‘I believe that is an example of what is known as British humour, Lieutenant,’ David Ford informed him as everyone else in the room burst out laughing.
‘Bad taste, but meant as a joke,’ Ronnie smiled disarmingly.
‘Well I’m ready to kick Jerry’s ass … begging your pardon, ladies.’
‘That’s some military machine you’re ready to take on.’
‘And what would you know about the Germans, stuck here in Pontypridd, Mr Ronconi?’
‘Ronnie fought with the partisans in Italy,’ Diana asserted, furious at George’s assumption that the Americans were the only fighting men in the room. ‘He was badly wounded …’
‘Not that badly.’ Ronnie took the coffee Megan handed him. ‘This smells wonderful,’ he complimented her, hoping to change the subject.
‘Do you speak Italian?’ David asked.
‘What do you think, with a surname like Ronconi?’
‘My sergeant is a Morelli, but his Italian isn’t up to first-grade standard.’
‘We spoke it at home,’ Tina volunteered. ‘Both our parents were Italian-born.’
The conversation moved on, but Bethan caught David Ford looking at Ronnie more than once afterwards. She had a feeling that he’d filed away the fact that Ronnie was bilingual and had fought with the partisans, but with the front in North Africa she really couldn’t see what possible relevance the information might have.
After the younger children had been bathed and put to bed, the evacuees returned from Sunday school and followed them upstairs. George Rivers and the colonel disappeared, David Ford to work, George out of the house, but Maurice Duval and Dino Morelli stayed in the drawing room. Tina opened the piano and roped the Americans in for a sing-song. Using her lack of musical talent as an excuse, Bethan cleared the dishes. She was crossing the hall with a loaded tray when Tomas D’Este walked in.
‘You look exhausted,’ she said.
‘I confess I’m beat. I’d forgotten just how tiring a fifteen-hour stint of surgery can be.’
‘I’ll make you something to eat, sir,’ Dino offered, as he walked through with a second tray.
‘As you’re the only one with any pretence to a voice, don’t you dare leave the drawing room,’ Bethan said. She had noticed that the sergeant hadn’t left her aunt’s side all afternoon, and anyone who could take Megan’s mind off William’s protracted silence for more than five minutes had to be a miracle worker. ‘I’ll make the captain something. I’ll be glad of the excuse to talk shop and brush up on my knowledge of surgical techniques.’
‘It’s my job.’
‘And I’m relieving you of it, Sergeant. This way, Captain.’ She opened the kitchen door.
‘Anything will do. As soon as I’ve eaten, I’m for bed. In ten hours I start all over again.’
‘There’s that many casualties?’
‘Not so many recent ones, thank God, although we’ve had a few in from the Dieppe disaster.’ He sat at the table. ‘The boys with burns are the worst. Your flyers paid dearly for the Battle of Britain victory.’
‘But you can do something for them?’
‘We can’t repair blinded eyes, but we can mend damaged bones and graft new skin over the worst disfigurements. Success depends on the degree of injury. Hello again,’ he greeted Jane as she walked in with a fistful of enamel mugs.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt, I’ve just collected these from upstairs.’
‘It looks as though they’ve had a party up there. Be an angel and wash them for me please, Jane, while I heat up some of Maisie’s rabbit stew for the captain?’
‘It’s Tomas, and I don’t want to eat into your, or the children’s rations.’
‘It’s to even things up. Sergeant Morelli uses any excuse to make treats for the children. And before you say anything about the meat, it’s off the coupon. The farmer’s son trapped them and gave Maisie a pair. Just between us, I think he’d like to start courting her.’
‘She’s twenty-five and he’s seventeen,’ Jane remonstrated as she ran water from the boiler set in the range into a jug.
‘That’s the age they get it worst,’ Bethan said, opening the pantry door. Ladling a generous portion of the stew from a large saucepan into a smaller one, she set it on the hob. ‘I’m fascinated by what you do.’ She opened the breadbin and extracted a gritty national loaf. ‘Just the idea of rebuilding a face seems like something out of H.G. Wells.’
