Pontypridd 02 - One Blue Moon
Page 7
Burning with temper, an unassuaged sweet tooth and self-righteous indignation, she’d run home and told her mam. Megan had hurtled down the hill to replace the money from her own meagre stock, making both boys stand in the cold for a further two hours until someone found the courage to lower another basket. But they’d never been sure that the inmates who’d paid over the pennies had been the same inmates who’d got the goods. The best part about the escapade was that William had been denied sweets for an entire month afterwards. How she’d enjoyed licking all her lollies and toffees, slowly ... very slowly ... in front of him during that month.
Still smiling, she pushed open the door of the shop. The swollen wood grated over the uneven red quarry-tiled floor, accompanying the shrill clang of the bell with a deeper resonance.
‘Diana, it’s lovely to see you back home love,’ Mr Rees, Wyn’s father, chirped cheerfully from behind his counter.
‘It’s good to be back home,’ Diana replied, feeling happy for the first time since her train had pulled into Pontypridd that morning.
‘I’ll have an apple and two cigarettes please, Mr Rees.’
‘Basket across the road?’ he wheezed as he took the coins.
‘You guessed.’
‘They’re starting early tonight. The master caught them at it a couple of weeks back and threatened to put out all the casuals.’
‘And himself out of a job?’
‘Fat chance,’ Mr Rees laughed.
‘Tell you what,’ Diana produced another penny from the depths of her damp handbag. ‘I’ll take another two Woodbines please, Mr Rees.’
‘Taken up smoking, have you, love?’
‘Something like that,’ Diana said lightly. ‘Oh and by the way, will you please thank your Wyn for me? I meant to do it myself but he disappeared before I had a chance to. He carried our Maud out of station yard over to Ronnie’s café this morning, when she fainted. I don’t know what I would have done without him.’
‘I won’t forget, love,’ he smiled with an odd expression on his sickly yellow face.
‘Thanks.’ Diana smiled as she shut the shop door behind her.
‘That one’s as soft as her mam ever was,’ Mr Rees told his next customer fondly, as he watched Diana cross the road clutching her apple and cigarettes. ‘And Megan was one in a million,’ he murmured, remembering a courtship he had begun two years after his wife’s death; it had come to an untimely end, with the appearance of Harry Griffiths on the scene.
As Diana put the apple and four cigarettes into the basket, and gave it a tug, an illogical, superstitious, almost prayer-like hope crossed her mind. Perhaps the fates – and her Aunt Elizabeth – would be kinder to her for sharing what little she had with those who had even less.
‘Haydn, fasten this for me, will you?’ Tessie Clark, one of the more ‘forward’ girls, stepped out of the grubby, sweet-smelling, communal dressing room that the female chorus shared. Her silver, sequined shorts snaked over her hips like a second skin, but the back of the matching bra flapped provocatively as she held the cups loosely over her ample bosom.
‘All the girls’ hands full in there, are they Tess?’ Haydn enquired caustically.
‘You know how it is, Haydn.’ She wriggled past him in the narrow corridor, brushing the front of his trousers with her buttocks and allowing the cups of the bra to slip below her nipples. ‘Women simply don’t have the strength to pull the edges together and button the back.’ Her warm breath wafted headily over his right ear.
‘Is that right now?’ Dropping the South Wales Echo that he’d bought for the lead comic, he gripped the edges of her bra between his forefingers and thumbs. Heaving with all his might, he pulled the straps back.
‘Ow, that hurt!’ Tessie complained playfully, wiggling her hips and batting her eyelashes coyly.
‘Women have to suffer to be beautiful, or so my girlfriend’s always telling me. There, all done. Can I get on with what I was doing now?’ he asked wearily.
‘Sneaking a whisky with Ambrose?’ she said loudly, piqued by the reference to his girlfriend.
‘Not before the show.’
‘Goody Two-shoes.’
‘Only where man-eating vampires are concerned,’ he countered, remembering this was the revue’s last night, and that if he were fortunate he’d never see Tessie again.
