Chapter Four

Mary turned her back to Bob Pritchard and her face to the wall when he had finished using her. The straw mattress crackled as he shifted his weight and left the bed. She heard the whisper of wool and linen when he buttoned his trousers and straightened his clothes.

‘If you want to carry on living here, you should try harder to please me, Mary.’ He grabbed her chin in his hand and wrenched her head until she faced him. ‘Look at me when I speak to you!’

She opened her eyes but focused inwards, anywhere but on him.

‘And you’d better have more livestock ready for market next quarter than you had this one. I’ll call in the next time I’m round this way to see how you’re getting on.’ He released her and she turned back to the wall. The door creaked when he opened it. ‘Did you hear me?’

‘Yes, Mr Pritchard.’

‘Sir, always, sir, girl,’ he reprimanded sharply.

‘Sorry, sir.’ Her tears soaked into the pillow she’d stuffed with goose-down.

‘And a word of advice – keep that brother of yours in check, or I’ll be forced to take action.’

‘Yes, sir.’

His footsteps echoed down the wooden staircase, the back door slammed, but she didn’t leave the bed until she heard the wheels of the trap rattle over the cobbles in the yard. Swinging her legs to the floor, she left the bed, wrapped herself in the bottom sheet and crossed the landing into the narrow room built into the archway that spanned the two halves of the farmhouse. Taking care that she couldn’t be seen from outside, she moved to the side of the window and watched the agent drive up the road that led to Brecon.

She felt dirtier than when she spent a day scrubbing out the pigsties and cowsheds. Cleaning up after animals was filthy but honest work. The things Bob Pritchard did to her were foul and degrading, and if it weren’t for her brothers and sister she would have killed herself the first time he’d violated her.

But before her mother had died, she had made Mary promise that she would care for her brothers and Martha until they were old enough to care for themselves. Her mother hadn’t needed to elaborate. Martha was young, but not too young to attract the attention of the agent.

She ran down the stairs to the stone scullery behind the kitchen that housed the well. Turning the wheel, she drew up a bucket of freezing cold water. Throwing the scrubbing brush and a sliver of a green carbolic soap into the enormous stone sink that almost filled the room, she rubbed the soap on to the brush and began to scrub every inch of her skin. Her face, her neck, her breasts still sticky with his spittle – between her thighs, her chest, her arms and legs, and she didn’t stop, not even when the scratches she’d raised began to bleed.

‘I think I’ve shown you everything you need to see, Mr Evans.’

‘I am grateful for the tour, Miss Adams.’ Harry followed Diana Adams along the corridor to a dark-wood staircase.

‘The rooms on the floor below were the principal bedrooms when the castle was a private residence. We have turned them into small wards. Some have four beds, some six. But there are no patients in them at present. They are all outside, either on the terrace or the balconies.’

‘Yet Mr Ross was still in his room?’ When Miss Adams didn’t comment, Harry realized the man was too ill to be moved.

Miss Adams led him down to the ground floor. She showed him the modern X-ray equipment and pointed to a closed door labelled ‘Silence – Operating Theatre’.

‘Although it’s not in use today it’s kept sterile, so I can’t take you in there.’

‘Doctor Williams warned us that it wouldn’t be possible to operate on my grandfather.’

‘Not if his lungs are also affected by pneumoconiosis.’

‘So, all you can really offer my grandfather is fresh air?’ Harry only realized how that sounded after he’d spoken. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean that as a criticism. He will be getting precious little of that in the isolation ward of the infirmary he is in at present.’

‘Fresh air, the benefit of our medical expertise and the twenty-four-hour care and attention of qualified and trained nurses and doctors in antiseptically clean surroundings designed to prevent the contraction and spread of secondary infections,’ she recited as though she were reading from a brochure. ‘You know there are no drugs that can cure his condition?’

‘Yes.’ Harry knew it, but he wished that Miss Adams and her father wouldn’t emphasize the fact.

