by Alis Hawkins
‘Your shilling partly pays for your dinner,’ the money-taker said, as if he’d had to say the same words ten thousand times before.
‘Partly?’
Jem Harborne butted in. ‘You can dine like a king for two shillings.’
‘But—’
‘Come on! We’ve got time to look around before they start taking orders at two.’
Lleu held his hand out. ‘Here’s my shilling.’ He looked over his shoulder at me. ‘I may never come to London again, so I’m going to see everything I can while I’m here!’
The two of them disappeared inside and I was left with no choice. If I stayed out here, I’d be a caricature ‘Cardi’ – a Cardiganshire miser with long pockets and short arms.
* * *
An hour later, we were finishing our dinner and I couldn’t believe I’d wondered if it’d be worth the money. Alexis Soyer’s restaurant was a marvel.
Jem Harborne said Soyer’d called it a ‘symposium’ because he wanted to educate people while he fed them. And entertain them too. According to Harborne, advertising posters’d gone up all over London calling the symposium a ‘Gigantic Dining Encampment of All Nations’. And from what we’d seen, that was no exaggeration.
Before we sat down to eat our dinner in the biggest dining room in the world, we’d walked through smaller rooms in the main house that seemed to represent every country and civilisation on earth, from China to Italy to the frozen north. Every inch of the place was painted with murals and decorated with objects from around the world, and there were technological wonders too – gas lamps whose light was flung about the place by mirrored glass, a gigantic gas-fired apparatus in the outdoor kitchen that was roasting a whole beef carcass, even a glass ceiling filled with water where little goldfish were swimming!
‘You should see this place at night,’ Harborne said, leaning back in his chair till the front feet were off the ground. ‘It’s like fairyland – lights everywhere and all the magical effects Soyer’s technicians have been able to conjure up. Mind you, with all the gas lamps and candles everywhere, it gets viciously hot. People’ve been known to faint clean away!’
I nodded. The whole place was astonishing enough by day, but by night I could picture it being like a giant magical box lit up from inside. ‘You’ve visited at night yourself, have you?’
Harborne held his hand up, fingers splayed. ‘Five times!’ He let his chair tip forward and leaned over the table at me and Lleu. ‘I’ll tell you one thing. What with this,’ he gestured around us, ‘and that monstrous glasshouse over there, nobody in future will ever be able to say that something can’t be done. If you’ve got the will, you can do anything, anywhere. And quickly, too. Paxton built the Crystal Palace in ten months, and for less than half the cost of the original design. Less than half! And look at it – it’s a wonder of the age.’
I nodded. It was; no argument about that.
Harborne leaned further over the table. ‘The “Crystal Palace”. Whoever called it that was a genius! Think about it. People might’ve come to see “the world’s biggest glasshouse”, but it doesn’t sound very exciting, does it? But “the Crystal Palace”?’ He began holding up fingers. ‘Riches, royalty, magic. Genius!’
We’d had nothing to drink with our dinner, but I began to think Jem Harborne might’ve been drinking before we met him. He seemed unnaturally enthusiastic about everything.
‘So, my Teifi boys, what’s caught your eye for the farms back home?’
Lleu looked at me. I rearranged the cutlery on my empty plate. Whatever I thought about the machines we’d seen, Glanteifi didn’t have the money to buy a single one. We were in enough debt already. Just the thought of it made me start to sweat. And whatever Harry thought, the way Mr Ormiston was managing the estate would make things worse, not better.
I tried to ignore the prickles of panic up my scalp and took a deep breath. ‘Seems to me,’ I said, ‘that all those mechanical contraptions are designed for a different type of farming.’
Jem Harborne cocked his head, wanting me to explain. But I couldn’t tell him that they were just too expensive for our little farms. ‘They’re built for big, flat, tidy fields,’ I said. ‘They’d never cope with our slopes. Or the size and odd shapes of the fields.’
‘Are you telling me that you haven’t seen a single machine that might be applicable back home? What about that sheep-washing contraption?’
