Finders and Keepers (18 page)

‘I've hung up your clothes in the old stillroom, Mr Evans. They can drip there until Enfys can see to them on Monday morning. We'd never hear the end of it if word got out that I allowed washing to be done here on a Sunday. The ministers preach against this place enough as it is. But I must say I've seen drier hauled out of a tub, so I hope you have others you can wear. If this storm holds, it might take us a few days to get them properly aired, even on the kitchen pulley.' Mrs Edwards lifted a mug down from the hooks screwed into-the wood above the bar and held it questioningly in front of Harry.

‘Yes, please, I would like a pint of beer, Mrs Edwards. And don't worry about my clothes. I brought a change, which is just as well if this weather is typical of the Swansea Valley. And I can always take the ones I was wearing back home wet.'

‘When it rains here, it rains,' Mrs Edwards said philosophically. ‘You warm now?'

‘Finally. All I needed was a hot bath and dry clothes.'

‘I don't like the look of those scratches on your face.'

‘They'll heal in a day or two, Mrs Edwards,' Harry said. ‘And they only look odd because I called in at the sanatorium to have them treated. They put iodine on them and in the waiting room well away from the patients.'

‘That will teach you to stay away from stray dogs.'

‘It will.' Harry compounded the lie he'd told the landlady about being attacked by a stray dog when he'd left his car on the mountain.

The only place in the inn that had a bath was a lean-to scullery. It was spartan, comfortless and draughty, even after the chilly, white-tiled and mahogany splendour of the Adamses' upstairs family bathroom, He hadn't lingered there long. He had washed hurriedly in warm water before dressing in a flannel suit identical to the one he had worn earlier.

‘You can't be too careful with your health, that's what I say, especially if you insist on running in and out of TB hospitals.'

Hoping to avoid another discussion of Mrs Edwards' favourite topic – the lethal, disease-ridden air of the sanatorium that she was convinced clung to everyone who walked in or out of the place – Harry changed the subject. ‘Is Mr Ross back from Swansea?'

‘Like you, he telephoned to say that he had run into a friend, was having supper with him and would be back on the last train. He asked if Alf could go over in the trap to pick him up at quarter to eleven.'

Harry saw Alf serving behind the bar and took the hint. ‘I won't be going to bed early, Mrs Edwards, so I'll pick Mr Ross up from the station.'

‘That would be good of you, Mr Evans. I know you've had supper, but do you fancy a snack?'

‘No, thank you, Mrs Edwards, beer is fine.' Harry glanced around the bar. He was used to the pubs in the Rhondda that filled early on Saturday nights and stayed full all evening. It was ten o'clock, prime drinking time in Pontypridd, yet there were only half-a-dozen farmers and labourers clustered around the fire that blazed in the enormous, old-fashioned hearth.

Mrs Edwards saw him looking around. ‘Not many want to walk down from the hill farms on a night like this.' She nodded to her son. ‘I'm off to the kitchen with these dirty glasses.'

‘No Enfys tonight?' Harry asked.

‘Saturday night is her courting night. She leaves at seven.'

Try as he might, Harry couldn't imagine the silent Enfys courting. ‘Is it serious?'

‘Should be, she's been stepping out with Mervyn Jones for eighteen years next month. And Saturday night suits him and me. We only have our regulars like you and Mr Ross in then. Travellers never stay over at weekends.'

‘Eighteen years and no sign of a wedding?' Harry was amused.

‘Mervyn's a second son. He has to save for his own farm.' There wasn't a trace of humour in Mrs Edwards's voice.

Harry carried his beer to a quiet corner, sat down and studied the men gathered around the fire. Their faces were lined and weather-beaten, their conversation slow and sporadic as if they were unused to voicing their opinions. And as they were speaking in Welsh not English, he could understand little of what was being said.

He sat back, enjoying the warmth of his dry underclothes, shirt, waistcoat and jacket after spending most of the afternoon soaked to the skin, and thought of the two boys who had gone out on to the rain and wind swept mountain to look for their sister, with nothing more than thin blankets around their shoulders for protection.

