Sensing his embarrassment, Sali guided him towards the French doors in the dining room. They made slow progress as people continually stopped him to offer their congratulations on his degree and wish him well in Paris. Trestle tables had been set up outside on the terrace, and they were covered with plates of savouries, sandwiches, cakes, jellies and blancmanges.
‘Mari’s outdone herself.’ Harry looked around for their housekeeper.
‘She has, but none of us have succeeded in getting her out of the kitchen.’ Sali took Glyn from him and handed the toddler a fairy cake.
‘I’ve told the others that I’m first and that’s all there is to it.’ Harry’s youngest sister, Susie, who had all the confidence of a girl twice her age, grabbed his hand and pulled him back towards the house when the band struck up ‘Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby’.
‘What about Maggie and Beth?’ Harry asked when they reached the middle of the drawing room where the dancers had congregated.
‘I told them Mari needed help in the kitchen.’
‘And did she?’ Harry resolved to pay the housekeeper a visit as soon as he could get away.
Susie just grinned before waving her hands and kicking her legs in an imitation of the chorus girls at the Town Hall.
‘Sorry you have five sisters,’ Lloyd commiserated when Harry managed to escape into the library five dances later to join the men who had laid claim to the room as a refuge and smoking parlour.
‘Sorry Edyth hasn’t learned to be more careful with that cast.’ He rubbed his arm. ‘I haven’t been back in Pontypridd an hour and she’s managed to thump me twice. Uncle Joey, thank you.’ He took the cigarette his father’s youngest brother offered him. ‘And thank you very much for the wallet you sent me when I graduated. I hope you and Aunty Rhian got my letter.’
‘We did.’ Joey lit Harry’s cigarette.
‘And thank you for the pen, Uncle Victor.’ He shook his father’s younger brother’s hand. ‘It was much appreciated.’
‘First Oxford graduate in the Evans family – you deserve something special. But I don’t deserve the thanks, Megan chose it. What would we do without our women?’
‘Have more money in our pockets to get drunk on every night?’ Joey suggested. He had been strikingly good-looking before the war but the years in the trenches and serious wounds had taken a toll on his health.
‘It’s just as well Rhian knows you don’t mean a tenth of what you say.’ Victor passed round a plate of sausage rolls he’d filched from one of the tables outside.
‘I won’t be the last one in this family to graduate from Oxford. Not with the number of cousins I have.’ Harry looked around the room. ‘Isn’t Granddad here?’
‘He complained he couldn’t breathe in here so he went outside.’ Lloyd handed him an ashtray.
‘How is he?’ Harry asked. Billy Evans had lost the lower part of one of his legs in a train accident fifteen years before. Forced to leave mining, he hadn’t allowed his disability to stop him from moving in with Victor and Megan so he could help Victor out on his farm. But it wasn’t only the loss of his leg that had affected his health. Like most miners who had spent twenty or more years underground he had succumbed to ‘miner’s lung’.
‘You know Dad.’ Victor swallowed a mouthful of sausage roll. ‘He’s not one to complain. Even when he’s in pain.’
‘You’re a brave lady venturing into the men’s lair,’ Joey said archly to Alice Reynolds, who was standing on tip-toe in the doorway.
‘I’m looking for Harry. It’s a lady’s excuse me.’
‘Far be it from me to interfere with a lady’s wishes.’ Joey divested Harry of his cigarette and pushed him towards Alice. Linking her arm into his, Alice led Harry back into the drawing room.
‘Please, not near Edyth,’ Harry begged.
Edyth was flinging around her one good arm and both legs under the pretext of teaching her younger sisters the Charleston. Harry felt sorry for Maggie, Beth and Susie, who all received a couple of inadvertent kicks from her. He also noticed Bella dancing a practised and more expert version with the boy who’d helped her from the car.
‘Bella has a boyfriend?’ Harry asked his mother as soon as the dance was over and he’d managed to shake off Alice.
‘Gareth Michaels.’ Sali glanced across the room at them. ‘He’s seventeen and so smitten it’s painful to watch the way she treats him.’
‘Isn’t she a little young to be going out with boys?’
‘The protective older brother.’ Sali looked amused. ‘So far he’s only taken her to the church social. Perhaps I should remind you how old you were when you escorted your first girlfriend to the theatre.’
