Finders and Keepers (37 page)

‘But?' Harry prompted when Toby didn't finish the sentence.

‘They preferred to do other things. Drink, womanize, make money. I couldn't understand them then, and I understand them even less now. God knows what drives a man. I only know that I have to paint in the same way that I have to draw breath. And Frank feels just like that as well. Take away our art and you'd take away our lives. No one, and I mean no one, would have made me waste three years of my life studying English at Oxford.'

*……*……*

Billy Evans looked at Harry's watercolour and nodded. ‘That's very good, Harry. You certainly have talent, and you should be in Paris, not wasting your time here with me.' He started to cough and saw Harry start nervously. ‘But you'd better keep it away from me or you won't be allowed to carry it out of here. You haven't told them at home what happened to me on Sunday morning?'

‘Against my better judgement, no, I haven't.' Harry shifted uneasily on the chair at the side of his grandfather's bed on the balcony and moved the canvas behind Billy's bed. ‘Dad telephoned the inn last night. Uncle Joey and Uncle Victor are coming down with him to visit you again this Saturday. They're travelling down with Mam and Bella, who has decided to model for Toby.'

Billy's eyes glittered feverishly and his voice was even feebler than it had been the day before. ‘Are the boys bringing Megan and Rhian?'

‘Yes, and hopefully they'll all be allowed in to see you, but Dad's already warned Bella that she will have to stay at the inn.'

The old man nodded. ‘Thank you. I'd hate to risk upsetting her again.' He grimaced as he moved in the bed. ‘You making progress teaching that family to read?'

‘Yes.' Harry saw the sister hovering in the doorway. Flouting regulations – again – he rested the canvas against the wall, blocked her view of the bed with his body and gripped his grandfather's hand. ‘See you tomorrow morning.'

‘Good luck, Harry. You can tell me then about the progress your scholars are making. And thank you for showing me your painting and what the scenery around here is like.'

Harry glanced at the sister. ‘Take care, Granddad.'

‘I'm not planning on having another haemorrhage, if that's what you mean.' Billy winked at him and glared at the sister, who was now smoothing the cover on his bed. ‘You've done that three times already this morning, woman, haven't you anything else to do besides fuss over me?'

‘No, Mr Evans, I haven't.'

His voice grew marginally stronger. ‘Pity. If you did, I might get some peace.'

Harry smiled at the banter and walked to the lift. After seeing Toby's watercolour he wondered if he should start on a second painting of the lake, or try to help David on the farm again.

He had spent all of Monday and Tuesday painting. But the day before, clouds had obscured the sun and muddied the light. Bored, he had walked up to the farm and found David in one of the outbuildings, chopping a pile of logs he had been given by a farmer who had cleared his woodland for grazing.

David had told him that Martha and Mary were out with Luke and Matthew repairing a wall in one of the fields. Harry had offered to help until they returned, and, to his amazement, David had accepted.

He'd taken off his jacket, rolled up his shirt-sleeves and chopped steadily while David had cleaned the pigsties and cowsheds. By the time the others returned, he had cut every log in the outbuilding into stove-sized pieces. He had drunk tea and eaten bread and jam with the Ellises, then given Martha and Matthew another lesson. Mary and David joined them, and although they said very little, he noticed that they took in everything he said.

He'd resolved that when he couldn't paint he'd spend as much time as possible on the farm, deciding that if David couldn't find him work to do, he'd ask if he'd allow him to make small repairs around the place. Any activity had to be better than sitting around thinking about his grandfather's illness.

‘I saw that.' Toby watched him rub an aching shoulder muscle as he left the sanatorium.

‘What?' Harry returned his canvas to the back of his car.

‘You moving your shoulder as if you were a wooden puppet. That will teach you to chop wood.'

‘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 and 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.