Keeping her back to him, Alma swept the dirt from the floor into a neat little pile.
‘You still haven’t told me what’s the matter,’ he ventured, struggling to keep his voice even.
Alma didn’t reply. Picking up a tin dustpan, she swept the mess of crumbs and dirt into it. Holding it carefully aloft, she made her way through the kitchen and out to the dustbin in the back yard.
‘Hello Alma,’ Ronnie shouted sarcastically. ‘Can you hear me? Can you see me? Am I invisible?’
She slammed the back door behind her, locking it ostentatiously, then glared at him, eyes blazing. ‘You disappear for the busiest part of the evening leaving me and Angelo to work our fingers to the bone. Then you swan in two and a half hours later and casually ask me “what’s the matter?”’
‘I wasn’t away for two and a half hours,’ he protested mildly, picking on the one thing he could contest. He abandoned his coffee and walked over to her, settling his arm around her waist.
‘You’re quite right, it wasn’t two and a half,’ she retorted, stepping out of his reach. ‘It was nearer three,’ she said caustically, borrowing his habitual attitude.
‘Alma, I’m sorry,’ be repeated abjectly. ‘I didn’t realise the time ...’
‘You’re so damned besotted with that ... that girl,’ she spat out the last word as though it left a foul taste in her mouth, ‘you don’t even know what time of year it is, let alone what time of day.’
‘What girl?’ he asked in genuine bewilderment.
‘Ronnie Ronconi, you’re the dumbest, stupidest man I’ve ever come across ...’
‘What girl?’ he repeated, grabbing her wrist across the counter as she tried to pass in front of him.
‘What girl?’ she mocked, temper making her bold. For once she didn’t care about security, or her job. ‘What girl?’ she asked incredulously. She attempted to pull her wrist away but he hung on to it, holding it tight. ‘There is only one girl. The one you drive up and down the Graig hill every half-hour in your van for. The one you give all the best-quality chocolates and cream cakes in the café to, the one you wrap up in a blanket and bring down here “for a change of scenery”’ she sneered.
He released her arm in disgust. ‘You’re being totally ridiculous. Maud’s a child. She’s Gina’s age ...’
‘She may be a child, and she may be the same age as Gina, but neither of those facts have stopped you from falling head over heels in love with her,’ Alma countered.
‘You’re crazy. She’s ill. She’s ... she’s ...’
‘Dying!’ Alma supplied the word he couldn’t bring himself to say. ‘She’s dying, it’s eating you alive, and you can’t even see it. Well I’m not going to stay around doing your dirty work and watching you cry for the moon. I’ve a life of my own to live ...’
‘Alma you’re insane!’ he cried out in exasperation.
‘Have you fallen in love with her because she’s dying, Ronnie? Is that it?’ she taunted. ‘Don’t you trust yourself with a healthy girl because she might actually demand something of you, and stay around long enough to see that you give it to her? It’s useful to fall in love with a girl who has one foot in the grave, isn’t it? You can martyr yourself while she’s alive, and mourn her forever more when she’s dead, effectively keeping me and the rest of the world at bay.’
‘I don’t know what brought this on ...’ Ronnie began in disgust.
‘Perhaps I just don’t like the way you make me feel,’ Alma interrupted. ‘I look at Maud, and I look at you mooning over her like a lovesick dog, and I find myself wishing her dead. As if she won’t be dead soon enough ...’ she burst into tears. ‘Damn and blast you, Ronnie Ronconi!’ She fumbled her way into the kitchen and grabbed her hat and coat. ‘Damn you to hell!’
‘Wait, Alma, you can’t go out like that. I’ll take you home.’
She ran headlong out of the café. By the time Ronnie reached the door she was half-way up Taff Street. He called her name just once, feeling foolish when Constable Huw Griffiths answered his cry from the doorway of the New Theatre, asking if there was anything wrong. Shaking his head, he retreated into the café and locked the door. Feeling restless, he went into the kitchen and heated fresh water to wash the cups and saucers he had dumped in the sink earlier. Alma had wound him up too much to sleep, so he decided he might as well work off his mood. There was certainly more than enough to do. When he finished the dishes, he scoured the pots and pans; afterwards he set about the gas stove, and the kitchen floor. Then it was the turn of the café. First the floor. He noticed a few spots on the walls, so he scrubbed those. When he couldn’t find any more work to do he looked at the clock: its hands pointed to a quarter to three. He could hardly go home now. It simply wasn’t worth it. Besides, he didn’t want to go home. He wanted peace and quiet, one commodity that was always in short supply in Danycoedcae Road.
