Pontypridd 02 - One Blue Moon

by Catrin Collier

  Dolly and Sean were both firing furious glares his way, interspersing them with the bright, brittle, artificial stage smiles they reserved for the audience. He paused, faltered, listened for the first time to the others and in a single, tingling moment of utter embarrassment and mortification, realised he’d been singing in the wrong key.

  ‘Ah manager, there you are.’ The director waylaid the manager as he walked towards them in his boiled shirt, black bow tie and evening suit. ‘I was just telling this boy that we’ll have to drop one and a half couples from the chorus for the next house,’ he said bitterly. ‘Needs must,’ he boomed as he flicked a disparaging glance at Haydn. ‘After all we can’t really call this –’ he jabbed his forefinger painfully into Haydn’s arm, ‘– half of any couple.’

  ‘The others might be safer without his presence on stage,’ the manager agreed drily.

  ‘A whole lot safer,’ the director concurred sharply.

  ‘Do you really need to drop one and a half couples?’ the manager ventured. ‘Why not put Dolly and her partner centre stage and allow the others to dance around them?’

  ‘Good idea, old man! Good idea, I’ll get the boys and girls together to talk about it.’ He immediately banged on the door of the girls’ dressing room. ‘Girlies!’ he shouted in a sickly voice, his small piggy eyes gleaming at the thought of catching a glimpse of one of them in a state of semi-undress.

  ‘We’ll be out in a minute,’ Dolly’s nasal voice echoed through the door.

  The manager was fond of Haydn. He’d watched him grow in confidence and competence during the months that he’d worked in the Town Hall, and he’d already marked him down for promotion to assistant manager when George Bassett, the old man who held the post at present, retired. But he was also aware of what a fiasco like this could do to the Town Hall’s and his reputation when the story got back to the booking agents in London. With the coal pits closed and money a scarce commodity in the valleys, it had become almost impossible to induce good quality acts to visit South Wales. And the few people who still had money in Pontypridd wouldn’t patronise shows that weren’t top drawer. Every week he and the manager of the New Theatre fought for better shows and a bigger share of diminishing audiences. And it wasn’t just the New Theatre. Since the talkies had hit town, they’d had the cinemas to contend with as well.

  He felt sorry for Haydn, read the misery of shattered dreams in the boy’s face, but with the director’s furious gaze upon both of them he didn’t feel disposed to openly sympathise with him.

  ‘The sooner you get out of that ridiculous outfit and back to work, the better,’ he said frostily. ‘There’s a mess waiting to be cleared up in the boys’ dressing room. Once you’ve changed, deal with it. Then come to the office. I’ve a list of errands for you to run between houses. Well, what are you waiting for?’ he demanded. ‘Get on with it. There’s still the calling to be done, you know. You can’t expect Judy to do your job for you just because you went out on stage for five minutes. She has her tray to set up and take out in the interval.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ Haydn mumbled. He was having a hard time grappling with mixed emotions that were half shame, half mutinous. He didn’t know what he wanted to do most urgently: sock the manager and the director on the nose, or break down and cry.

  ‘Oh, and Haydn?’

  ‘Sir?’ Haydn paused with his hand on the door of the boys’ changing room.

  ‘After tonight’s little fiasco I don’t want to hear any more from you about going on stage. That offer Ambrose made to you when he was drunk seems to have gone to your head. You’ve been fit for nothing since. Even if you hadn’t refused, he would have retracted it in the morning. You do know that, don’t you?’

  ‘I never said I was a dancer, sir ...’

  ‘If you ask me you’re not much of anything. Not even a callboy. Perhaps now that you’ve finally been given the “break” you’ve been whining for, you’ll understand that it takes good all-round talent to get anywhere in variety. It’s a tough world, and there’s any amount of idiots around who can sing a few notes. Most of them even manage the right key,’ the manager added sadistically, convinced he was doing the right thing in trying to keep Haydn’s feet firmly on the ground. ‘Believe me, boy, you need a lot more than just a pleasant voice. Talent, looks, ability to dance ...’

