A Sixpenny Christmas (18 page)

‘What’s terrain?’ Ellen asked doubtfully. ‘Oh, Molly, I’ll do my best but I wish I knew a bit more. Rhys says you make your own butter; I ain’t never heard of anyone doing so, norreven during the war. And he says now the hens is layin’ so well I should preserve some o’ the eggs in stuff called isinglass. He tried to explain how to do it but when I’m scared me lug’oles don’t seem to listen what you might call proper.’

Molly began to laugh, then stopped, a hand flying to her side. ‘Don’t make me giggle; it hurts my burns,’ she said. ‘I suppose you might sell the eggs at market but it’s a fair old journey to the nearest town and I reckon it would cost more in petrol than you’d get for the eggs. Look, tell you what, next time you visit me bring a pencil and notebook. I’ll tell you exactly what to do with the eggs and sort out any other problems you’ve come across.’

Ellen had agreed to do this but asked hopefully when Molly thought she would be returning home. ‘As soon as I blinkin’ well can,’ Molly assured her friend. ‘I’m bored to tears lying here, I don’t think much of the food and I worry all the time about Nonny and Chris. Chris fancies himself as a climber – Rhys says he really is good – and wants to join the mountain rescue team as soon as he’s old enough, so of course Nonny, who follows him in everything, wants to too. She scrambles up corries and chimneys and rocks so sheer that you and I wouldn’t think there was foothold for a fly. She’s had some tumbles, of course, though nothing serious, but Chris is just
learning to abseil and Nonny wants to learn as well. The chap who’s teaching Chris has promised to take her in a couple of years, but he says that as yet her arms don’t have the strength to support her body and she’s simply got to be sensible and wait.’ Molly looked hopefully at her friend. ‘You won’t let her take any risks, will you, Ellen? Nonny’s a real tomboy, always up to mischief. There’s a little gang of them – all boys except for Nonny – who spend any spare time they have rock climbing. If you could just explain to her that whilst I’m away Lana is her guest and must be treated with consideration and not subjected to danger, I’m sure she’ll listen to you. She’s a good girl and always does as I tell her. I know she’ll do as you tell her too, but I can’t help worrying.’

Ellen, sitting by her friend’s bed, patted her hand and then gave a rueful laugh. ‘If you’re worried that my Lana will want to scramble up chimneys like the sweeps’ boys used to do in the olden days, that’s one worry you can cast out of your mind,’ she said. ‘Lana likes pretty clothes and havin’ the cleanest hands in the class and playing skip rope or relievio with her pals, to say nothing of trips to the cinema and the theatre. She and your Nonny are exactly the same age, but she’s already showin’ an interest in boys. In fact sometimes she acts like a little old lady and not like a kid at all. So don’t worry that she’ll take to the mountains. I can’t think of anything unlikelier.’

‘That’s good,’ Molly said absently, and Ellen thought that she had put her friend’s fears to rest. She said as much but noticed that there was still a tiny frown between Molly’s brows.

‘What’s up now, queen?’ she asked and Molly was opening her mouth to reply when Rhys and the children
re-entered the ward. They had been down to the harbour to look at the boats, and then along to the pier to see the huge jellyfish as they floated past, and all four of them were pink-cheeked and smiling. Whatever Molly’s worries might have been she did not mention them again, and Ellen was glad that she had not admitted to her friend how much the silence frightened her. The ward sister had said that as soon as Mrs Roberts’s burns healed she would be given a walking plaster and allowed home, so long as Ellen stayed to look after her, and by that time, Ellen was determined, she would be as used to conditions at Cefn Farm as Molly was herself.

When her visitors had departed Molly lay back against her pillows with a frustrated little sigh. She had meant to ask Ellen how the children were getting on with one another, because for the first time for many years she had remembered the possible relationship between Chris and Lana. Molly told herself she did not believe Flossy for one moment, but if the ward maid
was
right, and someone had swapped the two baby girls, then Lana and Chris might be brother and sister. So far as Molly was concerned that was fine. What would not be fine was if Chris and Lana began to grow fond of one another in a more romantic sense; Molly could remember that she herself had had her first boyfriend at the tender age of ten. Chris, however, had never shown much interest in any girl, and teased his sister and her friends to distraction sometimes. Molly permitted herself a small grin. Chris, she concluded, was more likely to make Lana an apple-pie bed and clip her ear if she acted daft than to give her a cuddle.