Freeing the key from his watch chain, he opened the cupboard at the back of the kitchen, took out a bottle of brandy, and relocked the cupboard. Picking up a glass, he struck a match and lit a stub of candle that swam in a saucer of congealed wax on the windowsill above the sink. Candle in one hand, bottle and glass in the other, he ascended the creaking staircase. The room he used as a bedroom was freezing cold and smelt of damp. He laid the saucer down next to the oil lamp. There was no oil in the reservoir, it must have burnt out the last time he and Alma had used the room.
Stripping off to his underpants, he flung back the sheets. They too felt cold and damp to the touch. He would have given a great deal to have had ... have had who? Alma next to him? In her present mood?
For the first time he thought, really thought about what she had said. The woman was truly mad. It simply wasn’t possible. He couldn’t love Maud. Little skinny Maud, the baby he had warmed milk for when Bethan Powell had carried her into their High Street café after school. Bethan and his sister Laura, and Maud and Gina, two little girls playing with babies instead of real dolls. There had to be eleven years between him and Maud. Almost half his lifetime. He’d never thought of Maud as anything other than a kid. Sick as she was, she was still annoying and irritating, like ... Gina and Tina. Surely he couldn’t be in love with her?
Love was something else he’d hardly ever thought about. On the few occasions circumstances had forced him to consider it, he’d decided it was faintly ridiculous, and embarrassing. Something that affected others. Fools like Trevor Lewis and his half-baked sister Laura, who’d fussed and fretted for months before they finally managed to organise themselves a wedding. A wedding ... was that what Alma wanted? Was that what all this fuss and emotion had really been about?
He shook a packet of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and lit one on the flame of the candle. If she was unhappy with their ‘arrangement’ as it stood, all she had to do was say. He’d assumed that she was as content as he was. But for her to be jealous of Maud...
He puffed a smoke ring and watched it rise gently in the candlelight. The problem undoubtedly lay between him and Alma. The question was, did he want to marry her? Now marriage was something he had thought about. Even if he’d wanted to, he couldn’t have avoided it, when his father brought up the subject every time they spent more than ten consecutive minutes together. And he only had to hint that he’d be home at a mealtime for his mother to invite one of the daughters of a fellow café owner. Italian, of course. Not that they’d ever made Alma feel less than welcome on the rare occasions she had attended any of their family gatherings. But then perhaps they’d never realised that Alma meant more to him than any other waitress they’d employed. Why should they, when he hadn’t taken the time or trouble to explain his relationship with Alma to them? Possibly because both parents, Papa especially, had said enough to Laura when she’d brought home a non-Italian boy. Poor Trevor.
He wondered if he wanted Alma enough to go through what Laura had gone through to marry Trevor. Then he thought beyond the ceremony. Marrying Alma would mean settling down with her; living in a
small house like Laura’s; being with her all the time, in and out of the café; having no time to himself. And with his luck there’d soon be a parade of squalling babies who would grow into kids every bit as obnoxious and demanding as his younger brothers and sisters. If that’s what marriage to Alma meant, he definitely preferred his present life.
But then, what was his present life? Work, more work, followed by the occasional foray into this bed with Alma, or a sneaky visit to one of his other ‘ladies’. He had a sudden, incredibly vivid and real image of Maud. They were sitting side by side next to the fireplace in her back kitchen. She was smiling at him, and he could feel the weight of her hand in his. Only something was wrong. He sat up, almost dropping the cigarette when he realised what it was. The Maud in his vision had been plump, well; her cheeks bright with the warm glow of health, not the sickly spots of tuberculosis. The concept of Maud being well elated him. Then it hit him. Alma was right. He did love her.
He was in love with a girl eleven years younger than him who had terminal tuberculosis. The thought wasn’t a pleasant one. He’d always assumed that love would be something he’d be able to control, subjugate to his will. Maud was hardly the robust beauty he pictured whenever he’d thought of his future wife.