  Haydn couldn’t listen any more. ‘Sir,’ he muttered dejectedly as he opened the dressing-room door and stepped inside. Feeling sick and faint he breathed in the oppressive stench of stale male sweat and greasepaint. Clothes were strewn from one end of the bench that traversed the centre of the room to the other. He nodded to the boys. They stared at him before continuing to change in silence. He knew they’d heard every word the manager had said to him. And revelled in it.

  Steeling himself, he entered the room and closed the door behind him. With his back to the door he unfastened the only button of the shirt he had managed to do up, the last one, closest to the tails.

  ‘Careful you don’t rip it, callboy,’ one of the boys jeered in a derisory tone. ‘It’s worth more than your week’s wages.’ Haydn stripped it off in silence, folding it meticulously, collar up, sleeves neatly tucked in behind the front. He looked around for somewhere to put it.

  ‘You’re not going to give it back to us like that, are you?’ Tom, the youngest of the chorus boys and the butt of all their jokes was only too delighted to give a little of what he had to take. ‘Phew!’ he moved near the shirt and staggered around with his fingers over his nose in a parody of a man fainting. ‘Phew! Phew!’

  ‘Knock it off, Tom,’ Sean shouted irritably, succumbing to a sudden empathy for Haydn. He’d had a rotten break on his first job too. It had been so bad his career had almost ended before it had begun, and he knew exactly what Haydn was feeling right now.

  ‘I’ll take it home and wash it,’ Haydn murmured, looking around for his own shirt. He saw it, lying on the floor in the corner of the room. It was only when his fingers closed over the cloth that he realised it had been used to mop up the mess that the manager had told him about.

  ‘What’s the matter, Taffy?’ Tom laughed. ‘Something on your shirt?’

  Dropping the shirt, Haydn looked around the room.

  ‘Which one of you jokers did this?’ he asked quietly. Only Tom, who was as insensitive as he was naive, continued to laugh.

  ‘Can’t the Welsh take a joke?’ he sneered. ‘Do you think that’s lemonade on your shirt, Taffy?’ He looked to the others for support. ‘We all know different, don’t we boys? That’s –’ he pointed to the floor where Haydn’s soiled and sodden shirt lay, a limp, discarded rag, ‘– that’s what you get for trying to climb into boots that are too big for you, or,’ he grinned as he saw the shoes that Haydn was carrying, ‘in your case, too small.’

  ‘Shut your mouth before I shut it for you,’ Haydn hissed, focusing all his embarrassment, disappointment and anger on Tom.

  ‘Ooh, masterful,’ Tom pranced around in front of Haydn. Once Haydn saw Tom move he realised that he was a queer, like Wyn Rees. His emotions clarified, converging into cold, murderous rage. No one in the mining community liked queers. They were strange, unnatural ... his hand closed into a hard, tight ball of a fist. Lashing out, he hit Tom squarely on the jaw. The boy flew backwards. The last thing Haydn saw before Tom lay, a crumpled heap on the floor, was the startled expression as Tom’s eyes blinked open when the back of his head connected with the painted brickwork on the wall.

  ‘You’ve killed him,’ one of the boys wailed.

  ‘Don’t be so bloody soft,’ Sean exclaimed, hiding his own fear behind a thin veneer of irritation. He moved before anyone else. Kneeling at Tom’s side, he laid his hand over where he thought Tom’s heart should be. ‘He’s just out cold.’

  Haydn’s knees gave way as a surge of relief rushed through his veins. He almost fell to the floor. Sitting there with his head resting on his knees and his back to the cold brick wall, he trembled uselessly while Sean ass
umed absolute control.

  ‘We need a doctor. Haydn?’ He turned and saw that Haydn was on the point of passing out himself.

  ‘I’ll get one,’ Haydn breathed faintly, hoping his legs would carry him as far as Trevor’s house.

  ‘Now listen, all of you.’ The note of authority in Sean’s voice was unmistakable. ‘Tom slipped on the metal tap of his shoe while he was trying to take it off. Does everyone understand what I’m saying here?’

  The entire chorus nodded dully and in unison, as though practising a routine.

  ‘You don’t have to do that,’ Haydn whispered hoarsely, finally finding his own voice.

