Pontypridd 02 - One Blue Moon

by Catrin Collier

  ‘Barman owes me for a dinner he never paid for,’ Ronnie lied glibly, ‘so these are on the house.’

  ‘Cheers.’ Evan raised his glass to the bewildered barman.

  Ronnie picked up his whisky glass, swirled it briskly in his hand and downed it in one. He sensed Evan’s attention fixed on him as he turned to his beer.

  ‘I’ve never seen you drink like that before,’ Evan commented as he sipped his own beer slowly.

  ‘I never have, but then I’ve never said anything like what I’m about to say before.’

  ‘About Maud?’

  ‘I love her, Mr Powell, and I want to marry her,’ he announced with devastating simplicity.

  Maud had been shocked, but Evan was doubly so. He stared at Ronnie, his face showing absolute disbelief. ‘You what?’ he said incredulously.

  ‘I want to –’

  Yes I heard you, boy,’ Evan said impatiently. ‘I just wasn’t sure I understood you. Maud’s practically on her deathbed and you come to me ...’

  ‘Please, Mr Powell. All I’m asking is that you hear me out.’

  ‘I’ve got one question before you say another word,’ Evan said sharply. ‘She’s barely sixteen, you’re twenty-seven. Exactly how long has this been going on?’

  Ronnie almost blurted out ‘since last night’, then realised how that could be misconstrued.

  ‘Nothing’s been going on, Mr Powell,’ he stated firmly. ‘And without your permission, nothing will.’

  ‘I’m relieved to hear it.’

  ‘When I heard that Maud had been rushed into hospital this morning, I realised how much I loved her. I couldn’t bear the thought that I’d left it too late to tell her how I felt. So I talked to Trevor –’

  ‘Trevor Lewis, the doctor. About my daughter?’

  ‘Yes – no! Not about her,’ Ronnie explained hastily, realising the more he said, the more he was putting his foot in it. ‘I asked him about the treatments for lung disease. Her name was never mentioned between us,’ he lied. ‘Trevor told me about operations, cutting ribcages, deflating lungs – that sort of thing. I’ve lived in this town all my life, Mr Powell ...’

  ‘So have I,’ Evan pointed out drily. ‘And I think you’ll grant that my life’s been a little longer than yours.’

  ‘I know how many young girls die of TB,’ Ronnie continued unabashed. ‘Trevor admitted that the treatments don’t offer a lot of hope.’

  ‘You don’t have to spell out Maud’s mortality to me,’ Evan said fiercely, reaching for his whisky.

  ‘Then Trevor said something else. He said that sometimes the rich send their children to clinics in Switzerland, where they receive special treatment, breathe clean, fresh air and eat nothing but wholesome dairy food.’

  ‘Are you suggesting that if I had enough money to send Maud to Switzerland I would hold back? Do you think for one minute that Maud would be lying in the Central Homes if I had the money to keep her out of the place?’ Evan demanded heatedly. ‘Do you think the thought of sending her somewhere warm and healthy hasn’t crossed my mind?’

  ‘If it has, then you know there’s a chance for Maud in what I’m suggesting,’ Ronnie pleaded. ‘Neither I, nor my family, have the kind of money you need to send Maud to a Swiss clinic, but I could raise enough to pay for Maud’s and my own fare to my grandparents’ farm in Italy. The air is just as pure in northern Italy as it is in Switzerland. Probably better,’ he enthused with unintentional irony, ‘because there’s not so many consumptives breathing it. If you give Maud and me permission to marry, I’ll take her there straight after the ceremony.’

  ‘She can barely stand being carried downstairs and you want to drag her all the way to Italy!’

  ‘I’ve thought about it. She won’t be any worse off than she is lying in a hospital bed. I’ll ask Aldo – he has the café by the bridge –’ he explained superfluously: Evan had known Aldo since before Ronnie was born, ‘– to drive us to Cardiff in his car. That way we can get a through train to London. I’ll book a sleeper so Maud can lie down, then I’ll get a taxi to take us from the train to Tilbury docks. If I book a cabin on the boat, all Maud will have to do is rest and sleep until we reach Calais. There are plenty of trains with sleepers on crossing the continent ...’

  ‘Have you thought what that little lot is going to cost?’