Diana's comment that he didn't understand poverty had hurt because his parents had never tried to shield him from the grimmer side of life. He knew dozens of families in the Rhondda and Pontypridd who lived close to the breadline, and occasionally below it. But somehow poverty in an isolated farmhouse, miles from the nearest village, seemed much worse than poverty in a street of terraced houses where neighbours might be noisy and interfering, but were also generally charitable and well-meaning.

‘Here you are, Mr Evans. I know you said you didn't want anything, but these cockles are fresh up from Swansea market today. And nothing goes as well with a pint of beer as a plate of cold cockles boiled in vinegar water, or so my late husband, God rest his soul, always used to say.' Mrs Edwards set a bowl and a fork in front of him.

‘Thank you, Mrs Edwards, they do look good.' He picked up the fork.

‘Another pint of beer?' She took his empty mug from the table.

‘Please, and a drink for Alf and yourself.'

She glanced over to the bar where Alf was chatting to the farmers who could make their drinks last twice as long as the average customer. ‘That's very kind of you, Mr Evans. I'll have a glass of stout and I know that Alf would appreciate a pint of cider.'

Harry rose to his feet when she returned with the drinks and pulled a chair out for her. ‘Won't you join me, Mrs Edwards?'

‘I don't mind if I do, Mr Evans. The bar's the only place in the inn that's busy on a Saturday night and the weather's put paid to that tonight. Are the cockles all right?'

‘Excellent, as was lunch today.' Harry waited until she'd sat down before returning to his chair. ‘My father and uncles appreciated you putting yourself out for us.'

‘No trouble, Mr Evans. Has your grandfather settled into Craig-y-Nos?'

‘We weren't allowed to go into the ward with him.' Harry knew the declaration would reassure her, and he wanted to steer her on to another topic of conversation. ‘Do you know anything about the family of children who live on the big farm on the mountain above Craig-y-Nos?' He tried to make his enquiry sound casual, although he had no doubt that news of the car accident would spread before too long.

‘The big farm – you mean the Ellis Estate?'

‘Yes.' The room suddenly went quiet, and Harry realized that although he could only speak a few words of Welsh, his fellow drinkers had a grasp of both languages.

‘Why do you want to know about the Ellises?' she asked.

‘I happened to meet them today and I was curious to know how such a young girl and her brothers came to be running a farm of that size.'

‘That's simple, their mother and father are dead.'

‘And we all know whose fault that is.' A short, thickset man, who looked as though he'd never see seventy again, left the group in front of the fire and stomped over to their table.

‘Come on, Dic, you can't go saying things like that.' Mrs Edwards glanced uneasily over her shoulder.

‘I'll say what I like. It's still a free country for all that the crache are employing scoundrels to buy up every inch of it and put good people out of their houses to starve.'

Harry rose to his feet, pulled out a chair and offered the gnarled old man his hand. ‘Harry Evans.'

‘Dic Johns.' He shook Harry's hand briefly.

‘Can I buy you a drink?'

‘Pint of cider.' He thrust his glass at Harry.

‘Dic used to be the shepherd on the Ellis Estate,' Mrs Edwards explained.

‘And David Ellis was the best boss and friend a man could have until the crache, damn their thieving souls,' he curled his lips, took aim and spat across the room into the fire, ‘did for him.'

Alf, who had been watching Dic, brought a pint of cider over to their table. He gave it to Dic and nodded to Harry. ‘I'll put it on your tab, Mr Evans.'

‘Thank you, Alf.'

Harry knew the question he was about to ask would be seen as prying from an outsider, but he had to know. ‘How did David Ellis die?'

Mrs Edwards closed her eyes briefly as if she couldn't stand the thought. ‘He killed himself.'

‘The crache killed him,' Dic contradicted vehemently, slamming his glass down on the table.

‘Dic -'

‘All right, Mrs Edwards, I'll grant you, David Ellis tied the noose, but we all know what made him do it.' He looked at Harry. ‘What happened to David Ellis happened to a lot of good people around here back in nineteen nineteen.' He wrapped both hands around the pint of cider Harry had bought him as if he were afraid that it was going to be snatched from his hands. ‘The war was over; everyone thought better times were coming. The landlords of the farms and estates around here wanted to sell, and by law they had to give the sitting tenants first refusal. The farm was doing well, so David Ellis took out a mortgage to buy it. Then the Depression came. When he failed to make the payments, the bank sold the estate out from under him for half of what he'd paid them. And to the same landlord who'd owned it in the first place. The landlord's agent went to collect the rent every week, and when the Ellises couldn't pay he started taking their furniture. Some of it had been in the family for five hundred years and David Ellis couldn't stand the shame. It was the shame that drove him to hang himself.'