Reassured, she settled down to sleep.

Chapter Seven

IF THERE WAS
one thing that could be said in Sam’s favour, it would be that he was not work shy, so as soon as he got into open country he offered himself as labourer for any work that needed doing. Once or twice, as he journeyed on, he was forced to work for a couple of good meals a day and no pay, but that did not happen often. It was harvest time, when neighbours got together to bring the harvest home, and once he reached mountain country there was plenty of work for a man prepared to take on hard physical tasks such as mending fences, digging ditches and similar work.

To Sam’s pleasure, he only had to say that he was searching for an English woman with a little girl of ten or eleven and mention the name of the farm to be given the directions he needed. Thus it was only three weeks after leaving Liverpool that he finally found himself peering through a grove of trees at a low stone house surrounded by farm buildings, and the name
Cefn Farm
written in white paint on a large slab of slate even taller than Sam himself.

Sam tucked himself away in the copse, actually climbing into the branches of a good-sized oak whence he could spy on the inhabitants of Cefn Farm, because for all he knew there might be other farms of the same name or Ellen and the kid might have moved on. Sam had
purchased bread, cheese and pickles at the nearest village and now he settled himself comfortably on a broad branch from which he could see the farmyard clearly. Presently he was rewarded by the sight of a woman in a large canvas overall with a bucket swinging from her hand. His last glimpse of Ellen had been as she climbed back into the little car, but he recognised her instantly and felt the old familiar surge of rage and hate. She was doing all right for herself! She had obviously either moved in or married the chap who owned this place, yet she still had the cheek to demand money from Sam, a poor seaman, who at the moment was working as a labourer just to keep body and soul together. Of course the barrow boy had told him she was off to Wales to help a sick friend, but that was the sort of thing she would say. Saint Ellen, he told himself, his face screwed up into an expression of disbelief. That was a likely story! And try though he might he could not imagine how a Liverpool housewife could come to be friends with someone living so far from civilisation. He wondered, rather reluctantly, whether she might be working as some sort of maidservant, but doubted it after he had watched her for a couple of hours. She had the girl with her but he didn’t see much of the kid save when Ellen came out and banged a blackened ladle on a big old-fashioned saucepan. This, it seemed, was the call for dinner, for various people came across the yard, entered the building by the back door and shut it behind them.

Sam began to eat his bread and cheese, wishing he could have some of what the others were having, for though it was a hot day he could have done with something more solid inside him. He imagined he could smell a meat pie just out of the oven and his annoyance with Ellen grew.

Presently, he descended from his tree and made his way to a tumbledown cottage further up the mountain, almost overgrown with bracken; which he had noticed as he approached the farm. He was still not sure what form his revenge should take, but it was clear that it would probably involve the child. He had a pencil and notebook in his pocket, both filched from the small general shop where he had bought the bread and cheese. He meant to write a ransom note of sorts, warning Ellen of all the horrible things which would befall her daughter if she did not write a letter to the authorities saying that she had received the money they thought her husband owed, and now waived her claim to any more. He would need to see the letter, of course, but that was for later. First he must grab the child and scare Ellen witless.

It was a pity in a way that it was necessary to tell her who had kidnapped the girl. He would have preferred to exact his revenge, return the child and make off at once, but that would not stop the demands for money, and since these were the main reasons for the kidnap he would have to admit it was he who had done it. For a moment he feared that Ellen would refuse to write the letter, assuming he would not harm his own child, but then he chided himself for a fool. She knew very well that he had no affection for Lana, had not set eyes on her for half a dozen years and even before that had left her upbringing entirely in his wife’s hands. Knowing that he had taken Lana off into this wild country should surely be enough to bring Ellen to her knees. But first he must plan his campaign like a military manoeuvre, and to start with, once he was safely installed in the ruined cottage, he would no longer be Sam O’Mara. He would
think of himself as the Watcher, would
be
the Watcher. Sam grinned to himself. Ellen had thought she was rid of him; well, she would soon discover that that was far from the case.

