seen what Bob the Gob could do?

  He locked his hands around his knees and sank into despair. His family had been broken up, and somewhere on the journey between the Ellis Estate and the workhouse he had lost the hope that one day life might get better. All that was left to him now was this tiny glimpse of the world, framed by an iron-barred window.