‘Tell them he laid you off. They’re hardly likely to go and challenge him about it, are they?’
She realised he was glancing at the clock, and jumped up, upsetting her full cup of tea on the scrubbed wooden table top.
‘I’m sorry,’ she cried, tears rising to her eyes again.
‘For God’s sake stop apologising every five minutes. None of this is your fault,’ he said curtly, angered by his own inadequacy to deal with the situation. He threw a dishcloth over the mess, deftly mopped it up, put the cup and saucer in the sink, then picked up her coat again and helped her on with it.
‘You’ve been great, Wyn,’ she murmured, striving to contain her emotions. ‘Really great. I don’t know what I would have done without you. Aunt Elizabeth would have killed me if I’d gone home as I was.’
‘I doubt she’d have done that.’ He took the five pounds from her hand and thrust it deep into her pocket. She immediately pulled it out and walked towards the stove.
‘Don’t,’ he ordered sharply. ‘If you don’t want the money you can send it back to him any time.’
She pushed it back into her pocket.
‘Look,’ he conceded, ‘you know I work every night, except Sunday. How about I meet you Sunday afternoon? We could go to Ronconi’s.’
‘I don’t know,’ she murmured doubtfully.
‘You can’t let what Ben did to you spoil your life.’
At the mention of Ben’s name, she lowered her head and rushed out. He heard her sobbing again, and felt entirely helpless. This was one case where tea and sympathy really weren’t enough, and he had nothing else to offer – unless. He remembered something he’d seen and heard when he left the Ruperra after his training sessions. Sunday – all he had to do was wait until Sunday. It would be quiet then. He looked around the kitchen, checked that he’d left it tidy and followed Diana out of the door.
Ronnie hovered impatiently in the corridor outside the isolation area. The night nurse had disappeared what seemed like hours ago. He paced uneasily up and down, diving straight back into the ward kitchen when he heard footsteps echoing towards him from behind the closed doors of the ward, petrified in case it was someone other than the staff nurse that he’d spoken to. Someone with enough authority and acumen to throw him out. He was so close ... so close ...
‘What are you doing here?’
He whirled around. The nurse was small, plump, dark and, he noticed thankfully, as he whispered a prayer of gratitude to the Virgin Mother – a trainee.
‘It’s all right, Jones,’ the staff nurse he’d spoken to reprimanded sharply. ‘He has my permission to wait here.’
‘Sorry, staff,’ the nurse apologised.
‘Now go down to the porters’ station as I asked you to five minutes ago,’ the staff nurse ordered sharply. ‘I want two of them up here with a stretcher in the next five minutes, if not sooner,’ she added illogically, knowing full well that the porters’ station was a brisk five-minute walk away from the ward for a nurse, and ten for a porter who knew he was wanted to ferry dead, as opposed to live, patients. ‘And while you’re downstairs you may as well walk across the yard and alert the mortuary that there’s a body on its way.’
‘Right away, staff.’ Looking down at the floor to conceal her red face, the trainee scurried off.
‘One of the patients died five minutes ago,’ the staff nurse explained briefly to Ronnie. ‘The younger nurses often have trouble dealing with the inevitable, especially when the patient is young. It upsets the other inmates too,’ she commented drily. ‘But then again Jones is hardly the most competent of trainees,’ she finished unsympathetically.
Ronnie paled, ‘It’s not ... not ...’
‘No, it wasn’t your fiancée. But she was only fifteen, and, as it happens, in the next bed. She coughed up an entire lung before she went. Very messy.’ She shook her head as though trying to obliterate the image from her mind. ‘We had to wheel screens round her bed so none of the others could see what was happening. We’ve moved the body out now to the treatment room, but the screens are still up. If you promise to be quiet you can have a minute behind them with your fiancée. A minute, mind you. No longer,’ she warned.
‘Thank you.’ Ronnie had to restrain himself from dancing past her and into the ward.
‘Oh and by the way,’ she gave him a tight little smile as she held the ward door open for him, ‘you weren’t joking when you said you had problems with her family. It took some time for her even to admit she knew you, let alone was engaged to you.’
