‘The ... the Powells. How are they?’ Jenny stammered, concern for Haydn’s family giving her the courage to interrupt Mrs Richards in full flow.
‘They’re how you’d expect them to be,’ Mrs Richards sidestepped the question. ‘Haydn’s the one I talked to.’ She gave Jenny a knowing look that set the girl’s teeth on edge. ‘But then, he stays calm no matter what. A born gentleman, that’s what he is. Like his grandfather before him,’ she asserted fondly, referring to Evan’s father, not Elizabeth’s. The Baptist clergy might command her respect, but never her regard.
‘But what about the others?’ Jenny persisted. ‘Diana?’
‘Now there’s a baggage for you,’ Mrs Richards pursed her lips, as though she’d just tasted a sour apple. ‘She paints her cheeks and lips bright red. Curls her hair, even to go to work. After all the men. Just like her mother. And everyone knows what became of that one.’
‘What’s that you said, Mrs Richards?’ Harry Griffiths appeared from the musty depths of the storeroom. Mrs Richards had grace enough to blush to the roots of her tightly pulled hair.
‘Nothing, Mr Griffiths,’ she said loudly. ‘Nothing at all. Just called in to pick up a tin of tomatoes and a half-ounce of baccy for Viv’s pipe.’
Harry reached down to one of the bottom shelves and picked up a small tin of tomatoes. He didn’t have to ask what size she wanted; Mrs Richards never bought large tins. The Richards family always had toast for supper. The only one who ever had anything on it was her husband. He pushed the tin across the counter as he packed behind Jenny, who was engrossed in marking out a small portion of cheese to Mrs Evans’ exacting requirements.
‘The usual?’ he asked Mrs Richards, as he rested his hand on the shelf where he kept cigarettes and tobacco.
‘Please.’ Mrs Richards’ colour hadn’t subsided at all.
‘On the slate, I take it?’ Harry demanded coldly.
‘Only until Friday.’ Mrs Richards tossed her head and turned her back on them. ‘Good-day,’ she murmured almost inaudibly as she went out through the door.
Jenny finished serving Mrs Evans. She felt sick and dizzy, and it wasn’t just the smell of Mrs Evans. As soon as the door clanged behind the old woman she went into the storeroom and sank down on a pile of empty Corona crates.
‘Shouldn’t you go up there, love?’ Harry asked solicitously.
‘They won’t be wanting me there, Dad. Not now. Not at a time like this.’
‘You’ve got every right. You’re practically family. You and Haydn ...’ he looked at her closely. ‘There’s nothing wrong, is there love?’ he probed gently. ‘You and Haydn have patched up that silly row, haven’t you?’
‘Oh Dad,’ the single tear turned into a dam burst. All the emotion she had pent up since their quarrel erupted into a paroxysm of hysterical weeping.
He knelt beside her. Wrapping his arms awkwardly around her, he tried to comfort her as he had done when she’d been a small child. Only this time, his hugs and murmurs of ‘It’ll be all right, love. You’ll see, it’ll all come right in the end’ rang false, even to his own ears.
‘We had such a stupid, stupid argument,’ she sobbed. ‘I haven’t even seen him to talk to. And I don’t know what to do. I love him, Dad,’ she pulled away from her father and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘I love so much, it hurts,’ she cried poignantly.
‘I know,’ he stroked the back of her head with his hand. ‘I know,’ he repeated softly, his heart twelve miles away in Cardiff Prison.
‘I didn’t want you hearing it from anyone else.’ Trevor heaped two sugars into the tea Ronnie had brought him and stirred it. ‘Not after last night.’
‘Last night?’ Ronnie looked up warily from the stone-cold cup of tea he was hunched over.
‘Gina stopped off to see Laura on her way down to town this morning,’ Trevor said baldly. ‘I saw her when I called back to finish my breakfast after I’d settled Maud in the ward. She told us that you’d taken Maud to the café last night.’
‘The girl was all alone in the house,’ Ronnie protested.
‘And the girl should have been left all alone in the house!’ Trevor exclaimed furiously. ‘For heaven’s sake, she has terminal tuberculosis. Do you know what that means? It means she can die at any moment. She could have died here, in the café last night,’ he stressed, trying to bring home to Ronnie the enormity of what he’d done. ‘And when her family find out that she haemorrhaged the morning after you took her out on a cold, miserable night ...’
