‘I saw it.’ Mary handed Luke a finger of bread, but he screwed up his eyes and threw it down in a fit of temper.
‘Martha said it costs a lot of money to keep someone in Craig-y-Nos.’
‘I suppose it does.’ She was too busy fighting to keep Luke on her lap to pay much attention to what David was saying.
‘So if he does have a relative in there, he must be paying a lot of money to Doctor Adams.’
‘I suppose so.’ Ashamed of the way she’d flown at him, the last person Mary wanted to talk about was Harry Evans. She dipped a teaspoon into the soup, lifted out a thin portion and held it to Luke’s lips. He pushed it aside with his fist and shook his head vigorously from side to side. ‘Come on, darling,’ she coaxed, ‘you have to eat. If you don’t, you’ll be ill.’
‘As he’s rich, he should pay for knocking Martha down in his car.’ David tore the rest of his bread into pieces and dropped them on top of his soup.
‘He offered. I threw his money back at him.’
‘What did you do that for?’ David retorted angrily.
‘Because I didn’t want him to think that he could buy us. Like … like …’ she faltered, not wanting to say anything that would make her brother hate the agent any more than he already did.
‘Like bloody Bob Pritchard, with his endless “generous” extensions on our rent arrears?’ he growled.
‘Language!’ Mary glanced at Matthew who was sitting low on the bench. His mouth was barely level with the table, and although he was eating, it was obvious from his eye movements that he was listening intently to every word that was being said.
‘Well, I’ll tell Miss Adams when she comes tomorrow that we do want Mr Harry Evans’s money,’ David declared feelingly. ‘It’s only right that he pays Martha’s wages until she can work again. And we’ll take whatever else he’s willing to give us.’
‘Martha’s wages, maybe, but I don’t think we should take anything else off him. Not for an accident. It’s not as if Miss Adams will charge us anything for seeing to Martha.’ Mary gave up trying to feed Luke. She held a cup of water to his lips and he drank greedily. When he had finished, she lifted him on to her shoulder and held him there with one hand, freeing the other so she could eat.
‘What was he doing driving up here in the rain and mist anyway?’ David helped himself to another slice of bread.
‘How should I know?’ Mary answered irritably. Luke was so hot; his tiny body burnt hers, even through the layers of clothing that separated them. She couldn’t bear the thought of him and Martha both being ill at the same time. As it was, she was behind with the cheese and butter making, and she needed to kill and pluck at least a dozen chickens before the next market day. And there was Dolly … would the poultice work? She gripped her spoon tightly. It simply had to! She looked at David. He was holding his spoon over his bowl, apparently deep in thought. ‘Is the supper all right?’
‘Yes. Why shouldn’t it be?’ he snarled.
‘No reason. You’re not still thinking about that man, are you?’
‘A toff like him could do a lot for us.’
‘Like what?’ she questioned cautiously.
‘He could look at the agent’s books for one thing, and tell us if Bob Pritchard is really diddling us.’
‘I can’t believe that you’d want to talk to a total stranger about our private affairs.’
‘Why not? He owes us something for knocking Martha down. I told you, Mary, I’ve had just about all I can take from …’ he saw fire flash in her eyes and tempered his language, ‘the agent.’
‘And what would you do if Mr Pritchard refused to show him the books?’
‘He wouldn’t dare refuse a toff.’
‘Maybe not, but he’d be angry with us afterwards for asking Mr Evans to do it. You know he would. And then he’d take it out on us. He could evict us. Promise me you won’t say a word to Mr Evans about it, Davy?’
‘Only if you promise to tell Miss Adams that we want him to pay Martha’s wages until she can work again. As well as take anything else he offers,’ he added strongly. ‘Promise?’ he repeated when she didn’t answer.
‘I promise,’ she answered reluctantly. She moved her head back and looked at Luke. ‘I’ll take him up and tuck him in between Martha and me. If either of them is ill in the night I want to be on hand to see to them.’
‘And tomorrow?’
‘I said I’d talk to Miss Adams, didn’t I?’