He shrugged his shoulders and returned her smile. ‘As I said, there’s a lot I need to say to her.’
He crept through the door into the silent ward. The nurse didn’t follow, merely pointed to the bed immediately behind the door to the left. Because it was next to the wall, the iron and canvas screening that isolated the bed next to it effectively screened it also. Craving privacy, he glanced behind him and saw a tousled, and he sincerely hoped sleeping, head in the bed opposite. The nurse closed the door of the ward softly behind her. She had been kinder than he’d expected: this was as alone as he could reasonably expect to get with Maud while she remained in hospital.
Stepping on tiptoe, lest the rubber soles of his shoes squeak on the highly polished linoleum, he stole behind the screen. For the first time since he’d left school, headmasters and canings behind him, he tasted the cold, metallic tang of fear in his mouth. Wiping his clammy hands on his coat, he swallowed hard.
‘Don’t forget, one minute,’ the nurse warned through the closed doors of the ward, as she made her way back from the kitchen to the treatment room. ‘No more.’
The reminder gave him the courage he needed to look at Maud. She was lying, propped up on three pillows, her face as white as the cotton slips behind her head. The gold of her hair and the vivid gem-like blue of her eyes were the only hints of colour in a sea of white sheeting and bedcovers.
‘Ronnie?’
Her voice was faint, barely audible. The room faded, until he focused only on her. A pale golden figure shimmering in a fog of grey, wavering darkness. ‘The nurse told me that you were here, and you’d asked to see me,’ she whispered.
He crept close to the bed and knelt beside it. ‘I couldn’t rest or settle to anything, not without knowing how you were.’ Locking his fingers together he rested his hands on the edge of the bed.
She laid her hand on top of his. It was pale, so white and translucent he could see the pattern of veins beneath the skin, mute evidence of her fragility and mortality. He shuddered, noticing for the first time the mixed odours of decay, disinfectant and death in the atmosphere around him.
‘You don’t think my being here is your fault, do you?’ she asked, giving him a small smile.
‘No! Yes ... I don’t know ...’ he stammered like a nervous schoolboy. ‘If I hadn’t taken you down the café last night ...’
‘I wouldn’t have had a good time,’ she finished for him. The effort it cost her to talk brought on a coughing fit. He sat helplessly as she clutched the inevitable stained, sodden handkerchief to her mouth. He heard a sound in the corridor, and remembered the nurse’s injunction: ‘One minute. No more.’
‘Maud, there’s no easy way to say this,’ he blurted out uneasily, worried that the nurse would return and throw him out before he had a chance to tell Maud anything important. ‘Perhaps if I had more time ... oh, what the hell. I love you and I want to marry you,’ he confessed impatiently, and with a strange lack of eloquence considering the time he’d had to prepare for this momentous occasion in his life. Unnerved by the silence that greeted his outburst, a full minute passed before he dared to raise his eyes to her.
She was staring at him, dumbfounded.
‘I love you,’ he repeated in a softer tone. ‘I’ve been such a fool. I should have realised sooner. I didn’t even think about it until last night. Now I know I want to be with you. Always. I want to marry you ...’
‘Ronnie, I’m ill. The doctor said I’m –’
‘I know what the doctor said,’ he dismissed scornfully. ‘I’ve spoken to Trevor. He’s my brother-in-law, remember. But that doesn’t make him any different from the rest of the pack. All he can talk about is cutting ribs, deflating lungs, and operations.’
‘He said there’s a chance that an operation might work ...’
‘And there’s a chance that it might not.’
Maud looked through a small tear in the screen and saw the stripped and empty bed next to her own, and fell silent.
‘Trevor’s probably right,’ Ronnie conceded grudgingly. ‘An operation would be the best option if you stayed here. But you don’t have to. Everyone knows that people with consumption improve if they’re taken to a healthier climate with clean air. Mountain air,’ he finished triumphantly.
‘There’s nothing but mountains around here,’ she pointed out logically.
‘Mountains but no clean air, the dust on the slagheaps sees to that. Coal isn’t healthy, but there’s no coal mining in Italy,’ he began enthusiastically.
