Pontypridd 02 - One Blue Moon

by Catrin Collier

  ‘I’ll do that,’ Diana said dully, picking-up her coat and handbag.

  ‘They’ll all be glad to see you safely back home.’ Laura smiled brightly as she helped Maud button her coat.

  ‘I’m not too sure of that,’ Diana answered as she walked down the passageway. Her Aunt Elizabeth had never attempted to hide her dislike of her, her brother Will or their widowed mother Megan, and after her mother had been arrested Aunt Elizabeth had publicly announced that none of Evan’s dead brother’s family would ever set foot in her house again. Diana had nearly collapsed when she’d received a letter from Will two weeks after she and Maud had started work in the Infirmary telling her that both he and their mother’s Russian lodger, Charlie Raschenko, had moved in with their uncle and aunt, after he’d been forced to sell their house to pay off their mother’s fines. But for all of Will’s cheery determination to make the best of a bad situation, and Laura’s sentimental forecast of a warm welcome, she rather suspected that the atmosphere in Graig Avenue would be strained enough, without her and Maud adding to the already overcrowded household.

  Elizabeth was alone in the house, dredging sugar over the pastry top of an enormous bread pudding, when Diana and Ronnie walked into the back kitchen, half-carrying, half-dragging an exhausted Maud between them. Ronnie took one look at the deserted room and remained only as long as it took him to exchange pleasantries with Elizabeth before returning to the van for Maud and Diana’s bags. He left them in the passageway, shutting the front door behind him.

  ‘What’s this, then?’ Elizabeth demanded, although a look at Maud had been sufficient for her to sum up the situation.

  ‘They wouldn’t let me stay on in the Infirmary,’ Maud began to explain in a cracked whisper.

  ‘They gave Maud her cards yesterday,’ Diana interrupted. ‘I couldn’t let her go home by herself.’

  ‘Then you’ll be wanting a bed tonight too,’ Elizabeth sighed in a martyred voice.

  ‘Diana’s come home for good. Same as me Mam,’ Maud broke in quickly.

  ‘And pray tell, what are the pair of you going to live on?’

  ‘I’m sure I’ll find something soon.’ Diana knew full well that the question had been directed more at her than Maud. ‘I promise I won’t be any trouble, Aunt Elizabeth.’

  ‘And I know you won’t, my girl’ Elizabeth echoed harshly. ‘First sign of any nonsense and you’ll be out through that door quicker than you walked in. That’s something I’m promising you.’

  Taking Elizabeth’s idea of ‘nonsense’ as a veiled reference to her mother’s transgressions, Diana found it difficult to hold her tongue.

  ‘Heaven only knows where I’m going to put you,’ Elizabeth complained, crashing open the oven door and thrusting the bread pudding inside. ‘The house is full to bursting with William and Charlie lodging here as it is.’

  ‘Diana can share with me,’ Maud said faintly from the depths of her father’s easy chair, where Ronnie had left her.

  ‘I think not,’ Elizabeth contradicted. ‘Not with that cold. If Diana shares a bed with you, like as not she’ll catch it, and the last thing I need is two of you to nurse.’

  ‘Diana and I have been sharing a room for months, and it’s not a cold ...’

  ‘Of course it is, girl,’ Elizabeth broke in too quickly. ‘You obviously haven’t been looking after yourself the way I taught you to. I don’t expect you’ve been airing your clothes properly, or wearing the warm flannel underwear I stitched for you.’ She shook her head briskly. ‘It was the same with Bethan. She wouldn’t listen, and look where that got her. And when she was ill, what did she do? Expected me to drop everything and nurse her, same as you do now,’

  ‘I don’t expect anything, Mam,’ Maud croaked.

  ‘She has been wearing her warm underwear, Aunt Elizabeth,’ Diana protested, angered by her aunt’s lack of sympathy.

  ‘Seeing is believing,’ Elizabeth chanted smugly. ‘She wouldn’t be lying there like that if she had. Neglect! Pure neglect and selfishness, that’s what this is.’

  ‘I think Maud ought to go to bed, Aunt Elizabeth,’ Diana suggested. ‘She fainted twice on the journey here and the doctor said ...’

  ‘What doctor?’ Elizabeth commanded, instantly on the alert.

  ‘Doctor Lewis. Ronnie stopped off at Laura’s house on the way up the hill, so Maud could see him, and Doctor Lewis said Maud should be put to bed in a warm room right away, and he’d call in tonight after he finished in the hospital.’

