Past Remembering

by Catrin Collier

‘You live alone, don’t you?’ she asked, knowing full well he did from her conversations with Megan.

  ‘Have done for the last twenty years, ever since my father died.’

  ‘Aren’t you ever lonely?’ She flushed as she realised the implications of her casual remark.

  ‘Sometimes,’ he admitted. ‘But then, I’ve always tried to help Megan out with William and Diana. Diana never knew her father, and William can only just about remember him going off to war, but then Megan’s probably told you that. Megan was the only girl in our family, and the baby,’ he smiled, ‘although there’s only two years between us. When our brothers left for London, I felt it was up to me to look after her. I spent a lot of my free time with her and the children when they were growing up. Well, as much as she and the force would let me,’ he amended. ‘So in a way they’ve been my family. And, being a policeman I spend most of my working hours with people, but not always the kind I like. After a particularly hectic day a bit of peace and quiet doesn’t go amiss.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ she murmured, disappointed at his response.

  ‘Mind you, peace and quiet can’t compare with the right kind of company, like now.’ He leaned back as the waitress put two small portions of pudding in front of them. ‘There’s more breadcrumbs than apple,’ he complained.

  ‘At least what there is looks like real apple.’ Myrtle cut into the mess with a spoon. ‘And it is,’ she declared after she’d tasted it.

  ‘What were you expecting?’

  ‘Carrots. All we get for pudding in the canteen is carrots in disguise. Yesterday it was mock apricot flan, which meant they mixed them with plum jam, the day before almond flan, which turned out to be carrots soaked in almond flavouring. But then with what it’s costing in merchant seamen’s lives to bring food into the country, it’s unpatriotic to complain.’

  ‘I quite agree, so let’s toast victory.’ He lifted his coffee cup to hers. ‘Are there any shops you’d particularly like to visit?’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind taking a look at anything that’s on offer.’

  ‘Clothes?’ he asked apprehensively, cringing at the thought of trailing behind Myrtle in a lingerie department.

  ‘Food. Megan does a wonderful job with our ration cards, but if there’s anything extra or different to be had here I’d like to take a treat back.’

  ‘We’ll see what we can do.’ He took out his pocket watch and opened it. ‘The film doesn’t start for another two hours, so we’ll have plenty of time to sniff out a surprise.’ He slipped his hand into his inside pocket and pulled out his wallet before signalling to the waitress.

  ‘I’ll go and powder my nose.’ Myrtle went into the tiny toilet cubicle, opened her handbag and reached for her last bottle of pre-war eau-de-Cologne. Splashing it on to her hanky and wrists, she studied her face in the mirror then dabbed on an extra layer of powder. She had no illusions about her looks. The last twenty years had added a stone to her figure and unmistakable lines around her mouth and her eyes. Even as a young girl she had never been pretty. Before Huw, only two men had asked her out. Twenty years before, when she’d been eighteen and her mother had still been alive, she’d gone to a chapel concert with a young minister, and when she was twenty a lay preacher had taken her to a lecture on the Holy Land. Her father had insisted on meeting and interrogating both men, and neither had wanted to repeat the experience after facing him.

  At least she and Huw were talking without too many embarrassing silences, and perhaps, if she kept their friendship from her father, there would be more outings. It made no difference that her father knew and liked Huw. He liked him because he was Megan’s older brother and a policeman. The moment he found out that she had been seeing Huw alone, he’d order her to stop behaving like a lovesick schoolgirl and attend to her duties in the house. The notion of her having an independent life away from her family and home had always upset him, and it had taken all of Megan and Diana’s powers of persuasion to induce him to give his consent to her working in the factory.

  Pushing her compact and scent back into her bag, she checked the seams on her only pair of stockings and returned to the café.

  ‘Ready?’

  She followed Huw to the door, debating the best way to let him know just how much she was enjoying herself. Would it be so forward of her to tell him?

