Pontypridd 02 - One Blue Moon

by Catrin Collier

  ‘Never ...’

  ‘What are you doing out of the café?’ Mr Ronconi demanded of his son, suddenly realising that he was home at a peculiar hour. ‘No trouble, is there?’

  ‘No trouble,’ Ronnie replied evenly. ‘Here, you don’t have to wait until our Angelo gets home, Mr Morris. Pass me that wire, I’ll push it through, go into our kitchen and connect it there.’

  ‘Just in time for the evening theatre show,’ Mr Ronconi smiled. ‘Some of them are really good. Last week’s was about a haunted room in an old house.’

  ‘Ooh,’ Mrs Morris squealed. ‘Just think of it, Joe, theatre in our own back kitchen.’

  Mr Ronconi looked around. Ronnie had already gone. ‘I’ll just go and see if Ronnie needs a hand,’ he said as he backed out of the door. He could stand almost anything except being thanked for his kindness. ‘When that speaker starts working, just knock on the wall. Then we’ll know to leave the wires alone.’ Following his son out of the door, he returned to his own kitchen where Ronnie was putting the finishing touches to a Heath Robinson conglomeration of wires at the back of the radio.

  ‘There, that should do it,’ Ronnie announced. ‘Do you want to go and check?’

  ‘I told them to knock if they could hear it.’ As if to confirm his words a loud bang came from the other side of the wall.

  The younger children, hands and faces washed, teeth cleaned and hair brushed, trooped out of the washhouse and stood in a line waiting for their father and mother to kiss them goodnight. Much to Robert’s disgust, Ronnie patted him on the head. He adored his big brother, but he hated being patronised. Ronnie, however, was too lost in his own thoughts to notice Robert’s squirming. He was preoccupied with his parents’ frequent hints that he should marry. If he’d been about to tell them that he wanted to marry one of the daughters of the Italian community he knew that his parents would have greeted the news ecstatically. He also knew that given time, and conversion to the faith, he could possibly have talked them into accepting Alma as a daughter-in-law. But not Maud. At Gina’s age, she was too young. Her religion – her illness – the hint of scandal that still clung to her sister for all of Bethan’s marriage to a doctor – taken separately he might have overcome one of the obstacles. Put together, they were simply too much.

  When the last of the younger children had raced down the cold passage and up the stairs, he turned to Tina and Gina. ‘You two going to sit there all night?’

  ‘It’s too early to go to bed,’ Tina pouted. ‘I’m nineteen ...’

  ‘And I want to talk to Papa and Mama in private,’ Ronnie countered stiffly.

  Tina went white. ‘If you want to talk to Papa and Mama I have every right to be here,’ she began haughtily.

  ‘You, Madam, have no right to listen in ...’

  ‘If it’s about me, I have every right to hear.’

  ‘And what makes you think Ronnie is about to say anything concerning you?’ her father enquired suspiciously.

  Caught in a trap of her own making, Tina turned on her father and brother like a cornered wildcat. ‘You think I’m stupid?’ she asked furiously.

  ‘Must we answer that?’ Ronnie sighed wearily.

  ‘You think I haven’t seen you,’ she rounded on her brother, ‘sneaking around after me. You followed me tonight, didn’t you? Didn’t you?’ she screamed. ‘That’s why you want to talk to Papa and Mama. Well I’m a grown woman, not a naughty little girl. I’m old enough to make up my own mind as to who I see, where I go, what I do ...’

  Terrified by the inevitable consequences of Tina’s outburst, and the thunderous expression on her father’s face, Gina would have sidled out of the door if she could have. But Ronnie blocked her path. She stepped back, and stood alongside her mother, who sat rooted to her chair.

  ‘And what do you think Ronnie saw that was so terrible?’ her father shouted, pushing his face very close to Tina’s. ‘What? Come on, tell me. What have you been doing that you don’t want your own father and mother to know about?’ He folded his hands inside his arms as if he couldn’t trust himself to keep them off her. ‘Did you, or did you not go roller skating in Mill Street with Gina?’ he asked coldly. ‘Or were you lying?’

  ‘She was in Mill Street with me,’ Gina dared to interrupt, gabbling hastily. ‘She stopped off to have a drink of chocolate with Jenny on the way home, I didn’t want to go in with them.’ Gina’s explanation sounded like a well-rehearsed speech at a children’s school concert.