‘Italy!’ she exclaimed incredulously, feeling that he might as well have suggested the moon.
‘Why not? I have grandparents there.’ He omitted to tell her that he hadn’t seen them since he was five and wasn’t at all sure of the reception they’d give him if he turned up on their doorstep, let alone with a consumptive wife. ‘Marry me and we’ll go to Italy. I’ll see to it that we’re on a train before the end of the week. I’ll find your father and ask him for his permission tonight ...’
Maud knew he was talking to her because she could see his lips moving, but she could neither hear nor comprehend a word he was saying. She was too busy thinking of the pale, dark girl in the next bed. The cures she’d tried and told her about. The plans she’d been making, even up until that afternoon. Ronnie – she looked at him, seeing him in the light of a potential lover for the first time. It was the pictures come to life. True romance. Better, much better than It Happened One Night. His dark, rugged, brooding good looks. Italy, with a husband! For the first time since Diana had brought her back from the Infirmary she had something to think about, something to plan for other than her own funeral. She tried to sit up, then began to cough again. Her body racked by spasms, she reached out unsteadily, picked up the sputum jar and spat in it.
She sensed Ronnie looking at her, and remembered her disgust when her now dead neighbour had done the self-same thing. Had it really only been that morning? Ashamed of her disease-ridden body, she closed her eyes, afraid to look at him lest she see something of the revulsion she felt for herself mirrored in his eyes.
‘This isn’t a romantic disease,’ she said cuttingly. ‘I’m no Greta Garbo, you’re not Robert Taylor. And this,’ – she lifted her pathetically thin hand and waved it close to the sickly green walls of the ward – ‘isn’t Camille,’ she said brutally. ‘People with TB die horribly, messily ...’ she fought for breath, suddenly terrified – of him – of reaching out to take what he offered in case he saw her for what she was, changed his mind and rejected her. ‘They cough up shreds of lungs.’ She opened out her stinking handkerchief to illustrate her words, painting the blackest possible picture of the disease, so he would hold no illusions about what she was trying to tell him.
‘You’re not saying anything I don’t already know,’ he informed her smoothly.
‘How can you possibly love me –’
‘I’ve no idea, especially when you’re in this mood,’ he joked.
‘I don’t think I love you,’ she said slowly, choosing her words with care. ‘To be honest, Ronnie, I’ve never thought of you as anything other than one of Haydn’s and Will’s friends. And Laura’s brother, of course,’ she murmured as an afterthought. ‘You’re so old ...’
‘Not too old for anything that matters,’ he said earnestly. ‘Which I hope you’ll soon find out. And when you marry me –’ he refused even to think of the possibility of ‘if’, ‘– you’ll learn to love me. Until that happens I have more than enough love for both of us. Besides, my parents have always told me that love comes after marriage,’ he grinned wryly, wrapping his huge, thick fingers round her thin, reed-like ones. ‘It must be true. Just look at them, they only saw one another twice before the wedding, and that was in front of both of their entire families. At least we’ve seen more of each other than that, and much more than I’ve seen of any of the Italian girls that Mama and Papa have been trying to marry me off to for the past few years.’
‘Your parents may want you to get married, but I don’t think either of them will be all that happy with the thought of you marrying a girl as sick as me.’
‘What they want isn’t important. Not this time. You’re what I want. All you have to do is say the word. I’ll speak to your father, get you out of here, marry you and take you to Italy ...’
‘You’re mad.’ The idea of marrying anyone, especially Ronnie Ronconi, suddenly seemed so preposterous she wondered if she were dreaming or hallucinating.
‘Very possibly,’ he agreed infuriatingly.
‘Well I’m not mad,’ she stated positively, ‘and neither will I lie to you. I don’t think I love you,’ she said emphatically.
‘I thought we’d already dealt with that point.’
‘But you’re offering me so much. Italy. The girls here were talking about rich people’s cures in Switzerland this afternoon, and –’
‘Italy and Switzerland are next door to each other, they share the same air,’ he urged persuasively.
‘I want to live so much,’ she said fervently.
‘Then live with me.’
