‘Yes, and I’ve made a list of what they need. Do you know they don’t even have a set of underclothes between them?’
‘If you give it to me I’ll go into Pontardawe in the morning and buy enough to tide them over for a day or two. But I’ll telephone my mother tonight and ask her to send down most of what they need from Gwilym James.’ He looked around the kitchen. Apart from one plate covered with a lid set on top of a saucepan on the stove, the room was immaculate. ‘As a housekeeper you amaze me, Betty. You’d never think that there were three children and a baby in the house.’
‘Poor mites don’t have any toys or books to leave lying around. And it’s just as well I bought those nappies last week in Pontardawe. I should have thought and bought a couple of babies’ nightgowns as well. I never realized that they’d put a poor scrap of a toddler into a workhouse smock.’
‘Are they all sleeping?’ Harry asked.
‘Except Mary. She’s sitting with her brother. She won’t leave him.’
‘You have everything you need?’
‘And more, Harry. The things you’ve bought for this place –’
‘Will come in handy for the next one.’ He pulled out his cigarette case, and lit one. ‘Has Mary eaten?’
Betty shook her head and pointed to the plate on the saucepan. ‘I tried to get her to eat. She wouldn’t even listen to the doctor when he told her that her brother won’t wake before morning. He advised her to get some rest while she can but he might as well have saved his breath. She’s a stubborn girl.’
‘She is when it comes to her family,’ Harry agreed.
‘You sweet on her?’ Betty fished.
‘Please, would you go up and see her? Tell her that I need to talk to her for ten minutes. If she still won’t leave David, offer to sit with him.’
‘It would be easier to change coal into diamonds than get a straight answer to a personal question put to an Evans.’ Betty eased her bulk out of the chair. ‘I’ll ask her, but don’t hold out too much hope. If by some miracle she should come down, try to get her to do more than look at that dinner, will you? I doubt she’s seen a square meal in months. And don’t forget this.’ She tore the list from the book and handed it to him.
Harry pocketed the sheet of paper and, anticipating that Betty would succeed, he opened a hotplate on the stove and moved the saucepan of water that held the dinner on to it. The walls were thick but the floorboards weren’t insulated, and he could hear Betty’s voice, muted, muffled but unmistakably pleading.
A few minutes later Mary walked barefoot down the staircase that led directly into the kitchen. Betty had loaned her one of her flowered work overalls and she had tied it on over her workhouse smock.
‘Mrs Morgan said you wanted to talk to me.’ She still refused to look at him and he wondered if the wild spirit that he had loved so much had been extinguished for ever.
‘Yes, I do.’ He pulled a chair out from the table. ‘Please sit down. I’m heating up your dinner and Betty’s not long made tea.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘You don’t want to help your brothers and sister?’ he asked.
‘You know I’d do anything for them,’ she cried out in anguish.
He hated himself for hurting her more than she already had been. ‘Then eat so you can be strong enough to take care of them. Because if you don’t, they are going to be the ones taking care of you.’
‘David’s not in a fit state to take care of anyone.’ She sat at the table and stared down at her hands.
‘But he will be.’
‘The doctor said he’ll get better, but have you seen his back?’
‘He’s young, strong and pig-headed enough to make a full recovery just to spite Ianto Williams.’
‘I hope you’re right.’
‘You know I am.’ He sat beside her and took her hands into his. ‘Mary, they’re feeling every bit as wretched as you are,’ he murmured in a softer tone. ‘They all need you, especially David. I’ll do what I can, but they are your family, and if you are going to help them, you have to look after yourself. Your first priority has to be getting your own strength back.’
The water in the saucepan started bubbling. He went to the stove and placed his finger on the edge of the plate. It wasn’t quite hot enough. He took a cork placemat from a shelf on the dresser, and a knife and fork from the drawer, and laid them on the table in front of her. She continued to sit, so still and desolate that he felt guilty for lecturing her.
‘I know you’ve had a terrible time -’
‘You haven’t any idea what’s happened to me since I last saw you.’
‘If you want to talk about it, I’ll try to understand.’
‘Will you, Mr Evans?’ She finally looked at him.
‘You used to call me Harry.’
Her eyes were dark, anguished and so deeply shadowed they appeared to be bruised. ‘Have you the faintest idea what it’s like to live – no, not live, you can’t call what goes on in the workhouse living – to try to exist, day in day out, within those grim walls? To be given slops to eat, to be forced to do endless, meaningless scrubbing because the floor you’ve been ordered to clean was cleaned only ten minutes before by another inmate?’ She plucked at her smock. ‘To be given filthy rags to wear, but worse of all, to have to get through every day not knowing what is happening to your family or even where they are?’
‘No,’ he replied evenly, ‘I have no idea. And, as I’m not as brave as you, I hope I never find out. But courtesy of Robert Pritchard I do know what it’s like to spend the best part of two days and a night in the police cells.’
‘Then they did arrest you for trying to help us?’
‘Yes.’ The meal was finally warm enough. He took an oven cloth, lifted it from the saucepan, carried it to the table and set it in front of her. ‘Careful, the plate is hot.’
‘But they let you out,’ she said. ‘They must have, you’re here now.’
