Free Return to Hendre Ddu by Sian James Page B

think of this little lot?’
    Josi had plenty to say. ‘I don’t know how she came by it and I don’t much care. But I know what you should do with it. You should make Davy Prosser your manager and build him a decent house with some modern facilities. Brithdir is all but falling down, but naturally the man just tries to patch it up instead of complaining about it. Speak to him about it this very afternoon.’
    ‘That’s a good suggestion. Just as long as no one else has any claim on it. Perhaps we should wait a few days in case something else turns up amongst her papers.’
    ‘No, I think I’ve been through pretty well everything now,’ Lowri said. ‘But anyway, you can surely have a house built on your own land for a fraction of that money.’
    ‘I think Tom’s loath to part with his little haul,’ she told her husband.
    ‘I wouldn’t be surprised. That’s the Morgan blood coming out in him. Did I ever tell you about old Thomas Morgan, the one he was named after? He was a noted money-lender and thief. What he used to do was offer to lend a little struggling smallholder fifty pounds or so when his harvest had failed on the understanding that he would pay it back in a year’s time. Of course the man would take it. What other option did he have? And that’s how he’d lose his little farm. How do I know? Because that’s what happened to my grandfather, old Amos Evans, that’s how he lost Cefn Hebog that had been in his family for three hundred years.’
    ‘How many times have you told me that story? What would it take to shut you up once and for all? I thought giving you back Cefn Hebog might do it, but no. You’re a pitiless, unforgiving wretch.’
    ‘Apologise to your son,’ Lowri said, ‘And make it up, I beg you.’
    ‘We’re friends really, don’t worry. I like to tease him a bit, that’s all. I don’t want him to forget that he’s got bad blood in him.’
    ‘I’ll put this money back in Miss Rees’ room then until you decide what to do with it,’ Lowri said. ‘We don’t want Tom to get too fond of it,’ she added.

    That night, Tom had another nightmare, but this time when his father had rushed to his bedroom he cried and talked for a short while. About treading on blackened corpses in the slime of the trenches. ‘So many dead,’ he moaned, ‘so many arms and legs, so many mutilated faces.’
    ‘You must work towards a lasting peace, my son,’ Josi murmured tenderly. ‘It’s being called the war to end all wars. You must see to it that it is. Make that your life’s work. What could be more worthwhile? You’ve got the energy and the means. You must work to stop the killing. Work for world peace.’ Josi went on repeating the same sentences until he hardly knew what he was saying, and Tom fell asleep again, still holding on to his hand. And Josi sat at his side until morning.

    On Monday morning Tom was surprised and disappointed that there was no letter from May. ‘Do you think her father has forbidden her to marry me?’
    ‘Of course not,’ Josi said. ‘Why should he? And you a soldier and, he probably thinks, a gentleman. And he must have heard something about you two. After all, she’s been writing to you for nearly three years and all that time you’ve been writing back to her. He can’t have been unaware of all those army letters reaching her from France. She’s probably got a lot of people to see and hasn’t had too much time for letter writing. You’ll hear from her by the end of the week I’m sure.’
    Josi was wrong. Tom heard nothing at all from his fiancée until the Monday of the following week and that letter brought heart-rending news. May was very sorry but felt she’d promised to marry him without sufficient consideration. Now that she’d given the matter further thought she’d decided that she didn’t know him well enough to commit to being his wife and would be pleased if he would be good enough to free her from her too-hasty engagement. She