  Diana sat on the park bench, watching the seconds tick by on the gold wristwatch Wyn had presented to her to mark Billy’s birth. If Tony hadn’t offered her the option of meeting him today or tomorrow, she would have felt compelled to walk across the park to the bandstand. As it was, she couldn’t bear the thought of confronting him. Not now. Tomorrow, perhaps? After she had spoken to Wyn. But would it be better to keep Tony’s letter from her husband? After all, she had told Wyn that Tony was nothing to do with them, or their marriage.

  Her mind a turmoil of doubt and indecision she left the bench and retraced her steps over the bridge and into the town. She hesitated at the entrance to Taff Street. Where could she go? Home? Her mother would take one look at her and realise something was wrong, and the last thing she wanted was an inquisition with Wyn’s father sitting in the kitchen. Besides, her mother’s health hadn’t been strong since she had been released from prison. It wouldn’t be right to risk upsetting her by telling her the sordid truth about Billy’s real father, not when she and Wyn had worked so hard to convince both their families that everything was settled and happy between them. But she needed to talk to someone.

  Bethan was the obvious choice, but these days her cousin was either working or sleeping. She barely had time for herself, let alone anyone else. Jane – they had been close when they had both lodged in her uncle’s house before they had married, but after being bombed out, Jane had enough troubles of her own. Phyllis? She’d be busy with Brian and with Bethan’s children, and Alma would be trying to get back into the routine of running the business after her mother’s funeral.

  She had always been close to William, but she hadn’t dared tell him the real reason why she had stopped seeing Tony, for fear of what he might do to him. And he was married to Tina, Tony’s sister. There was no telling how the Ronconi girls might react if they found out they were related by blood as well as marriage to Billy.

  Hardly knowing where she was going, she turned left, heading for the Tumble and the junction of Taff and High Street. She could call into the shops, but it was too early for the banking, and she felt too restless to serve behind a counter, especially on a Monday, traditionally one of the slowest days of the week.

  She stopped outside the Tumble café. Perhaps she should call in on Will and Tina, not to tell them about her troubles, but just to talk, about something – anything – that would help take her mind off her problems. Pushing open the door she went inside. Two tram crews, both with conductresses wearing trousers, still considered a shocking sight in Pontypridd, were sitting in the back room. The front room was empty.

  ‘Diana, good to see you. Tea?’ Ronnie reached for a cup.

  She looked around: there was no sign of William or Tina but she could hardly walk out just after she’d come in. ‘Yes please.’

  ‘You look as though you’ve lost a shilling and found sixpence.’

  ‘Just at a bit of a loose end. Monday’s always slow. It’s too early to do the banking, and too late to walk home to see Billy because as soon as I got there, I’d have to turn round and come back into town.’

  ‘Things have been so slow here, I’m glad of someone to talk to.’ He poured the tea and put it on the counter. ‘Sugar?’

  ‘Two please, if you can spare them. Seen any sign of my brother?’

  ‘Your brother, no. But Tina appeared about an hour ago, piled a tray with food and disappeared upstairs. I think they’re making the most of his leave,’ he added superfluously. ‘So tell me,’ he asked, as she stared down into her tea and stirred it. ‘How’s business?’

  ‘The shops? Not too bad. Of course the sweet shop in the New Theatre is barely ti
cking over, with sugar so heavily rationed.’

  ‘But you are selling something?’

  ‘“Something” being the operative word. “Don’t ask what’s in it, just eat it” seems to be the motto in the food trade these days. The toffee and boiled sweets we stock would have been thrown in the bin before the war. It’s amazing what people will eat when there’s nothing else on offer.’

  ‘You run a pie shop as well, don’t you?’

  ‘Wyn and I have gone half-shares with Alma. She supplies us with cooked meat, brawn and pies, we own and run the shop and we’re generally sold out by midday.’

  ‘We’re so short of things to put on the menu I was wondering if she could supply us. I’ve been meaning to talk to Tina about it, but it’s pointless trying to discuss anything with her until William goes back.’

  ‘You’ll also have to check with Alma. I think she’s hard pressed to supply two shops at the moment, although she was thinking of expanding.’

  ‘The kitchen in our High Street café isn’t being used at the moment. She’s welcome to take it over if she wants to. I’ll talk to her about it when she’s had a chance to get over the funeral. She seems to be having a rough time lately.’

