A coughing fit shook her thin frame, jolting her sharply back into the present. Lifting her sodden handkerchief to her stained lips, she looked around the railway carriage in bewilderment.
‘Off on a fancy again? With Robert Donat instead of that porter, I hope,’ Diana said caustically. ‘Here, you’re hopeless.’ Seeing the state of Maud’s handkerchief she pulled a crumpled white cotton square out of her coat pocket.
‘I can’t take yours. I’ll stain it, and it won’t wash out,’ Maud gasped breathlessly.
‘Then I’ll just have to bleach it before I put it in the wash, won’t I?’ Diana thrust the handkerchief impatiently into Maud’s hand. ‘Here. Yours is soaking.’ She rummaged in her coat pocket, found an empty triangular sweet bag and held it out.
‘Thanks.’ Maud dropped her bloodstained handkerchief into the bag as she turned to stare out of the rain-spattered window. All her carefully nurtured romantic images had fled. Unable to rekindle the sense of exoticism, she despised herself for her foolish fancies. Looking the way she did, a tramp wouldn’t waste time on a second glance, let alone Clark Gable.
As she closed her eyes again, another, darker image came to mind. A winter’s scene. Cold, dismal. Rain noisily spattering the bark and dead leaves of the skeletal trees that laced the grey skies above Glyntaff cemetery. On the ground, vibrant splashes of white and red flowers piled next to a mound of freshly dug earth - would they have to be wax flowers if it was winter? The headstone in the mason’s yard close to the gate, already chiselled and embossed with shiny new black Gothic lettering
Here lies Maud Powell
Cut down in the full flush of youth
Aged 16 in 193-
Nineteen thirty what? Would it be this year’s date, or next? Would she live to see the New Year in? If she did there’d be Christmas to look forward to. Her father nearly always managed to get a chicken, and she could hang up her stocking...
‘Almost there,’ Diana observed briskly, shattering Maud’s lachrymose thoughts as moss-green hills crowned by precarious pyramids of black slag began to roll sedately past.
‘Unfortunately,’ Maud snapped with unintentional harshness as she was prised from the tragic scenario of her own funeral.
‘Well, it might not be the homecoming we dreamed of when we left for Cardiff, but at least it is a homecoming,’ Diana commented philosophically, buttoning the old red wool coat that she’d “turned” at the beginning of winter.
‘I’m dreading telling everyone that Matron asked me to leave.’
‘You won’t have to say a word,’ Diana reassured her bleakly.
‘One look at you will be enough. You’re in no fit state to be a patient in the Royal Infirmary, let alone a ward maid.’
‘If I get better, they will take me back, won’t they?’ Maud demanded, struggling for breath.
‘If you’ve any sense left, you won’t ask,’ Diana retorted. ‘No one with a brain in their head would want to work as a skivvy in that place.’
‘It wasn’t that bad,’ Maud protested. ‘And they would have taken us on as trainee nurses when we were seventeen.’
‘You, perhaps, Miss Goody Two-Shoes, not me.’ Seeing despondency surface in Maud’s face yet again, Diana reached out and touched her cousin’s hand. ‘A couple of months’ rest at home, in the warm, in front of the fire, and you’ll be right as rain,’ she asserted boldly, hoping she sounded more convincing than she felt. ‘Then if you really want to carry on scrubbing floors, emptying bedpans and cleaning lavatories for the rest of your life, I’m sure they’d welcome you back with open arms.’
‘I didn’t like that side of it any more than you did,’ Maud countered irritably. ‘But it was a way into nursing, and all I’ve wanted since Bethan passed her exams was to be a nurse like her.’
‘Little sister, big sister! Well thank God I’ve no one’s footsteps to follow in except dear brother William’s, and as he’s an absolute waster, that leaves the coast clear for me to do as I like.’ Diana deliberately chose not to mention her mother, Megan, who was in jail for handling stolen goods. ‘And before you go all noble, sacrificial and Florence Nightingale on me, remember, even Bethan got out of it as soon as she could.’
‘After she qualified, and only when she married,’ Maud remonstrated.
‘Aha! So that’s it. You want to marry a doctor. Well it beats me how Bethan managed to hook one. The nearest I ever got to the almighty breed was to scrub their dirty bootmarks off the floor after they’d passed by. A long time after they’d passed by,’ she qualified sourly.
