Finders and Keepers (58 page)

‘Come on, I'll take you to the washhouse first, Mary.' Joyce led the way back across the yard to the women's lavatories. Mary trailed behind, stumbling awkwardly and twisting her ankles when she tried to quicken her pace in the rough wooden clogs that were too large for her feet.

‘Here.' Joyce handed her a piece of green carbolic soap. ‘Wash your hands and face.'

Mary turned on the cold water tap, the only one there was, and held her hands beneath the flow of water, but she didn't use the soap. Her skin was still burning from the over-generous helping of caustic soda that had been tipped into her bucket.

‘You'd better rinse your face as well. You've dirt on your forehead and nose.' Joyce picked up one of the rags they used as towels and held it, ready.

‘Thank you.' Mary lowered her face to the sink, dipped her hands under the stream of cold water and rubbed her face. Joyce was more sympathetic than most of the orderlies because she knew what it was like to be an inmate. ‘Why has the master sent for me?'

‘I don't know, but there's a young man in his office, and he was shouting at the master and the master didn't shout back. Your brothers and sister have been sent for as well. It could be that someone in your family has come to take you out,' she suggested optimistically.

‘We haven't any relatives.'

‘The young man was tall, blond and very good-looking. A real toff. Do you know anyone like that?'

Mary's spirits lifted. She nodded.

‘A relative?' Joyce pressed.

‘A friend. A good friend.' Mary had hoped and prayed that Harry would try to help them, but even now she was too afraid to believe that it was really him. It could be any young man …

‘Lucky you to have rich friends. I've give whole worlds,' she said illogically, given her lack of possessions, ‘to know someone like him. I saw his posh car parked in front of the reception block. Perhaps his family needs servants, or perhaps he's discovered that you're a long-lost cousin.' She strayed into the realms of romance. ‘Or, it could be that he's heard about your brother.'

‘My brother! Which brother?' Mary took the towel and wiped her face. It smelled musty, and without thinking, she dropped it on to the basin.

‘The only name I heard was “Ellis”. Ellen, one of the ward maids in the infirmary, came into the kitchen earlier to get some grease. They sent her because Matron knows that the master and his family have goose for dinner every Sunday. She said that an Ellis boy had been brought in and he was in a bad way.'

‘Brought in from where? Wasn't he already here? What's wrong with him?' Questions tumbled out one after the other, but, panicked by the thought that one of her brothers was ill, Mary didn't wait for answers.

‘All I know is what I've told you. Perhaps no one's come for you. Perhaps the toff's nothing to do with you, and …'

‘The master sent for me to tell me bad news.' Mary ran headlong out of the door.

‘Wait for me,' Joyce shouted. ‘I'm supposed to take you. And you haven't hung up this towel. You could be put on bread and water for that.'

‘Mr Evans,' the master called to Harry from the corridor outside the waiting room.

Harry looked up at him without rising or relinquishing his hold on Martha and Matthew.

‘Mary Ellis is in my office.'

‘Mary …' Matthew ran forward but Betty caught him by the waist and held him fast. ‘I know you want to see your sister but you have to wait here with me, young man.'

‘I'll return as quickly as I can.' Harry pushed Martha gently towards Betty and climbed to his feet. ‘You two be good for Mrs Morgan and look after Luke until I come back.'

‘We'll see Mary then?' Matthew asked plaintively.

Harry felt like a coward when he pretended that he hadn't heard the boy. He crossed the corridor. The office door was open and he walked straight in. The master was sitting behind his desk. A female inmate was standing with her back turned to him. He knew she was a female because her smock was longer than the ones the men wore over their trousers. But her hair had been cut as close as Martha's.

‘I have considered your request, Mr Evans,' the master said formally, ‘and if Mrs Morgan is prepared to sign all the relevant papers you may take Mary Ellis with you now.'

Harry blanched when he realized that he was looking at Mary. Where she had been slender, she was now broomstick-thin, and as he walked to her side he saw she was as pallid and gaunt as her brothers and sister. ‘Mary?'