  ‘We’re not doing it for you, but for Tom,’ Sean said scornfully, looking pointedly at Haydn’s shirt. ‘If half of what happens in this dressing room ever got out, the gossip could kill the show dead, not to mention our careers. Particularly in one or two of the towns we’ve been playing in lately.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was closer to eleven than ten o’clock when Ronnie drove back down the Graig hill. He and Gina had gone into the Powells’ house to sit with Maud until someone came home. They had a long wait. William and Diana didn’t walk in until nearly ten o’clock, and meanwhile Maud’s face grew paler, and her thin frame slumped further and further in the chair until she looked on the point of collapse.

  Ronnie hadn’t seen the animation in her face, or the glow in her eyes as she’d talked to Gina. Only the gaunt, grey sickness that was eating her alive. He’d wanted to kick himself for his stupidity. Only an idiot would have taken a girl as frail and ill as Maud out on a cold, rainy winter’s night.

  He’d sat in silence, drinking the weak tea Gina had made for them, without tasting it. He hadn’t even heard a word they’d said. For once the cynicism he habitually adopted to buoy him through life had deserted him. Instead he’d visualised Maud, dead. He found himself picturing the misery of her funeral, the gap her death would create in the lives of his sisters ... and perhaps not only his sisters. He could actually hear the awed whispers in which they would speak her name. See the babies that would be named after her.

  Distraught at his own imaginings, the moment William and Diana walked into the back kitchen he’d dragged a protesting Gina out. Left to her own devices she would have gossiped with Maud and Diana all night. He drove up to Danycoedcae Road and dropped Gina off, stopping only as long as it took him to shout a quick hello and goodbye to his parents.

  A pang of conscience niggled at the back of his mind. He should never have left Alma to cope for so long alone. He comforted himself with the thought that she’d had Angelo in the kitchen, but then he remembered just how useless Angelo was as soon as he was put under any pressure. But perhaps Angelo was entitled to be useless. After all he was only fifteen, no more than a kid. He scrutinised his thoughts and wondered if he was going soft in the head. He’d done as much work as Angelo – and a great deal more – when he’d been only twelve.

  He drove his Trojan under the archway that led into the back yard of the White Hart, and pulled into the car park. He nodded to, but didn’t dare stop to pass the time of night with the landlord who was putting out a crate of empties. Hurrying around the corner it only took a few steps for him to realise his worst fears. The windows of the café were misted up, but inside he could make out the dark, shadowy shapes of blurred figures at virtually every table.

  He thrust open the door. Alma glanced up from an order she was taking, and he thought he saw a fleeting look of annoyance cross her face as she pushed her hair back from her forehead. She picked up a tray from the table behind her; it was loaded with dirty dishes. Turning her back on him, she carried them out to the kitchen. He smiled thinly, acknowledging the customers he knew and checking the dirty plates to see what had been ordered. He recognised the swirls of grease and thin vestiges of egg yolk which meant the bus crews had been in, in force. They always mopped up the last traces of egg, beans and chips with double orders of bread and butter. An endless array of empty cups covered with a fine sprinkling of sugar and cigarette ash lay strewn across the tables in the back. He didn’t have to ask Alma anything. He could see that she’d coped. Just!

  Without waiting to don his khaki work jacket, he stacked a pile of dirty cups and saucers and carried them into the kitchen.

  ‘Boy, did this place turn into a madhouse after you left,’ Angelo grumbled loudly as soon as he caught sight of him. ‘Sixteen orders of egg and chips, seven of beans and chips. Five pie and chips. The fat hasn’t been off the gas ring in the last hour, and my hands are covered with spit burns ...’

  ‘Well, I’m here now.’ Ronnie dumped his load into a sink that was already overflowing with dirty dishes, before taking his jacket down from the hook behind the door.

  ‘What took you so long?’

  ‘I stayed with Maud. She wasn’t well, certainly not well enough to be left alone,’ he explained abruptly.

  ‘Gina could have stayed with her.’

  ‘By herself!’ Ronnie retorted derisively.

  ‘You could have got Mama,’ Angelo suggested in exasperation as he lifted yet another load of chips out of the fry basket.

  ‘I could have, but I didn’t,’ Ronnie snapped, wondering why he hadn’t thought of getting his mother. Angelo was right: it would have made more sense for her to have sat with Maud, than him and Gina.