‘I made her worse?’ Ronnie looked so grief-stricken that Trevor relented, but only slightly.
‘It’s impossible to say what brought it on,’ he conceded irritably. ‘But it’s fair to say that last night didn’t help. What on earth possessed you to behave like an irresponsible lunatic? You of all people ...’
‘I love her.’
Trevor was so taken aback by the calm, matter-of-fact declaration that he dropped his cup. Tea spilled over the table and dripped down on to his trousers.
‘Gina, cloth!’ Ronnie shouted in an unnaturally flat voice for a man who had just made an earth-shattering announcement.
‘But she’s a child, she’s a ...’ Lost for words, Trevor’s spluttering ceased as Gina wiped his tea-stained trousers, and then the table.
‘And I suppose you want me to bring you more tea,’ she mumbled, picking up Ronnie’s cold cup as well as Trevor’s empty one.
‘There’s no hurry,’ Ronnie said sharply. Gina knew when to leave her eldest brother alone. She retreated quickly to the front counter.
‘I didn’t exactly go looking for this,’ Ronnie muttered as soon as Gina was out of earshot. ‘It just – well it just happened,’ he finished shortly, daring Trevor to reproach him.
‘Does Maud know how you feel?’ Trevor ventured.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You mean, you haven’t said anything to her?’ Trevor breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Hardly. I only realised myself last night.’ Ronnie looked around the café. It was half-past ten. Too early for the ‘elevenses’ rush of the market traders and bus conductors, and too late for the breakfasts of the council labourers. He and Trevor were sitting at a table for two, placed in the darkest corner of the back room. Too far away from the stove to be popular, its only advantage lay in the privacy it commanded.
‘Alma and I had a row last night,’ he explained briefly. After his sleepless, solitary night it was an incredible relief to talk to someone. And while he felt that Trevor might not understand him, he sensed that, being a doctor, Trevor was used to being entrusted with confidences and, unlike some people, would know how to keep them. ‘The last thing Alma accused me of, before she flounced out of here in a foul temper, was being in love with Maud. I told her she was being ridiculous. That I couldn’t possibly love Maud. I listed all the reasons why I couldn’t. Her age, her illness. Then I thought about it ...’
‘All night, judging by the bags under your eyes,’ Trevor commented cuttingly. He couldn’t resist adding, ‘Tina told Laura you didn’t go home last night.’
‘I slept –’ Ronnie grinned ruefully as he ran his hands through his hair, which for once wasn’t smoothly slicked back. ‘Or should I say, stayed here last night.’
‘You do know she’s going to die, don’t you?’ Trevor said brutally. ‘The only question is when.’
‘Can you get me in to see her?’
‘Are you mad?’
‘Come on, Trevor, you’re a doctor in the Graig. That position must be good for something.’
‘Visiting on the TB ward is strictly limited to Sunday afternoons and sometimes, at ward sister’s discretion, Wednesday evenings. No more than two visitors to a patient, and anyone young, or deemed at risk, has to stay in the visitors’ room behind a glass screen. Even if I managed to get you into the ward I doubt that her family would look kindly enough on you to allow you to take one of their precious places.’
‘Then get me in
outside of visiting,’ he pleaded.
‘It would be easier to get you into the vaults of the Bank of England. She’s on an isolation ward, Ronnie. That means she’s highly infectious –’
‘There has to be a way. If I took a porter’s job ...’
‘Now you’re being ridiculous,’ Trevor said in exasperation. ‘Have you any idea of the number of applications we get for every job that comes up in the hospital?’
‘Then at least take a letter to her for me?’
‘Ronnie.’ Trevor slowed his voice as though he were explaining complicated surgical techniques to a two-year-old child. ‘She’s seriously ill. When I saw her this morning she was in a coma. God knows what a letter out of the blue from you, telling her that you love her, could do to her at this point in her illness.’
‘If you won’t help me, then I’ll find someone who will.’ Ronnie turned away from him and pulled a loose cigarette from the top pocket of his jacket.
‘Ronnie, be realistic,’ Trevor pleaded, slightly alarmed by this strange, passionate man who had sprung from his usually laconic, always sarcastic, and generally easy-going brother-in-law.