‘But there are medicines that will help control his pain and make him comfortable. My father is also a great believer in a healthy, nourishing diet rich in fish oils.’ She looked at him, and he noticed that her eyes were darker than his, almost navy blue, but there wasn’t any warmth in their depths. ‘I would rather that you had not witnessed my argument with Mr Ross, Mr Evans. It may have given you the impression that our rules are unduly harsh. But they are designed not only for the benefit of our patients but also to stop the spread of the disease within our staff and any visitors.’

‘I realize that, Miss Adams.’ Harry hadn’t been quite so irritated by anyone since his schooldays when he’d been subjected to the teachings of masters prone to over-explanation.

‘There is one more thing you should see before you come to any firm decision about your grandfather’s treatment.’

They left the main building and walked down outside corridors which were obviously recent additions.

They stepped on to a covered, paved yard, surrounded on three sides by what seemed to be workshops of some sort. Harry assumed they had been the stables, outside dairies, stillrooms and storerooms when Craig-y-Nos had been a private residence.

‘This roof was erected by Madame Patti so she could leave and enter her carriage without getting wet. She couldn’t afford to catch cold, when her voice was her fortune.’

A middle-aged hunchback with yellow skin opened the door to one of the workshops. ‘You need a box, Miss Adams?’

‘No, thank you, Fred, not now. I’m showing Mr Evans around the sanatorium.’

Fred touched his cap and retreated, but not before Harry saw that the floor of the workshop behind him was covered in wood shavings and sawdust. A half-finished coffin, resting on trestles, stood in the centre of the room.

‘You make your own coffins?’

‘Yes.’

Harry took a deep breath. He dreaded the answer but he had to ask the question. ‘Do you have many deaths here?’

‘Yes, Mr Evans.’

‘How many people do you cure?’

‘“Cure” is not a word my father chooses to use. Tuberculosis weakens the system. What may appear to be a full recovery is frequently reversed when a patient returns to poor living conditions, or a less than healthy way of life. Insufficient rest, drink, poor diet, a strenuous job – one or all of those things can precipitate a relapse.’

‘And if the patient returns to an ideal home life, with a good diet and plenty of rest?’

Seeing that he wasn’t prepared to be fobbed off, she said, ‘Twenty per cent of the patients who have entered Craig-y-Nos since my father took his post have been certified sufficiently free from infection to be returned to their homes.’

‘Two out of ten,’ he murmured. That moment he realized he had yet to accept his grandfather was going to die. He was still hoping against hope for a miracle that would save his life.

‘I have to visit the children’s ward. If you have decided to bring your grandfather here, you will find the clerk in the office. It is the third door on the right down that corridor.’ She pointed to her left.

‘May I see the children’s ward?’

‘Why?’

Miss Adams’s curt, professional manner had made Harry curious to see how she behaved around children, but he could hardly admit that was his reason. ‘I’d like to see the facilities you offer children,’ he answered lamely.

‘They are exactly the same as the ones we offer adults, but if you want to inspect them, keep your mask over your face. Children are just as contagious.’

They entered a ballroom-sized, light and airy conservatory that overlooked the gardens at the back of the house. Not all of the beds had been pushed outside, and Harry blanched when he saw children the same age as his brother, Glyn, and some even younger lying pale, wan and skeletally thin in cots, their faces as white as the sheets drawn to their chins.

‘Miss Diana?’ a girl called out when they approached her bed. She smiled when Miss Adams turned to her.

‘I’ll be in to see you – all of you – at teatime. And, I happen to know there’s a surprise.’

‘Oranges!’ one young boy cried hopefully.

‘Not oranges, Aled, but something just as nice.’ She walked between the rows of cots and beds, and Harry noted that she knew every patient by name and had something personal to say to each of them. All the patients were lying flat on their backs, some in contraptions that resembled straitjackets, and he couldn’t help feeling that they must be bored witless with nothing to do other than stare up at the skylights.

He wanted to help, to say something comforting to the children who gazed at him with searching, trusting eyes, but to his embarrassment he couldn’t think of a single thing. So intensely grateful for his good health that he was almost ashamed of it, he left the conservatory, turned his back on the rows of beds on the terrace, pulled his mask from his face and walked away from the sanatorium.