  ‘Two toasts, two boiled eggs and a pie, Angelo,’ Alma shouted through the counter door.

  ‘Damn,’ Angelo swore. ‘Just when I thought I could go home.’

  ‘Finish that order and you can,’ Ronnie conceded.

  ‘Ronnie?’

  ‘Yes?’ Ronnie thrust his arms into the sleeves of his khaki coat. He could see a queue waiting to pay at the till. And the first rule of business that his father had hammered home to him was: never keep a man waiting when he wants to pay his dues.

  ‘You will get a replacement cook as soon as you can, won’t you?’ Angelo pleaded. ‘I don’t mind helping out –’

  ‘I’ll start looking tomorrow,’ Ronnie shouted testily as he went to the till.

  Alma called off the orders of the customers as they reached him. ‘One egg and chips – two eggs, beans and chips and extra bread and butter’ – that one had to be a bachelor, but then who was complaining – ‘one tea and a pie – one Oxo and a ham sandwich ...’ He found difficulty in adding up the money. Maud’s face kept intruding into his mind: drained of all colour, like the clear lard they used for frying. He remembered her racking cough, wondered if she was coughing up shreds of her lungs along with the blood he had seen her spit into her handkerchief ...’

  ‘Ronnie!’ Alma stared angrily at him, her temper rising precariously at his lack of response. ‘Ronnie!’ She repeated furiously.

  He looked up blankly. The last man in the queue had gone. He glanced around the café: there were only a few late stragglers finishing their teas and Oxos. Without acknowledging that she’d spoken he picked up a damp rag and wiped down the counter, paying special attention to the area around the coffee machine. When he’d finished he lifted down a tin of coffee beans from a high shelf, tipped half a handful into a small wooden grinder, and turned the handle. He refilled the coffee jug, setting it on the small oil burner to warm, making it as much for himself as for any customer. Then he took his rag and went to the tables to give Alma a hand. She’d piled a tray high with dishes and was carrying them into the kitchen. He wiped down the tables and chairs, setting them all back carefully into their allotted positions. No sooner had he finished than a dozen people walked in from the New Theatre across the road. Five minutes later they were joined by a small crowd who’d been to the Town Hall. Unlike the bus crews, they didn’t buy much in the way of food. They wanted to linger in the warmth and light of the café, delaying for as long as possible the moment when they’d have to leave town for their homes, using the time they should have spent sleeping to relive the magic they had seen on stage.

  Ronnie and Alma were kept busy making a
nd serving coffee, teas, chocolates, Oxos, but mercifully few time-consuming tit bits like toast. Just after the clock struck half-past eleven the door closed on the last customer.

  ‘I think it’s over,’ Alma breathed heavily.

  ‘Did you say something?’

  ‘I was talking about the rush.’ She dropped a tray piled high with cups and saucers noisily on to the counter.

  ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right,’ he agreed absently. He took the dishes into the back. Angelo had tidied up before he left, but hadn’t pulled the plug on the washing-up water. Ronnie tossed the cups and saucers into the sink and left them there to soak. Gina and Tina could do them in the morning. By the time he returned to the café Alma had upturned the chairs on to the tables and was sweeping the floor. He blew out the light beneath the coffee burner, and took down two cups from the shelf.

  ‘Want a coffee?’

  She shook her head. ‘It’ll keep me awake.’

  ‘Chocolate, then?’ he asked pleasantly, trying to make amends for his absence.

  ‘Nothing. Thank you,’ she snapped.

  ‘Damn it all, Alma, I’ve said I’m sorry, what more do you want me to do?’ he demanded, concealing the guilt he felt at leaving her and Angelo alone at the busiest time of the evening, behind a screen of anger.

  ‘You know what more you can do!’

  ‘No I bloody well don’t. I’ve never seen you like this before. You’re behaving like ... like ...’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like a typical bloody woman,’ he answered hotly. ‘Like one of my sisters, if you must know,’ he shouted. He felt betrayed by her mood. Other women threw tantrums or fell into black sulks, but not Alma. Never Alma. Good old reliable Alma. He propped his elbows on the counter, and sipped his coffee slowly in a determined effort to calm himself.