When she didn't respond, he saw that the workhouse had succeeded in doing what none of the other tragedies she'd had to face in her short life had. She'd been cowed, and the fighting spirit he'd so admired had been destroyed. He wondered if the separation from her brothers and sisters had contributed more to her broken state than the punishing regime of the workhouse.

‘Mary?' he repeated softly.

She continued to stare down at her feet, unable or unwilling to look him in the eye.

Harry's temper, constrained for so long, finally erupted. Wishing he'd never followed the advice to wait and help the Ellises through official channels, he shouted, ‘The condition of the Ellis family is an absolute disgrace. The younger children are malnourished. Miss Ellis has obviously been starved and mistreated, and her brother has been beaten to within an inch of his life. This is not a workhouse. It is a death house. The only wonder to me is that anyone survives here at all.'

‘We do the best we can to care for the destitute with the limited means at our disposal, Mr Evans.' The master pretended to study a paper on his desk.

‘If you allowed the friends of those human beings you label destitute to take care of them, you wouldn't have to trouble yourself to draw wages from the parish.' Harry said cuttingly. He heard a vehicle halt outside the main entrance and glanced through the window. As he'd hoped, it was the ambulance. ‘Mary, we're going.' He offered her his arm as if they were leaving a ballroom.

‘Given the circumstances, I am sorry to have to remind you, Mr Evans, but the Ellis family are wearing workhouse property.'

‘Where are the clothes they arrived in?' Harry questioned, his temper still simmering at boiling point.

‘We burned them. They were verminous.'

‘No, they were not,' Harry contradicted baldly.

‘It is workhouse policy to burn all prospective inmates' clothes.'

‘Why?'

‘Our regulations are designed to keep the institution clean and disease-free.'

Harry looked at the smock Mary was wearing. ‘Or more likely they were burned because you want to further humiliate the destitute by insisting they wear rags. I wouldn't force a criminal into this cloth, let alone a baby like Luke Ellis.' He opened his wallet, extracted a five-pound note and flung it on the desk. ‘That should more than compensate the parish for anything they laid out on the-Ellis family's keep. I'll expect an official receipt to be sent to my solicitor's office. If it isn't, I'll know that you appropriated it, the same way you appropriated furniture that was removed by Robert Pritchard's bailiffs.'

‘I object to your tone -'

‘Send a clerk out to my car with the papers you want signed. Mrs Morgan has already taken the children there.' Harry grasped Mary's hand and practically pulled her through the door and into the courtyard. He glanced over to the corner where he had parked his car. Betty Morgan had already settled the younger children into the back and was sitting in the passenger seat, but he steered Mary out of their sight towards the ambulance. A nurse was sitting on one of the side benches in the back. David was lying face down as he had been in the infirmary, on a stretcher in front of her.

‘How is he?' Harry asked.

Mary looked from Harry to the nurse and back and finally spoke. ‘David?'

‘Yes.' He helped her into the ambulance and the nurse moved up on the bench to make room for her.

‘He's been given something to help him sleep through the journey. I doubt he'll wake until tomorrow morning.' The nurse glanced from Harry to Mary. ‘I know he looks bad, but he will recover.'

‘Mary? Mary?' Harry had to repeat her name twice before he felt he had her attention but she still refused to meet his gaze. ‘I have to drive the others down the valley, but I'll see you at the house.'

‘House,' she repeated uncomprehendingly. She picked up David's limp hand and held it in her own.

‘I have rented a house for you and your family.'

‘The others?' She couldn't tear her gaze away from David.

It was then that he realized she hadn't understood a word he'd said. ‘Matthew, Martha and Luke are in my car, Mary. I'm going to tell the ambulance driver where to go. He'll drive you to the house I've rented for all of you. I'll see you there.'

‘You have them all? Martha, Matthew, Luke …' She didn't look away from David.

‘They're all safe, Mary. Another hour and you'll be …' He would have given a great deal to have been able to say home. ‘You'll see them shortly. And,' he looked across at the grim facade of the workhouse, ‘I know I let you down but I swear that neither you nor your family will ever have to go into a place like this again.' He stepped down from the ambulance and closed the door.

Martha waved shyly to him from the car. Feeling as though he had been given a greater reward than he deserved, he waved back to her before walking around to the driver's cab.