Inhaling the ‘fresh air’ that was all Craig-y-Nos really had to offer its patients, despite what Diana Adams had said, he strode down the paths and stone steps that linked the flowerbeds and shrubberies, and headed for the river. He crossed a narrow footbridge and looked back at the castle. Its massive grey bulk towered above the trees, seemingly even larger and more imposing from the back. Perched high on the hill overlooking the valley, it dominated the beautiful and lonely countryside.

It was ideally placed for quarantining people with a virulently infectious disease that proved fatal in eight out of ten cases.

Mary returned to her bedroom as soon as she had dried and dressed herself. She stripped the linen from her bed and bundled it downstairs. Dragging the iron bucket to the well, she filled it with water and set it on the range to boil. Hoping that David wouldn’t forget to buy soap, she grated the last of what she had into the wooden laundry tub. When the water started bubbling, she poured it in, whipped the suds into lather, threw in the sheets, bolster and pillowcases, and pounded all trace of the smell and sweat of the hated agent from them with the dolly until her arms ached and she no longer had the strength to lift or twist the wooden pole.

Only then did she tip the tub into the stone sink and rinse the bedding in fresh water. After wringing out as much water as she could with her bare hands, she tossed the linen back into the tub and carried it out to the washing line behind the yard. Pegging the sheets, pillowcases and bolster securely with dolly pegs, she hauled the line high and knotted it securely around the nails her father had hammered into the pole.

Exhausted, consumed by loathing for the agent and herself for allowing him to use her, she sank down on the grass. The day was balmy, the sun warm on her bare head and arms. She looked down the hill to the reservoir on the valley floor. Built the year she had been born, it glittered blue and beautiful with the reflected light of the sky and the flickering images of the bare hills that encircled it.

Her father had told her that he hadn’t wanted Swansea Council to flood the valley but the agent before Bob Pritchard had told him their landlord had no choice but to sell the council the best grazing land on the Ellis Estate. If he refused, he would have been taken to court, fined more money than most people saw in a lifetime and still lose the land because it was needed to generate electricity for the town of Swansea. Although what a reservoir of water had to do with electricity had been a mystery to her father and remained one to the entire family.

But when all the local objections had been ignored, and the inevitable had happened, her mother said it had been a blessing in disguise because the only thing that could possibly have made the view from the back of their house more beautiful was water. And although Swansea might think it owned Crai Reservoir, it didn’t, because the only people who saw it every day were the Ellises. Her mother had come to regard the reservoir as the Ellises’ private lake, and so did Mary.

No matter what she did around the farm she was aware of its presence. As the seasons changed so did the reservoir. Its surface, cold, dark and brooding under winter skies, was transformed by the sun. Sparkling and fairy-like in spring and summer, it became wild, windswept and rough when autumn winds blew down the valley from the hills.

Sometimes, she dreamed that she was walking towards it for the very last time, because once she reached its edge, she would carry on walking until the waters closed over her head. And then she’d feel nothing … be nothing …

A breeze ruffled her washing and a wet sheet slapped her face. Jolted back to the present, she thought of her brothers, shopping in Pontardawe, and Martha working in Craig-y-Nos. For their sake she had no choice but to carry on.

She returned to the yard and picked up a wheelbarrow and spade from the barn. An hour later she had dug up enough carrots, potatoes, onions and parsnips to make a vegetable stew for their supper, and cut leeks and beans to flavour it. The raspberry canes, which had never done well, yielded enough fruit for a small summer pudding. She stacked the vegetables carefully, balanced the spade on top and wheeled the barrow back into the yard.

A flurry of wings and high-pitched cackling alerted her to a fracas amongst the chickens. One of the Leghorns was attacking a smaller Friesian bird, pecking it savagely and aiming for its eyes. The Friesian was valiantly trying to retaliate, in between dodging its attacker’s beak, but it was no match for Leghorn, and blood seeped down its feathers from the wounds on its head.

Mary dropped the handles on the barrow. She saw the vegetables and fruit rolling over the dirty cobbles, but the sight that would have normally appalled her barely registered. She dived on both birds and caught the Leghorn at her second attempt.

