‘I’ll be his friend, Alma, but not at the expense of being yours.’
‘Damn! That’s the delivery.’ Alma rose to answer a knock at the back door.
‘Your ration from the slaughterhouse, Mrs Charlie.’
‘Are Sunday deliveries going to be a regular thing from now on?’
‘We told your boy –’
‘I got the message. Well, as you’re finally here you’d better bring it in.’
‘It won’t happen again. We’ve been taking stock before the new restrictions come into force. This will be your last delivery at these quantities. Manager told me to tell you, he’s very sorry, but he’s had to cut your ration by a third.’
‘A third!’
‘Government orders, Mrs Charlie. The war might be over but food shortages aren’t.’
‘Government orders or not, I’m sure your manager can do better than two-thirds of my usual order.’
‘I’m only the messenger, Mrs Charlie.’
‘Then I’d better talk to your boss.’
‘Suits me, Mrs Charlie. I’ve had nothing but flak from the customers since the manager started cutting orders yesterday, and there’s a lot worse off than you. I’m tired of it. Don’t suppose there’s a cuppa going?’
‘Help yourself. There’s even a pastie, not that you deserve it.’
‘You’re a life-saver, Mrs Charlie.’
‘I’ll get out of your way.’ Bethan left her chair and pushed it under the table.
‘You will give my love to Ronnie and the children, and tell your Aunt Megan if there’s anything I can do, she only has to ask.’
Bethan knew it was useless to remind Alma she had enough problems of her own. ‘I will.’
‘Thanks, Beth, you’re a real friend.’
‘So are you.’ Bethan hugged her. ‘See you.’
Side-stepping the deliverymen and leaving through the back door, Bethan glanced at her watch. It was three o’clock. She – and Andrew if he didn’t have any more calls or emergencies with his existing patients – had arranged to meet the children in her father’s house for Sunday tea at four thirty, one and a half hours away. Polly and Nell enjoyed the responsibility of walking Eddie and Rachel up the Graig Hill after Sunday School and would undoubtedly see her early arrival as an indication that she didn’t trust them to look after the younger two.
She could go up and help Phyllis prepare the meal but what if Phyllis had already done everything? She’d only end up interrupting Charlie talking to her father. She really wanted to go to see if she could help in Huw’s house, but Huw had telephoned and asked if she and Andrew could visit at seven after the children were in bed so Megan and Ronnie could talk to them. Billy and Catrina adored Diana almost as much as she adored them. And Bethan doubted that even the support of a grandmother as loving and close as Megan would help Diana’s children adjust to the sudden absence of their mother and their traumatic removal from the only home they could remember.
The Italian cafés were open but she was neither thirsty nor hungry. There was always home and housework but quite apart from the long walk up and down Penycoedcae Hill, Nessie would have finished the daily chores by now. The girl might even think she was checking up to see that her afternoon off hadn’t started a couple of hours earlier than it should have, and after Rachel’s comment this morning the last thing she wanted to do was upset her. She could visit her mother-in-law in her spacious villa on the Common and might have even considered it seriously if they’d got on better.
There was nothing for it but her father’s. Turning right, she began to walk up Taff Street, to see David Ford handing a case and kitbag from the back of a Jeep to the doorman of the Park Hotel.
‘Mrs John, out and about on this cold Sunday afternoon.’
‘Colonel Ford, how nice to see you.’
‘And you’re probably going to see a lot more of me. As most of our equipment seems to have disappeared in the area around Pontypridd and the Rhondda Valleys, Command has moved me here.’
She looked up at the imposing facade of the hotel. ‘Nice billet.’
‘It’ll do. Don’t suppose you got time for a cup of coffee in Ronconi’s?’
‘And set the gossips going again?’
She smiled as she offered him her arm. ‘I’d love to, Colonel.’
*……*……*
‘How are you coping?’ Bethan asked Angelo, after watching him let rip at the waitress for keeping customers waiting while she chatted to a young man in uniform.
‘Not very well. I can’t stop thinking about Diana, and then there’s Tony. And my mother doesn’t even know yet. Ronnie’s coming over shortly so he, Tina, Will and me can go up Danycoedcae Road to break the news to her. I’m dreading it.’
