A Silver Lining (9 page)

‘Alma, be realistic. If you go back to work tonight you could collapse again. And then where will you and your mother be?’

‘I won’t collapse.’

‘Ronnie would never forgive me if he knew that I’d allowed you to go back to work straight after an operation.’ If she hadn’t been so desperate to make Alma see sense Laura would never have used her eldest brother’s name.

‘Is that why you want to help me? Because I was your brother’s fancy woman?’

The silence in the kitchen closed in unbearably. Laura stood up and picked up her basket. ‘I’ll tell Tony to expect you tonight.’

‘Take the money.’

‘No. I’d rather you paid me back all at once.’

‘That could take time.’

‘I can wait.’

Laura walked towards the curtain that screened off the passage. ‘You will come to us if you need help?’ she pleaded one last time.

‘Thank you for the offer, but I’ll manage,’ Alma replied stubbornly.

‘I would never have moved you out of the café into the kitchen if I’d had any choice. You do know that, don’t you?’

‘I know what everyone in the town is saying about me.’ Alma’s cheeks flamed crimson but she still looked Laura in the eye.

‘Alma, all this gossip started when Ronnie left you to marry Maud. As Ronnie isn’t here, the rest of the family have to bear some responsibility for what’s happening to you,’ Laura said finally; weary of diplomacy and mincing words.

‘No they don’t.’ Alma lifted her eyes to meet Laura’s. ‘If I’ve lost my reputation, it’s my own fault. No one else’s. And I’ll sort things out my own way without charitable hand-outs. From anyone!’

Chapter Five

‘No one else is sitting down.’

‘What everyone else does is no concern of yours. I’m the manager of this café, and if you want work, the only job I have on offer is vegetable preparation. And from now on that’s done sitting down.’ Tony dumped a chair in front of the wooden preparation table. ‘Are you going to make a start or not?’

‘Yes,’ Alma answered sullenly, pulling the chair towards her.

‘Here’s your knife. There are the potatoes.’ Tony pointed to the massive stone sink at the end of the table that Angelo had filled with half a hundredweight of potatoes.

‘Thank you.’ Alma didn’t even try to keep the sarcasm from her voice.

‘You feel the slightest bit ill, you go home.’

‘I feel fine.’

‘Angelo,’ he shouted to his brother who was browning toast over a gas flame.

‘I’ll keep my eye on her.’

When Tony had started to work in the family’s cafés, it had been Alma, not his older brother Ronnie, who had shown him the ropes and eased him into the café routine, and he was embarrassed at having to play the part of boss to her kitchen maid now. Banging the door behind him, he returned to the café. It was a Saturday night, the busiest of the week and his sisters, Tina and Gina, were dashing back and forth between the tables and the counter like yo-yos. Neither of them was as skilful at waitressing as Alma, and he picked up murmurs of discontent as the girls slopped coffee and tea into saucers, and beans off plates as they dumped them down in front of the customers.

‘Gina! Tina!’ He called them to the counter.

‘I am
sorry. The management appears to be having a crisis,’ Tina apologised to the bus crew she was about to serve.

‘More haste, less speed,’ Tony hissed as his sisters approached him.

‘What?’ Gina asked blankly.

‘Both of you are rushing it. You’re slopping up, not serving the customers’ orders. They’re not happy.’

‘We’re run off our feet and you call us over to tell us that?’ Tina stared at him in disbelief.

‘I overheard someone complaining.’

‘Someone will always complain. If you hire waitresses who look like Anna May Wong and sing like Judy Garland they’ll still find something to gripe about,’ Gina said mutinously.

‘That’s not the attitude...’ Tony began.

‘Well, clever clogs, seeing as how you know all about attitudes as well as waiting tables, you can damn well run this place yourself.’ Tina pulled the bow on the back of her apron; whipped it off and handed it together with her notebook to her brother.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Tony growled. ‘And don’t use language like that. I just thought you should know they’re moaning.’

‘Well let them moan,’ she raised her voice. ‘If they don’t like the way Gina and I wait tables, they shouldn’t have kicked up such a bloody fuss about Alma.’

‘Come on now, who’ll offer me two pence for this? There’s got to be two full pounds in weight here.’ William Powell held a sheet of newspaper piled high with creamy folds of tripe above his head so even those at the back of the crowd who’d gathered around Charlie’s stall could see what he was auctioning. ‘Did I hear anyone say two pence?’

‘Penny,’ a woman shouted from the centre of the throng.

‘Penny-halfpenny,’ another called.

‘It’s yours.’ William wrapped the newspaper around the tripe and glanced down at the remaining meat on the display slab. Unlike some of the other butchers on the market, Charlie insisted on clearing his stall of stock every night. Opening as they did only on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays he liked to start every trading day with fresh meat, which he spent Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays preparing in the slaughterhouse.

William shivered in the icy draught of the constantly opening door as he debated which of the remaining bundles to auction next.

‘What about those chop bones?’ Viv Richards, Evan Powell’s next-door neighbour, pushed his way to the front. ‘You ever going to hold them up?’

William looked at what was left. Four beef hearts, three shin bones splattered with a few meat scrapings, and the single heap of small, splintered chop bones Viv wanted. With luck, they’d be able to pack up in another ten minutes. ‘OK, Viv, how much you prepared to give me?’

‘A penny.’

‘I’ll give you a penny-farthing,’ a woman elbowed Viv aside.

‘Penny halfpenny.’

‘Two pence.’

At a nod from Charlie, who knew just how little meat there was on the bones, William knocked them down to Viv. ‘Now who’ll give me a shilling for a beef heart?’ It was a procedure they went through every Saturday night after nine o’clock ‘auction bell’, and every Saturday night the hearts were knocked down for ten pence. Very occasionally the last straggler was lucky enough to get a misshapen one for eight or nine pence, but nevertheless there was good eating in a beef heart, and everyone knew it. Sunday dinner for the family, and afterwards, thinly sliced, it provided sandwich fillings for the week for those fortunate enough to be working.