David knew better than to push his sister further than she was prepared to go. He finished the soup in his bowl and left the table. ‘I’ll check on Dolly. If she’s all right I’ll clear up here and put Matthew to bed if you want to stay with Martha and Luke.’
‘Thanks, Davy.’
‘And don’t worry about the morning milking, stay with Martha.’ He reached across the table and ruffled Matthew’s curls. ‘It’s time this one took over. I’ll soon teach him to get the cows in and milk them by himself.’
Matthew bristled with pride, but all Mary could think of was David’s threat to join the army. Didn’t he realize there was no way that he could train six-year-old Matthew to replace him on the farm? No more than she could do his work as well as her own.
The bathroom in the Adamses’ house was cold, and Diana’s fingers were even colder. Harry shuddered when she unfastened his collar and tie, opened the top buttons on his shirt and bathed the cuts on his throat.
‘Did I hurt you?’
He thought she looked positively gleeful at the notion, and lied rather than add to her pleasure. ‘I flinched because your hands and the iodine are cold.’ He tensed when she upended the bottle on a fresh ball of cotton wool.
‘It doesn’t sting?’
‘A little,’ he conceded.
‘You’re lucky Mary only took the top layer of skin from your face and neck. If she’d gone for your eyes, she could have blinded you.’ She examined his wounds before cleaning them again. ‘I doubt they’re deep enough to give you permanent scars, but the iodine will make you look as though you’re wearing war paint. I could bandage you, if you like.’
‘That won’t be necessary, thank you,’ he said firmly.
‘Now the dog-bite.’ She knelt in front of the stool he was sitting on and watched him remove his sodden shoe and sock before pressing the skin around his ankle. ‘I always knew Merlyn was well trained. You’ve two neat rows of teeth-size bruises but there are no breaks in the skin.’ She wiped the area with cotton wool and iodine.
Unable to quell the feeling that she was relishing his discomfort, he rose to his feet as soon as she’d finished. ‘If I don’t go now, I’ll be late for supper at the inn.’
‘If you changed out of your wet clothes and borrowed my father’s robe, you could have supper here.’
‘Pardon?’
‘It’s the servants’ night off,’ she continued matter-of-factly, ‘so you’d have to take pot luck. My repertoire is somewhat limited, but Cook generally leaves fruit, smoked salmon and salad, and I make an excellent Manhattan cocktail.’
‘And your parents? Wouldn’t they object to you inviting a stranger for supper at the last minute?’
‘They are in Swansea. The Mackworth Hotel holds a supper dance every Saturday night and they dine there, dance afterwards and stay over until Sunday morning, when they stop off to attend morning service on their return journey. My father calls it his weekly dose of civilization.’
‘And if there should be an emergency in the sanatorium?’ Harry was alarmed at the thought of what might happen to his grandfather if he was taken ill during the night.
‘I am here and the local doctor is on standby should I need his assistance.’ She looked coolly at him. ‘So do I get you the robe or not, Mr Evans?’
His throat went dry. If the invitation had come from one of his female fellow students in Oxford he would have known exactly what to do. But he was finding it difficult to see past Diana Adams’s starched medical image.
She turned
her back on him, plugged the iodine bottle with a cork and replaced it on a shelf. ‘Not quite the Saturday night invitations you have been used to, Mr Evans? But then, this is a quiet valley.’
‘This is only the second evening I’ve spent here.’
‘You’re not bored yet?’
‘I would have preferred a boring afternoon to the one I’ve just had.’ He picked up his jacket, which was soaking wet.
Her mouth twitched. ‘Are you afraid of me? Or of what might happen if we ate supper together, Mr Evans?’
He never had been able to resist a dare. ‘Do you have a telephone that I can use to call Mrs Edwards at the inn, Miss Adams?’
‘Downstairs in the hall, Mr Evans. I’ll start running your bath while you speak to her.’
‘That’s right, Mrs Edwards,’ Harry concurred. ‘My things are still in my room because I’ve decided to extend my stay at the inn for a day or two. I hope that won’t cause any problems.’
