An experienced pharmacist, she automatically glanced at the labels and a moment later was tottering after her brother-in-law, screaming at the top of her voice.
‘Samuel, you bastard! What have you done, damn you?’
ONE
Breconshire, September 1955
The burly youth pedalled his way along the lane, its high hedges still green, with just a few signs of approaching autumn. The Raleigh was old and clumsy and he made heavy weather of the slope up towards the barn. The bike was his father’s cast-off and, though Shane had tried to modernize it with a pair of drop handlebars, it still remained an old bone-shaker. If his employers weren’t so tight-fisted, he grumbled to himself, he could have got in a bit of overtime to afford the down payment on a new machine.
It was just seven o’clock when he dismounted at the gate and leaned his cycle against a post. Hauling a pair of keys from the pocket of his stained dungarees, he undid the padlock and pushed the metal gate wide open with a squeal of protest from the rusty hinges. He was always first here in the mornings, as Jeff and Aubrey were milking down at the main buildings, almost a quarter of a mile away. That lazy bugger Tom Littleman never got here before eight – or even later if he’d been hitting the beer the previous night.
Shane wheeled his bike into the large yard, the ground sticky with yesterday’s rain mixed with years of old oil from the vehicles scattered around like an elephant’s graveyard. Land Rovers, tractors, a couple of small trucks, muck spreaders, reapers and even an ancient threshing machine littered the area, laced with old tyres and unidentifiable pieces of rusty metal. Some of the debris had been there so long that grass, nettles and even briars were growing through it.