‘Point taken.’ Harry followed Sali back outside. She retrieved Glyn, who was sitting on the grass watching Joey’s youngest son and daughters play ball.
‘Too much cake isn’t good for one small boy, Glyn.’ She took an iced bun from him and wiped the crumbs from his mouth. ‘I hope everyone is enjoying themselves.’
‘Judging by the smiles on their faces, they seem to be. It was a brilliant idea to hold a last party here.’ Harry looked up at the house. ‘It’s a pity it had to be sold but Dad and the trustees were right – a house this size needs an army of servants to run it. And in this day and age it’s simply not practical.’ He smiled wryly. ‘Despite Dad’s Marxist ideals, we enjoyed the best of the vanishing world of the privileged.’
‘We did.’ Sali pressed a plate of sandwiches on a group of colliers who were hanging back diffidently from the table.
‘From that look on your face, I can see that I’m not the only one who’s sorry to leave,’ Harry commented.
‘We all are. The girls didn’t stop crying for days, and although your father would deny it, I caught him wiping away a tear or two.’
‘While you, of course, were indifferent,’ Harry teased.
‘You know me. I’m sentimental at the best of times. Don’t forget, I knew and loved this house long before we lived in it. Some of my happiest times were spent here with Great-aunt Edyth before you were born.’
‘Is the new house easier to run?’
‘Much,’ she said brightly. ‘Mari and I manage it with the help of two dailies, although it has almost as many rooms. But they are a lot smaller. Your father sold two of the houses he owns in the Rhondda and paid the builder to extend the original plans so each of your sisters could have their own bedroom. As he said, it’s worth the extra expense to stop their squabbling. Now, when they start, we just say, “Go to your rooms” and peace is instantly restored.’
‘It’s good to be home.’
‘You’ll be in Paris this time next week.’
‘I’ll write,’ he promised.
‘Like you did in Oxford? Letters that ignored the questions I asked in mine,’ she reproached. ‘You never did tell me how much you drank at the party after your graduation.’
He adopted what he hoped was an innocent expression. ‘Not that much.’
‘You expect me to believe that?’
‘Of course.’
‘And Anna?’
‘Anna?’ He looked blank.
‘She’s the reason I only allowed two of the girls to drive to the station with me. I thought you might bring her home. You introduced her to us before the ceremony,’ she reminded him.
‘Oh, that Anna.’
‘Given the way and the number of times she kissed you, I assumed it was serious between you two.’
‘She’s a poet who believes in free love and she’s gone to practise her creed with Guy in an artists’ commune in Mexico, or perhaps it was Cape Cod. I’m not sure even they knew where they were going,’ he said carelessly.
‘Guy, your friend who shared rooms with you?’ Sali asked in surprise. ‘Aren’t you upset?’
‘About Anna? Good Lord, no. I’m twenty-one, not sixteen, Mam. There have been a few Annas in the last three years.’ His mother and stepfather had encouraged him to discuss every aspect of his life openly with them and becau
se they had rarely been disapproving or critical, he told them, if not everything, a great deal more about his life than most of his friends told their parents.
‘Lloyd said you weren’t serious about her.’ (What Lloyd had actually said was, ‘Don’t get your hopes up of seeing Harry walking down the aisle just yet, sweetheart. She’s just another one of his aristocratic flibbertigibbets.’)
‘Dad was right.’
She changed the subject. ‘The builder is progressing well with the house next door that the trustees have bought as an investment for you. Not that they expect you to move in right away. And we put all the furniture you wanted from here in storage.’
‘The trustees don’t expect me to make a successful career as an artist, do they?’ he said quietly.
‘I think hope is a better word than expect,’ she replied diplomatically.
‘I wish they’d see me as a person, not a lump of clay to be moulded into the ideal owner of Gwilym James stores and associated companies.’ In some ways Harry had come to resent the wealth that he would inherit in full at the age of thirty and not only because of the interference of the trustees in what he regarded as his personal decisions. He disliked the privileges it brought him, such as his Oxford education. He would have been happier winning a scholarship to an art college on his own merit, and would have tried to get one, if Lloyd hadn’t pointed out that if he succeeded it would be at the expense of a poverty-stricken student who desperately needed the money.
