‘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 mouth-watering 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 co
mmotion 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.’
‘I wouldn’t trust you to,’ Ronnie rejoined.
‘Then who is?’ Angelo demanded.
‘Tina, and before you say another word, think of Tony. He’ll have to manage both the counter and the tables for half an hour.’
‘But Ronnie, you promised I could go to the penny rush this week. You promised.’
‘Just stop your griping and get on with it, will you? It’s time all three of you learned to cope on your own for five minutes.’
‘Ronnie ...’
‘One more word out of you, Angelo, and you’ll be working every night next week.’ He looked at the girls. ‘When you hear the horn, get Maud ready. I’ll come in and carry her outside.’
‘Thanks, Ronnie.’ Diana was grateful to him for not making her beg for the lift. She finally picked up her tea from the counter and sugared it.
‘There’s no need to thank me. I owe Will a favour. And you,’ he glared at Tina. ‘Take a good look at these two and think twice before you try to nag Papa or me into letting you leave home again.’
‘See what you’ve done, Diana,’ Tina hissed as Ronnie went out. ‘Now they’ll never let any of us leave home.’
‘Except to visit our grandmother in the back end of Italy,’ Angelo crowed. He’d never had any desire to leave Pontypridd.
‘Don’t you dare go rubbing it in, Angelo Ronconi,’ Tina snapped.
‘Leaving home’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Is it kid?’ Diana helped Maud to sit up while looking around for Wyn. She wanted to thank him. The first familiar face in Pontypridd had shown her that she no longer had to shoulder the problem of Maud’s illness alone. But she couldn’t see him anywhere.
Maud closed her eyes again, too weak even to voice agreement with Diana. At that moment she would have given every penny that she’d managed to save since September to turn the clock back two years. She wanted to be fourteen again. Curled up in her big, warm, comfortable, flannel-sheeted double bed, a stone footwarmer at her feet, and her big sister Bethan to soothe and cuddle her. But Bethan wasn’t home, and before she’d be allowed go to bed she’d have to face her mother. One glance at the apprehension on Diana’s face was enough to tell her that she wasn’t the only one dreading the encounter.
Chapter Two
‘You’re going the wrong way,’ Diana protested, struggling to prevent Maud from falling on to Ronnie as he swung the Trojan around a sharp left turn a third of the way up the Graig hill. Ronnie had insisted on sandwiching Maud on the bench seat between them, but with Maud still teetering on the point of collapse, Diana was finding the drive up the hill more of a strain than the train journey.
‘I’m stopping off at Laura and Trevor’s,’ Ronnie announced. ‘What’s the point in having a sister married to a doctor if you don’t make use of him occasionally?’ The eldest of eleven children, he was accustomed to making decisions and assuming authority. Authority strengthened by the business responsibilities his father had thrust upon him at an early age, and his mother’s habit of deferring to him almost as much as she deferred to her husband.
‘I think Maud should go straight home to bed,’ Diana said forcefully.
‘And I think she needs to see a doctor,’ Ronnie countermanded, swinging the van round to the right and pulling up outside a low terrace of stone houses that fronted directly on to the pavement. ‘And if you’re worrying about Trevor’s bill, don’t. Your uncle pays Trevor his penny a week same as all the other families on the Graig. Trevor won’t charge him any more for looking at Maud now.’
‘I didn’t think he would.’ Diana flung open the door of the van and turned to help Maud, but Ronnie had already lifted her cousin from the van. Cradling Maud in one arm, he opened the front door of one of the houses with his free hand.
‘Laura!’ he shouted, walking straight past the parlour, down the narrow passage and into the back kitchen.
‘Ronnie?’ Laura answered from the range where she was stirring a pot of stew. ‘I am honoured,’ she said sarcastically. ‘What brings you here in the middle of the day, and a market day at that ... Dear God!’ She stepped back, dropping the spoon to the floor as Ronnie carried Maud into the tiny room and set her down in an easy chair comfortably placed in front of the fire.
‘She’s ill,’ Ronnie announced somewhat superfluously as Laura, still very much the nurse despite her new status of housewife, loosened the collar of Maud’s coat and checked her temperature by laying her cool hand against Maud’s flushed cheek. She looked up and nodded to Diana, who was hovering awkwardly in the passageway just outside the kitchen door. Seeing condemnation where none was intended in Laura’s glance, Diana forced back the tears that were stinging the back of her eyes.
‘The Infirmary didn’t work out then?’ Laura asked.
Diana shook her head.
‘They’ve just come in on the Cardiff train,’ Ronnie explained briefly. ‘Maud fainted in the station so I thought it might be as well if Trevor took a look at her before I take her home.’