  ‘And just what did Ronnie Ronconi think he was doing, taking my daughter to a doctor when he wasn’t asked?’ Elizabeth ranted. ‘Is his brother-in-law so short of work now that he has to tout for trade for him? And I suppose Trevor Lewis suggested that we go and buy some expensive concoction or other in the chemist’s, when any fool can see all that’s wrong with Maud is a common cold.’

  ‘He didn’t prescribe anything,’ Diana said coldly, before Maud, who was struggling for breath, managed to speak. ‘All he said was that Maud should go to bed.’

  ‘As if I need a doctor to tell me to put my own daughter to bed when she’s in that condition,’ Elizabeth sneered. ‘Well, doctor or not, Maud, I’m afraid you’re going to have to make do in your father’s easy chair with a stool at your feet for an hour or two while I make up and air your bed. It will do more harm than good for you to go upstairs the way it is now. I don’t think your bedroom door’s been opened more than once or twice since Bethan left. And seeing as how you’re here,’ she turned to Diana, ‘you may as well make yourself useful. You can bring up some sticks and half a bucketful of coals, and lay a fire to chase the damp out of the room. And don’t go thinking that you can have a fire in there every day either,’ she cautioned her daughter. ‘We haven’t money to waste on coal for anyone’s bedroom, ill or not. We’re hard pushed to keep the kitchen stove going, even in this weather, on what little your father and Eddie bring in. This will be a one-off treat because the room’s not been used since the cold weather started.’

  ‘Don’t put yourself out on my account,’ Maud bit back, her eyes heavy with anger and exhaustion.

  ‘Looks like I’m going to have to, whether you want me to or not.’ Elizabeth opened the washhouse door and lifted out her brushes and dusters.

  ‘Won’t take long, Maud.’ Diana lifted Maud’s feet on to a kitchen chair. Taking her coat off, she draped it over Maud, who was still wearing hers.

  ‘There’s spare blankets in the ottoman at the foot of my bed,’ Elizabeth said. ‘You can bring one down. It will be a sight more serviceable than your damp coat.’

  ‘Yes, Aunt.’ Inwardly seething, Diana left the room. She brought down a thick grey blanket that smelt of moth-balls and folded it around Maud. Her cousin was already asleep. Slumped sideways in the chair, her fair hair was plastered close to her head in tendrils that had been curled into tight ringlets by the rain. Her face was flushed with illness and the heat of the fire. An overwhelming sense of guilt washed over Diana as she tucked the blanket around Maud’s emaciated figure. She should have done something weeks ago: persuaded Maud to leave the Infirmary when the signs of tuberculosis had become increasingly apparent; rushed her home when she had first coughed up blood, not a couple of weeks ago as Maud had told Trevor, but months back. During the first week they’d spent in Cardiff.

  It was four o’clock in the afternoon before Elizabeth had organised Maud’s bedroom to her satisfaction. Spotlessly clean furniture had been dusted and polished unnecessarily. The immaculate linoleum had been scrubbed with a bucket of warm water, lye soap and a well-worn scrubbing brush. The fire had been laid, lit, and the grate cleaned and blackleaded – by Diana. As soon as she’d finished, Elizabeth propped the double mattress against the dressing-table stool in front of the flames for airing, and it was two hours to the minute before she allowed Diana to lift it back on to the bed. The sheets, blankets and pillowcases that Elizabeth had removed from her ottoman were carried downstairs and hung over the wooden air
ing rack and hoisted above the range for the same magical two hours before they too were allowed on the bed.

  When the bed was finally made up to Elizabeth’s exacting requirements, she and Diana woke Maud from her unnaturally deep sleep and helped her upstairs. Elizabeth undressed her while Diana unpacked Maud’s bag. Diana’s own bag still stood ostentatiously alone and abandoned in the hall.

  ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting something to eat,’ Elizabeth muttered as she pulled the curtains against the light. Maud didn’t reply. Worn out, she was asleep again, curled comfortably into the depths of the great bed.

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ Diana answered curtly. She would have died rather than admit she was starving.

  ‘If you want a cup of tea, I’ll make you one,’ Elizabeth offered brusquely. The bread pudding was cooked, but she wouldn’t have dreamed of cutting into it before the men came home.