‘They don’t see you as a lump of clay, darling. And most of them may be elderly and a little old-fashioned, but they are truly fond of you. And although it may not always seem like it, they do have your best interests at heart.’
He slipped his arm around her shoulders and gave her an affectionate squeeze. ‘I know, and I also know just how much trouble you had to persuade them to let me spend this next year in Paris.’
‘I think your threat to give up your inheritance if they tried to stop you from going to France had more effect than anything I said.’
‘It’s good to know that you are behind me. Most of my friends’ parents have insisted that they start in some business or other after three years at Oxford. Anyone would think all we did there was laze around, drink and have parties.’
‘Didn’t you?’ Sali’s question wasn’t entirely humorous.
‘I admit I had some jolly good times, but they didn’t give me a First for my social life. I had to work for it.’
‘Of course you did, darling.’ She sensed she’d touched a raw nerve. ‘And knowing that you wanted to go to art college, not university, made your father and me even prouder of the effort you made. You’ve dreamed of being an artist for years. It’s only right you have the chance to find out if you have what it takes to become one. And now, given the way the food’s disappearing, I’d better go and see if Mari needs help in the kitchen.’
Harry noticed Alice Reynolds bearing down on him again. ‘And I need to say hello to her. Come on, Glyn,’ he picked up his brother again, ‘let’s go and see what goodies Mari’s kept back for us in the kitchen.’
‘Welcome home, Master Harry.’ Their housekeeper, Mari Williams, who was supervising the colliers’ wives Sali had paid to help her in the kitchen, dusted breadcrumbs from her hands, opened her arms and hugged him.
‘How’s the most beautiful and best cook in Pontypridd?’ Harry handed Glyn to his mother and, despite her bulk, swept Mari off her feet.
‘I can see that degree of yours hasn’t changed you, Master Harry.’ She heard her helpers giggling. ‘Put me down, you rascal.’
‘Seeing as how you asked nicely, I will.’ Harry set her gently back on her feet and kissed her cheek.
‘What are you after?’ Mari eyed him suspiciously.
‘Oh, a couple of hours after this party, one of your roasts followed by an iced raspberry bombe would go down a treat, Mari,’ he said hopefully.
‘Then it’s a pity we’re having fricassee of tripe and bread and butter pudding for dinner.’ They were the only two dishes Harry wouldn’t eat.
Sali saw Alice hovering in the passage behind them and whispered, ‘If you want to return to the library, use the scullery door.’ She raised her voice and pretended she’d just seen the girl. ‘Alice, how lovely of you to come and offer to help. There’s a tray of cheese patties ready to be carried outside.’
Harry sneaked out of the door and past the stables. A suspicious pall of blue smoke hung above the shrubbery. He crept inside. His Uncle Victor and Aunty Megan’s twelve-year-old twins, Tom and Jack, were puffing on a cigarette they were sharing with Eddie, his Uncle Joey’s eldest son.
‘Got you!’
Jack’s eyes rounded in alarm. ‘You won’t tell on us, will you, Harry?’
‘Not if you tell me who you stole this from.’ Harry picked up the cigarette Tom had allowed to fall to the ground and held it up in front of them.
‘We didn’t steal it. Granddad dropped it accidentally, we just picked it up,’ Eddie blurted breathlessly. ‘Honest, Harry, it’s the truth.’
‘I believe you, thousands wouldn’t. Where’s Granddad now?’
‘He was sitting on the seat under the chestnut tree.’
He handed the cigarette back to Tom. ‘If anyone else catches you, or you start being sick, you didn’t see me. Right?’
‘Right, Harry,’ they chorused.
Harry found his grandfather where the boys said they had last seen him, sitting on the bench under the tree, filling his pipe.
‘Granddad, I’ve been looking for you.’ Knowing the old man would be embarrassed by a hug, Harry sat next to him and shook his hand.
‘I wandered out for some air and caught your cousins trying to smoke dried leaves in bits of newspaper.’
‘So you went back into the house, and cadged a real cigarette for them to practise smoking with,’ he guessed, recalling the time when he’d been thirteen and Billy had slipped him a cigarette when he had seen him trying to smoke one of his father’s cigars.