‘Yes, they let me out, or rather my father came with a solicitor who made them release me.’ He sat beside her. ‘Eat, and I’ll tell you what’s happened since you were evicted.’
Mary barely ate a third of her meal but he knew from his childhood illnesses that it wasn’t easy to start eating again after a period of fasting so he didn’t try to force her to eat more. And while she picked at the food, he told her about Robert Pritchard’s arrest, the ongoing police investigation, his suspicions that the agent had defrauded not only them but all the tenants of E&G Estates, but, uncertain how she’d take the news, he kept the fact that he owned E&G Estates until last. When he finished speaking, a silence settled over the kitchen, stifling the atmosphere until he felt he could no longer draw breath.
‘Haven’t you anything to say?’ he said.
When she spoke her voice was flat, devoid of expression. ‘So you own the Ellis Estate?’
‘Not morally, it was built by your family and they – or rather you, David and the others as their direct descendants – are the rightful owners. But as I explained, like everything else I will inherit, it’s being held in trust and I won’t be in possession of it until I’m thirty. But I promise you that I will give you and your family the Estate as soon as I am able to.’
‘Then it’s like David and Martha always said, you are very rich?’ She turned and finally looked at him but he couldn’t decipher the expression in her eyes.
‘I will be, yes.’
She left her chair and headed for the stairs.
‘Mary?’
She stopped and turned back. ‘You said that you would help us, and you kept your word. Thank you, Mr Evans.’
‘I’m only sorry that I couldn’t do it sooner, Mary. I might have saved David from a thrashing and the rest of you time in the workhouse.’
‘The women there told me that I would never get out. That being a moral degenerate was as bad as being an unmarried mother. You managed the impossible. You took me out.’
‘You were never a moral degene
rate.’
‘No?’ she challenged. ‘After what the agent did to me?’
‘He raped you, Mary.’
‘And there was you … you said you liked me. I liked you, and if you’d asked, I would have done what he made me do and willingly – and now …’ The tears she’d held in check for so long finally began to flow. ‘I’m bald and ugly and …’
He went to her and held her. She struggled but he tightened his grip. ‘You are none of those things, Mary.’
‘The men, the orderlies in the workhouse, they used to point at us women and laugh. Call us names -’
‘Forget them, Mary, I don’t want to hear what they called you, it’s not important. I want to talk to you about the future, but there are things that need to be said about the past first. It’s not going to be easy, but you must try to forget this awful time, for the sake of your brothers and sister. My solicitor has given me a list of small farms owned by E and G that are empty. I’ll drive you around them tomorrow afternoon, if you’re up to it and prepared to leave David, so you can choose which one you want. And then I’ll furnish and stock it for you. Unfortunately, because you’re all underage, the only way I could get you out of the workhouse was to arrange for Mrs Morgan to look after you. They wouldn’t have released you otherwise. And I chose Mrs Morgan because I have known her most of my life. She is a kind woman. She was my grandfather’s housekeeper for years.’
‘I should have asked,’ she murmured distantly. ‘How is your grandfather?’
‘He was buried two weeks ago.’
‘I am sorry.’
‘Mary, you’re exhausted and so am I. I’ll come back tomorrow morning before I drive down into Pontardawe to buy clothes for you. We’ll talk some more and you can give me a list of the other things that you and your brothers and sister need.’
‘Why are you doing all this for us?’ She struggled to free herself and when he released her, she sat back at the table.
‘You know why.’
Her hands went to her bald head. ‘You can’t still like me?’ she whispered. ‘Not when I look like this.’
‘How can I not still like you? You’re the same person you’ve always been, Mary. Hurt and a little battered and bruised, but still you.’ He crouched beside her. ‘I’m not far away. I’m staying at the inn in front of the cottage. In fact, you can see my window from here. It’s the one over the door.’
‘It’s almost dark.’ She looked out through the open door. ‘Do you know what I missed most in the workhouse, apart from Martha, David, Matthew and Luke, that is? The mountains, the trees and the grass – You could see the hills, but we were penned in concrete yards like animals. The walls were so high there was never any fresh air even outside the buildings.’
‘Mrs Morgan will stay with David if we ask her to. Why don’t you walk outside with me for a couple of minutes now to get a breath of air? We could both do with it after spending most of the day indoors. There’s an orchard just behind the house that belongs to the inn. It’s pretty and full of apples and pears.’
‘I don’t want anyone to see me in this smock.’
‘There’s no one to see you except me, and I’ve already seen you in it.’
‘I need to check on David first.’
‘I’ll wait for you outside.’ He went into the garden, not really expecting her to join him. But she came out a few minutes later with a shawl he recognized as Betty’s draped around her shaved head.
He slowed his steps to hers and they walked up to the orchard in silence. At the top, set in a copse of low bushes, was a rickety bench that he suspected was one of Alf’s early attempts at carpentry.
The branches of the trees on the gently sloping hillside below them were bowed, heavy with green, red and gold fruit. Twilight had fallen, a purple mist that heralded the close of a fine, late-summer evening and portended an equally good day to come. He could almost feel the last traces of warmth leaving the air and the first cool breaths of autumn wafting in on the night breeze.