  ‘Not as much as I have put away in the bank,’ Ronnie said with as much dignity as he could muster. ‘And once we’re there, there’ll be no problems. My grandmother and my aunt will take care of Maud, and I’ll be around to do any heavy work like lifting ...’

  ‘Have you discussed any of this with Maud?’ Evan questioned him bluntly.

  Ronnie nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘What you’d expect someone as unselfish as her to say. She pointed out that if I married her, I might not have a wife for very long.’ Ronnie had weighed his words carefully before speaking. He knew he’d hit home when Evan didn’t come back with an immediate reply.

  ‘What about your life here?’ Evan asked finally. ‘Your family, your business. You’re in the middle of opening up another café, aren’t you?’

  ‘A restaurant.’ Even now Ronnie couldn’t allow the slip to pass. ‘But there’s nothing here that means as much to me as Maud’s life,’ he said gravely.

  ‘Does she love you?’ Evan asked shrewdly.

  ‘At the moment she’s too ill to know what she wants.’

  Evan finished his pint and picked up his and Ronnie’s empty glasses. He went to the bar and brought back refills. He was too preoccupied to think of whisky chasers, Ronnie noticed thankfully.

  ‘Let’s see if I’ve got this straight,’ Evan murmured as he sat down again. ‘You’re telling me that you’ve never courted, and if I’m guessing correctly, never even kissed my daughter.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Evan held up his hand to silence Ronnie. ‘Yet you say you love her enough to give up everything you have, even your family, to take her half-way round the world in the hope of finding a cure for her.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What does your father think of all this?’

  ‘He doesn’t know about it. Yet,’ Ronnie stressed. ‘But he will before the night’s out,’ he finished confidently. He shook two cigarettes out of his packet and handed one to Evan. He looked at the older man, seeking either approbation or blunt dismissal, but Evan’s face remained composed, impassive. It was impossible to read what he was thinking in the set of his features, or the expression in his eyes.

  ‘To get down to practicalities, what are you going to live on? You’ve said you have money, but however much you’ve got put away, I’ll warrant you’d run out sooner rather than later, and you can’t expect your family here to keep you when you no longer work in the café.’

  ‘My grandfather has a farm. It supported my father and his brothers while they were growing up. It’s still supporting him, my grandmother and my aunt, and once I start working there, I’m sure I’ll be able to bring in enough extra to support Maud, and me.’

  ‘I suppose your father left Italy to get away from the good living that the farm brought in,’ Evan murmured caustically.

  ‘It’ll be enough,’ Ronnie said calmly, refusing to allow Evan to rile him. ‘As I said, there’s only my grandparents and my father’s sister living there. There’s no able-bodied man around the place, I’m sure they’ll welcome me with open arms.’

  ‘You’re sure? You don’t really know?’ Evan guessed.

  ‘They’re my family. They’ll welcome me.’

  ‘And Maud?’

  ‘She’ll be my wife, and that will make her family too.’

  ‘You’ve already more or less admitted she doesn’t love you.’

  ‘Maud has agreed to go with me,’ Ronnie pleaded. ‘All we need is your permission to marry.’

  ‘In a Catholic church?’

  Ronnie looked Evan squarely in the eye. ‘No. Maud’s not a C
atholic and there isn’t time enough for a conversion.’

  ‘But if she lives you’ll want her to convert?’

  ‘I couldn’t give a hang what she is!’ Ronnie exclaimed in exasperation. ‘She can be a Hindu, Muslim or Buddhist, anything as long as she’s alive. All I want for Maud is what she wants for herself. And a quick wedding,’ he added firmly, ‘so we can leave early next week. I don’t think Maud should be left in that ward a minute longer than necessary.’

  ‘Banns have to be called wherever you get married. Even a Registry Office. And that takes three weeks ...’

  ‘An exception can be made if the bride is ill. I talked to the Reverend Price about it this evening, after I saw Maud.’

  ‘You’re Catholic, Maud’s Chapel and you went to an Anglican priest?’ Evan smiled for the first time that evening.

  ‘I wanted advice and I could hardly go to Father O’Kelly or John Joseph Bull. Both of them would have come up with a million obstacles to put in the way of things.’

  ‘I suppose they would have. To you it’s all so simple, isn’t it? You totally disregard Maud’s illness, marry her and carry her off to the hills of Italy where you hope, against all medical advice, for a miraculous recovery.’