‘Bethan told me what happened. I’m very sorry. If there is anything I can do to help your brother or his wife, I would be happy to.’
‘Thank you, Colonel, but this is one messy situation that the Ronconis are going to have to sort out for themselves and I know my mother, she’s going to blame herself.’
‘It’s hardly her fault …’
‘Didn’t you know, Beth? She threw Tony out last night.’
‘Whatever for?’
Angelo looked around to make sure no one was listening. ‘You know Tony, once he’s made up his mind to do something he does it no matter how stupid, so there’s probably no point in trying to keep it quiet. He’s gone and got engaged to a German.’
‘From what I saw when I was over there, some of the girls are human,’ David commented drily.
‘I even proved it. There was a cracking little land army piece on the farm I worked on as a POW …’ He looked at Bethan, and cut his story short. ‘But there’s no telling my mother any of it. She blames the entire German race for my father’s death. Tony would have been better off getting engaged to a Martian.’
‘If Tony really cares for this girl, your mother will come round.’
Angelo shook his head. ‘It’s not just her, Colonel Ford, there’s Ronnie. You know as well as I do, Beth, that he blames the Germans for your sister’s death, and now this business with Tony and Diana. I know the police have got it down as an accident but I can’t see Ronnie ever talking to Tony again, even if Diana makes a full recovery, which from what I’ve heard doesn’t seem likely.’
‘It’s too early to make a prognosis about Diana. All we can do is hope – and pray.’ Bethan considered what Angelo had said about the Germans. Ronnie had married her younger sister, Maud, before the war, only to see her die when they had been forced to take refuge in the Italian hills so Maud could escape internment when Italy joined Germany in declaring war on Britain. But surely he wouldn’t be narrow-minded enough to blame Maud’s death on Tony’s German girlfriend?
Utilising the consummate skill all the Ronconis seemed to possess, Angelo completed his transformation from ranting café manager to conversational friend. Pulling a chair up to their table, he clicked his fingers, ‘Coffee for three,’ he ordered the waitress. ‘You will have another?’
‘No thank you, I have to get back to work.’
‘It’s Sunday, Colonel Ford.’
‘Not in the US Army.’
‘Normally we would have arranged a party, with William and Ronnie coming home together,’ Bethan mused, half to herself.
‘It would have had to be in your house. The restaurant is fully booked for the next two weeks with paying welcome home parties.’
‘Business before brotherly love,’ David smiled.
‘You Americans have got it right.’ Angelo agreed, moving back so the waitress could set a tray on their table. ‘But at least Will being here should take Tina’s mind off Tony’s evil doings with Germans for five minutes.’
‘Ronnie and Tina have more sense than to blame an innocent German girl for your father’s and Maud’s death.’
‘That’s if she is innocent. She must have done something in the war. The Germans had their women’s army sections too. Think about it,
there’s hardly a family in Pontypridd that hasn’t lost someone close to them in the last six years.’ Angelo pushed the coffee David had refused earlier towards him. ‘But then I don’t need to tell you that, Beth. You lost a brother and sister. Quite apart from what Tony did in Ronnie’s house last night, would you want your brother bringing a German girl into your family now it’s finally over? Because I certainly don’t.’
Chapter Six
‘I killed them! I killed your Diana and my Tony, Ronnie! God forgive me, I killed them …’ Mrs Ronconi thrust her hands upwards into her greying curls, practically tearing them out by the roots.
‘Mama, no one’s killed Diana or Tony because they’re not dead.’ Too afraid to look at Ronnie, Angelo gripped his mother’s shoulders and forced her down into a chair.
‘But they’re dying and all because I threw him out into the cold. My son – my own flesh and blood – first he goes to your house, Ronnie, to make trouble, and your wife dies trying to stop him, then he freezes to death in the streets while I am lying safe in my warm bed …’
‘You didn’t get him drunk, send him down to Diana’s or make him sit half naked in a gutter in Leyshon Street on a frosty night,’ Angelo pointed out logically. He stepped back as Ronnie crossed the room and sat next to his mother.
