‘No. It’s difficult. You and Bethan are Alma’s friends as much as mine. If you don’t want to meet Masha I would understand and respect your decision.’
‘Have you talked to Alma about this?’
‘Not about meeting Masha. But you know Alma has insisted that Masha move into the house she bought in Tyfica Road.’
Andrew finished his brandy and lifted his pint on to the mat in front of him. ‘I’m sure Bethan would be happy to go to Tilbury with you. So would I, for that matter. I can always get my father to take care of the practice for a day or two but there’s one thing you’ll have to understand, Charlie. I can’t see Bethan befriending Masha at the expense of her relationship with Alma and I certainly won’t. If possible we’d like to be friends with all of you but if ever there’s a conflict, Bethan will side with Alma, you do know that.’
‘There won’t be a conflict.’
‘Alma may feel differently when your first wife and son are actually living round the corner from her and Theo. Have you thought of taking Masha elsewhere?’
‘Alma wouldn’t hear of it. As she pointed out, everything I have is in Pontypridd. All my friends, the business – her.’
‘But you’re abandoning her for this other woman.’
‘I won’t desert her.’
‘But you’ve already moved out of the shop.’
‘Masha is my wife, my first wife,’ Charlie muttered hoarsely. ‘And if I live with her it won’t stop me from loving Alma.’ He slouched over his brandy. ‘I could sooner stop breathing than loving Alma. She brought me happiness when I had given up hope of even finding contentment again. She married me knowing I had another wife who might be alive. She waited for me all through the war, refusing to believe that I’d been killed when everyone with better sense told her there wasn’t the remotest possibility I’d survive. She built my single shop into a chain of twelve that’s making more money than even I dreamed of. She gave me a wonderful son …’
‘Are you saying you don’t want to take this Russian wife of yours back, Charlie? Because if you are, there are people who can help.’
‘It’s not that simple.’
‘Why not? We have one life. What’s the point of living if we don’t make at least one person happy, if only ourselves. No man talks about a woman the way you’re talking about Alma only to walk away from her.’
‘You know how I was.’
‘You were suffering from depression. It was only natural after what you’d been through. It takes time for the body and mind to adjust.’
‘Depression? You think that was natural?’
‘Perhaps natural isn’t the right word. I knew something went wrong a couple of months after we came back. Was it you and Alma?’
‘No – perhaps in a way- it’s not easy to explain. But I felt as though I was slipping back, away from everyone. I was there and I wasn’t. Even everyday living demanded more from me than I had to give. I could hear people talking but it was too much effort to answer their questions. I could see that Alma – Theo – all the people who cared about the man they knew as “Russian Charlie” were fine. They didn’t need anything from me – Feodor Raschenko – the man who should have, and perhaps did, die in the camps. I had come back to a town that barely accepted me before the war, to a wife who had waited, and a son. But even Theo wasn’t really mine. He was Alma’s and Mary’s. It wasn’t their fault. It was just the way it was. I hadn’t been there for Theo when he was born and they were. I was a stranger foisted on him, someone for him to resent because I came between him and his mother. I’d spoiled his safe, happy, childhood world.’
Andrew suppressed his instinct to tell Charlie he was wrong, because for the first time since he’d discovered him in a corner of a stinking typhus hut in Nordhausen the Russian was actually talking about himself and his feelings. And he sensed there was more to come.
‘The camps …’ Charlie looked into Andrew’s eyes. ‘You saw them, but not when the Germans were there and no one who saw them after the SS left can have any idea of what it was like to exist in them day after decaying, rotting day. I survived because I learned to look on things no man should without lifting a finger to help. And I did things that I will never tell a living soul about. Even now, just thinking about them is enough to make me wish that I’d died of shame. You found a dead man, Andrew. When you came into that hut, looked at me and gave me your hand, you helped a corpse from my grave and that’s what you brought back to Alma.’
He drank his brandy and Andrew signalled to the barman to bring two more.