The road between the workhouse and the inn was interminable, and the whole time Harry drove, his thoughts were with Mary and David in the ambulance. All three children fell asleep huddled beneath the blankets in the back, before he pulled into the yard of the inn, the nearest place to the cottage that he could park his car.

‘Shall I take the children straight into the house, Harry?' Betty asked.

‘Please. I'll help you.' Seeing that Martha, unlike her brothers, had woken and was scrambling out, Harry lifted Matthew into his arms, leaving Luke for Betty. He carried him into the kitchen, where, thanks to Enfys, a fire blazed cheerfully in the hearth. He set the boy in an easy chair.

‘It's all right, Matthew, you're in that house I told you about,' Harry reassured him when he opened his eyes and looked around in confusion.

‘Sit next to Matthew for now, Martha,' Betty suggested when she led Martha inside and set Luke gently on a sofa. ‘Then, when we've had a cup of tea and you've woken up a bit, you can have a look at the bedrooms we've prepared for you.'

‘I'll be back in a few minutes, Betty. Will you turn down one of the beds in the boys' room, please?' Harry went to the door.

‘The boy is seriously hurt?'

‘Yes.'

‘I'll turn back the bed in the master bedroom.'

‘Thank you, Betty, but I think he'd prefer to share a room with his brother, and his brother with him.' Harry smiled at Martha. ‘The Ellises like doing everything together. Don't you, Martha?'

She didn't exactly smile but her lips crinkled.

Harry crossed the garden to the car park. The driver had opened the back of the ambulance and Mary was sitting on the floor next to David's stretcher. The nurse stepped down and stood beside Harry.

‘He didn't wake during the journey?' Harry asked.

‘Not once,' she confirmed. ‘But as I said, I wasn't expecting him to.'

Harry saw Alf in his workshop. He waved and shouted, ‘Alf, do me a favour, help us to carry David Ellis into the cottage.'

Alf dropped the cigarette jammed between his teeth, ground it under his heel and ran over to the ambulance. ‘We heard what happened to him. Couple of constables came in for a swift half after Ianto Williams was arrested and sent to Brecon.'

Harry took some comfort from the thought that Ianto Williams might be languishing in the same spartan cell he had endured. ‘When we've got David inside, do me another favour, please, Alf? Go into the inn and ask your mother to call the doctor?'

Harry found Toby in the bar and bought him a drink. He was looking at some sketches Toby had drawn of a hare when the doctor walked in. He rose to meet him.

The doctor set his bag on a chair. ‘Mrs Morgan tells me that you are jointly responsible for the Ellises.'

‘We are,' Harry answered. ‘Can I get you a drink?'

‘After seeing that poor boy's back a brandy wouldn't go amiss.' The doctor sat down. Harry bought a double brandy and set it in front of him.

‘They told me in the infirmary that he will recover,' Harry said hopefully.

‘In time, but he'll have to take it easy for months. There's muscle damage. He'll need a great deal of care, Mr Evans.'

‘I'll see that he gets it. You'll visit him again?'

‘Tomorrow.' The doctor downed his brandy. ‘Do I send my bill to you, Mr Evans?'

‘You do.'

‘Here, to the inn?'

‘Even if I should move on, I'll leave a forwarding address, but I have no intention of leaving for a while.'

The doctor tipped his hat. ‘I have two cases of diphtheria up at Bont Farm. Perhaps I'll see you tomorrow.'

‘I hope so.' Harry looked out of the window and watched him cross the yard to his car.

Mrs Edwards left the bar and came over to collect the doctor's empty glass. ‘Enfys has taken dinner over to the cottage.'

‘Thank you, Mrs Edwards. Mrs Morgan will have her hands full with the children for the next few days without worrying about meals.'

‘If you don't mind me saying so, Mr Evans, you've taken a lot upon yourself with those Ellis children. Not that they didn't need someone to take care of them, what with David Ellis getting beaten,' she added illogically. ‘And your own dinners are ready for you if you'd like to go in the dining room.'

Harry picked up his pint of bitter and led the way into the back room. Enfys had set out two plates of pork chops, apple sauce, peas, roast and mashed potatoes.