Everything went blank until she was conscious of a pain in her leg and she realized she was on the ground. The handle of the barrow was digging into her thigh. Birds were flocking around her, and to her dismay she saw they were pecking at the fruit and vegetables that had taken her over an hour to harvest.

Her hands were warm and sticky. She looked down and saw that she was holding the severed head of the Leghorn in one hand and its body in the other. Blood flowed sluggishly from its neck, soaking her fingers and her skirt. She had wrung its neck and from the mangled state of the head, used more force than necessary.

It had been one of the finest white Leghorns they had bred. Martha had named it Bounty because it had been their best layer. She stared at its dull, lifeless eyes, fingered its clawed feet and began to cry – harsh, rasping sobs that startled the birds and set the dogs barking.

She had no memory of killing the bird. Was she going mad? What if she had attacked a person – Bob Pritchard, for instance? If she hurt him, he would take revenge on her family. Then she recalled his strength. She couldn’t hurt him, but she was strong enough to hurt Luke, Matthew and Martha. And even David was a sound sleeper. What if she attacked him one night the way she had the chicken?

She sank her head on to the limp, feathered body and continued to weep. She had never felt so utterly alone. She had her sister and brothers, but she couldn’t burden their childhoods by telling them what the agent was doing to her. Much as she loved them, there were times, like now, when she felt the responsibility of caring for them crushing down on her like an enormous weight that prevented her from breathing.

She had no idea how long she sat there cradling the bloody body of the hen amongst the wreckage. She only knew that she had to carry on as best she could. Chickens were too precious to be eaten by her or her family. Even the eggs were hoarded to be sold, and in winter they went without rather than send short measure to the sanatorium or the shop. Whenever she killed a chicken, duck, or goose, it was for market.

But would it be so awful for them to eat one of their own birds? Just this once. She looked down at the corpse and spoiled fruit and vegetables. She couldn’t let food go to waste. But neither could she do anything else until she’d set her skirt to soak. Blood stained worse than anything else. She’d change, salvage what she could, pluck the chicken and put it in the stew – or, better still, roast it in the oven. She’d tell David that it had been wounded in a fight with another bird, which wasn’t so very far from the truth.

She struggled to her feet. She couldn’t wash her clothes until David returned with soap, but she could soak them in cold water and salt to bleach the stain. And after she’d changed, she’d prepare the meal. By then it would be time to drive the cows from the fields into the shed for milking. She hoped David would be back to help her. She was tired and what remained of the day stretched ahead, with more work to be done than there was time left to do it in. And all she really wanted to do was curl up in bed, close her eyes and sink into oblivion.

Life would be more bearable if she could see a time, no matter how far into the future, when things would be better. When her family would be able to hold their heads high again because they didn’t owe anyone a penny and there’d be no agent to take everything they owned away from them – including her self-respect.

*……*……*

Harry wandered aimlessly around the gardens for over an hour before making his way back to the house. Taking a wrong turn, he was soon hopelessly lost in a maze of modern annexes and old servants’ quarters. After ten minutes spent trying to orientate himself, he was relieved to see Diana Adams through the window of a very different ward to the ones they had visited.

It was filled with young women who were all sitting up in beds or on chairs, with cushions plumped behind their backs. Mask pulled down, Diana Adams smiled as she chatted and admired the embroidery and knitting they held up for her inspection. She glanced up and saw him through the window. Leaving the ward, she joined him.

‘You are lost, Mr Evans?’

He knew from the tone of her voice that she was annoyed he’d seen her. ‘I am.’

‘I’ll take you back to the main entrance.’ She went ahead of him.

‘Do those patients have tuberculosis?’

‘They did.’

‘They’ve recovered?’

‘The patients on that ward are undergoing weekly tests. When we are absolutely certain that they are no longer contagious, and consider them strong enough, we discharge them to their homes.’

‘Then they are cured?’

‘I told you my father is reluctant to use that word, Mr Evans. But yes, some of them will make up the twenty per cent of patients who walk out of Craig-y-Nos.’

‘How long have they been here?’