‘Not queer, are you?’ she taunted.
‘My girlfriend doesn’t seem to think so,’ he replied softly as he went on his way.
‘No luck, Tessie?’ One of the girls’ mocking laughter followed him along the narrow corridor.
‘Boys, they’re all the bloody same!’ Tessie muttered savagely. ‘Don’t know what to do with it.’
Haydn heard the remark as he banged on Ambrose’s door. It slid away like jelly from a spoon. None of it stuck, or hurt. Not any more. The manager of the Town Hall had warned him when he’d taken him on that the first six months would be the worst. They had been: crawling past in red-faced embarrassment, he’d answered cries for help from the girls’ dressing room, only to walk in on crowds of half-naked, giggling girls, who had nothing better to do than torment him by drumming the tips of their fingers on his flies. More than once he’d found himself running messages along the corridors with vital buttons undone. His boss had said nothing. He’d seen it all before.
And there was more than just teasing. Offers of intimacy had come thick and fast, and not only from the girls. Naturally easy-going, he’d made an effort to remain pleasant and friendly while turning them down, but his refusals hadn’t always been well received. The kinder ones gave up when they realised that they could neither embarrass nor use him; others went out of their way to humiliate him.
When he got to know variety girls better, he began to understand them. Every revue carried about four times as many girls as men. Moving to a new town every week, or at best fortnight, they spent their days bored out of their skulls, and their evenings prancing around with next to nothing on, while strange men ogled every inch of flesh that the Lord Chamberlain allowed them to bare. And no matter how they tried to live their private lives they were regarded – and treated by the locals of the towns they played – as little better than prostitutes. It wasn’t a lifestyle that allowed for sanity, or morality, but he could honestly say he’d never been tempted. Not with Jenny to go back to. Jenny who – he slammed the door shut on the painful memories of that afternoon, valiantly suppressing the urge to try to leave the theatre early so he could go knocking on her door.
As Will would say, there were plenty of other fish in the sea. And not all of them were like Tessie.
For once he wouldn’t rush home. He’d go to the last-night party, that’s if he was invited. Take a good look round. Watch the girls; not Tessie – perhaps one of the quiet ones like small, dark haired Betty. If he was lucky, word would get back to Jenny. Then she’d realise he could survive without her.
Yes that was it. He’d really give her something to think about. And for once perhaps her nagging would be justified.
Diana walked the long way round to Graig Avenue. She didn’t want to take the short cut up past Leyshon Street, and through Rhiannon Pugh’s house. One look at her old home had been enough for one day, and she’d met too many old friends and neighbours as it was. She was tired of telling people why she and Maud had left Cardiff. She couldn’t take any more sympathetic, knowing nods from women who’d soon be baking for Maud’s funeral. And it would be even worse if her aunt didn’t listen to the boys and her Uncle Evan, and threw her out. The disgrace of trying to explain why she’d moved away from Will, across town to Bonvilston Road to live with her bachelor uncle, would be the final, bitter straw.
The first thing she saw when she walked over the rise past the vicarage was her uncle’s horse and cart. He and Eddie were struggling up the steps with the spring base of Will’s old bed.
‘It seems you’re moving in then?’ Elizabeth said acidly, as Diana walked slowly up the steps behind them.
‘
I told Diana she had no choice in the matter. It would look bloody funny, a girl of her age moving in with her bachelor uncle when her brother and married uncle are living here,’ Evan panted as he and Eddie hauled the bedstead on to the doorstep.
‘I’ve a job, Aunt Elizabeth,’ Diana announced proudly, too excited to wait for a more propitious time to announce her news.
‘You’ve a what?’ Evan dropped the bedsprings on to the hall floor.
‘Don’t you dare scuff that lino, Evan Powell’ Elizabeth shouted angrily. ‘Lino doesn’t grow on trees. And with what you bring in we’ll never be able to replace it.’
‘It’s resting on my foot, woman,’ Evan snarled. ‘Where are you working?’ he asked Diana in a gentler tone, as he turned his back on Elizabeth.