‘All I could think was; why me? Why had I survived when so many so much worthier had died? I didn’t deserve to live any more than they but they were the ones whose bodies had been thrown into the pits and burned in the crematoria. I came back, looked at Alma and Theo and saw that they had led a happy, well-ordered existence without me. They didn’t need a dead man weighing down their lives.’
‘You can’t blame yourself for surviving, Charlie.’ Andrew paid the barman who brought the brandies to their table.
‘I can blame myself for sinking lower than the level of an animal to survive, and for making Alma unhappy when I came back. She doesn’t need me.’
‘But Masha does?’
‘She has no one and nothing else. She has spent sixteen years in camps, I was in them for three and I can’t imagine longer. And my son – he was born in the camps. Did you see the boys at Nordhausen? Children with the faces of old men, or worse, evil, cunning wolves. Masha and Peter need me because I am all they have. Me – Feodor Raschenko – a Russian who like them no longer has a country to call his own.’
Andrew took his brandy and sat back in his chair. He’d watched Charlie give up on life when he’d been surrounded by kindness and the love of a woman who had fought hard to be strong for him. How could any of them have known that all he’d needed to give him the will to live was the simple human condition of being needed?
‘If you want us to, Bethan and I will travel up to Tilbury with you next Wednesday.’
‘Thank you.’ Charlie picked up his brandy.
‘You do realise Masha might be as weak as you were when you left the camp?’
‘I have her letter.’ He removed it from his pocket; slipped out the photographs it contained and opened it. Like Alma, Andrew noticed that he kept it in the pocket closest to his heart. ‘She writes that she is glad I am alive and that I didn’t have to live in the work camps like her. My parents, three brothers and two of my sisters died not long after I last saw them.’
‘I’m very sorry.’ As Andrew murmured the hackneyed phrase of condolence he realised that Charlie hadn’t looked at the letter once.
‘They were among the lucky ones. From what I heard at Nordhausen, conditions in Stalin’s camps weren’t any better than Hitler’s – just different.’
‘Did anyone from your family survive apart from Masha and Peter?’
‘No.’ Andrew was not a sensitive man yet even he could hear the anguish behind the single word. ‘Masha writes that Peter is strong and clever and that it was he, not she, who scavenged the food and privileges that kept them alive after they were taken by the Germans.’
‘He’s sixteen?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ll have to find something for him to do.’
‘I’ll ask him what he wants.’ Charlie looked down at his untouched beer. ‘Shall we have another brandy?’
‘Why not, and why don’t you come back with me for dinner?’
‘Thank you, but no.’
‘That way you can ask Bethan to come to Tilbury yourself. I have a house call to make in town later, I’ll bring you back then.’
‘Evan and Phyllis are expecting me.’
‘Then I’ll drop you off on my way up the hill. Look, I can always find something to do in the surgery, why don’t you call and see Alma and tell her some of the things you have just told me?’
‘No.’ Charlie’s reply was harsh, finite. ‘It would o
nly make things more difficult for her if I did.’
‘Perhaps you’re right, Charlie. But at the moment I don’t think things can be any more difficult for her than they already are.’
‘Look, Ronnie, I’d like to help you, but money is tight right now. Ianto never expected me to pay my bills in cash, and certainly not the minute the van was fixed. He always gave me time.’
‘How much time?’ Ronnie asked, glancing at William who was standing, arms folded, leaning against the door of the filthy, grease-stained cabin they’d promised Tina they would transform into an office.
‘If you’ll only take cash – at least a month or two. Times are hard, very hard.’
‘For all of us, Gwilym.’
‘There’s nothing I can do about it, Ronnie. I haven’t a penny to my name. All the farmers round here live hand to mouth in winter. I’ve nothing but a few cold weather greens and the wife’s faggots and stuffing mix to sell on the market, and they don’t bring in enough to pay the coal bill.’
‘Butter, cheese, eggs?’