‘Diana and Tony are in the best place, Mama,’ Ronnie took her hand into his. ‘The doctor and nurses are doing everything they can to save both of them.’
Gina took the kettle from the stove, warmed the teapot, heaped tea leaves into it and returned the kettle to the range to boil, principally because she needed something to do rather than from any real need for tea. As Mrs Ronconi started to wail again, William hustled Roberto into Gina’s room, out of sight, if not sound, of his mother-in-law’s hysterics. Uncharacteristically quiet, Tina trailed back and forth from the dresser, lifting down cups and saucers.
‘Diana, yes they will care for her in the hospital because everyone knows she is an angel,’ Mrs Ronconi cried between sobs. ‘But Tony – he threw her through a window and as if that isn’t enough, he wants to marry a German. No doctor or nurse will want to care for him. He needs his mother because he has no one else. I have to go to him.’ Mrs Ronconi would have left her chair if Ronnie hadn’t pinned her down.
‘You can’t, Mama. He’s resting. That’s the best thing for him now. Rest, medicine and nursing care. As soon as he’s conscious Andrew John promised to let us know, and then you can go and see him.’
‘And if he wakes in a strange place he’ll think we abandoned him. I want Laura. If Laura was here with Trevor, they’d make him better.’
‘Andrew John is a perfectly good doctor,’ Ronnie said brusquely, shorter with his mother than any of them had seen him before.
‘But he isn’t married to one of your sisters like Trevor. And Laura is a nurse. They’re family, Ronnie. They would look after our Tony like family.’ Mrs Ronconi dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. ‘I must see Tony, tell him I didn’t mean what I said last night. That this is his home. Will always be his home if he marries fifty Germans. That I could be so cruel to my own flesh and blood …’
‘Mama, there’s no point in you even trying to see him. He won’t be able to hear you, he’s unconscious and the hospital won’t let anyone see him until he wakes,’ Ronnie’s voice grew harsher as he began to lose patience.
‘My son – my baby – is dying, and you’re keeping him from me.’
‘No one is doing anything of the kind, Mama.’ Tina handed her mother the tea Gina had poured for her. ‘And I agree with Angelo: whatever’s happened to Tony is his own fault.’
‘But we – his family – his own flesh and blood, closed our doors to him.’
‘Because he wants to marry a German, Mama.’
‘Is better he marries a German than he’s dead, Tina!’ The more agitated Mrs Ronconi became, the thicker her Italian accent became. ‘I’ll make a bargain with God. If Ronnie’s Diana and my Tony recover, Tony can do what he wants.’
‘Even marry a German?’
‘Yes, Tina, even marry a German. I swear before God, if this girl is what he wants, and Ronnie’s Diana and my Tony get well, then I’ll accept her as a daughter.’ She glared at Tina, daring her to say otherwise. ‘We will all accept her – all of us. We’ll give them a wedding – a big wedding Tony can be proud of, so this German, whoever she is, will know she’s not marrying just anybody off the street. She is marrying a Ronconi. Tony will have to have one of the cafés and a house – somewhere to live …’
Angelo rolled his eyes heavenwards. ‘I’m going down the Tumble. Alfredo booked this afternoon off weeks ago. See you, Ronnie.’
‘I’ll be down tonight. We’ll have a family conference.’
‘You want to talk about the business today of all days, with Diana and Tony in hospital?’
‘Seeing as how we can’t do anything for either of them, I can’t think of a better time.’
‘When Tony’s with you, not before,’ Mrs Ronconi protested. ‘Ronconi’s is a family business, all the Ronconis need to be there to decide what’s to be done with the cafés.’
‘Don’t worry, Mama, we won’t cut Tony out.’
‘If he lives, Ronnie.’ As the seriousness of Diana’s accident and Tony’s illness finally sank in, Mrs Ronconi broke down. Covering her face with her hands, she began to cry uncontrollably. Relinquishing his place to Tina, Ronnie walked Angelo to the door.
‘Café, tonight half-past eight?’
‘You sure you want to do this?’