  ‘She was home before nine, so what’s the problem?’

  Tina’s mouth dropped open. She couldn’t believe her brother Ronnie had said that.

  ‘If roller skating with Gina and a chocolate with Jenny Griffiths was all she’d done she wouldn’t have screamed at you, or be blushing the way she is. She’s been out with a boy. That’s it, isn’t it Tina?’ her father shrieked. ‘You’ve been sneaking around with someone behind my back. The same way your sister Laura sneaked around with that, that –’

  ‘Husband,’ Ronnie broke in quietly. ‘Papa –’

  ‘Papa nothing,’ Mr Ronconi raged. ‘Tina, what’s been going on?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Whiter than Ronnie had ever seen her before, Tina swayed on her feet.

  ‘You’ve been seeing that William Powell, haven’t you?’ her father raged.

  ‘No!’ Tina lied defiantly.

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Papa, you’re calling your own daughter a liar,’ his wife remonstrated.

  Tina’s bottom lip trembled and she began to cry.

  ‘There! There, I knew it!’ Papa Ronconi began a swift ascent into one of his notorious, and amongst the younger members of his family, much feared, rages.

  ‘All I did was walk home with him,’ Tina sobbed tearfully. ‘It was the first time ever. We didn’t do anything wrong ...’

  ‘You did something wrong by speaking to him. Just look at you, just look ...’ he babbled, his voice breaking into incoherence.

  ‘Papa, I ... I ...’

  ‘I forbid you. I absolutely forbid you,’ Papa Ronconi’s face turned purple. ‘I forbid you to see that boy, and what do you do? You go sneaking behind my back, you ... you slut!’

  ‘Papa!’ Ronnie exclaimed angrily.

  ‘Tomorrow you pack your bags and you go to your grandmother in Bardi. She’ll see you married off to a decent Italian boy within the month. I’ll have no daughter of mine ...’

  Ronnie looked at Tina and jerked his head sharply towards the door.

  ‘Don’t you dare leave this room!’ his father screamed, beside himself with rage.

  ‘Let her go, Papa,’ Ronnie said quietly, with what seemed to Tina amazing courage. ‘In a minute I’m going to give you a lot more to shout about than Tina ever has.’

  Evan pushed his way through the crowded passage of the Graig Hotel until he reached the hatch that served as bar to the back rooms. He pulled all the money he had out of his pocket, spread it on his palm and stared at it. He had just enough for two pints, with sixpence left over for the hire of a cart tomorrow, no more. And he knew there was nothing left in the old, cracked Doulton teapot that Elizabeth kept on the top shelf in the kitchen. Throwing all sense of caution to the wind, he handed over everything except the precious sixpence to the barman.

  ‘Bitter please, Albert.’

  ‘Your usual?’ the barman asked.

  ‘Two pints.’ Evan carried them through to the half-empty back room where Charlie was sitting staring into the fire.

  ‘Cheers, mate.’ Charlie picked up his pint and supped it slowly. He’d bought the first pint they’d drunk in the Graig, and he knew Evan had drunk a pint or two earlier, with Ronnie. One was usually Evan’s limit on a weekday, so he was obviously troubled by something. But Charlie knew that if Evan wanted to talk about it, he would do so in his own good time.

  Will glanced in through the door. Seeing his uncle and Charlie, he walked over to them.

  ‘Pint?’ Charlie asked, putting his hand in hi
s pocket.

  ‘No thanks,’ Will shook his head. ‘I only came in to see if anyone was about. I’m going down the gym to meet Eddie. We’ll probably wait until it’s time for Haydn to finish, then pick up some chips on the way home.’

  ‘Overtime burning a hole in your pocket?’ Charlie smiled.

  ‘No.’ The truth of the matter was, Will couldn’t wait to tell someone he’d finally walked Tina home. And he was hoping that three heads would be better than one when it came to finding a solution to the obstacles that stood in their way: principally Papa Ronconi and Ronnie. ‘Tell Di I’ll see her in the shop tomorrow, Uncle Evan,’ he said as he went out.

  ‘I’ll do that.’ Evan went back to his pint. Charlie continued to sup his and study the flames that played between the glowing embers in the fire.