‘I can see it’s been a long time since you’ve walked round the market. They haven’t appeared on any stall since the beginning of the war. They’re strictly rationed and no sign of a let-up. The government fixes the price and they take all we can produce for a pittance. The money I get for my eggs doesn’t cover the cost of the chicken feed. This war’s not just been hard on you soldiers, those of us on the home front have suffered something terrible too.’
‘And you’re going to suffer some more, Gwilym. No money no van.’ Ronnie capped his fountain pen and laid it across the invoice pad on the grubby, finger-marked, steel table in front of him.
‘You can’t do that!’
‘I just did.’ Ronnie pocketed the van keys to drive his point home.
‘How am I going to get to market?’
‘You just said there was no point in going there because you’ve next to nothing to sell.’
‘I’ve always got a bit –like I said the winter greens and the wife’s faggots …’
‘And the black market eggs, butter, milk and cheese you deliver to your special customers on the way, Gwilym,’ Ronnie suggested quietly.
‘Talk like that could get me into trouble and there’s no truth in it. Not a word!’
‘You denying you used to pay Ianto in goods?’
‘Now and again, I used to give him a bit on the side when it suited us both. But nothing illegal, mind. Just a bit I saved from my own personal stock. I’m a patriot through and through, me.’
‘How much is the bill, Ronnie?’ William asked.
‘Ten pounds fifteen shillings and sixpence, parts; six pounds two and fourpence labour, and a pound towing charge, which makes, seventeen pounds, seventeen shillings and tenpence.’
‘You’re bloody thieves, that’s what you are. Over six pounds’ labour! The wife and me work from dawn to dusk for a month and don’t see anywhere near that kind of money.’
‘The wife and you aren’t skilled mechanics, Gwilym. A trained man and boy worked on your van for three days and nights, including Sunday and that’s double time. You were the one who told us it was a rush job. “Couldn’t be without it for Wednesday market” was what I believe you said on Sunday when the mechanic picked it up from your place.’
Seeing he was beaten, Gwilym eyed Ronnie sideways, then scratched his head thoughtfully. ‘Tell you what, seeing as how it’s you, and you were so good about fixing it in time for tomorrow morning, how about I give you half a cow. I’ve got a bit of a thing going with the slaughterhouse and they’ll always kill the odd animal for me as a favour when I’ve a few unexpected bills to pay.’
‘We’re not into the black market, Gwilym.’
‘I’m not saying you are, but like everyone else, you’ve got family.’
‘Not one big enough to eat half a cow before it goes off.’
‘Make it a whole cow and you have a deal, Gwilym.’ William said suddenly.
‘Will …’
‘That’s daylight robbery!’ Gwilym exclaimed indignantly.
‘A whole cow or we keep the van.’ William deliberately refused to meet Ronnie’s eye. ‘And,’ he smiled, ‘not an odd cow either, Gwilym. One of your best beef bullocks will do.’
‘I can sell those for twenty-five guineas.’
‘In that case sell it and give us the money,’ Ronnie interrupted.
‘You have to be careful these days. There’s people watching all the time: Jealous buggers who won’t think twice about shopping a mate if there’s a reward in it for them.’
‘Exactly, and if we’re running the risk of getting caught we’ll need extra to cover that risk,’ William stated firmly.
‘You’ll not be wanting the head and the innards?’
‘The whole cow, Gwilym, or the deal’s off. How soon can you deliver?’
‘To here?’
‘The slaughterhouse. We’ll take it from there.’
‘They do their specials on Thursday night.’
‘In that case, I’ll expect to go to the slaughterhouse on Friday morning and arrange delivery of my meat.’
‘That’s a lot of meat. If you need any help to get it off your hands –’
‘No help, Gwilym. Here.’ William stepped forward and picked up the invoice. Unscrewing the cap from Ronnie’s pen he wrote, Full payment to be received in cash by the first Saturday after the above date or van to be repossessed in lieu of payment. ‘There, that makes it nice and legal, now all you have to do is sign that and you can drive away.’
‘Bloody highway robbery, that’s what this is,’ Gwilym grumbled, but he took the pen.
‘We’ll still take cash on Saturday.’