‘I do hope Bethan’s taking care of herself,’ Maud murmured absently. ‘It’s bad enough having to live amongst strangers in London, but being pregnant as well must be horrible.’
‘She’s better off than most with a doctor for a husband.’ Diana rose to her feet and lifted down their shabby and threadbare gladstones from the knotted string rack above their heads. ‘He’ll bring home enough to keep her in the lap of luxury. Bet he even buys her roses and chocolates on pay night, which is more than you and me’ll ever have if we don’t pull our fingers out and start looking for something better than that porter you got mixed up with in the Infirmary,’ she added practically.
‘I wasn’t mixed up with him!’
‘No, you only held his hand every time you thought no one was looking.’
‘He was so far from home, and lonely.’
‘And you’re a sucker for a corny line.’
‘I am not!’ Maud gasped indignantly.
‘Jock Maitlin was a self-righteous, self-seeking, selfish clot, who wanted someone to wash his dirty socks, and you didn’t even wait for him to ask.’
‘Diana, everyone knows how helpless men are.’
‘And helpless they’ll remain while there are idiots like you willing to run after them. Look, we’re here.’ Diana turned away from Maud and gathered up her handbag.
Maud rose unsteadily to her feet, succumbed to yet another vicious coughing fit that lent unhealthy colour to her face, and sank weakly down on the seat again. Diana flung open the door, threw out their bags and looked back at her cousin.
‘Here, grab my arm!’ she commanded ungraciously. ‘The guard’s about to blow the whistle, and I’ve no intention of carrying on up to Trehafod.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Maud whispered hoarsely, as she clutched Diana’s sleeve and stumbled out on to the platform.
‘Oh God, what am I going to do with you?’ Diana griped as, ignoring their bags, she struggled to dump Maud on a bench set against the wall of the refreshment bar. Maud had no voice left to apologise a second time. She fell on to the grubby seat and continued to cough into Diana’s now bloody handkerchief.
‘Damn! There’s not a soul around we know,’ Diana cursed, as she scanned the crowds that were leaving the train and pushing their way past the ticket collector’s booth at the top of the wide, steep stone flight of stairs that led down into the station yard. ‘And it’s raining cats and dogs,’ she continued to moan, brushing away the raindrops that were falling on to her head from the high roof of the open platform. ‘Well you’ll just have to jolly well sit there while I carry the bags,’ she asserted forcefully, abandoning Maud and picking up their luggage. ‘I’ll leave them downstairs, and come back up for you.’
‘I’ll take your bags, Miss.’
Diana stared coolly at the young, scrawny, ginger-haired porter.
‘I haven’t any money to tip you,’ she said bluntly.
‘I’d settle for a kiss,’ he grinned cheekily.
‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ Diana retorted.
‘Visit to the pictures tonight, then? Dutch treat.’
‘I’d sooner go out with...’ The whistle blew and the sound of the steam engine drowned out the rest of Diana’s words, which was probably just as well.
‘Why don’t you stick to old ladies, Pugh, and leave the young ones to those experienced enough to deal with them?’ A squarebuilt, thickset porter elbowed Pugh aside and sw
ept Diana’s bags from her hands.
‘Here, where do you think you’re going?’ she shouted furiously.
‘Station yard,’ he called back glibly, running smartly down the stone steps.
‘Men!’ Diana gripped her handbag firmly in her left hand, and offered her right to Maud.
‘I’m sorry for being such a trouble,’ Maud wheezed from behind the handkerchief she still clutched to her mouth.
‘For pity’s sake stop apologising,’ Diana snapped.
‘Diana... I...’ Black mists swirled upwards from Maud’s feet. The grey stone platform spotted with black coal smuts, the mass of ill-dressed women and damp, red-nosed children revolved headily around her. She slumped forward.
‘She’s in a bad way,’ the young porter observed tactlessly as he struggled to catch Maud’s head before it hit the flagstones. ‘Consumption, is it?’
‘Of course it’s bloody consumption,’ Diana raged as the anger she’d barely managed to hold in check all morning finally erupted. ‘Any fool can see that.’