Tears welled in the corners of her eyes. He’d seen her cry before. Stood by helplessly while she’d swallowed silent, bitter tears of pain, watched as she’d struggled with hot, fierce tears of anger. This was different. He couldn’t help feeling that she was shedding her first tears of sorrow. He instinctively knew what she was thinking. He was offering her a chance to live, and all she could think of was – how long?
‘We’ll marry, and take whatever time we’re given,’ he declared practically. ‘Anything has to be better than nothing, and if our marriage lasts for years instead of months, I’ll just have to take my chances that you don’t turn into a nagging wife like Laura, and make my life a misery.’
‘That’s another thing,’ she fought to keep her tears in check.
‘Trevor and Laura went out together for ages. They knew all there was to know about one another before they married. You don’t know the first thing about me.’
‘I know everything that’s important.’ Sensing her exhaustion, he rose from his knees and kissed her gently on the forehead. ‘Right, now that’s over and done with, I may as well warn you, you’ll never get me on my knees again. I’ll speak to your father, see about getting you out of here. Then I have to buy some train tickets.’
‘My father –’
‘Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll see to everything. You lie there, conserve your strength and concentrate on falling in love with me. If you can manage it, I’d like it to happen before next Tuesday. I aim to be away by then.’
‘You still here, Mr Ronconi?’ the staff nurse hissed furiously. ‘I said a minute, and you’ve taken ten. Quick, out,’ she ordered, panicking; she’d already had word that the senior night sister was on her rounds.
Ronnie smiled at Maud, and winked at the nurse.
‘Do you have a day off coming to you before Tuesday? Because if you do, you can be bridesmaid,’ he grinned wickedly.
‘Out,’ she pushed him through the door and watched him descend the stairs. She didn’t return to the ward until she heard the click of the door closing behind him.
‘You look happy,’ she commented to Maud as she wheeled the screens away from her bed.
‘I think I am.’ Maud admitted as she wriggled down between the sheets.
‘I can understand that. He’s very good-looking, isn’t he? Funny, his sister said he’d never fall for anyone. “Heart as hard as t
he brass in the till,” that’s what she said. “Might marry another café, but never a girl.” But then,’ the nurse couldn’t help herself, for all her professional training she responded to Maud’s smile with one of her own, ‘what does a sister ever know about a brother? They say the harder they are, the harder they fall. You’re a lucky girl,’ she said quickly, glossing over Maud’s illness. ‘At least he owns one café, even if you’re not bringing him another. And with a café, you’ll never go hungry.’
‘He’s taking me to Italy,’ Maud murmured sleepily. Excited by the prospect, she didn’t give a thought to the café or the business, or what Ronnie would be giving up to take her away from the valleys. For the first time in months she was looking forward to sleeping. Tonight she wouldn’t dream of wreaths, funerals and headstones in Glyntaff cemetery, but of weddings. Of floating into chapel in the centre of a cloud of white tulle, flowers in her hair, a scented bouquet in her hand, a lace veil covering her head. The only thing that had been a little misty until now was the face of her bridegroom. She thought of Ronnie’s dark, handsome features, the way he’d looked at her when he told her he loved her, and she fitted him into the grey suit with the white buttonhole. She was still smiling in her sleep when the duty sister checked the ward on her rounds an hour later.
Chapter Nineteen
‘You didn’t have to walk me all the way home,’ Jenny said as she led the way around the corner of Llantrisant Road into Factory Lane. She waited outside the six-foot-high wooden door that fitted flush into the eight-foot wall around the back yard of the shop. ‘You’ll be late now for your training session in the Ruperra, and it means making a double trip. You’ll have to walk down the hill and back up again later, won’t you?’ she asked.
‘If you’re serious about boxing you can’t afford to give training a miss. Ever,’ Eddie said gravely.
She turned her umbrella, and was preparing to lower it when she caught sight of him staring at her. She smiled, elated. Haydn might be impervious to her charms, but his brother wasn’t, and that meant she wasn’t wholly unattractive after all. Perhaps given time Haydn might even change his mind about her.
Pontypridd 02 - One Blue Moon Page 24