‘Ben Springer’s.’
‘Oh! Oh! Oh! You’d better watch that one.’ Eddie forgot Elizabeth’s presence for a moment. ‘We may have to punch him on the nose.’
‘What do you mean?’ Diana asked, knowing full well what he meant.
‘If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you,’ Eddie mumbled, looking at the floor as his mother cast her disapproving eye on him.
‘And I’ll have none of that filthy double talk in my house, Edward Powell,’ Elizabeth ordered.
‘I can look after myself,’ Diana asserted, lifting her chin defiantly.
‘If you get any trouble from him, love, just tell me.’ Evan picked up the bed again. ‘How much is he paying you?’
‘Six bob for the moment, but he said he’d review it if I suited the job.’
‘That’s bloody slave labour,’ Eddie cursed.
‘And how much do you intend paying me out of six shillings a week?’ Elizabeth demanded, too concerned with the changes in the family’s income to chastise Eddie for swearing.
‘Whatever Will and Charlie are paying you,’ Diana said boldly. ‘I can afford to make it up until I get a pay rise. I’ve got savings,’ she said boldly.
‘They’re paying seven and six a week. Each.’ Elizabeth folded her arms and stepped aside so Evan and Eddie could move the bed on to the stairs.
‘There’s no way a slip of a girl like Diana will eat the same as those two great hulking men,’ Evan protested. ‘Four bob a week is more than fair.’
‘Evan!’ Elizabeth exclaimed.
‘I’ve spoken, Elizabeth,’ he said decisively. ‘Right, Eddie?’
Carefully, so as not to tear the twenty-year-old jute carpet on the stairs, they manhandled the bedstead into the hall and over the banisters. It was tricky manoeuvring it through the narrow passageway and into the box room, but eventually they managed it, and laid it on its side beneath the window opposite the door.
‘I don’t know where you think you’re going with all that furniture,’ Elizabeth said as she peered through the darkness at the lumpy tarpaulin on the cart. ‘That box room is full as it is.’
‘Eddie and I will empty what’s there into the attic,’ Evan said calmly, refusing to allow himself to be rattled.
‘Like as not, on top of the plasterboards, so you’ll bring the ceiling down.’
‘I hope tea is about ready, Elizabeth,’ Evan reminded her. ‘As soon as we’ve finished here, Eddie and I’ll be wanting to eat.’
Elizabeth knew when she was beaten. Muttering under her breath, she retreated to the back kitchen.
‘This room could do with a bit of a sweep out.’ Evan brushed aside the dust as he handed Eddie the first of the boxes.
‘I’ll do it.’ Diana called out from the hall, smiling in response to Eddie’s wink, as he walked along the landing. Happy at the thought of making herself useful, she took off her wet coat and hung it on one of the hooks behind the front door, then rushed through to the washhouse to get a duster and a broom.
‘As you’re intent on staying here, you may as well know first as last that I’ll have no barging around in this house,’ Elizabeth shouted, stepping out of the way as Diana entered the kitchen.
‘Sorry, Aunt Elizabeth,’ Diana murmured. But she wasn’t really downcast. She’d forgotten just how nice her Uncle Evan could be. And Eddie. She glanced at the clock. It was past seven. Another couple of hours and Will and Charlie would be home. Maud might wake up at any minute. Living in Graig Avenue wasn’t going to be so bad after all.
Chapter Six
‘We closing early tonight then, Ronnie?’ Alma asked as Ronnie switched off the electric lights in the front of the café, and locked the door after the shop’s last customers left.
‘Hardly early, that was the last bus down from Ferndale.’ He pulled a cigarette out of the top pocket of the boiled white shirt he was wearing beneath his jacket, and pushed it into his mouth. ‘Rake the coals out of the fire on to the hearth and douse them, there’s a good girl,’ he ordered absently. ‘I’ll sort out the kitchen.’