  ‘I’ll wash and change, and go into town.’ Diana glanced at the clock as they returned to the kitchen. ‘I need a job and the sooner I start looking, the sooner I’ll find one.’

  ‘There’s plenty of advertisements in the Observer for live-in kitchen and parlour maids in England,’ Elizabeth suggested in a marginally lighter tone. ‘There’s an agency opened in Mill Street. You can find out more there.’

  ‘One stint in the Infirmary was enough,’ Diana insisted. ‘I don’t intend to go back into service. Besides, I really would like to stay in Pontypridd close to Will.’

  ‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ Elizabeth recited in a schoolmarm voice. ‘I didn’t say too much in front of Maud because I didn’t want to risk upsetting her, but we’ve no room for you here. Your brother and your lodger Charlie are sharing the downstairs front room as it is. Haydn and Eddie are in one bedroom, your uncle and I in the other and there’s no way Maud can share a room in her condition. The box room as you well know isn’t even furnished, and we’ve no way of furnishing it. Not with the way things are at the moment.’

  ‘In that case I’d better see if I can find somewhere else.’ Diana concealed the pain of her aunt’s rejection beneath the facade of belligerent abrasiveness she had adopted as both shield and defence mechanism since the day her mother had been wrenched out of her life.

  ‘Your Uncle Huw is still living in Bonvilston Road,’ Elizabeth reminded her. Huw, Megan’s bachelor brother, was a policeman in the town and worked all kinds of unsocial shifts.

  ‘Perhaps I’ll go and see him. Is Will still working on Charlie’s stall?’

  ‘He was when he left this morning.’

  ‘As soon as I’ve washed I’ll go down and see him.’

  ‘I’ve cleaned all the bedrooms I intend to for today, and I’m certainly not going to traipse up and downstairs with any more buckets. If you want to wash you can use the washhouse. There’s no one to disturb you. You’ll find soap in the dish, and a towel on the top shelf.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Diana didn’t even attempt to keep the sarcasm from her voice.

  It was a long, cold walk down the Graig hill, made all the more unbearable by a cordial greeting from the Reverend Mark Price and his pretty young wife, who assumed that Elizabeth would be ecstatic to have her daughter and niece back home again. Pulling the collar of her sodden red coat high around her ears, Diana struggled to make civil replies to their polite enquiries after her own and Maud’s health, before trekking on, past the rows of dripping stone cottages. The downpour turned into a drenching torrent. Twilight became a dark and early night, but sentiment took precedence over reason, and she paused for a few moments at the junction of Llantrisant Road and Leyshon Street.

  She’d known it would hurt, and it did – more than she would have believed possible – but she couldn’t stop herself from looking down the narrow terraced road towards the tiny house that her parents had bought when they’d married. She and William had both been born there in the front bedroom, where, as her mother had told them with brimming eyes glittering with happy memories, they’d also been conceived. She’d never known her father. He’d died in the mud of the Western Front six months before she’d been born. Her mother had hung his photograph on the wall of the kitchen so she and William would at least know what he’d looked like, but the photograph had faded with time, until there was only a blurred face that looked remarkably like her Uncle Evan. Quiet, kind Uncle Evan who’d been led a dog’s life by Aunt Elizabeth for as long as she could remember.

  Tears mingled with the rain on her cheeks as she stared at the house that had once been her home. She closed her eyes, wishing with all her might that she could walk down the street, turn the key that protruded from the lock, and enter the house. But then it wouldn’t be the same. She didn’t even know who lived there now. William had written to say that he and Charlie had taken the best of their mother’s furniture across town to their Uncle Huw’s before the bailiffs had moved in, but that was all. Perhaps it was just as well. If it was an old friend or a neighbour she’d have an excuse to call, and the sight of unfamiliar objects within the familiar walls would be more than she could bear right now. Even from where she stood she could see strange curtains hanging limply at the windows. Made of green and gold artificial silk, they sagged a little lopsidedly. The front door had been given a new coat of paint as well. A grim, unwelcoming shade of dark brown so different from the vibrant sapphire blue Will had painted it at her mother’s instigation.

  ‘Lost your way, Diana?’ Glan Richards, a porter in the Graig Hospital, and the next-door neighbour of her Uncle Evan and Aunt Elizabeth, stood before her.

  ‘Glan! How are you?’ she cried out eagerly, sentiment causing her to forget the antagonism that had once existed – and for all she knew, still did exist – between him and her brother.

