Finders and Keepers Read Free

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.
    â€˜Mari’s outdone herself.’ Harry looked around for their housekeeper.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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’.
    â€˜What about Maggie and Beth?’ Harry asked when they reached the middle of the drawing room where the dancers had congregated.
    â€˜I told them Mari needed help in the kitchen.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜We did.’ Joey lit Harry’s cigarette.
    â€˜And thank you for the pen, Uncle Victor.’ He shook his father’s younger brother’s hand. ‘It was much appreciated.’
    â€˜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?’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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?’
    â€˜He complained he couldn’t breathe in here so he went outside.’ Lloyd handed him an ashtray.
    â€˜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’.
    â€˜You know Dad.’ Victor swallowed a mouthful of sausage roll. ‘He’s not one to complain. Even when he’s in pain.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜I’m looking for Harry. It’s a lady’s excuse me.’
    â€˜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