  ‘Isn’t that all Maud’s got left?’ Ronnie said earnestly. ‘Hope? Please Mr Powell, I’m begging you, let me marry her. This could be Maud’s only chance of living ...’

  ‘That’s just what I am thinking of, Ronnie. Maud’s life, or rather, what she’s got left of it. Let’s not mince words,’ he said bleakly, looking at Ronnie over the rim of his glass. ‘Maud’s dying.’ It hurt him almost as much to say those two words as it hurt Ronnie to hear them. ‘She’s dying and you want me to allow you to drag her across Europe on a wild-goose chase, that will inevitably end the same way it would if she stayed here. The difference being that if she died here she’d have her family and friends around her, while if she died in Italy ...’

  ‘You just said it Mr Powell. “If”.’

  ‘I said if, because she’s just as likely to die on the boat or the train, and then what will you do, Ronnie? Tell me, what will you do?’

  ‘I’d bring her body home to you, Mr Powell. I’d be devastated, but at least I’d know that I’d tried everything humanly possible to save her. Could you honestly say that, if you refuse me permission to even try?’

  Even stared down into his half-empty glass.

  ‘Please, Mr Powell,’ Ronnie begged. ‘Please, let me at least try to save her. I love her.’

  Evan looked up into Ronnie’s dark, brooding eyes. ‘So do I,’ he said slowly. ‘So do I,’ he repeated thoughtfully. ‘Far too much to allow her to die amongst strangers.’

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘You’re going to get me shot, Will Powell,’ Tina complained as they sneaked around the corner of Danycoedcae Road, creeping close to the damp garden walls of the houses.

  ‘No one is going to shoot you for going roller skating with Gina, you silly girl,’ he murmured, squeezing her hand.

  ‘When I come home without her?’

  ‘For pity’s sake,’ he grumbled. ‘You spent long enough plotting your story. You wanted a cup of chocolate in Jenny’s house, and Gina didn’t. Now what could be simpler than that?’

  ‘Nothing as long as Gina remembers the story, and Papa doesn’t interrogate her until she breaks.’

  ‘You’re not living in a gangster film, Tina.’

  ‘You don’t know Papa,’ she retorted briskly. ‘He asks more questions than the Spanish Inquisition. And generally gets better results,’ she added gloomily.

  ‘And you worry too much.’ He pulled her into the shadows. ‘Any chance of seeing you after work tomorrow?’

  ‘You don’t finish on the market until ten o’clock on a Saturday night.’

  ‘More like eleven, but a fellow can live in hope.’

  ‘Not that much.’

  ‘Shoni’s, three o’clock Sunday?’

  ‘What if it’s raining?’

  ‘I’ll bring an umbrella.’

  ‘Fat lot of good that will do in Shoni’s.’

  ‘All you ever do is meef,’ he complained playfully. ‘Meef, meef, meef.’

  ‘What on earth is meefing?’

  ‘You should know, you do enough of it.’ He was wondering whether he dare risk a kiss, when her eyes grew alarmingly round and large.

  ‘Holy Mother of God,’ she exclaimed. ‘Here comes Ronnie! See you.’ She ran round the corner, just as Ronnie thundered his Trojan to a halt outside their front door.

  ‘Close the café early?’ she asked, trying desperately to look as though she hadn’t a care in the world.

  He gazed straight past her, completely ignoring her, then ran up the short flight of steps to their front door.

  ‘Serve him right if he tripped over his big flat feet,’ she muttered under her breath, reaching the front door just in time for him to slam it in her face.

  ‘Hey, what about me?’ she shouted irritably, turning the key and walking in behind him. He was half-way down the passage. He didn’t bother to glance back and look at her, let alone apologise. She shook her umbrella outside the door, propped it in the corner on the old tin tray that her mother put there for the purpose, threw her coat over the multitude balancing on the rack, and followed Ronnie down the long flagstoned passage that led from the front to the back of the house.

  The radio was blaring into the hot, steamy kitchen. Friday had been her mother’s day for making Saturday’s fish soup out of the heads and tails of Friday’s dinner for as long as she could remember, and the smell of herrings lingered tartly in the air.