‘Some have been here since my father took over the management of the sanatorium five years ago, in nineteen twenty-one. Two of the girls have been with us for less than a year, but that is an unusually short stay.’

‘A year,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘You must get to know your patients really well.’

‘My father discourages close relationships between staff and patients, Mr Evans.’

It was then Harry realized what should have been obvious from the outset. Diana Adams’s offhand manner was a defence mechanism. No one could afford to get emotionally involved with so many terminally ill patients. It would be soul-destroying. But she could let her guard down with those in the recovery ward, because, thanks to her father’s treatments and the care they had received in Craig-y-Nos, they still had their lives ahead of them.

‘Miss Adams,’ he walked out into the covered yard alongside her, ‘would you be kind enough to take me to your father’s clerk so I can make arrangements to have my grandfather admitted here tomorrow?’

‘Yes, Mr Evans.’ For the first time since she had opened the front door to him he saw a hint of sympathy and commiseration in her dark blue eyes.

‘I would be grateful if you could recommend a place where I could rent a room tonight.’

‘The inn at Abercrave has rooms.’

‘The one four miles down the road?’

‘It’s the only other building in the valley with a telephone, Mr Evans. And there are occasions when we need to get in touch with relatives of our patients urgently. Good day.’

‘I won’t forget, Dad. You’ll be arriving at Penwyllt station at eleven o’clock … Doctor Williams has asked Doctor Adams to send an ambulance …’I’ll be there as well. I’m sorry there’s no change in Edyth. How is Mam coping?’

The crackling on the telephone line drowned out the end of Lloyd’s answer. Harry raised his voice in the hope that his stepfather could still hear him.

‘… Yes, the countryside around the sanatorium is beautiful, Dad. As to whether Granddad will be happy there I doubt it, because he’ll be so far away from the family … I can’t hear you, but I hope you can still hear me. Love to everyone.’ The line went dead before Harry finished shouting the last sentence. Exasperated, he replaced the telephone and receiver on the rickety card table.

‘Did you get through all right, Mr Evans?’ Mrs Edwards asked when he left the tiny room, no bigger than a broom cupboard, which she had grandly referred to as ‘the office’. There wasn’t even a chair. All it contained besides the table and telephone was a rough set of shelves that housed haphazard bundles of invoices and bills held together by elastic bands.

‘Yes, I did, thank you, Mrs Edwards. Although I was cut off before I finished.’

‘When I booked the call with the exchange, I asked them to give you the full two and a half minutes.’

‘I would have liked five.’

‘The exchange gives priority to Craig-y-Nos. They don’t like us tying up the line for any longer in case they have an emergency and need to contact relatives.’ She lifted the account book she kept beneath the bar on to the counter. ‘I’ll put the call on your bill, Mr Evans?’

‘I’ll pay you now, Mrs Edwards.’ Harry thrust his hand into his pocket and pulled out a fistful of change.

‘When you leave will be fine. I’ll add your bar bill to your board and lodge as well, if you like.’

‘That’s good of you, Mrs Edwards. I’ll have a pint of beer now, please.’ After three years in Oxford when he’d had to pay for a full term’s accommodation in advance, Harry found this attitude to money refreshingly trusting. Mrs Edwards had refused the five shillings he’d offered her for a night’s food and accommodation when he’d arrived, on the grounds that she liked her customers ‘to be satisfied’, adding that if he thought a meal ‘wasn’t right’ she wouldn’t charge him for it. And he’d practically had to press the cost of the tyre repair on Alf, who’d insisted he could pay him ‘anytime’ once he’d discovered that he’d booked into the inn.

‘Does the room Enfys showed you suit?’ She pulled a dark-amber pint of ale with a creamy head, and pushed it over the counter towards him.

‘Enfys?’ Harry asked blankly.

‘The maid.’

He recalled the red-faced, red-haired serving maid, who’d puffed and panted up the stairs ahead of him, and thrown a bedroom door open before walking on silently down the passage.