‘I am,’ Ronnie stared intently at Trevor. ‘Totally and utterly realistic. For the first time in my life I’m facing facts as they are, not as I’d like them to be. I’m in love. I know what I want. I want Maud. And if she hasn’t got long to live, then the sooner we get together to spend whatever time she’s got left with one another the better.’ He rose from the table.
‘I’ll try to talk to her,’ Trevor conceded at last. ‘I can’t do any more.’
‘You’ll find out how she is? Come back and tell me?’
There was such a look of anguish on Ronnie’s face, all Trevor could do was nod.
Diana was still in Ben Springer’s at eight o’clock that night. He had her humping boxes from the back of the shop to the front; stacking the shelves, rotating stock that wasn’t selling to the top shelves and filling the prime positions with new stock. And while she lifted, strained and struggled to carry heavy boxes of boots up and down ladders, he delicately arranged men’s patent evening shoes next to gold and silver leather dancing slippers on the display stands in the window.
Hot, sweaty, tired, and worried because so little had been said about her late arrival that morning, Diana was too afraid to utter a single word of protest. What if he decided to dock her a day’s pay? She’d already borrowed money off William against this week’s wages. Money she knew he wouldn’t ask for, but money she also knew he could ill afford to spare.
‘Did you hear what I said?’
‘Pardon, sir?’ Jerking out of her reverie, she almost fell off the top rung of the ladder.
‘I was talking to you, girl.’ Ben had the till open, and was holding out his hand. ‘Four shillings and sixpence. A week’s wages less your shoe club money, and less tomorrow’s shilling. Not that you deserve that much.’
‘I’m happy to wait until tomorrow as usual, Mr Springer,’ Diana protested mildly, her arms strained and aching as she descended the ladder with a full load of boxes. She tried, and failed, to stop herself from shaking. The last time she’d been offered money before the end of the week had been in the Infirmary. He couldn’t be thinking of giving her notice. He simply couldn’t be!
‘Take it, girl,’ he commanded tersely. She piled the boxes on a fitting stool and reached out nervously, delicately removing a sticky two-shilling piece and a half-crown from the sweaty palm of his hand.
‘Thank you,’ her voice dulled to a cracked whisper.
‘And don’t bother to come in tomorrow.’
‘Don’t ...’ her heart beat unnaturally quickly, and her throat went tight.
‘I get girls in here every day looking for a job. The likes of you are ten a penny. This afternoon on my way to the bank, I called into the Labour Exchange.’ He smiled maliciously, savouring the power he wielded over her. ‘There was a girl there,’ he continued gloatingly, ‘just sitting, waiting for something to come along. Sharp young thing. Prepared to work five and half days a week for five shillings. And turn up on time every morning,’ he finished pointedly.
‘Mr Springer, I’m sorry,’ Diana was too panic-stricken to cry. If she lost her job she wouldn’t be able to pay Aunt Elizabeth her lodging money for more than a few weeks. And she wouldn’t get any help from the parish. All they’d see was a young, single girl without ties who could take a domestic job anywhere in the country. They wouldn’t take into account her need to be near Will, or Cardiff prison. ‘Please Mr Springer. Please, it won’t happen again I promise you,’ she begged abjectly. ‘Please. I’ll make the hours up I missed. Give the shop a good going through on Sunday ...’ Her voice faded to a whisper as she tried to think of other ways – any ways – to make him change his mind and keep her on. He studied her for a moment. There was a peculiar smile hovering at the corners of the mouth, and she smiled weakly too, hoping against hope that the smile meant he was considering her offer. That she’d touched his pocket and instinct for a bargain, if not his heart.
‘I’ll work for five shillings a week, Mr Springer,’ she begged swiftly, all sense of pride evaporating as the spectre of unemployment, real and terrifying, hovered at her elbow.
Ben continued to smile. He was wondering just how far she would go to keep her job. He eyed her up and down, noticing how the buttons of her tight cotton blouse strained over her bust. She was what he termed a ‘ripe piece’. Plump in all the right places, a nice change from most of the scrawny, scarecrow women around town. And a lot more attractive than his wife, who had left plumpness behind for obesity more years ago than he cared to remember.