  ‘Hello everyone,’ she shouted, going to the biscuit barrel and helping herself to a home-made oatmeal crunch. Gina looked up from where she was teaching thirteen-year-old Maria and ten-year-old Stephania how to apply lipstick, and raised her eyebrows. She was dying to ask Tina if William Powell had kissed her, but knew her questions would have to wait until their sisters slept. Nine-year-old Alfredo and six-year-old Robert swept past, sword-fighting with a pair of ill-matched wooden kitchen spoons. Her mother, oblivious to the noise and chatter, smiled absently, continuing to mend a great, long tear in eight-year-old Theresa’s school skirt.

  ‘Where’s Papa?’ Ronnie demanded as he emerged from the washhouse. They all turned towards him, Tina and her mother both noticing a keener edge to his voice than usual.

  ‘He’s next door. He and Mr Morris are drilling a hole so they can pass a wire through the wall to set up a wireless speaker for them,’ Maria explained. ‘Papa thought it would be nice for them to listen to ours. After all, it’s on all day.’

  ‘Is everything all right in the café?’ Mrs Ronconi shouted above the laughter that greeted Arthur Askey’s latest joke. Something in the expression on Ronnie’s face made her uneasy.

  ‘Everything’s fine, Mama.’ He glared at the milling children.

  ‘Everyone under sixteen to bed,’ he ordered brusquely.

  ‘Aw Ronnie!’ Maria, Stephania, Theresa, Robert and Alfredo chorused in protest.

  ‘This finishes at nine, Ronnie, that’s only five minutes. Can’t we hear the end of it?’ Alfredo begged, knowing that where Ronnie was concerned, his pleading would hold far more weight than that of the girls.

  ‘None of you can hear it above the din you’re making,’ Ronnie observed unrelentingly. ‘Come on, bed. Now!’ He stood over them as they trooped mutinously to the washhouse in single file. When he heard the tap running and the sounds of teeth being brushed, he left. A moment later the front door banged shut.

  ‘The minute the show ends,’ their mother warned as Alfredo poked his head around the washhouse door, letting in an ice-cold draught of air.

  ‘Promise, Mama. Cross my heart,’ Alfredo beamed.

  Ronnie opened the Morrises’ door and walked through to their kitchen.

  ‘It’s only me, Mr Morris,’ he called out as he stepped into the room, which was considerably colder and less cosy than the ki
tchen in his house. ‘Is Papa here?’

  ‘Papa is here,’ his father answered from the depths of the cupboard that filled the alcove next to the range, where he was crouched, trying to bore a hole. ‘And you’re just the man we want. Come here and hold this bit steady while I drill. You wouldn’t believe how solid this wall is.’

  ‘Yes I would.’ Ronnie went to the cupboard and extracted the drill from his father’s hand. ‘You’ve picked the wrong place, Papa,’ he smiled. ‘You won’t do it there, you can’t see what you’re doing. Here, let me. Near the ceiling will be easier.’ He picked up a scarred wooden chair, positioned it on the lino near the communal wall, climbed on it and, holding the bit steady in the crack between wall and ceiling, proceeded to drink steadily. ‘Get a cloth please, Papa,’ he shouted, as a stream of black mortar poured out of the hole he was making. Mr Morris rushed out the back and returned with a ragged pair of pants.

  ‘I always keep the old clothes, especially the cotton underwear,’ Mrs Morris wheezed from her easy chair next to the range. ‘They make such good dusters.’

  ‘Yes they do, Mrs Morris. Absorbent too,’ Ronnie the knowledgeable café owner called out cheerfully. He persevered, working at a steady pace. ‘Have you a drill with a longer bit?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Mr Morris raked over the few odds and ends of tools that he kept proudly in a wooden box that his eldest son had made in woodwork class before he’d gone off to join the army.

  Ronnie balanced the drill in one hand, wiped his eyes with the other, pushed forward, and almost fell off the chair.

  ‘Steady,’ his father shouted.

  ‘We’re through.’

  ‘There, what did I tell you?’ His father rubbed his hands and beamed at the old couple. ‘Now all you have to do is put that speaker on top of the dresser. We’ll poke the wire from it through the wall, and our Angelo can connect it when he gets back from the café!’

  ‘It’s very good of you to go to all this trouble, Mr Ronconi,’ Mrs Morris gushed. ‘We never thought we’d have radio in our own kitchen, did we Joe?’ she smiled up at her husband.