The landlady’s voice crackled down the line. ‘We’ve no other booking for that room at the moment, Mr Evans. Can we expect you back tonight?’
‘Yes.’ Harry was conscious that he was speaking on the sanatorium line, and anyone who picked up a receiver in the castle would be able to listen in. He was also very aware of Diana moving around upstairs and probably eavesdropping on every word he was saying. ‘I’m not sure of the time because I’m having supper with a friend.’
‘A friend, Mr Evans, in Swansea?’ she enquired artfully.
‘No, Mrs Edwards, in the valley. I may be late, but don’t worry, I have the key you gave me.’
‘The back door’s never locked.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Edwards. I have to go, my supper is ready. Goodbye.’
Not at all sure he’d done the right thing in accepting Diana’s invitation, he walked up the stairs. Water was still running in the bathroom. When he opened the door, clouds of steam wafted out to greet him. He closed it, noticed there was no lock and hoped Diana was right about them being alone in the house.
He unbuttoned his sodden shirt, and peeled it off, as well as his trousers and underclothes. He was turning off the tap and testing the water when the door opened behind him. He turned and froze.
‘You don’t mind if I share your bath with you, do you, Mr Evans?’
Diana Adams was standing naked in the doorway, one leg poised in front of the other, her head thrown back, her arms extended and her hands gripping the door frame. It was a classical pose that reminded him of the statues he had seen in Rome. But she was no marble or bronze Venus, or Aphrodite. Her flesh was ivory, blushed with the palest tints of rose. Even her nipples were a light shade of pink. Her breasts were surprisingly full given her slender waist and limbs, her thighs softly rounded, her hair glittering like spun gold under the electric light … and to his shame he couldn’t stop staring. He felt his cheeks burn as colour flooded into them. ‘Miss Adams …’ he stammered.
‘Diana.’
‘The huntress,’ he murmured unthinkingly.
‘And, like the huntress, I find the predatory approach saves time.’ She walked towards him; he stepped back. ‘I’m sorry. Have I misjudged you?’
He said the first thing that came into his head. ‘I have a bruise.’
She ran her fingers lightly over his abdomen. ‘So you do. I have some salve that I can rub on that -later.’
It had been a long time since Harry had thought of himself as an innocent when it came to women. Even before Oxford, where he had met educated, emancipated fellow female students, like Anna, fully conversant with all the modern birth control methods that enabled them to practise their philosophy of free love, there had been a girl with whom he had been besotted. Until he had discovered that she was bestowing her favours as freely on his fellow pupils as on himself.
But Diana Adams was more domineering, demanding and adventurous in her lovemaking than any women he had ever encountered. Before he had time to kiss her, she had taken the initiative, rousing him to a pitch where he felt that he was not so much making love to her on the bathroom floor as being consumed by her there.
Afterwards, at her suggestion, they bathed together, taking it in turns to wash and explore one another’s bodies, before going downstairs, he in her father’s bathrobe, and she in a flimsy silk gown.
The maid had lit a fire in the drawing room. They cobbled together a makeshift picnic in the kitchen and carried it in on trays before making love again at a slightly less frenetic pace on the hearthrug, in between drinking gin cocktails and eating smoked salmon sandwiches.
He was lying back, naked and exhausted, when she loomed over him and dangled a grape above his mouth.
‘Don’t tell me you’re too tired even to snap at it?’ She brushed it over his lips.
He opened one eye. ‘You’ve killed me.’
‘I hope you’re in heaven not hell.’
‘Definitely heaven.’ He smiled lazily, reached up and stroked the hair away from her forehead.
Evading his touch, she rolled over on to her stomach and propped herself up on her elbows. ‘That was fun, Harry.’
‘It was,’ he agreed sleepily.
She lifted her cocktail glass to him. ‘Here’s to the beginning of a lovely and loving friendship. Now,’ she slipped her robe back on and set a plate of grapes between them, ‘Tell me all about yourself, starting with the day you were born.’
‘I can’t remember it.’
‘Do you have brothers and sisters?’