‘Tremendous advances have been made in reconstructive surgery since 1939, but for every man we help, there’s half-a-dozen more we can do nothing for.’
‘But it is wonderful that you try,’ Jane interrupted. ‘I know I shouldn’t be telling you this – Official Secrets Act and all that – but I’m sure you’ve already heard that there was an explosion in one of the munitions factories here last year?’
‘Not only heard. I’ve seen some of the casualties.’
‘Jane was caught up in the blast,’ Bethan explained.
‘You weren’t hurt?’
‘I was one of the lucky ones.’
‘She only broke both her legs.’
‘At least I recovered. I just wish there was something I could do to help the ones who weren’t so fortunate, like Megan’s brother’s wife, Myrtle.’
‘There is.’ Tomas sat back as Bethan placed a tray on the table in front of him. ‘We’re desperate for volunteers to befriend the servicemen who haven’t any friends or relatives living close enough to visit them. Not just the Americans but the Canadians and British.’
‘I’d love to help too, but …’
‘… you’re working twenty-four hours a day as a district nurse, twenty as a mother and sixteen as a foster mother for evacuees, Mrs John?’
‘Not quite those hours, although sometimes it feels like it.’
‘What about you?’ He turned to Jane.
‘I only get one day off a week, and I can’t be certain when that’s going to be from one week to the next.’
‘But you could spare an hour now and again?’
‘As long as no one relied on me.’
‘That would be fine. I could put you down as a casual.’
‘What would I have to do?’
‘Talk to the patients.’
‘I’m not much of a conversationalist.’
‘Just remind them that there’s an outside world. Tell them about yourself, your daughter, anything, as long as you let them know that someone appreciates what they’ve done, and still cares what happens to them. The trouble with reconstructive surgery is that it’s usually a long job involving several operations. Anything that takes the patient’s mind off what’s happening to him has to be good. Even if it’s only for an hour a week. When’s your next day off?’
‘A week tomorrow.’
‘I’ll work out some transport.’
‘Shanks’s pony,’ Bethan suggested.
‘Pony?’ he looked up, confused.
‘Walking?’
‘A charabanc picks up the volunteers in town every day, and I’d be only too happy to bring you home on my motorbike, Mrs Powell. That is if you don’t mind riding pillion?’ He smiled at Jane as Bethan laid the stew in front of him.
Chapter Seven
A grey, January Sunday afternoon was threatening to turn into an even colder, murkier Sunday night as Captain Richard Reide escorted Anthea down the steep hill that led from the Common into town.
‘That was some meal your mother organised.’
‘Christmas leftovers.’
‘Didn’t taste like any leftovers to me.’ He shifted the umbrella he was holding over both of them, pushing it against the wind that was driving the rain into their faces. ‘What are these church socials like?’
‘Boring.’
‘Then why are we going?’
‘Because there’s nothing else to do in Pontypridd on a Sunday night. Nothing respectable, that is.’ Anthea brushed an imaginary fleck of dust from Richard’s greatcoat as she tighten
ed her hold on his arm.
‘What if we looked for something else?’
‘You trying to corrupt me, Captain Reide?’
‘Most definitely. But what about your parents? We told them that we’d be at the social.’
‘If they ask, I’ll say we got sidetracked.’
‘Won’t they be mad at you?’
‘Possibly, but I can handle them.’
‘I’m not so sure. Your father watches you like a hawk, and me like a buzzard. And with good reason. I know that if I was ever lucky enough to have a daughter like you I’d do exactly the same, and God help the fellow who dared ask her for a date. Every time I’d look at him, I’d remember the way I’m feeling about you right now.’
‘Then you’d frighten him off and your daughter would die an old maid. She wouldn’t thank you for that.’
‘I suppose she wouldn’t.’ Richard stopped. Drawing the umbrella closer to their heads he unbuttoned his greatcoat and reached for his cigarettes. Tapping two out of a pack he offered her one.
‘On the street?’