In a sudden, inspirational flash of self-knowledge, he realised why he’d never asked Alma to marry him. He didn’t love her. Had never loved her. Instead he was in love with a scrawny kid who was going to die. He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another, staring up at the ceiling until the light from the candle flickered out.
He continued staring and smoking all through the night, watching the shadows move on the ceiling as Huw Griffiths paced at hourly intervals past the lamppost outside the window. He listened to the creaks and groans of the building, and heard the thunder of the milk train as it rattled noisily over the rails and out of the station. He didn’t close his eyes once. And in the morning when the first customer tried the door of the café, he left the bed and dressed next to the untouched bottle of brandy.
He’d decided one thing and one thing only during his long vigil. He couldn’t let Maud die. Not without putting up a damned good fight.
Chapter Fourteen
‘Were you very late last night?’ Laura asked as she lifted two pieces of bacon and an egg out of the frying pan on to Trevor’s plate.
‘Not very.’ Struggling to push his collar studs through both his collar and his shirt, he leant across the table and kissed her. ‘I was back in bed by twelve.’
‘Sorry I wasn’t awake.’
‘I didn’t want you awake. Just warm. And you were exactly what a poor fellow needed after an hour spent in a freezing dressing room.’
‘Dressing room?’ Laura’s eyes shone as she nosed out potential gossip. ‘Anyone exciting?’ she asked, taking the last piece of bacon for herself and sitting across the table from him.
‘One of the chorus boys,’ Trevor answered, through a mouthful of bacon and bread. ‘The others insisted that he knocked himself out. Slipped while changing.’
‘But you don’t believe that?’
‘Good God, woman, I can’t keep anything from you, can I?’
‘Don’t blaspheme,’ Laura lectured. ‘And no, you can’t. I know you too well. Tea?’ she asked, picking up the pot.
He nodded, his mouth still full.
‘What happened then?’ she persisted, ferreting out the story with the dogged determination of a terrier in a rabbit burrow.
‘Put it this way, he had one hell of a bruise on his chin. It almost matched the one I noticed on Haydn’s fist.’
‘Not Haydn Powell?’
‘I don’t know of any other Haydn who works in the Town Hall, do you?’
‘You’ve got to be wrong on that score,’ Laura remonstrated. ‘Haydn wouldn’t hurt a fly.’
‘A fly maybe. After last night, I’m not so sure about chorus boys. The whole time I was there, he hung back in a corner, looking incredibly sheepish. And that’s not Haydn.’
‘Well?’ She stared at him, an uneaten bacon sandwich in her hand.
‘Well what?’ he asked blankly.
‘What did the chorus boy do to deserve it?’ she demanded in exasperation.
‘How should I know?’
‘You were there,’ she grumbled. ‘If it had been me, I’d have found out a whole lot more.’
‘I don’t doubt that you would have,’ he murmured drily.
A frown marred Laura’s smooth forehead as a loud banging at the front door interrupted them. ‘Oh heavens above, not again!’ she said peevishly.
‘Now who’s blaspheming?’ Trevor cut an enormous piece of bacon. Holding it poised only as long as it took him to shout, ‘Come in’, he shovelled it into his mouth.
‘I hardly ever get to see you. We can’t even eat a meal in peace ...’
‘You should have thought of that before you married me,’ he broke in, taken aback by the vehement tone in Laura’s voice.
‘I did, I just assumed people would have the common courtesy to get taken ill outside of mealtimes, especially breakfast. And you’re going to get indigestion eating like that. Do come in,’ she shouted with exaggerated politeness, just as Charlie burst through the door.
‘Sorry Doctor Lewis, Mrs Lewis,’ Charlie apologised in his heavy Slavic accent. Not even an emergency could make inroads into Charlie’s formal, courteous way of speaking.
‘It’s Maud.’ Trevor rose from the table without waiting for Charlie to confirm his suspicions. ‘My bag’s in the front room,’ he said as he picked up his coat from the back of the chair and disappeared into the passage.
‘I’m sorry for disturbing your breakfast, Mrs Lewis,’ Charlie apologised again as Laura made another sandwich of the remaining bacon on Trevor’s plate.