‘We’ve got the river.’
‘The machine for bruising gorse, then?’
‘That’s one of the things labourers do in the winter.’
‘Labourers? That’s the point of machines – to do away with the need for labour!’
‘But what would the labourers do if they didn’t have the work? Their families’d starve!’
Lleu was watching me and Harborne as if we were the only people in the room. And why wouldn’t he? This was his life we were talking about. I knew for a fact that he’d gone to work in Miss Gwatkyn’s house because his parents couldn’t afford to feed him.
‘Machines are coming to the Teifi Valley whatever you think,’ Harborne said. ‘And the labour will just have to go somewhere else. There’s going to be no end of jobs down in the Rhondda mines once they get the pumping systems right. They’ve got coal measures down there to last a lifetime.’
‘But people can’t just pack up and go south!’
‘Why not?’
I shook my head. Jem Harborne had no idea how the world worked when you were so poor you didn’t know where your next mouthful was coming from. ‘If you’re going to walk to the Rhondda valleys, you need enough food to keep you going on the way there. That’s got to be four or five days of walking – a week if you’re taking your whole family.’
‘Who said anything about walking? I’m talking about the railways!’
‘We haven’t got any railways at home.’
‘Yet. But they’re coming – fast. And when they get to Llandysul and Newcastle Emlyn and Lampeter and Tregaron, people will get on the train and leave. Imagine it – breakfast in Llandysul, supper in the Rhondda.’ Harborne was waiting for me to say something, I could tell. When I didn’t, he just smiled. ‘They’re sinking a new coal pit down there as we speak, gentlemen. As we speak!’
He leaned back again. Behind him, through the glass wall, I could see people wandering around outside, gawping at the decorated gardens and Soyer’s outdoor kitchen. Was Harborne right? Would the people at home who scratched a living from their smallholdings and laboured for a pittance just move away to find a better life somewhere else? Perhaps. Some people’d already gone further, hadn’t they? To America. But they were mostly farmers who’d been able to save money for the passage. Cottagers and labourers would never be able to put enough aside. But if the railways came, like he said…
I didn’t want to think about that. Because if there weren’t enough labourers, then machines were the only solution and Glanteifi just wouldn’t be able to afford them. Not unless our financial situation changed quickly.
The thought made me start worrying about what Mr Ormiston was doing while I was away. Just thinking about his attitude to the kind of smallholders Jem Harborne was talking about put icy fingers around my neck. He’d be very glad to see labourers and cottagers loading their families onto a railway carriage and leaving.
I fixed my eyes on the crowds milling about on the other side of the glass and tried to put Micah Ormiston out of my mind.
There were all sorts out there in the grounds – men and women mingling, some well-dressed and some in working clothes, a few soldiers in uniform, foreigners with their different fashions. Was this the future – nobody staying where they started out, just going off to the next new thing and making a life there?
I knew that in the next week or so we might be forcing people to leave Glanteifi and go somewhere else because we had to deal with all the tenants who were in arrears with their rent. They’d be hoping and praying that Mr Ormiston’d let them have more time, ma
ybe even reduce their rents. But I knew for a fact that he was planning to throw them all off their land. I knew what that would mean for them so I was going to have to do whatever I could to stop him. And I was dreading it.
‘Are you something to do with the railways then, Mr Harborne?’ Lleu asked.
‘Not at all. I’m a textiles man. But you’ve got to keep abreast of what’s going on. It’s the only way you’ll get ahead. I’ve been working in Newtown up in Montgomeryshire. They’re decades ahead of us in terms of mechanisation. Decades.’ He leaned over the table again. ‘I went up to Yorkshire recently to see some of the mills there. Do you know how many spinning mills there are in Leeds? No, neither do I. But I know how many there are in the Teifi Valley – one.’
That was a surprise to me. I didn’t know there were any.
‘But that’s going to change,’ he went on. ‘And I’m the one who’s going to change it. With the railways coming and markets opening up in the coalfields, the Teifi Valley is going to be the best place in the country to produce textiles. And I’m going to be the first to do it!’