  ‘She’s had worse.’ Diana coloured as she recalled that the most difficult time for Alma was just before she’d married Charlie, right after Ronnie had deserted her to marry Maud. ‘Her mother had been ill for a long time, so it was expected. But to go back to the shops, Alma and I were hoping to open more places that could be run along the lines of the High Street shop, which is supply only, so your idea of utilising your kitchen in the High Street café could be a good one. But that will be up to Alma. It all depends on what stock she can get from the slaughterhouse.’

  ‘The figures will need going into. We haven’t much capital set aside. This café’s takings are down on what I remember, but like your sweet shop we’re ticking over. Seems to me that’s all any legitimate business can expect to do in wartime. More tea?’ As he turned the tap on the urn, the door opened. Diana looked up and saw Tony standing in the doorway, a thunderous expression clouding his clean-cut Italian features.

  ‘I see you’re very busy,’ he mumbled, swaying on his feet.

  ‘As busy as trade warrants,’ Ronnie answered, assuming Tony had spoken to him. ‘Can I get you anything? Black coffee, for instance?’

  ‘All I want is five minutes alone with her.’ Grabbing Diana’s wrist with one hand, he lifted the flap in the counter with the other. Too stunned to protest, Diana didn’t make a sound as he dragged her off the stool.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Ronnie remonstrated, as one of the tram drivers walked out of the back room to pay his bill.

  ‘Stay out of things that don’t concern you,’ Tony snarled.

  ‘Your brother’s in the kitchen, Diana,’ Ronnie said in a loud voice for the customers’ benefit as Tony pushed her through the swing door. Smiling at the driver, he muttered, ‘Sorry, must go. Family reunion. I’ll send someone out to take your money.’

  Jane was sitting in the back kitchen with Phyllis. Between them they’d cleaned the house, finished the washing, hung it on the line and done what little baking they could with the stores on the pantry shelves. Although they had Bethan’s two children as well as Brian and Anne, both babies were sleeping and Brian and Rachel were playing happily on the floor with a collection of old wooden trucks that had once belonged to Haydn and Eddie.

  ‘Is the mending basket still in the same place?’ Jane asked.

  ‘I haven’t found anywhere new to hide it. But you don’t have to work all the time. You’re supposed to be taking it easy so your ribs will heal.’

  ‘If I don’t do something, I’ll start screaming.’

  ‘It will be easier, once you get used to living here again.’

  ‘If you really are serious about looking after Anne for me, perhaps I ought to take up Jenny’s suggestion of working in munitions.’

  ‘And what would Haydn say about that?’

  ‘Not a lot, seeing how he isn’t here. And then again, he didn’t exactly ask me what I thought about him touring the front. In fact he didn’t even tell me he was going until the night before we came here.’

  ‘So you want to get your own back on him by working in munitions when you know he wouldn’t approve?’ Phyllis suggested gently.

  ‘I want to do something more than just sit around, cooking, cleaning and looking after Anne. Being trapped in that cellar was horrible. Everything was so dark and quiet after the bomb fell that for a long time I wasn’t sure whether I’d been deafened by the blast or killed. It was only when Anne started crying that I realised we’d been buried alive. And even then it seemed to take an eternity for them to dig us out.’

  ‘I can’t even begin to imagine what it was like,’ Phyllis said, dropping her knitting on to her lap.

  ‘I would like to help build a bomb that would do to Berlin what the Germans did to our house.’

  ‘That’s only natural, but you have to consider Haydn’s feelings. Some men hate the idea of their wives working.’

  ‘You know Haydn isn’t like that.’

  ‘I’m not so sure.’

  ‘I’ve been reading the paper,’ Jane continued, glossing over Phyllis’s suggestion of Haydn’s disapproval. ‘They say it takes seven factory workers to keep one front-line soldier supplied with arms. If we are going to win this war thousands more women are going to have to volunteer.’

  ‘Perhaps you could talk to someone at the Labour Exchange. I know, from what Myrtle Rees has said, there’s three shifts a day in the factory. They might take into account that you’re a mother and let you work part time. But I still think you ought to write to Haydn and let him know what you’re thinking of doing.’