‘She looks just like my older sister did before she went.’ For all of his slender build, the boy scooped Maud high into his arms. ‘She died last year,’ he added forlornly.
Diana heard what he said, but her temper had risen too high for her to think of commiserating on his loss.
‘Is there anyone meeting you?’ he asked, as he carried Maud down the steps.
‘No one,’ Diana said flatly. ‘Our family don’t even know we’re on our way home.’
‘There’s usually a taxi waiting in the yard.’
‘Do we look as though we’ve money to pay for a taxi?’ she demanded hotly.
‘Have you far to go?’
‘The top of the Graig hill.’
‘I could always carry her to the Graig hospital. It’s only around the corner.’
‘I do know where the Graig hospital is. I’ve lived here all my life, and I’m not putting her’ - she pointed at Maud- ‘in any TB ward. There’s only one way they come out of there, and that’s feet first, in a box.’
The boy turned white; Diana’s bluntness conjured up painful images of his sister’s death and funeral. Images that constantly hovered too close to consciousness for peace of mind.
‘She needs help,’ he emphasised bitterly. Turning left at the foot of the steps he walked swiftly through the rain into the shelter of the booking hall.
‘What do you think you’re doing, Pugh?’ the porter who’d carried Diana’s bags down demanded.
‘Young lady passed out cold.’
‘Yes well, that’s as may be. But now you’d better leave her to me and get back on to the platform before you’re missed. I’ll call you a taxi, Miss,’ he smirked at Diana.
‘You most certainly won’t,’ Diana said fiercely. She thought quickly. If her brother William’s friend Giacomo ‘Ronnie’ Ronconi was working in his family’s café on the Tumble, his Trojan van wouldn’t be far, and once he saw the state Maud was in he could hardly refuse to drive them up the hill. ‘Carry her across to Ronconi’s café,’ she ordered Pugh, as she picked up her bags from the older porter’s feet. ‘Ronnie’s a friend of ours. He’ll see us home.’
‘Pugh, you know you’re not allowed to leave station yard during working hours,’ the older porter lectured, ruffled by Diana’s offhand dismissal of his services.
‘That’s all right. I’ll take the lady from here.’ A tall thickset man with light brown curly hair, who for all of his size, weight and athletic build had a soft feminine look about him, lifted Maud from Pugh’s arms.
‘Wyn Rees!’ Forgetting her brother’s antipathy to Rees the sweetshop’s son, who was more commonly known in the town as ‘Rees the queer’, Diana hugged him out of sheer joy at seeing a familiar face. ‘Where did you spring from?’
‘Saw the commotion as I was on my way back to the shop from the post office,’ Wyn explained. ‘Dear God, Maud’s lost weight!’ he exclaimed, shifting her to a more comfortable position. ‘What have you two been doing to yourselves in Cardiff?’
‘Working ourselves to the bone.’
‘So I see. Did I hear you say you wanted to go to Ronnie’s?’
Diana nodded.
Tenting his coat over Maud’s head, he walked out of station yard and crossed the road quickly, avoiding a milk cart laden with churns that came rattling down the Graig hill at full tilt. Sidestepping a couple of boys on delivery bicycles, he pushed through a gawping group of gossiping women, and into the café.
Struggling with the two gladstones, Diana failed to keep up with him. By the time she’d opened the café door, Tina Ronconi, Ronnie’s sister, had taken Maud from Wyn, uprooted two customers, stretched Maud out across their chairs and was bathing her temples with cold water.
Hot, steamy air, and mouthwatering warm aromas of freshly ground coffee and savoury frying blasted welcomingly into Diana’s face as she dropped her bags and closed the door. The interior of the café was dark, gloomy and blessedly, marvellously, familiar. A long mahogany counter dominated the left-hand side of the room, with matching shelves behind it, backed by an enormous mirror that reflected the rear of the huge mock-marble soda fountain, and stone lemon, lime and sarsaparilla cordial jars. A crammed conglomeration of glass sweet jars, open boxes of chocolate bars, carefully piles packets of cigarettes, cups, saucers and glass cases of iced and cream cakes filled every available inch of space on the wooden shelves.