Harry
Drawn by the sound of our voices and the horses’ hooves, Mrs Rees’s younger daughters and her husband soon joined us in the house. The apples that the girls had been picking were still warm from a whole day’s sunshine, and their sweet fragrance mingled with the smell of the wood fire and the astringent smell of a recent coat of limewash. I looked around the kitchen as well as I was able, acutely aware of how much more John would have been able to take in. The thought brought with it an unwelcome reminder of how reserved John had been since our argument over Ormiston’s running of the estate. He’d barely spoken to me for the fortnight before he left for London.
‘This is my husband, Mic, and my daughters, Ann and Gwen,’ Mrs Rees said as the little girls began to take apples from their aprons and place them on the kitchen table.
I inclined my head to the slim figure who had risen from his chair. ‘Mr Rees, may I offer my deepest condolences?’
As I did not want to assume that he shared his wife’s facility with English, I had addressed him in Welsh, and he responded in the same language. ‘Thank you, sir. It’s Mic y Porthmon they call me,’ he added. ‘If you talk about Mic Rees, nobody’ll know who you mean.’
So, he was a drover. ‘Do you drive cattle still?’ I asked.
‘No. Not since I met Esther and we settled down here. Would you like some cider?’ he asked. ‘Or tea? You’ve come a fair way.’
‘Mr Probert-Lloyd isn’t here to drink tea,’ his wife snapped. ‘He’s here to see Lizzie.’
‘I know. But the least we can do now you’ve dragged these gentlemen here is offer them something.’
Without answering, Mrs Rees pushed him out of the way and bent to pick up a large jug from the hearth. ‘Go and fill that,’ she thrust it at one of the girls, ‘then put the kettle on the fire.’ Turning to us, she reverted to English. ‘Not to waste your time, Doctor, Mr Probert-Lloyd – will you see my Lizzie before you have your tea?’
‘Of course.’
She led us to the bedroom, which was separated from the kitchen by a huge dresser and the back of what I took to be a box bed. As we passed to one side of the dresser, I was pleased to see that windows, front and back, let in a decent amount of light; my partial vision made it almost impossible for me to make out anything that was not well lit.
But it seemed that Elizabeth Rees’s body was not in this room. As I took care not to stumble over the rag rugs that lay on the beaten-earth floor, I saw Mrs Rees open a door in the end wall.
‘We thought she’d be better in the weaving shed.’
Until a coffin was made, the body would need to be kept at a distance to prevent the house being infected with the smell of putrefaction. However, though the weaving shed’s large windows had been covered with white sheeting out of respect to the dead, it was little cooler than the main part of the house.
Reckitt drew back the sheet and revealed Elizabeth’s body, clad in her long petticoat. ‘Mrs Rees, may I ask you to undress your daughter, please?’
Mic Rees, who had followed us from the kitchen, took a step back, obviously uncomfortable at the thought of his daughter’s naked body being exposed before him. Seeing an opportunity to speak to him alone, I indicated that he and I should leave Reckitt and his wife to their business.
Once he had shut the door behind us, I stood beside the bedroom window so that as much light as possible would fall on him. However, I knew that I would be able to see very little that might help me discover the truth of what had happened to Mic y Porthmon’s daughter, and once again I felt John’s absence keenly. ‘When exactly did your daughter die, Mic?’
He cleared his throat. ‘This morning. I found her dead in bed.’
‘This morning? Not yesterday?’
‘No. Today.’
In which case, Esther Rees had barely seen her daughter’s body and heard her husband’s account of what had happened before she had taken to her heels and walked the seven or eight miles to Cilgerran to speak to Reckitt. Her suspicions must have been aroused instantly, and I wondered what it was that had made her so determined that Lizzie had not died a natural death.
Scanning the room, I could see no other beds.
‘Your daughters sleep in the loft?’ I asked, indicating the ladder that stood in the corner, ready to give access to the loft under the eaves overhead.