‘It was either that, or risk them poisoning themselves. Besides it’s a family tradition. Your father and Victor sneaked their first puffs of tobacco about that age. Your Uncle Joey was an early developer. I caught him with a packet of twopenny tube when he was seven. His mother brought out her carpet-beater when she found out he’d saved his halfpenny-a-week sweet money to buy them. Not that she used it other than to threaten him.’
‘Let’s hope Jack, Tom and Eddie don’t give the game away by turning green.’
Billy reached for his stick and rose awkwardly to his feet. ‘Sad to see the old house go?’ he asked, limping on his artificial leg.
‘Mam and I were just talking about that.’ Harry walked alongside his grandfather as he headed for the door closest to the library. ‘It’s the sensible thing to do. Are they really going to turn it into a clinic?’
‘I think so.’
‘I’m glad the War Memorial Committee managed to raise the funds to buy the gardens and grounds outright before handing them over to the town. It would have been awful if the park had been burdened by debt.’ Harry held the French door open for his grandfather.
‘The people of the town gave every penny they could spare.’
‘They wouldn’t have managed to meet the price set by the trustees if you and Dad hadn’t persuaded the miners’ unions to chip in.’ The sale of the grounds had given rise to the first serious argument between Harry and his trustees. If the decision had been his, he would have donated the land and gardens. But nine of the twelve trustees had voted against him and all he had managed to do was set the price at slightly below market value.
‘Joey’s right, a free park dedicated to the dead of the Great War and owned by everyone in the town is a more fitting memorial than any number of statues.’ Billy looked proudly towards his youngest son, who was talking to Harry’s solicitor, Mr Richards. Joey had enlisted in 1914 and fought in France and Mesopotamia for four years before being wounded and invalided out of the
army.
‘And here’s the man himself, Mr Richards.’ Joey buttonholed Harry. ‘We were just talking about you and your trip to Paris. Ooh la la. All those artists’ models -’
‘I’m going there to study.’ Harry rose to Joey’s bait.
‘So you say.’ Joey lifted his eyebrows. Away from the influence of his wife, Rhian, his humour tended towards the risqué.
‘You putting your car in storage, Harry?’ Victor asked, deliberately changing the subject.
‘Unless Dad or Mam want to drive it.’
‘Not us.’ Lloyd handed round a tray of beers. ‘I think you were mad to want an open-topped car given the amount of rain we have in Wales. And before you ask, no one has driven it since you returned to Oxford for the summer term, apart from your mother when she took it up to the new house and picked you up from the station today. We prefer to sit in the dry when we drive.’
‘You have no sense of adventure.’
‘Because we don’t want to risk pneumonia?’
‘Dad, come and dance with me?’ Joey’s eldest daughter, Rachel, stood in the doorway, Edyth behind her, both with pleading looks on their faces.
‘It’s times like this I’m glad I have four sons.’ Victor watched Lloyd and Joey being dragged into the drawing room as the band struck up ‘I’m Sitting on Top of the World.’ ‘Can I get you anything to eat, Dad?’
‘No thanks.’ Billy saw Harry slip upstairs and followed him.
The bedrooms had also been stripped of furniture and Harry’s footsteps echoed over the floorboards as he walked around the old nursery. He gazed at the seven columns of lines drawn on to the wall next to the fireplace. Each was topped by a name and inscribed with ages and dates in keeping with the family tradition of measuring every child on his or her birthday. All his half-sisters’ and -brother’s marks started with age one, his with age six, marked by his mother the year they had moved into the house. He fingered his topmost line, his age, twenty-one, his height neatly inscribed in Lloyd’s careful writing beside it – 6 ft 2 in.
He stared at the unpolished square of boards, where a rug had been, and recalled the times he had sat, ostensibly reading on the window seat, while secretly watching his sisters hold dolls’ tea parties under Bella’s bossy tutelage. The scorch marks that marred the tiles of fairy scenes around the fireplace brought back memories of a traumatic Christmas Eve when Edyth had thrown lamp oil onto a sluggish fire and set the chimney ablaze. But that was Edyth; her well-meaning attempts to be helpful invariably ended in catastrophe.
Finders and Keepers Page 2