She paused and listened for a moment, making out the distinctive voice of her old schoolfriend, Tony Ronconi, as it drifted noisily above the din of café conversation from behind the curtained doorway that led into the unseen recesses of the kitchen. All the tables she could see were taken. They were every Saturday morning, especially those around the stove that belched warmth into the ‘front’ room of the café. Through the arched alcove she could see a tram crew huddled round the open fire in the back area, shoes off, feet on fender drying their soaking socks.
‘I see you looked after Maud all right?’ Ronnie, the eldest and most cynical of the second generation of Ronconis, called from behind the counter where he was pouring six mugs of tea simultaneously.
‘I’d like to see you look after anyone where we’ve come from, Ronnie Ronconi,’ Diana scowled, moving the bags out of the doorway and closer to the chairs Maud was lying on.
‘Here,’ Ronnie pushed a cup of tea and the sugar shaker across the counter towards her. ‘Tony?’ he called out to the brother next in line to him, who was working in the kitchen. ‘Take over for me.’
‘Who’s going to do the vegetables for the dinners if I have to work behind the counter?’ Tony asked indignantly as he appeared from behind the curtain. ‘Angelo can’t. He’s still washing breakfast dishes. At half speed,’ he added. Noticing Diana for the first time, he smiled and nodded to her.
‘It’s only ten o’clock,’ Ronnie countered, quashing his brother’s complaints. ‘Papa and I used to get out seventy dinners in two and half hours on a Saturday in High Street with no help, and only an hour’s preparation. Time you learnt to do the same, my boy.’
Maud began to cough.
‘Prop her up, you stupid girls,’ Ronnie shouted at his sister and Diana. ‘Can’t you see she’s choking?’ Lifting himself on the flat of his hands he swung his long, lithe body easily over the high counter. He pushed his hand beneath Maud’s back and eased her into a sitting position. Startled by how light she was, he failed to stop the shock from registering on his face. He looked up. Diana was watching him. ‘I’ve seen more meat on picked chicken bones,’ he commented. ‘Didn’t they feed you in the Infirmary?’
‘Slops and leftovers, and not enough of those,’ Diana said harshly.
‘You back for the weekend, Diana?’ Tina asked brightly in a clumsy effort to lighten the atmosphere generated by Ronnie’s insensitive questioning.
‘No, back for good,’ Diana said flatly.
‘Job didn’t work out then?’ Tina asked.
‘They gave us all
a medical yesterday. Afterwards they told Maud she was too ill to work. Swines handed over her wages along with her cards. I could hardly let her come home on her own.’
‘Language!’ Ronnie reprimanded. ‘If you were my sister I’d drag you into the kitchen and scrub your mouth out with washing soda.’
‘Then it’s just as well I’m not your sister.’
‘One more word from you, young lady, and I’ll put you outside the door.’
Diana fell silent. Although Ronnie was eleven years older than her, and more her brother’s friend than hers, she knew him well enough. He wasn’t one for making idle threats, and she was too worried about Maud to risk being parted from her now, when they were so close to home.
‘They only told Maud to leave yesterday?’ Ronnie demanded incredulously as he brushed Maud’s fair curls away from her face with a gesture that was uncommonly tender, for him.
‘It was as much as they could do to let us sleep in our beds in the hostel last night. New girls took over from us today.’
‘Maud didn’t get like this in a day or two, I know.’
‘She never was very strong,’ Diana insisted defensively. ‘And as soon as the weather turned really cold, she got worse.’
‘Stop talking about me as if I wasn’t here,’ Maud murmured, consciousness coinciding with yet another coughing fit.
‘See what you get for trying to talk?’ Ronnie unpinned the corners of the tea towel he was wearing round his waist and flung it at Tony. ‘I’m going to get the Trojan out of the White Hart yard. You’ll have to hurry the dishes and do the vegetables as well Angelo,’ he ordered his fifteen-year-old brother, who was peeking out from behind the kitchen curtain to find out what all the commotion was about.
‘I was going to the penny rush in the White Palace. Why should I do Tony’s jobs as well as my own?’ he complained.
‘Because Tony’s needed behind the counter, and because I’m telling you to,’ Ronnie said forcefully.
‘Well I’m not doing the cooking as well.’ Angelo slammed the pile of tea plates he was holding on to the counter. ‘And that’s final.’
Pontypridd 01 - Hearts of Gold Page 49