‘Yes.’
Without John, I would have to rely on Reckitt to examine the bed.
‘When did you discover that Lizzie had died?’ I asked.
‘Well…’ Mic Rees hesitated. ‘I’m not sure of the time. Not exactly. Lizzie’s usually up with the sun – was, I mean – and she’d call to wake me. The light doesn’t get in to the box bed. But this morning, the cow woke me, shouting to be milked. I knew something wasn’t right straight away, because it was properly day and the ladder was still up – Lizzie hadn’t come down yet. So I called up to her that the cow’d be in through the door in a minute. But there was no answer.’ He fell silent and I did not hurry him. I did not want to embarrass him if he was mastering tears. ‘I thought maybe her cold’d turned into a fever,’ he said eventually. ‘And she was still tired after being away working.’
‘Away?’
He took a shuddering breath. ‘She’d been down south,’ he said, his distress evident in his voice. ‘Went for harvest work with some of the other local girls.’
‘I see. How long was she away?’
‘A month or so.’ He cleared his throat. ‘They went as soon as the hay was in.’
Had Lizzie caught something worse than a summer chill while she had been away from home?
‘Did she already have the cold when she came home?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘And was it just that that was making her feel under the weather, or was there something else?’
‘No. Nothing. She said she ached a bit, but I think that was all the work and sleeping under a hedge on the way back. The damp gets to you even if you’re young, doesn’t it?’
‘But it was the cold that stopped her going with your wife and your other daughters, was it?’
With the whirlpool trained on his chest, I saw him nod above it. ‘Yes. Generally she’d have been happy to go over to Ffynone with her mother and sisters. It’s not all hard work when women get together, is it?’
I wondered what Mrs Rees and her daughters had been doing at the Colbys’ mansion. The promise of work must have been substantial, as Ffynone was a good three hours’ walk away. ‘Was it more harvest work?’
‘No. It was one of those big affairs Mr Colby has through the summer. Other businessmen and their families up from Merthyr for a week. Esther’s niece is a laundrymaid there. She can always get work for my girls when there’s a big party on.’
I wondered if Lizzie Rees had been feeling more unwell than she had admitted. I did not imagine that she had lightly forgone a few days’ working holi
day with her female relatives.
‘Had Lizzie been down south to work on the harvest before?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Last year. And the year before. It’s good money if a girl knows how to work hard.’
‘Yes, so I gather.’ Farmers’ wives and daughters in the ‘soft south’ of Pembrokeshire, the area sometimes called Little England Beyond Wales, were rumoured to regard fieldwork as beneath them.
‘And she’d had no ill effects the previous times?’
‘No, none. She’s a good worker. Brought back a tidy sum, fair play to her – that’s why I didn’t let her mother push her to go over to Ffynone. I thought she deserved a day or two to get over her cold.’
As he was speaking, Esther Rees appeared, startling me slightly as I had not heard the door to the weaving shed open. ‘I should have made her come with me,’ she said, obviously having caught the gist of her husband’s last comment. ‘But you could never refuse her, could you?’
‘What d’you mean by that?’ Mic Rees flared.
‘You treat the three of them like little swci lambs – as if they need nursing by the fire! They’ve got to learn to make their own living!’
‘What was Lizzie doing down south if she wasn’t making her own living? It’s not me that’s too soft, Esther, it’s you that’s too harsh – you never gave that girl a minute’s peace from your nagging. She could never please you!’
I did my best to ignore the tense silence that followed his outburst. ‘So,’ I said, turning my deficient eyes to Mic Rees, ‘last night, was Lizzie late to bed?’
‘No.’ He sounded chastened. Or perhaps he was just embarrassed by the insults he and his wife had traded. ‘We were both busy in the shed till the light went – Lizzie spinning, me on the loom. Then we came in and had supper and went to bed.’
‘Who brought the wool?’
Mrs Rees’s question surprised me. Her husband seemed equally taken aback. ‘What?’