All through that long hot afternoon, Sam – the Watcher – lay in the nest of bracken he had made for himself in the doorway of the ancient cottage, from where he could watch the comings and goings in the farmyard below. He snoozed and plotted and thought about his ransom note with increasing pleasure. How Ellen would weep and wail, how she would go down on her knees and beg him to return her daughter! Then he settled down to wait, for dusk comes late in August, and he told himself that he needed darkness for his plan to succeed.

‘Lana O’Mara, how can you possibly stand there and say you’re afraid of a sheep?’ Chris’s voice was scornful. ‘I could understand if you were a bit scared of the ram, because he’s a grand big fellow and if he once got you on his horns he could likely chuck you into the next valley, but that ewe was bottle-reared by us last year and wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

‘She butted me in the breadbasket,’ Lana said, her voice trembling a little. ‘She did, honest to God she did, Chris. She come up to me, trod on me nice new sandals and butted me.’

‘Oh, Lana, she didn’t mean any harm,’ Nonny said at once, leaping to the defence of the yearling. ‘She wants you to play or to give her a bit of something nice to eat, she’s not fussy which. But surely you’re used to the sheep by now? You actually said you liked the lambs yesterday . . .’

‘Lambs are all right, but they don’t trample on me feet,’ Lana pointed out. She turned hopeful eyes upon Chris. ‘My mum says when we go into the village for her messages, we can buy an ounce or two of aniseed balls or some treacle toffee, whichever we’d rather. Shall we go in today?’

The three children were in the stables, Chris and Nonny energetically grooming Cherry so that Chris might presently harness her to the pony cart, for Rhys had agreed, when asked, that they might drive to the village to fetch the groceries Ellen needed, thus saving them from hefting heavy shopping baskets the four miles back. At Lana’s words, Chris heaved a sigh, then nodded. ‘Might as well, since we’ve done all our jobs, haven’t we, Nonny? And I’m for treacle toffee ’cos you get more than a couple of ounces of that in one of Mrs Enfys’s little brown bags.’

He sent his sister running back to the farmhouse for the list of Ellen’s requirements whilst he backed the pony between the shafts and Lana watched.

‘Wish I could do that,’ she said as he worked, though without much conviction. She had tried to hide her fear of horses from the others but did not think she had succeeded very well. Nonny, mindful of her mother’s words, was kind and patient with their visitor, doing her very best to make Lana feel at home, but Chris could not conceal his impatience over Lana’s many fears. So it was no surprise to Lana now when he turned a scornful face towards her and answered sharply.

‘Wish you could do what? If you want to be a help take hold of Cherry’s bridle near the sort of ring thing which holds her bit, whilst I fasten the rest of her harness.
She’s a placid little thing, never dances about, so your toes should be safe.’

Lana admired Chris and was desperate for his approval, but even so she could not bring herself to actually touch the pony. Knowing nothing of bridles or bits or any other sort of harness she imagined that Cherry, a bay with a black mane and tail, might turn and snap off her fingers before she could get them out of the way. Nonny had told her always to offer food to any creature on the flat of the hand, ‘for they wouldn’t mean to hurt you but might mistake your fingers for a carrot,’ she had explained. Far from reassuring Lana, however, the remark had merely given her something else to worry about. If an animal was so stupid that it could confuse a finger with a carrot then it might easily take a bite out of her cheek, assuming it to be a rosy apple. So poor Lana, even after three weeks of close association with the animals at Cefn Farm, still preferred to remain within doors. The old sheepdog, Feather, who was allowed to come into the kitchen from time to time, mostly ignored Lana, though she did consent to let the visitor stroke her pointed black ears; and when, highly daring, Lana had offered her a piece of bacon rind she had accepted it with such careful gentleness that Lana had actually told her mother that one of these days it would be nice if the O’Maras could have a dog.

But right now Chris was giving an exasperated sigh and Lana decided that the time had come to make a clean breast of her fear. She could not have borne to do so in front of Nonny, because they were the same age and should, in theory, be as brave as one another, but she hoped that with Nonny out of the way she could explain to Chris, even ask him to help her to conquer her timidity.
She glanced across the yard to make certain that Nonny was not approaching once more and then sidled closer and put a tentative hand on Cherry’s burnished neck. She waited until Chris turned to give her an enquiring look, then spoke out.