  ‘Ronnie went into the Central Homes and saw Maud tonight,’ Evan volunteered eventually.

  ‘So he said in the club,’ Charlie murmured.

  ‘So he did.’ Evan put down his pint. He screwed up his face thoughtfully. ‘Damned fool!’ he swore absently.

  ‘Did he say how Maud was?’ Charlie asked, wondering if Evan’s black mood had been caused by a worsening in her condition.

  ‘Conscious but no better, from what I can work out. Ronnie wants to marry her,’ Evan said suddenly. He looked suspiciously at Charlie. ‘You don’t seem surprised.’

  ‘I thought it might have been something like that when he came into the club looking for you.’

  ‘She’s dying,’ Evan said bitterly.

  ‘We’re all dying.’

  ‘Some sooner than others.’

  ‘Ronnie’s an intelligent man. I’m sure he knows that.’

  Something in the tone of Charlie’s voice made Evan look him squarely in the eye. ‘You think I should let him marry her?’ he demanded incredulously.

  ‘Provided Maud wants to marry him, I can’t see any objection,’ Charlie said evenly. ‘He’s a hard worker, he has a share in two cafés, and he’s busy building up a third. I would have thought that any father in the town would be proud to have him for a son-in-law.’

  ‘The idiot wants to give up all he owns to take her to Italy.’

  ‘Italy!’ This time Charlie had the grace to look surprised.

  ‘He thinks the air in the mountains will cure her.’

  ‘It might,’ Charlie agreed cautiously.

  ‘Do you really think there’s a chance? Trevor Lewis more or less told me that she’s pretty far gone.’

  ‘All I know is doctors aren’t God. My sister had lung disease. My mother took her to live with our uncle in the Ural Mountains. She died in the end, but at least she had ten years of life she wouldn’t have had if she’d stayed with us.’

  Evan knew better than to question the veracity of Charlie’s story.

  ‘So you think I should let him take her?’

  ‘That’s your decision to make, not mine. All I’m saying is that sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.’ He shrugged his massive shoulders and finished his pint. ‘And then again he must think a lot of her to want to give up his share in the cafés. Last one for the road?’ Charlie held out his hand for Evan’s glass. Normally Evan would have protested about the uneven rounds, but this time he handed over his glass.

  ‘What would you do if you were Maud’s father?’ he asked seriously.

  ‘If I was Maud’s father,’ Charlie said gravely, ‘I think I’d begin by talking to Maud.’

  ‘Giacomo, please,’ Ronnie’s mother begged, calling him by the baptismal name that was hardly ever heard, even in his own family. She was standing in the kitchen as far as she could get from the two men. She had seen her husband angry many times, but had never been unduly perturbed. His type of anger was typical of many Italians: quick to rise, and quick to blow over – until now. This anger was different. He’d never quarrelled so vehemently with any of the children before, and for the first time since she’d met him, twenty-eight years before, she could see real and bitter pain beneath his anger.

  Their eldest son was special – to both of them: the only one of their children born in Italy, in her father-in-law’s farmhouse in the tiny, primitive, backwater hamlet outside Bardi. Her husband had stayed with her until the birth, then he’d left her for five long years, while he went to Wales to work in his brother’s café. He’d promised to send for her the minute he made enough money to provide a comfortable home for her, and his son. But when she waved him off on the bus that left the square in Bardi, neither of them had imagined that it would take so long for him to get established.

  While she’d sat and waited in her father’s small Spartan farmhouse, all she’d had to remind her of her young, passionate husband was her baby, and the monthly money orders he sent, which, no matter how carefully she counted them, never quite reached the figure needed to pay for her and their child’s fare to Wales.

  She’d cashed the orders in Bardi, spent sparingly and saved prodigiously, and in the meantime her son grew into a fine boy, and as his grandfather had said, ‘old beyond his years’.