‘Five sisters.’ He fell serious when he thought of Edyth, and imagined her lying still and unconscious in the Graig Infirmary while he and Diana had been making love. The image brought a sour taste to his mouth.
‘You don’t like them?’ she asked, misreading his expression.
‘I adore them, when they don’t gang up on me,’ he replied, taking refuge in flippancy. ‘They are all younger than me,’ he added, not wanting to talk to Diana about Edyth – yet. ‘I also have a brother, Glyn, who is only two.’
‘I would love to have brothers and sisters.’
‘You’re an only child?’
‘I wasn’t.’ Something in the tone of her voice warned him not to pry further. ‘Damn!’ She was on her feet before the telephone rang a second time. Tying the belt on her robe, she ran out of the drawing room to answer it.
Harry reached for the robe he’d borrowed. He was so tired he wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or relieved by the interruption. But he did know that he felt completely drained – by the acrid taste of guilt after the accident, by Mary and David Ellis’s attacks but most of all by the totally unexpected and pleasurable demands Diana Adams had made on his body.
He had the oddest sensation that he’d wandered into a surreal dream. Any moment he’d wake in his rooms in Oxford, the shrill ring of his alarm clock vying with the shouts and arguments of his fellow lodgers as they fought for the bathroom. His grandfather would be fine and he’d be looking forward to a short trip home, followed by a summer in Paris …
Diana returned, the thin robe tied tightly at her waist and a frown creasing her smooth forehead.
‘Problems?’ he asked, when she started piling their plates and uneaten food back on the trays.
She stared at him as though she had forgotten he was there. ‘I’m needed across the road, and before you ask, it’s not your grandfather. It’s one of the children.’
‘I’m sorry, is there anything that I can do?’
‘I only wish there was something I could do,’ she murmured soberly.
‘It’s time I was leaving anyway.’
She glanced at the carriage clock on the mantelpiece. ‘At a quarter past nine? You go to bed this early, you dull boy?’ She pushed her feet into her slippers and picked up a tray.
‘It’s been a long day and I have wet clothes that need seeing to. I don’t think my landlady would appreciate me dumping them on her at midnight.’ He carried the second tray into the kitchen for her.
‘Leave thos
e,’ she ordered, as he started piling dishes on to the board next to the sink. ‘The maid will see to them in the morning.’
He followed her up the stairs to the bathroom where they had left their clothes. She picked up his shirt and trousers from the floor and draped them over the bath. ‘You can’t possibly put these back on, they’re sodden. Borrow some of my father’s. I’ll explain that I brought you back here to see to your cuts and gave you a change of clothes rather than see you risk pneumonia.’
‘No, thank you,’ he said unequivocally. ‘It would lead to too many questions. Mrs Edwards is a kind woman, but if I turned up in your father’s clothes she may put two and two together and get the right answer. And that, Miss Adams, wouldn’t do your reputation any good at all.’
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she smiled. ‘But you have to promise me that you will have another hot bath as soon as you get back to the inn. We can’t risk you going down with anything that will prevent a repeat of what just happened, can we?’ She slipped her hand inside his robe and tickled him before retrieving her suspender belt from the chair and hooking it around her waist.
‘Yes, Doctor,’ he answered with mock humility.
‘Are you patronizing me?’ she asked, not entirely humorously.
‘You don’t like taking what you dish out?’ he teased. Removing the robe, he hung it on the hook on the back of the door and reached for his underclothes. He wrung them over the bath before he put them on, but he still cringed when they clung to him, cold and clammy. Trying to forget his discomfort, he took solace in watching Diana roll on her stockings.
‘My parents go to Swansea every Saturday night, but the hotels there hold supper dances on other evenings.’ She stepped into a waist slip and reached for her brassiere.
‘The slow waltz and the foxtrot?’ he asked absently, fighting with his wet shirt.
‘It may amaze you to know that the natives have been seen doing the Charleston in the Patti Pavilion. But they have a jazz band in residence there on Friday evenings.’
‘And you go there?’ He stepped into his trousers.
Finders and Keepers Page 13