‘It’s fine, thank you, Mrs Edwards.’ The room was perfectly adequate but it wouldn’t have met with Diana Adams’s approval. There were far too many things in it that could harbour germs. The floorboards were covered with rag rugs, the bed was made with a quilt as well as Welsh flannel blankets and feather-filled pillows and bolster. And there was an upholstered easy chair and a writing table in addition to the pine bedroom suite. The furniture was solid and built for durability rather than beauty. Recalling Alf saying that the pieces he made ‘seemed to suit the farmers round here’, Harry wondered if they were examples of his handiwork. To his amazement the room also had electric light.

‘Enfys will serve you supper in the dining parlour,’ Mrs Edwards indicated a door in the corridor behind the bar. ‘It’s steak and kidney pudding, boiled potatoes, peas and carrots tonight, with rhubarb and custard for afters. If you want more beer, there’s no need to disturb yourself. Just bang the table or call out and Enfys will get it for you.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Edwards.’

‘I’ve only one other young man lodging here at present. He’ll share the dining parlour with you.’

‘And here he is, Mrs Edwards.’ A slim man, as dark as Harry was fair, walked down the narrow passageway towards them. ‘Good evening.’ Juggling the knapsack, easel and folder he was carrying, he freed one hand so he could lift his hat to Mrs Edwards.

‘Been off painting again, Mr Ross?’

‘You know me so well, Mrs Edwards. A pint of your best, please. Painting’s thirsty work.’ He set down the easel and folder, turned to Harry and held out his hand. ‘Toby Ross.’

Harry shook it firmly. ‘Harry Evans.’

‘I hope the dressing-down Miss Adams gave me earlier hasn’t coloured your opinion of me.’ He picked up the pint of beer Mrs Edwards had pulled for him and downed half of it in one thirsty swallow.

‘Toby Ross – that was you behind the mask at the sanatorium?’

‘It was. Please, call me Toby. I’ll dump these things in my room, wash my hands and I’ll be with you.’ To Harry’s astonishment he finished his pint in a second gulp. ‘I’ll have another with a whisky chaser when I come down, please, Mrs Edwards.’

‘He’s an artist,’ Mrs Edwards confided superfluously after Toby ran up the stairs. ‘So’s his uncle. He’s famous and paints pictures that get put in books. But by all accounts he’s in a bad way. That’s why Mr Ross spends all his time painting, trying to do as much of his work for him as he can.’

‘Frank Ross!’ Harry exclaimed.

‘I think that’s his name,’ Mrs Edwards poured a measure of whisky into a glass.

‘To think that I met Frank Ross today, and didn’t know who he was. He’s been my idol for years. You should have seen his exhibition in London two years ago. The way he blended the colours -’

‘You met Mr Ross’s uncle in the sanatorium! You were in the same room as him?’ Mrs Edwards exclaimed in horror.

‘All visitors are gowned and masked,’ Harry assured her.

‘Well,’ Mrs Edwards set about refilling Toby’s pint mug, ‘those precautions Mr Ross is always telling me about had better work, that’s all I can say. It’s a mystery to me why they had to go and put a lot of infectious people in Madame Patti’s castle in the first place. Poor woman would turn in her grave if she could see what they’ve done to her home. It was lovely in her day, and I should know. The late Mr Edwards and me were up there often enough, serving stout and ale at the parties she gave the locals. If we get any more cases of TB in the valley than we had in her time, we’ll know exactly where to lay the blame.’

‘The doctor in charge and his staff take every precaution not to spread the disease outside of the castle, Mrs Edwards.’

She sniffed loudly. ‘Is the gentlemen’s supper ready?’ she asked Enfys, who had emerged from the kitchen quarters at the back of the inn with a tray of crockery and cutlery.

Enfys nodded and disappeared into the dining parlour. Harry wondered if she were a mute or simply chose not to speak.

‘Thank you again for arranging the telephone call, Mrs Edwards.’ He picked up his beer and followed Enfys into the parlour, which was furnished with an enormous oak dresser, long table and ten chairs. The walls were papered in a red stripe that wavered over every uneven bump and lump in the plaster.

Toby Ross joined him a few minutes later, carrying his beer and whisky. He took the chair at the head of the table. ‘Cheers.’ he lifted his mug and sipped it.