‘It needs doing and the sooner the better.’
‘Alfredo and I will be there. You’ll tell the girls?’
‘I’ll get them there.’
‘Ronnie, what if Tony …’
‘Knowing that troublesome little bastard he’ll live to make our lives hell another day.’
Angelo stared after his older brother as he returned to the kitchen. He’d accompanied Ronnie to the police station earlier, heard Ronnie insist that Diana had fractured her skull as the result of horseplay between him and Tony that had got out of hand. Saw him sign statement after statement to ensure that the police wouldn’t prosecute Tony or take the matter any further. Even heard him say ‘accidents happen’. And now – now – he couldn’t help thinking that he’d seen Ronnie in many moods – but never quite so bitter, angry or unforgiving as this before. He’d meant it when he’d told Bethan earlier that he didn’t think Ronnie would ever talk to Tony again. Now he wondered if the pneumonia didn’t kill Tony, whether Ronnie would.
‘I should be on my way up the Graig Hill, not strolling round the park with you.’
‘Come on, Bethan. A five-minute walk isn’t going to make any difference to your life.’
‘We’ve been here ten minutes already and I have things to do.’
‘I wanted to explain that I didn’t ask to be sent back here.’
‘But you didn’t refuse the posting.’
‘No.’ David Ford fastened the top button on his overcoat and pulled up his collar. The wind that whistled down from the snow-capped mountains that encircled Pontypridd cut sharp as it tore along the floor of the river path that linked the two main gates to Pontypridd Park. ‘But I’m regular army and it doesn’t pay a regular officer to question orders or a posting. Refuse Pontypridd and I could find myself cooling my heels in an Arctic training camp north of Alaska.’
‘It couldn’t be any colder than this.’
‘But the company could be a lot worse.’ He offered Bethan his arm as they came to a fork in the path.
‘You have a choice: the children’s playground or the sunken garden.’ She pulled her royal-blue scarf higher, winding it over her mouth and nose.
‘I’m a bit old for swings and roundabouts.’
‘Then it’s the sunken garden.’ She took a deep, satisfying breath of intoxicating fresh air that chilled her lungs and sent the blood racing to her head. ‘I’d forgotten how beautiful winter can be. I love the park whe
n it’s like this.’ Her eyes shone dark, flecked, with wonderment as they turned towards a vista of vast lawns transformed into sheets of pure, unsullied white by frost-crimped snow. Even the shrivelled debris of last summer’s blooms in the decorative beds had been changed into glittering fairy sticks by clinging snowflakes and ice.
‘And I’d just love to take you to Montana. Winter there is really something. Cold clear days and nights that bring the stars so close you think you can reach right out and pick them from the sky. Snow six feet thick, mountains so high you can walk all day and never reach the top, and forests you can lose all the sheep in Wales in.’
‘Then they must be huge.’ She smiled at his reference to sheep. ‘You go there a lot?’
‘Used to when I was a kid. My mother’s folks came from that way and my grandfather had a place up near the Canadian border. We spent a couple of Christmases there.’ He hesitated as they reached the edge of a low dry stone wall. ‘So this is the famous sunken garden.’ He peered over the top.
‘It’s pretty in spring and summer.’
‘What I was saying about not asking to be sent here – I meant it, Bethan. The last thing I want is to make trouble between you and your husband.’
‘Andrew made his feelings that obvious at the wedding yesterday?’
‘Any guy with a wife like you would be worried at the thought of losing her.’
‘Are you saying that he has a right to be suspicious?’
‘Not of you. But an old bachelor who’s been shown a glimpse of domestic bliss – now that’s another thing. Just look at me, I’ve only been back in Pontypridd officially for a morning and so far I’ve lured you into taking coffee with me in Ronconi’s …’
‘With Angelo and every reprobate mitching Sunday School looking on.’
‘And now a walk in the park.’
‘There isn’t a more public place in Pontypridd. And Andrew said the best way to silence the gossips would be for you to visit both of us.’
‘People talk about us?’
‘You didn’t know?’
‘No, but your husband obviously does. No wonder he looked at me the way he did yesterday.’
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