‘Why don’t we sit for a few minutes?’ He perched on the rickety bench and Mary sat the other end, leaving a gap between them that he was beginning to feel was unbridgeable. ‘You’re cold.’ He took off his jacket and draped it around her shoulders when he saw her shiver.
She seemed oblivious to his attentions. ‘I never thought I’d be able to walk and breathe in the fresh air again.’
‘Stop thinking about the workhouse. I promise you that neither you nor your family will ever go back there.’
‘You said that before. The morning after you fought Robert Pritchard in the yard.’
‘I know, and I’m sorry I couldn’t prevent it from happening. But it is behind you now, Mary. You have to believe that.’ He took her hand into his. She looked at him and he gripped it tighter. ‘I was terrified that I’d never see you again.’
‘I thought I’d ever see anyone outside of the workhouse again,’ she murmured.
‘I order you to forget that place.’
‘I don’t think I’ll ever be able to. Look what they did to me. I wasn’t pretty before but now …’ She bit her lips hard to stop tears coming into her eyes.
‘You were never pretty, but you were beautiful, and that’s the way I’ll always see you. I told my father about you.’
‘What did you say?’
‘That I loved you.’
‘You love me?’ she echoed in wonder.
He moved closer to her. ‘I think I fell in love with you the first time I saw you when you skinned my face.’
‘I hurt you, I treated you so badly.’
‘You were being the protective older sister and you had every right to do what you did to me,’ he said softly.
‘You really love me?’
‘I truly love you.’ He reached out and touched her face with his fingertips. ‘I love your wildness, the single-minded way you love and care for your brothers and sister, and the way you have fought to protect them. I love your dark, beautiful eyes, and I want to spend my whole life caring for you. I want to give you all the things you deserve and above all I want to make you happy. But the question is, could you ever love me?’
‘I already do.’
He smiled at her. ‘Really?’
‘I never thought anyone would love me, not looking the way I do, my hair -’
‘It will grow again, Mary.’
‘But it’s still impossible. I could never leave Martha and my brothers.’
‘I know you would never leave them.’ His smile broadened. ‘It might be fun to start married life with a ready-made family.’
‘You want to marry me?’ She stared at him incredulously.
‘What have we been talking about, if not marriage, Mary?’
‘I don’t know … I … the agent, I thought perhaps you’d visit sometimes like him’
He laid his finger across her lips. ‘I’m not him and I never want to hear you mention his name again. He’s gone from our life for good. I’m not usually vindictive, but I hope they lock him and Ianto Williams up for years.’ He opened his arms and she went to him.
He’d intended to hold her gently, but when she relaxed against him and responded to his touch, he drew her even closer, and when he kissed her, it was passionately with a longing born out of love, not lust as it had been with Diana Adams. She clung to him, and tentatively returned his caresses, cradling his head in her hands and running her fingers through his hair.
‘Mary, you have no idea what you are doing to me,’ he murmured thickly when she pressed her body against the length of his.
‘You love me, but you don’t want to make love to me?’ she asked.
‘More than anything, but I’m terrified of hurting you. You need time to recover, you’re so fragile …’
‘So skinny.’
‘I warn you, I intend to spend a lifetime feeding you until you grow plump.’
She kissed him again and thrust her chest against his. He cupped her small, hard breasts and remembered what
his father had said: Tread carefully. Damaged women are fragile: smother them with kindness and you’ll suffocate them.
He hoped Lloyd was right, because he had lost all self-control. He raised her from the seat, lay on the grass and lifted her on top of him. Untying her overall, he pulled it away from her before peeling the hated smock over her head. She lifted her arms to help him and to his astonishment she was naked beneath it.
He unbuttoned his shirt and trousers, and tossed aside his own clothes. Moments later he entered her, and soon they were both lost in a world where the only thing that mattered was the overwhelming tide of emotion that engulfed them both.
Afterwards they lay, hidden by the long grass and the darkness. He ran his fingertips lightly over her naked back and reached for his jacket and shirt. He covered her with them as she lay on him, not from any sense of false modesty but because the chill in the air had brought goosebumps to her flesh.
She lifted her head away from his and looked down at him. ‘So that is what my mother meant when she said that love between a man and a woman could be beautiful.’
‘I never understood how it could be either, until now,’ he confessed.
‘You’ve never felt like this before?’
‘Never. I won’t lie to you, Mary. There have been other women -’
‘Like Miss Adams.’
‘Like Miss Adams,’ he said, ‘but I now know that what happened between us was meaningless. This is my first true love affair and, my darling, I promise you it will be my last.’
‘I wish we could lie like this together for ever.’ She snuggled close to him but he could feel the cold seeping up from the ground.
‘So do I, but not here. And much as this has been a night I’ll remember all my life, I wish we’d waited until we were in a warm room under bedcovers.’
‘It is cold, but it didn’t seem to matter.’
‘It does now.’ He kissed her and tried to rise, but she locked her hands around his neck and pressed her body against his again. And once more, he lost all control.
‘You’ve bewitched me,’ he said much later, ‘but no more, my sweet, not tonight or we’ll both catch pneumonia.’
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