Alma topped up the salt, pepper and vinegar bottles on the tables while Ronnie did what little had to be done in the kitchen. She wiped down the tables and chairs and swept the floor, as he opened the till and counted the money. It was their normal routine, and had been for two years.
Papa Ronconi had never liked any of his own girls to work the evening shifts, and as his wife was kept busy taking care of the younger children, he and Ronnie had been forced to employ part-timers in the family’s two cafés. Evening hours suited Alma. Every morning she helped out in the tailor’s shop lower down Taff Street. Work was slack because of the depression, so they could only afford to pay for her services two and a half days a week. The six nights a week she worked for Ronnie made all the difference. Apart from a small widow’s pension her wage was all the money she and her mother had to live on.
A slim, green-eyed redhead, Alma had the kind of looks that turned men’s heads, and she wasn’t unaware of the fact; but she’d set her sights high – on Ronnie. She knew she was fighting fierce competition. Tall, dark, handsome, in a typically warm-blooded Latin way, with craggy, masculine rather than Hollywood good looks, Ronnie attracted women like syrup attracted flies. And most of them came to the same sticky end. It was probably true that Ronnie’s attractions lay as much in his flourishing business as his looks. Security was a luxury few women had been able to aspire to since the pit closures.
But whatever good points Ronnie possessed, charm was most definitely not one of them. Lazy to the point of lethargy socially, when it came to wooing women he merely sat back and waited for them to come to him. Even when his friends or sisters dragged him to a late-night dance he never graced the floor. His forte seemed to be leaning on the bar, glass in hand, watching the world go by. Alma didn’t mind. Not even when he refused to take her to the few annual dances that still went on after the café closed for the evening. When all was said and done, they saw one another six nights a week. What other couple could say that? And if he hadn’t publicly acknowledged their relationship, so what? It would only be a matter of time. He simply wasn’t given to gushing displays of sentimentality or affection, that was all. Besides, the words ‘I love you’ were the most overworked in the English language. They didn’t mean anything: not when glib, flashy Romeos who fancied themselves as ladykillers used them over and over again. Men like Glan Richards, who murmured them to any girl foolish enough to go to the pictures with him, only to use the same phrase the next night, when he moved on to the next gullible female. She didn’t need Ronnie to make any declarations of love to her. He showed her in so many ways other than words. Besides, what more could she ask of him? When they were alone ...
‘Ready then?’
She looked up and smiled. ‘Ready for what?’ she asked innocently, knowing full well what was coming.
‘Upstairs, woman. Now!’ He patted her behind. ‘Then if you’re good I just might take you home.’
‘Via the mountain?’ she asked hopefully.
‘What for?’
‘Look at the scenery?’
‘It’s raining. There’s nothing to see.’
‘It might clear up. ‘
‘Men!’ she exclaimed disparagingly. But his lack of romance didn’t prevent her from running up the back stairs to the small bedroom that he’d furnished for the nights when he told his parents he was too tired, or as they privately believed, too drunk to drive the Trojan home.
Ronnie ran his hand through his Vaselined, slicked-back hair and glanced at his profile in the huge mirror that hung on the back wall behind the counter. Smiling broadly, he studied his teeth. Satisfied with what he saw, he checked around the café one last time before stuffing the contents of the till into a cloth cash bag. He pushed it into one of the capacious pockets of the loose-cut khaki jacket he kept for work. Pulling down the door blind, he tried the lock on the front door to make sure it was fastened, switched out the back lights and followed Alma.
He knew she would be undressed, ready and waiting for him between the sheets of the small single bed. If he’d ever stopped to think about their relationship he might have realised just how much he took her for granted. Almost as much as he took every other female in his life for granted, including his mother and his sisters. Used to being one of the family’s breadwinners from an early age, the responsibility had made him, if not callous, then at least indifferent to their needs and desires. Without thinking, he tended to treat those dependent on him like children. Beings to be petted when they were good, chastised when they were not, and to be kept in the dark about his private thoughts and any problems he might have, lest the need to confide in someone be misinterpreted as weakness.