Diana realised he was eyeing her, and swallowed hard. She knew exactly what that look meant. When she’d left Pontypridd for Cardiff she’d hoped to put her mother’s tarnished reputation, and the kind of advances it encouraged from men and boys, behind her. But events had soon led her to the conclusion that it must be something within herself that attracted the wrong sort of attentions, and made men see her as a loose woman, who was good for one thing, and one thing only.
Ben took a step towards her. Lifting his hand, he reached out, slowly, deliberately, and squeezed her left breast hard. She backed away, knocking over the pile of boxes that she’d heaped on the stool.
‘I’ll just pick these up.’ Taking care to keep him within her sight, she crouched down and began to pick up the boxes. He squatted beside her. Sliding his hand up her skirt, he rested his damp fingers on the welt of her stocking top. His touch burnt through the lisle to her leg. She could smell his sweat, feel the unhealthy sexual excitement rising within him.
‘Just a little touch ...’ His hand slid higher.
‘No.’ The voice was so resolute, so loud, Diana barely recognised it as her own.
‘You do want to keep your job, don’t you?’ he leered as he moved his hand higher. Pushing up the elastic on the legs of her bloomers he stroked her naked thigh. ‘Have you ever had it?’ he murmured, lifting her skirt to her waist with his free hand.
‘Mr Springer, please!’ She jerked awkwardly to her feet, dropping the boot box she was holding on to his toe.
‘That hurt,’ he protested, rubbing his foot.
‘It was meant to.’
She tugged down her skirt. Forgetting about her job, forgetting everything except the need to get out of the shop and away from Ben Springer as soon as possible, she ran into the stockroom to get her coat and bag.
‘That’s clever of you, Diana.’ He followed her into the long, thin, windowless cupboard, and slammed the door hard behind him. She heard a dull thud as he leant heavily against it. ‘It was too public out there. Where are you?’ He clicked on the electric light. She was holding on to her coat and bag, gripping them as though they were lifelines. ‘Don’t stay all the way over there,’ he murmured. ‘Come closer.’
‘No!’ Panic set in as she realised she’d boxed herself in with no avenue of escape. He was leaning against the only exit. There
was nowhere for her to run.
‘Still pouting,’ he laughed, displaying two rows of chipped, yellow and brown stained teeth. ‘I’m not going to hurt you, only give you what you want. What you’ve been after ever since you walked through that door.’
‘I’m leaving!’ she announced, fear lending her false courage, but her bravado didn’t extend to walking as far as the door. After what had happened in the shop she was afraid to move close to him.
‘You do want to hang on to your job, don’t you Diana?’ he cooed softly. ‘The six shillings a week that keeps body and soul together.’
‘Not any more!’ Terror heightened her voice to a screech.
‘Such temper.’ He stepped away from the door and swung round in front of her, trapping her in a blind cul-de-sac. The coat hooks were at her back, and shelves ranged either side of her. They lined the entire storeroom, even running above the door, narrowing the free space to a corridor of little more than two feet. Diana backed away, still holding her coat and handbag like a shield in front of her. He stepped closer and she cracked her back painfully against a hook.
‘All I want is a good look,’ he murmured thickly.
‘Please Mr Springer, let me out,’ she pleaded, more terrified than she’d ever been in her life before.
‘Please Mr Springer,’ he mocked cruelly. ‘That’s all you’ve said for the past ten minutes, girl. Please Mr Springer,’ he repeated in a strained, high-pitched voice. ‘Well now it’s my turn to please you. Come on, you want it, you know you do. If you didn’t you wouldn’t have worn that tight skirt and blouse every day, or looked at me as coyly as you did, every chance you got. You would have sewn that button on tighter.’ His hand darted across the front of her blouse, flicking open a button, exposing the valley of her breasts above her bust shaper. She lashed out and hit him, but her arms were hampered by her coat and handbag. He responded, slapping her soundly and squarely across the face and sending her reeling sideways into the shelves. The sharp edges bit into her forehead and cheekbones, she crumpled. Sliding down towards the floor, she fought frantically to remain upright. She opened her mouth, tried to scream, but terror muted her voice to a pathetic whisper. He laughed.
Pontypridd 02 - One Blue Moon Page 20