‘Can’t be helped.’ She gave him a tight little smile. ‘How are they all coping?’
Charlie shrugged his massive, heavily muscled shoulders.
‘They’re coping,’ he repeated unconvincingly.
‘I know, they’re coping because there’s nothing else for them to do,’ she murmured sympathetically.
‘Charlie, if you’re going back up, I’ll give you a lift,’ Trevor shouted from the hall. Charlie hung back as Laura preceded him. She thrust the sandwich she’d made into Trevor’s hand.
‘Give them all my love, especially Diana,’ she said quietly. ‘And tell Mrs Powell I’ll be up to see her later.’
Trevor kissed her cheek as he opened the front door. Charlie followed him out on to the pavement.
‘Jump in,’ Trevor said to Charlie as he removed the starting handle from beneath the front seat. Charlie needed no second bidding.
‘Don’t forget to tell Mrs Powell I’ll be up just as soon as I’ve washed the breakfast things,’ Laura shouted to Trevor above the noise of the firing engine. He nodded to show he’d understood.
‘How bad is it?’ he asked Charlie as he steered the car up the Graig hill.
Charlie turned away from Trevor and stared out of the car window. As far as Trevor could see there was little except early morning workers and shoppers to hold Charlie’s interest, but he seemed to find them fascinating.
‘I’m sorry, did you say something?’ Trevor asked. Between the noise of the engine, the accent and the distance, Trevor wasn’t certain whether Charlie had answered or not.
‘I didn’t say anything,’ Charlie replied flatly.
‘She’s haemorrhaging, isn’t she?’ Trevor said, hoping for a contradiction.
‘It started when Diana took her breakfast up.’ Charlie finally turned his head and faced Trevor. ‘Diana has taken her breakfast up every morning since they’ve come back from Cardiff.’
‘It’s what I’ve been afraid of all along,’ Trevor muttered.
Charlie was out of the car before Trevor parked it. He ran up the steps and opened the front door, slamming it straight into Evan who was sitting, head in hands, on the bottom stair.
Haydn and William, not knowin
g what else to do, were hovering in the passageway, effectively blocking the way into the kitchen. Eddie, anxious to be of help, had valiantly fought back his tears, and made tea in Elizabeth’s chipped and cracked everyday cups. Because everyone had congregated at the foot of the stairs he’d carried a tray into the front parlour, laying it out on top of the dustcloth that covered Elizabeth’s treasured mahogany octagonal table. He’d filled the teacups so much they’d slopped over into the spoons and saucers. The messy parody of a formal tea party was the first thing Trevor saw when he pushed his way into the house. He couldn’t help thinking that it looked totally incongruous. Like a miner sitting in working clothes in the lounge bar of a pub.
He avoided meeting Evan’s eyes as he asked, ‘Upstairs?’
Evan rose silently and made room for him to pass. Trevor ran up the stairs two at a time. Diana was waiting for him in the doorway of Maud’s bedroom. He felt as though he were walking into a hothouse. The atmosphere was stuffy, unpleasantly warm after the sharp freshness of the winter morning. He looked from Diana to the fire-grate, where lumps of coke still smouldered among the ashes. The Powells had evidently taken to heart his advice about keeping Maud warm. He recalled Elizabeth’s moans about the cost and wondered if Evan had swallowed his pride and gone to the parish for help. Then he remembered the boys. They wouldn’t have allowed Evan to succumb to the final indignity of the unemployed. There’d be no means test conducted on the Powell household while there was coal on the Maritime tip free for the thieving.
Elizabeth moved back, away from the bed, allowing Trevor his first glimpse of the unconscious Maud. She lay pale and still, like one of the waxwork effigies of murder victims in Louis Tussaud’s in Porthcawl fair.
‘There’s nothing you can help with here, Diana,’ Elizabeth voiced a harsh practicality Diana didn’t want to hear. ‘The best thing you can do is go to work. You don’t want to lose your job now, do you?’
‘I thought ... I thought ...’
Trevor sensed Diana’s reluctance to leave Maud while her cousin’s immediate future was so uncertain. ‘I’ll get Laura to call in the shoe shop and let you know how she gets on,’ he promised quietly.
Pontypridd 02 - One Blue Moon Page 18