  Giacomo had been born old. When the tickets to Wales finally came, it had been five-year-old Giacomo who’d helped her pack, deciding what was to go and what was to be left behind. Giacomo who’d dried her eyes when the grandparents and maiden aunt had wailed at their leaving. Giacomo who’d taken charge of their tickets, checking the train times, and pronouncing the strange place names that he’d made one of their neighbours (who’d been to Wales and returned) repeat time and again to make sure that he’d got it right. And even after they’d arrived in the two tiny rooms that were their first home, it had been Giacomo who’d helped his father mix the ice cream and stock up the handcart every morning. Giacomo who’d rushed home from school every day to wash dishes in their first café in High Street. Giacomo who’d helped her husband to make his first serious decision to borrow from their uncle to buy the second café on the Tumble. Giacomo who was, even now, steering the plans through for their first restaurant. Giacomo – always Giacomo.

  She couldn’t bear to see her husband and much beloved eldest son at loggerheads. The pain was vicious, cruel, almost physical.

  ‘You want to throw up your whole life, everything we’ve built here,’ her husband raged and ranted at Ronnie, ‘for a sick girl. A dying girl!’

  ‘I love her,’ Ronnie said directly, as though those three words were enough to explain everything.

  ‘You can’t remember Bardi ...’ his father began earnestly.

  ‘I remember Bardi,’ Ronnie replied. ‘Probably better than you. After all, I left it later,’ he pointed out drily.

  ‘But this girl. She’s not Italian,’ his mother said reasonably, as though she were afraid of her words hurting him. ‘She’s not even healthy, Giacomo. Listen to me, please. I had a brother who died of the lung disease, but he died after he gave it to my sister, and then she died ...’

  ‘Mama, please don’t cry.’ Ronnie wrapped his arm around his plump, diminutive mother. ‘I want to get married, not die,’ he smiled.

  ‘What makes you think that Bardi is such a healthy place?’ his father shouted scornfully. ‘There’s less money there than here. There’s no work, except back-breaking farm work. The most you can make is enough food to eat. No coins to jingle in your pocket. It’s poverty-stricken. In summer there’s nothing but flies ...’

  ‘At least you can be sure of having a summer in Bardi,’ Ronnie retorted.

  ‘Surer than you can be of having food on the table,’ his father taunted. ‘There were times when we didn’t have enough to eat. Why do you think your uncle and I left home?’

  ‘There were a lot more of you in those days, Papa. There’s only your father, mother and Aunt Theresa there now. With a young able-bodied fellow like me around the place, we’ll soon produce more than enough,’ Ronnie asserted forcefully.

  ‘You?’ his father ridiculed. ‘You? What do you know about farming?’

  ‘About as much as you did about the caf
é business when you came to Wales.’ He waited for his father’s explosive temper to cool to the point where he could make himself heard again. ‘From what I remember of farming in Bardi, the main qualities needed are hard work, brute strength, and the ability to stand foul smells.’

  His father’s features hardened to a stern, intractable mask. ‘You go, and I cut you off with a penny. You will no longer be my son. You will not be welcome in this house. You will not darken my door again. I will give you nothing. Do you understand me? Nothing!’ He spat into the fire. ‘You leave this house with this girl, and to me you are dead.’

  ‘I am sorry, Papa. I have no choice to make. I am going to marry her, and take her to Bardi.’

  His mother burst into tears.

  ‘Go ahead. Go,’ his father sneered. ‘What will the pair of you do for money? I know that the Powells have none ...’

  ‘I’ve worked in the business for thirteen years.’

  ‘You’ve been fed and clothed. You won’t see a penny more than you’ve already had.’

  ‘The Trojan’s in my name. I’ll sell it,’ Ronnie threatened. ‘Even a quick sale will bring in enough for two tickets to Bardi.’

  ‘The van belongs to the business,’ his father shrieked.

  ‘It doesn’t. I bought it in my name. And I hold the logbook.’

  Ronnie matched his father’s antagonistic glare. ‘And I wasn’t so dull as not to put a little aside,’ he lied, wondering just how much today’s takings would be. He’d have to get down to the café quick. The minute he left here ...

  ‘You, you dared to rob me? Your own father –’

  ‘No, just took some wages.’

  His father knew when he was beaten. Terrified of losing Ronnie, and having got nowhere with his bullying tactics, he tried a different approach.

  ‘Please Ronnie, I’m asking you, begging you, please don’t give up. Not now, not when everything is going so well. The new restaurant ...’

  Ronnie found this approach much harder to deal with. ‘Tony knows as much as me,’ he said simply.