  ‘Only if you really wouldn’t mind looking after Anne.’ Jane neatly evaded giving a direct answer. ‘Now that I can’t feed her any more, it won’t matter who gives her a bottle.’

  ‘Get well first.’ Phyllis patted her arm as she picked up the kettle and went out to the washhouse to fill it. ‘You may feel differently about the idea a few weeks from now.’

  ‘Not after losing my home and everything we owned in London.’

  ‘All I’m saying is don’t make any decisions in a hurry. It will take you a while to recover.’

  ‘And helping to put together a bomb might be just the medicine I need to get better.’

  ‘Watch the counter.’

  ‘Mr Ronconi …’

  ‘The counter,’ Ronnie repeated to the cook, ‘and take off that apron. It’s spattered with grease. Here,’ he slipped off the khaki jacket he was wearing and handed it over as the man walked past.

  ‘What do I do if anyone wants anything from the kitchen?’

  ‘Knock on the hatch.’ Ronnie closed the swing doors as soon as he left, pushing the bolt across so no one could get in. ‘You all right, Diana?’ he asked, as she sank, white-faced and dark-eyed on to a stool.

  She nodded unconvincingly. He turned to his brother who was leaning against the wall, looking as though he’d collapse without its support.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, coming into the café drunk in the middle of the day and pushing Diana around? The customers will be talking for months.’

  ‘What I do, or don’t do, is no concern of yours, big brother,’ Tony retorted belligerently, as he reached into his pocket for his hip flask.

  ‘No? You create a scene in a business that’s owned by the family. Harass a customer who happens to be Tina’s sister-in-law and a friend of all your sisters, and you think it’s none of my business?’

  ‘Friend?’ Tony mocked. ‘She’s no one’s bloody friend.’ He took a step towards Diana. As Ronnie moved between them Tony shoved him aside. Ronnie tottered unsteadily, forced to put all his weight on his crutch.

  ‘You’d better go and sleep it off in Laura’s before you make even more of a fool of yourself than you already have.’

&n
bsp; ‘Not until I’ve talked to her.’

  ‘You’re in no fit state to talk to anyone, let alone a lady.’

  ‘Now she’s a lady?’ Tony sniggered, then upended the flask into his mouth.

  ‘You’ve insulted her and me enough. Go now, before I make you.’

  ‘Make me! All you can make me do is laugh. You look like a bloody scarecrow and you haven’t even got the strength of one.’ He sidestepped as Ronnie reached out to take his flask. The crutch slipped and Ronnie went crashing to the floor, hitting his shoulder on the cooker on the way down.

  ‘Look what you’ve done now, you fool!’ Angrier with Tony for causing Ronnie pain than for manhandling her, Diana was on her knees in an instant.

  ‘He’s all right.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Ronnie protested as he struggled to his feet looking anything but.

  ‘I want … no, I demand to see my son. It’s my right -’

  ‘Get out of here, Tony, before William comes down.’ Diana helped Ronnie on to the stool she’d been sitting on. Picking up his crutch she handed it to him.

  ‘What son?’ Ronnie asked in bewilderment, as he rubbed his shoulder.

  ‘Ask the slut. That baby of hers is mine.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Diana countered forcefully as she helped Ronnie unbutton his shirt.

  ‘I can count as well as any other man. Why the hell didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘There was nothing to tell, even if you’d been in a mood to listen.’

  ‘You were my girlfriend.’

  ‘You were the one who stopped talking to me, remember?’ She peeled back Ronnie’s shirt. White shreds of skin hung from a rapidly swelling, reddened area that covered his upper arm and shoulderblade. She threw a tea towel into the stone sink and turned on the tap.

  ‘And whose fault was that?’ Tony grabbed her, pushing his face close to hers. His warm, whisky-soaked breath wafted over her. She recoiled swiftly in disgust.

  ‘It didn’t work out between us, Tony. Leave it at that.’ She wrung out the cloth and pressed it against Ronnie’s shoulder. Tony caught her arm and spun her round.