‘Cheers.’ Harry lifted his own glass.

‘So, what were you doing at the sanatorium in the company of the Snow Queen?’

Harry laughed. ‘Who christened Miss Adams that?’

‘My uncle. He finds it preferable to believe she’s incapable of loving any man because her heart has been penetrated by an icicle than to accept her rejection of his advances.’

‘Even after hearing Miss Adams call you both Mr Ross and seeing your uncle sketching, I didn’t realize your uncle was the Frank Ross. Mrs Edwards just told me.’

‘The one and only.’ Toby sat back so Enfys could set a plate of steaming steak and kidney pudding and vegetables smothered in gravy in front of him. ‘At the risk of being thought rude and repeating myself, why were you at Craig-y-Nos?’

‘My grandfather will be a patient there from tomorrow.’

‘Tuberculosis?’ Toby sprinkled his plate with salt.

‘And pneumoconiosis.’

‘Then there’s no hope.’

‘None.’ Harry almost choked on the word.

‘There isn’t for my uncle. Not that I think of Frank as my uncle. He is, but he’s only eight years older than me, so we’ve been more like brothers than uncle and nephew. Especially since he became my guardian after my parents drowned when the Lusitania went down eleven years ago.’ Toby picked up his knife and fork and cut into the suet pastry.

‘Eight years,’ Harry repeated in surprise. ‘But you can’t be much more than twenty-one.’

‘Twenty-five. Frank is thirty-three but these days he looks more like sixty. I take it from what you’ve said that you’re familiar with his work?’

‘I love it,’ Harry enthused. ‘I read English literature at Oxford but I’ve always wanted to study art. His illustrations for Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and The Shakespeare Folios were magnificent. I spent hours studying them when I should have been reading the text. But that’s not to say his other illustrations aren’t as good. It’s just that those are my favourites.’

‘He’s been commissioned to illustrate Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. The publisher almost had a fit when Frank was diagnosed. He wanted to commission another artist, but after some argument he agreed that as long as Frank planned out and oversaw the designs, I could do the actual sketching and painting. That’s not to say I have any illusions about my talent. I’m the apprentice to Frank’s master. As you saw today, the creation and the ideas are all his. All I do is flesh out his drafts into a poor approximation of what he would do if he were well enough.’

‘You’ve studied art?’

‘Three years at the Slade.’

‘I would give my eye teeth and every other tooth in my head to do that,’ Harry said enviously.

‘The Slade’s cheaper than Oxford. So why didn’t you?’ Toby questioned bluntly.

‘It’s a long story.’ Loath to go into details about his inheritance, he added, ‘Basically I went to Oxford to please other people.’

‘Frank says life’s too short to please anyone other than yourself,’ Toby held his fork poised in front of his mouth. ‘And given where he is now, he’s been proved right.’

‘It must be wonderful to spend all your time working on something you’re passionate about.’

‘It is,’ Toby agreed. ‘But although I make a somewhat precarious living as an artist I don’t consider myself one. Every time I look at one of Frank’s paintings or sketches I feel a fraud.’ He washed down a piece of pudding with a mouthful of beer. ‘But I have been given a few jobs on my own merit, and I like to think they didn’t know who my uncle was at the time. Nothing important, just illustrations for children’s story books and pantomime posters. Frank couldn’t have been prouder of me. But I wish I’d never taken them. They kept me in London while he went off to Paris to hold an exhibition. By the time I joined him two months later he was already coughing up blood.’

‘You couldn’t have stopped him from contracting the disease.’

‘No,’ Toby agreed grimly. ‘But if I had been around I would have seen and recognized the early symptoms and stopped him from working all day and drinking all night, which is what he always does whenever he lives in Paris. Then, perhaps, the disease wouldn’t have taken such a swift hold. Doctor Adams told me there was no hope for Frank the first time he examined him.’

‘That must have been tough.’ Harry finished his beer and looked around for Enfys.

‘Bang your mug on the table and the silent one will appear.’ Toby helped himself to an extra spoonful of mint sauce.