‘That must have been dreadful for his family.' Harry went cold at the thought of the desperation that had led the man to take his own life. It was no wonder that Mary Ellis and her brother were so protective of their sister.

‘He did it in the barn. His wife and daughter found him. By the time I heard about it in the hills, they'd buried him outside the wall of the churchyard next to all the other suicides and babes who'd died before they could draw breath, or be baptized. Mrs Ellis told me she couldn't pay me. I didn't have the heart to tell her that I hadn't been paid since her husband had bought the estate. So I found myself a job lower down the valley. I'm at Pen y Cae now. It's all right. But the people aren't like the Ellises. I'd worked for the family, man and boy, for close on forty years, and my father and grandfather before me.'

‘When did Mrs Ellis die?' Harry asked.

‘Just over a year ago, bringing a babe into the world,' Mrs Edwards informed him sadly.

Harry remembered the baby lying on the rag rug in front of the fire.

‘I thought the agent would put the Ellis children out but he did worse.' Dic stared moodily down into his glass. ‘He stripped the place of every stick they had left that was worth a brass farthing. And it's my guess that as most of their furniture was hundreds of years old, it was worth a lot more. Not that those babes saw any of the money. It all went into the agent's pocket.'

‘You can't say things like that, Dic.' Mrs Edwards looked around nervously again.

‘Yes, I can, and I'll say it twice as loud in case any of Bob the Gob's cronies are here. It all went into his pocket.'

‘The younger girl, Martha, lied about her age to get a job as a maid in Craig-y-Nos.' Mrs Edwards sipped her stout.

‘How old is she?' Harry asked.

‘Eight, nine, I don't know for certain. But I can tell you she's a few years shy of twelve and no one should employ a girl that young, let alone in a sanatorium.'

‘Miss Adams makes sure that they don't work her too hard.'

Mrs Edwards sniffed loudly to let Harry know what she thought of that. ‘I feel sorry for them. Everyone round here would like to help them but they're an independent lot. And the eldest girl, Mary, is a fool if she believes she can keep that estate going until her brother's old enough to take over.'

‘Even if she does manage to keep the tenancy, there'll be nothing left for young Davy to inherit by the time the agent's finished with them,' Dic pronounced bitterly. ‘Ask any man around here. Like most farmers, David Ellis paid for his land ten times over and all he got for his trouble was a parish funeral and a plot six feet by two outside the churchyard. Not even inside under the family slab with his father and grandfather.'

‘Miss Adams told me that the Estate had been built by the Ellises.' Harry offered his cigarettes around the bar.

‘The name David Ellis and the date, sixteen twenty-four, are carved into the arch over the front of the house, and there are Ellis graves in the churchyard that go back even further.' Dic finished the cider in his glass. ‘They say the Ellises were aristocracy round here back then. But in seventeen fifty-four another David Ellis had to sell up to re-stock the farm when disease killed every one of his sheep. The man who gave him the money took the deeds to the Estate and that left the Ellises tenants where they had once been freeholders.'

‘For all we know that could be a story, Dic,' Mrs Edwards admonished.

Dic clutched his empty glass. ‘My dad told me it was true and he never told me a lie in his life.'

‘It was that story that made David Ellis all the more determined to buy the place. I remember him coming in here the day he went to the solicitor's to sign the deeds. He and Mrs Ellis were so happy. They bought the children tea to celebrate.' Mrs Edwards smiled sadly at the memory. ‘He put down every penny the family had, five hundred pounds, as a deposit against the fifteen hundred pounds the farm cost him. When the bank sold the Estate out from under him for seven hundred and fifty pounds it left him owing two hundred and fifty pounds, as well as the capital on the mortgage and the interest on the payments he hadn't been able to make. The rent was fixed at a hundred and fifty pounds a year and those children have been living hand to mouth ever since.'