‘He’s in the Central Homes.’ Laura glanced up at a smart black modern clock on the wall. ‘I’ll telephone and see if I can get hold of him. Morning ward rounds should be about finishing by now. I’m sure he’ll be able to spare a few minutes.’
‘I’m fine,’ Maud murmured faintly.
‘I can see just how fine you are, my girl,’ Laura said in a calm voice that reminded Maud of her sister Bethan. ‘I’ll telephone. Diana, get your hat and coat off and make us all some tea.’
Diana did as she was asked, while Laura went into the hall. Ronnie sat in the easy chair at the opposite end of the range to Maud’s. He pulled the Pontypridd Observer out from behind the cushion at his back, propped his feet up on a kitchen chair, and began to read.
Diana bustled around, checking the kettle was full, lifting cups down from the dresser, all the while marvelling that Laura – the Laura she’d known ever since she could remember – had a telephone in her house, and a doctor for a husband.
‘Trevor will be here in five minutes.’ Laura wiped her hands on her overall and checked her reflection in the bevel-edged mirror that hung above the table. She had to lean over the table in order to do so: there wasn’t much free space to move around in between the range, easy chairs, dresser, table and kitchen chairs.
‘Bride primping for hubby?’ Ronnie teased, peering over the top of the paper.
‘Just checking to see I don’t look as scruffy as you.’ Laura kicked the chair out from under Ronnie’s feet. ‘And don’t treat my home like a dosshouse,’ she ordered.
‘Tea’s poured,’ Diana interrupted. The fights between the Ronconis, particularly the two eldest, were legendary on the Graig.
‘Is it sugared and stirred?’ Ronnie extended his hand from behind his paper.
‘You paralysed, or what?’ Diana retorted.
‘Just looking after my driving arm.’
Conscious that Ronnie had only ferried them half-way up the hill, Diana heaped three sugars into the tea, stirred it and handed it to him.
‘Maud, do you want some tea?’ Laura asked in the slightly loud voice that nurses on public wards usually adopt when talking to their patients.
Heaving for breath, Maud shook her head.
‘Laura, I’m home.’ The door banged and Trevor strode into the house. Not quite up to Ronnie’s six-foot mark, he was dark and slightly built. His thin face flushed with pride as he looked briefly at his wife before turning to Diana and Maud.
‘Back already from the Infirmary?’
‘It didn’t work out,’ Diana muttered, embarrassed by the constant repetiti
on of her and Maud’s failure.
‘The Infirmary’s hard on junior doctors,’ Trevor said kindly, ‘but I’ve heard it’s even harder on ward maids.’ He glanced at Ronnie. It’s good to see you, Ronnie, you should come down more often.’
‘I would if dear sister didn’t live here.’ Ronnie finished his tea, stood up and stretched. ‘I’ve been meaning to check the oil in the van for days. Give me a shout when you’re ready to go, Diana. See you Trevor, Laura.’ He closed the door behind him.
Trevor took Maud’s pulse while Diana squeezed another cup of tea out of the pot for him. ‘Looks like you’ve had too much work, not enough food and nowhere near enough rest.’ Trevor released his hold on Maud’s wrist.
‘They said it was consumption,’ she said flatly, taking deep breaths in an effort to stop coughing.
‘Did they take an X-ray?’ he asked.
‘They X-rayed all of us twice. Once when we started in September, and again last week,’ Diana answered for her.
‘And they asked you to go after they had the results of last week’s tests?’
‘Yes,’ Maud whispered.
‘How long have you been coughing like this?’
‘For a couple of weeks,’ Maud mumbled vaguely.
He wrapped his hand around her fist, and forced her fingers open. Diana’s sodden and bloody handkerchief lay in her palm. ‘And how long have you been coughing up blood?’ he asked quietly.
‘A week, perhaps two,’ she replied reluctantly.
‘Home for you, young lady,’ Trevor decreed. ‘Warm room, warm bed, and plenty of rest. Tell your mother I’ll be up as soon as I’ve finished in the hospital for the day.’
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Who’s the doctor here, me or you?’ He looked at Diana. ‘You’ll see she behaves herself?’
‘I tried my best the whole time we were in the Infirmary. I’m not likely to stop now,’ Diana replied. She felt as though the whole world were blaming her for the state Maud was in.
‘I’ll give Ronnie a shout.’ Laura opened the door. ‘Tell Mrs Powell I’ll call in and see her when I come up to visit Mama.’
Pontypridd 02 - One Blue Moon Page 2