‘Does she ever speak?’ Harry lifted his mug and tapped it on the table.

‘Not that I’ve heard. So you’re staying here in the valley?’ Toby finished the beer in his glass and handed it to Enfys when she appeared to pick up Harry’s.

‘Tonight. After that I’m not sure. My sister’s ill in Pontypridd and, like the rest of my family, I’m torn between wanting to stay with her and my grandfather.’

‘Doctor Adams won’t allow you to visit your grandfather often,’ Toby warned.

‘But I hope to be on hand when he will.’

‘What do you want to paint?’

‘I’m not sure. And I’m not in your or your uncle’s class. I’m only an amateur, and a bad one at that,’ Harry qualified hastily, embarrassed at confiding his ambitions to a professional. ‘I had planned to go to Paris in the hope of finding out if I have any talent worth developing, but that was before my grandfather was diagnosed.’

‘You must have had some idea of what you wanted to study there?’ Toby insisted.

‘I would have liked to experiment with different techniques. I’ve finished a few watercolours, mainly land and seascapes, and I’ve sketched portraits of my sisters.’ He gave a deprecating smile. ‘You know how it is. My family think I’m brilliant. I know I’m not much of an artist, not yet anyway, and perhaps never will be, but I want to try.’

‘I don’t know how it is with a family, because since my parents drowned, the only family I’ve had is Frank and he’s a brutal critic. But compared to him I’ll always be third rate.’

‘So would Beardsley,’ Harry added drily.

‘You’re welcome to whatever little I can teach you when you’re here. It will be good to have company.’

Much as Harry wanted to accept Toby’s offer, he was reluctant to impose on him. ‘I told you I’m an amateur. I’ll probably bore you to death.’

‘I doubt it. Have you looked at what’s around here? If it weren’t for Malory, God bless him, and trying to do justice to Frank’s ideas on illustrating Le Morte d’Arthur, I’d be spending all my days in the bar just so I could talk to another human being as opposed to sheep. And, as you see – thank you,’ he lifted one of the beer mugs Enfys set on the table ‘I drink more than is good for me already. Do you have materials?’

‘Not with me.’

‘Next time you come, bring some. If the weather is good, you can come out with me. I’m painting one of the lanes that leads out of Craig-y-Nos. It’s not the road to Camelot, but by the time I’ve finished, it will be. How do you think Mrs Edwards would look as the elderly Morgan le Fay?’

‘She’s far too jolly and nice.’

‘I was afraid you’d say that. Besides, I really want to paint her when she’s young, before she seduces Arthur. How about the Snow Queen as Guinevere?’

It was the oddest conversation Harry had ever had with someone he’d just met. ‘She has the right colouring and she’s pretty enough.’

‘Pretty and regal, but my uncle is right – her heart has been penetrated by an icicle, and it shows. Which is fine except when she’s with Lancelot. Do you think, if I ask her nicely, she’ll fall in love for me so I can capture the right expression for their first meeting? Frank insists that painting should be the highlight of the book.’ It was an idiotic question but Toby appeared to be perfectly serious.

‘Who do you think she should fall in love with?’ Harry forked the last morsel of pudding to his mouth.

‘You, there’s no one else the right age and class around.’

‘There’s you.’ Harry pulled his beer towards him.

‘I tried, got absolutely nowhere, and have the ice burns to prove it. In her eyes I am the proverbial dust beneath her feet.’ Toby handed Enfys his plate when she came to clear them. ‘How are you at seducing women?’

‘Useless,’ Harry lied.

‘This would be in the cause of art.’

‘Still useless, even in the cause of art.’

‘Then I’ll just have to keep looking.’

‘For another Guinevere or a man to seduce the Snow Queen?’ Harry enquired in amusement.

‘Both, if necessary.’ Toby stared down unenthusiastically at the bowl of rhubarb and custard Enfys had set in front of him. ‘Want to come up to my room and see what I’ve done? Some of the canvases have already gone up to London, but I’ve kept sketches.’

‘Please.’ Harry stood, and Toby followed suit.

‘We’ll pick up another couple of beers and whiskies on the way.’