‘Your cow will be there, first thing Friday morning but they’ll be wanting it out of the slaughterhouse quick. The meat inspector’s no fool and he never lets on when he’s coming.’
‘We’ll take it out, don’t worry. Ronnie, give the man his keys. Nice doing business with you, Gwilym.’ William offered his hand. Still grumbling the farmer hesitated before taking it and walking through the door.
William went to the window. Taking his handkerchief from his pocket he cleaned a small hole in the grimy glass and watched Gwilym drive away. ‘We’re going to do it, Ronnie. We’re going to catch up with all the bastards who’ve been sitting nice and safe and cosy in Pontypridd making a fortune on the black market while the Nazis have been using us as live targets. There may be quick money to be made during a war but there’s still some to be made in reconstruction. This is going even better than I thought it would.’
‘Better!’ Ronnie brushed the horsehair stuffing off his trousers that had leaked out of the chair he’d been sitting on, and joined William at the window. ‘What are we going to do with a whole cow including head and innards?’
‘Think about it, Ronnie. Who do we know who sells food and can cook it on the premises?’
‘The cafés and Alma, but the girls ran the café and restaurant legally during the war and Angelo hasn’t put a foot wrong since he’s come back. I’ll not have my brothers running the risk of prosecution just because you’ve done a dodgy deal, Will.’
‘I thought you’d opted out of running the cafés.’
‘I’m still head of the family. If Angelo takes any of your meat I’ll take a walk up to the police station myself.’
‘You weren’t so fussy in Italy .. .’
‘Because Italy was a bloody shambles. There weren’t any police to chase up black marketeers and even if there had been, there weren’t any prosecutors to prosecute. Haven’t you read the Pontypridd Observer since we’ve come back? At least half a dozen cases of black market dabblers are tried every week.’
‘That doesn’t mean we’re going to be one.’
‘You not me. I’ve two kids and a sick wife to think about. I’m having nothing to do with this.’
‘You’ll take half the profits.’
‘I’ll take no more than what it takes to clear Gwilym
’s bill.’
‘Not even if I sell at double the price of the bill to Alma?’
‘Not even if you sell at ten times the price. But I warn you now, Will, Alma hasn’t got where she is by bucking the system. You start poking around in Gwilym and the slaughterhouse manager’s “special business”, and you’ll find yourself standing in the dock alongside them.’
Chapter Ten
‘My letter to the MP worked,’ Tony announced as he sat down to tea with Gina, Luke, Roberto and his mother. ‘He must have moved Gabrielle’s name up one of the lists because she’s arriving in London next Wednesday.’
His mother paled as she picked up a tureen from the table. ‘Mashed potato?’ She dolloped a large spoonful on Tony’s plate.
‘Did you hear what I said, Mama? Gabrielle –’
‘We all heard, Tony. Luke, take three sausages not two. You need your strength working down that pit.’
‘I’ll be going up to London to meet her.’
‘As long as you don’t expect any of us to go with you. We can’t afford train tickets let alone the waste of good working time.’ Mrs Ronconi forked three sausages on to Tony’s plate. ‘Pass Luke the gravy boat, Roberto.’
‘The wedding –’
‘I said I would arrange it and I will; a beautiful one you can be proud of. Do you know if she has a dress and a veil, or will we have to find one? Perhaps Laura’s would fit her. You poor girl,’ Mrs Ronconi looked down fondly on Gina, ‘getting married in that terrible registry office on the day I took the little ones to Birmingham. You had to make do with that awful costume.’
‘It wasn’t awful, Mama, it was new.’
‘Wartime!’ Mrs Ronconi scoffed. ‘Poor you and poor Tina. Both married in ordinary clothes in an office, not a church, and Tina without a soul from her family except you and Luke there. And now here I am arranging a beautiful wedding for a German. But you don’t have to remind me, Tony. I promised God, you and this German a beautiful wedding and you will have one. I only hope Diana’s head will mend in time for her to see it.’
Tony had the grace to stare down at his plate as Gina and Luke exchanged glances.
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