  ‘Better than you by the look of it.’ He thumbed the lapel of the new raincoat that he’d bought in Leslie’s stores on a sixpence-a-week card. ‘Lost a bob and found a farthing?’

  ‘I’m great,’ she smiled through her tears. ‘It’s just this damned cold and wet.’

  ‘Back for the weekend?’

  ‘No, for good,’ she said, forgetting for an instant that she had nowhere to sleep that night.

  ‘Couldn’t stand the pace?’ he asked snidely.

  ‘No, the wages’ she said cuttingly. ‘I’ve had enough of hospital slave labour. I’m off to town to look for something better.’

  ‘If you find it, let me know. I’ve had about enough of hospital slave labour too, but then, whenever I’ve looked I’ve never found anything better. There’s a depression on, or so they tell me.’

  ‘Could be that you’re not looking in the right places, and then again could be that you haven’t the talent I’ve got on offer,’ she retorted, regaining some of her old spirit as she lifted the hem of her coat provocatively to her knees. ‘See you around.’

  ‘In the Palladium, six o’clock tonight?’ he asked hopefully.

  ‘With an old man like you?’ she laughed. ‘I’m kind to the elderly, but not that kind.’

  ‘Since when has twenty-two been old?’

  ‘Twenty-three,’ she corrected. ‘You’re four years older than Will and that makes you ancient!’ She stuck her tongue out cheekily. ‘See you around, Granddad.’

  Glan laughed in spite of the brush-off as she walked away. He’d forgotten what a Tartar Diana was. Life was certainly going to perk up with her living next door.

  Chapter Three

  ‘I hate Saturdays,’ Tina moaned to her younger sister Gina who’d been ordered into the café by Ronnie to put in an hour’s practice in the cashier’s chair. ‘Here, move over.’ She nudged her sister from the edge of her seat, unlaced her shoes and rubbed her aching feet through her thick, cable-knit stockings. ‘And I hate waitressing,’ she added emphatically. She affected a whining voice: ‘“Miss, Miss, I ordered two teas, not coffee ... Miss there’s only butter on one side of this Chelsea. It costs a penny farthing you know ... ” Never mind that the lump of butter I slapped on the other side of the bun is big e
nough for four. Next week I’m sitting on the till, dear sister. It’s time you got blisters on your feet.’

  ‘I’m too young to wait tables,’ Gina said. ‘Too much exercise stunts growing bones.’

  ‘In that case you’ll grow into a ruddy giant.’

  ‘I’ll have none of that language in here, Tina,’ Ronnie reprimanded her. ‘And get your shoes on – sharpish. You’re putting the customers off their food.’

  ‘Slave driver.’ Her voice pitched high as her temper flared. ‘I must have walked twenty miles today around these tables ...’

  ‘And you can walk twenty more. With your shoes on,’ he added loudly, slapping the ice cream and coffee she’d ordered on to the marble-topped section of the counter. ‘Serve these. After you’ve washed your hands.’

  ‘He’s getting far too big for his boots,’ Tina hissed at her sister as she laced her shoes back on and fired mutinous glances in Ronnie’s direction. ‘Sometimes I think he’s in training to become another Papa.’

  ‘He’s ten times worse than Papa ever was,’ Gina answered, smiling as one of the market boys approached the till with a sixpence in his hand. ‘Mama can always soften Papa.’

  ‘It’ll take a blue moon for a woman to want to stand close enough to Ronnie to soften him.’

  ‘Tina!’ Ronnie snarled.

  ‘I’m going. I’m going,’ she shouted irritably. Pushing her way around the counter she threw back the curtain and stormed into the kitchen, where she washed her hands with as much fuss and splashing of water as she could manage.

  A pretty girl with unfashionably long fair hair and soft grey eyes opened the café door, folded her umbrella, shook the rain from her coat and walked up to the counter.

  ‘Seen Haydn Powell, Ronnie?’ she asked quietly as she looked shyly around the room.

  ‘No, but he’ll be here in –’ Ronnie glanced at the clock ‘– five minutes. Usual?’

  ‘Yes please.’ She rummaged in her handbag and pulled out a well-worn leather purse. ‘And ...’ she peered through the steamed-up glass on the cases that held the cakes. ‘One of those custard slices, please Ronnie, and a ...’