‘Live dangerously. Besides, no one else is crazy enough to walk out in weather like this.’
She smiled up at him as he lit it for her. ‘Do you know my father thinks you’re a fine officer and a trustworthy fellow?’
‘You sure he was talking about me?’
‘Absolutely. He said it the first time you came to dinner.’
‘Nice to know that your folks think as well of me as I do of them.’ Richard closed his gloved hand over hers and gave it a light squeeze as they turned the corner opposite the old bridge and entered the top end of Taff Street.
‘That’s better. Rain is bad but rain and wind like that is disgusting. I’m soaked through.’ Turning down the collar on her coat, Anthea shook the worst of the icy raindrops from her scarf.
‘Now we’ve decided to play hooky from the social, we have to find something else to do, preferably out of this rain.’ Richard looked up and down the deserted, blacked-out street. The only sounds were the rain teeming in the gutters and the hymn singing resounding from Tabernacle Chapel behind them.
‘You’re the gentleman, you decide.’
‘You’re the native. How about a drink?’
‘The pubs only serve travellers on Sundays.’
‘So the boys have been telling me. But we could be travellers.’
‘Only in the pubs a lady wouldn’t go into. Try it in the New Inn and we’d get thrown out. They value their licence too much to bend the rules.’
‘I’ve spent so much time in your house since I’ve been here I haven’t had time to explore the town. Are there any good but quiet bars?’
‘No, and none of any kind that open on a Sunday.’
‘The movies?’
‘The cinema, you mean. Not open on Sunday.’
‘Something has to be open on Sunday.’
‘The cafés, chapels and churches.’
‘We’ve already discounted the churches, and the cafés are out, they’re full of enlisted men. It’s bad enough facing them during working hours without socialising with them. Unfortunately Chuck’s taken our transport. The colonel’s sent him into Cardiff to – sorry, classified – so I can’t even drive you anywhere.’
‘There isn’t anywhere to drive.’
‘And it’s too cold and wet for a walk. Who suggested we leave your cosy parlour?’
‘You did.’
‘So I did. Well, as I said, Chuck’s out. I have a bottle of bourbon stashed in our rooms. I don’t suppose you’d consider keeping a guy company?’
Anthea caught her breath at the outrageousness of the suggestion. Every warning her mother had ever given her about putting herself in compromising positions with men flashed into her mind. But then, ‘men’ didn’t mean Richard. He was different – an officer and a gentleman – and it wasn’t as though she didn’t know him. He’d called on her at least once a week since the party. Her parents knew and approved of him. And, after all, she was a mature twenty-nine-year-old working woman with a responsible job, not a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl.
‘Maybe,’ she answered hesitantly, ‘but only if he behaves like a gentleman.’
‘You could tie my hands behind my back.’
‘Would I need to?’
‘You can trust me with your honour and your life, honey.’ He kissed her, grazing her cheek with his moustache. ‘Well, what are we waiting for?’ Taking her by the arm he walked her briskly up towards the fountain and his billet.
Damning British licensing laws that didn’t allow for Sunday opening, Kurt Schaffer sipped his fourth lukewarm cup of tea in Ronconi’s café and continued to watch the door. Darkness had fallen, the blackout was in place, and half the lamps had been switched off to comply with fuel-saving regulations; but in his mind’s eye he was back, dancing with Jenny in the brilliantly lit ballroom in the New Inn. Her blonde hair gleaming silver under the lamps, her lace dress glittering like a Christmas fairy’s as she dipped and swayed in time to the music. Her lips curved upwards in a smile, her blue eyes gazed into his, sending his heart pounding in anticipation of the night to come …
The dream world he’d manufactured out of that one short evening and night was more beguiling and romantic than anything he’d seen on or off a movie screen, and much more real than the café and the people around him, but he realised it wasn’t the time or place to wallow in imaginings.
Snapping out of his reverie he reached for his cigarettes. Since the night of the party he’d become obsessed with Jenny. All he could think of was seeing her, kissing her – making love to her again. And convinced that all he had to do to rouse her passion to the same fever pitch as his own was to confront her, he’d spent every free moment since the party plotting out ways to meet her again. But despite endless visits to the café, dance halls and pubs frequented by the munitions workers, weeks had passed without him seeing her, until that morning, and then he had been unable to talk to her. He had been racing through town in a Jeep with Chuck and Rick Reide and she’d been heading into Station Yard with a crowd of girls. He’d seen and recognised her silver hair even through the gloom of the blackout. Knowing that she worked in a munitions factory, and having heard somewhere that the girls were on twelve-hour shifts he realised she’d be back in town about the time he’d finish for the day.
The minute training manoeuvres were over he’d raced up to the Common to change out of his combat dress. Mrs Llewellyn-Jones had been less than cordial since the evening of the ball, despite his lying assurances that he’d had to sit up all night with a sick man. A week later she’d dropped a heavy hint that of choice, she’d exchange him for Captain Reide, who had been cultivating the entire family with the assiduous attention of a salesman out to make the ‘big’ kill.
Subsequently, she, her husband and Anthea had grown noticeably cooler towards him, with the result that he now spent as much of his off-duty time as he could out of the house. Christmas had been especially dismal. He had whiled away most of the day with the enlisted men in the basement of the Tabernacle Chapel that had been turned into a ‘British Restaurant’. But even then it had been Jenny, not his family, who had occupied most of his thoughts.
Seeing her that morning had honed his desire to the point when he physically ached to be with her. One night, and all he had been able to think of since was her. Colonel Ford had bawled him out twice on manoeuvres for not paying attention, and that was after Chuck Reynolds had covered a couple of his mistakes.
After washing and changing in record time he had spent all evening in the café, sitting, watching and waiting. A few girls had approached his table and spoken to him, but none had silver blonde hair, or could hold a candle to Jenny. He was debating whether finally to put himself out of his misery and risk another rejection by driving up the hill and knocking on her door, when the curtain moved and she walked in with a man. A tall, well-built, fair-haired man he hated on sight. He left his seat.
‘Hi,’ he greeted her
, unable to conceal his resentment.
‘Hello.’
‘It’s Lieutenant Schaffer. Remember?’
‘I remember. Alexander, this is one of the American soldiers I told you about. Lieutenant Schaffer, this is Alexander Forbes.’
‘How do you do?’
Alexander’s politeness, polished BBC accent and well-cut, though shabby clothes only served to fuel Kurt’s irritation.
‘Not so well. This country takes some getting used to.’
‘Is there anything we can do to make you feel more welcome, Lieutenant?’
‘Explain why you drink such disgusting tea and warm beer. And you can’t even get the beer on a Sunday night. There’s no movie theatres open, no dance halls, nothing for a man to do after a hard day’s work.’
‘Sundays in Wales are for chapels and churches. I’m sure you’d be made welcome in anyone of them.’ Jenny took Alexander’s arm. ‘If you’ll excuse us, Lieutenant, we’ve friends waiting.’
Kurt watched them walk into the back room where they joined another, younger couple. Tossing enough coins on to the table to cover the cost of his tea and a tip, he went outside. The rain had stopped, the moon had risen, but a chill, damp wind began to bite as he fastened his greatcoat. Hating the town – the weather – the country – the war for exiling him from the States – but most of all hating Jenny Powell – he pushed his hands into his pockets, pulled his cap over his face and headed across the road towards Station Yard.
‘Want a good time, Yank?’
‘If you do I’m the one to give it to you …’
‘Not if you like redheads.’
He peered into the darkness. ‘How much?’
‘A pound?’ answered the nearest voice.
He did a swift conversion into dollars. ‘Where’s your room?’
‘No room, but I know a quiet doorway.’
‘Forget it.’
‘All right, ten bob.’
‘No room, no go.’
‘My, aren’t we the picky one.’ Cackles of laughter followed as he walked away. Furious he kicked a ball of newspaper from his path.
‘Kurt?’
He turned around. ‘George?’
Broken Rainbows Page 11