While William sold off the remaining meat Charlie lifted the lid on the meat safe and checked the shelves. They were blood-stained, but empty. Taking the zinc buckets from beneath the counter, he left the stall in William’s charge while he prepared for the nightly scrub down.

Two plump women, dressed in the white overalls and caps of the cheese and bacon stalls, were gossiping as they filled their buckets in the market wash house, and Charlie held back, waiting politely and silently for them to finish.

‘It’s right, I tell you,’ one said to the other. ‘The Ronconis have put her to work out of sight in the kitchen because she’s expecting. It’s all over town, and Ronnie Ronconi married to Maud Powell and in Italy. Well that’s one poor bastard that will never see its father. You can be sure of that. Do you know Mostyn Goldman sacked her?’

‘No!’ the other gasped.

‘Well he had to, didn’t he? It’s what the Ronconis would have done if they could have, but then seeing as how Ronnie’s responsible they couldn’t.’

‘Why not?’ The question was a valid one. Paternity suits were difficult to prove at the best of times, and even if the judge was satisfied, with the father in Italy it would be well-nigh impossible to extract the one or two shillings a week Alma could hope to be awarded.

‘Gossip!’ The woman nodded her head sagely. ‘Well would you want to eat there, knowing they’d abandoned their own flesh and blood, even if it will be born the wrong side of the blanket?’

‘There’s plenty that won’t want to eat there knowing a woman like her is working in the back.’

‘You’re right.’ The tap was turned off and the full bucket exchanged for an empty one. ‘But then, it’s her mother I feel sorry for. Blind or not, she’ll never be able to hold her head up in this town again. I can’t think what the girl was thinking of.’

‘That’s obvious isn’t it? The café. If she’d caught Ronnie she’d never have had to look for food for herself and her mother again.’

‘Well from what I’ve seen lifting your skirt leads more often to the workhouse than to wedding rings. But it’s a shame to think she’ll take her mother down with her. Lena McIver was a smart girl in her day, but then she would go and marry a Moore. Good-looking fellows, the Moores, but none of them lived long. Weak chests,’ the woman pronounced authoritatively.

‘I thought Lena’s husband was killed in the pit.’

‘He did, but if he hadn’t he wouldn’t have lasted long. Not with the Moore chest.’

With the second bucket full, the two women turned around. They paled at the sight of Charlie.

‘Mrs Rees. Mrs Pickering.’ He nodded to them as he stepped forward with his own buckets. The women continued to talk, even before they’d moved out of earshot.

‘He’s always so quiet.’

‘Sneaking around ...’

‘Never know when he’s there ...’

‘Sly, like all foreigners.’

Wilf Horton turned up with a bucket and stood beside Charlie. ‘Bloody dog messed up the front of my stall,’ he complained. ‘Just when I sent the boy off to the night safe.’

‘That’s always the way it is,’ Charlie sympathised as he stood back from the water splashing up from his bucket.

‘Bloody dogs. Oughtn’t to be allowed ...’

‘Tell me, Mr Horton,’ Charlie interrupted. ‘Do you happen to know who owns that empty shop by the fountain?’

‘Which empty shop?’ Wilf growled. ‘If you ask me, Taff Street has more empty shops than full ones. Ponty looks more like a ghost town every day.’

‘The shop that used to sell china.’

‘Meakins’ shop. Little wonder he pulled out, what with people cutting back to the bone. Not many have food these days, so there’s no point in them buying plates. He’s taken a stall on the outside market now. Less working days, less money, but then there’s less overheads and –’

‘Did he own the shop?’ Charlie pressed.

‘Does any trader own a shop in this one-horse town?’ Wilf retorted, using a phrase from a Western he’d watched in the Palladium. ‘That place is one of Fred the Dead’s.’

‘Thanks, Wilf.’ Charlie swung the heavy buckets easily into his hands and left the washroom for his stall.

‘Looks like that’s about it for the day,’ William greeted Charlie on his return. The last few customers were wandering between the stalls as they finally made their way outside. Like chickens searching for grubs they darted their heads first one way, then the other, scanning the counters in search of edible leftovers which the traders might be prepared to give away.

‘Missus ... hey Missus!’ Charlie shouted to a woman who was bundled up in a grey ragged blanket tied with a length of twine at what passed for her waist. ‘Do you want some bones for your dog?’ he asked when he caught her attention.

She nodded, flaccid lips trembling around her toothless gums. He wrapped the shin bones and one small heart, all that was left on the counter, in newspaper, and handed them to her. She ran off clutching them close to her chest.

‘You know old Patsy hasn’t got a dog.’ Will tipped soda into one of the buckets.

‘Start with the meat safe.’

‘You could have sold that heart back to the slaughterhouse for dog meat,’ Will grumbled as he tossed a cloth into the hot water.

‘It’s not worth it for what we’d get.’

‘It would have been enough for a pint. You’re a soft touch, Charlie, and everyone around here knows it.’ He looked up from the counter he was wiping down. Charlie wasn’t listening. He’d picked up the wooden box that contained the day’s takings, and pulled out the notebook he kept in his shirt pocket. Piles of farthings, halfpennies, pennies, threepences, and silver sixpences were mounting up on the shelf at the back of the stall.

Alongside them lay a few florins and half-crowns. There was even a ten-bob note, but only one.

‘We do all right, Charlie?’ William asked.

‘All right,’ Charlie agreed as he handed William his half a crown wages. They’d taken nearly ten pounds, six pounds of which was earmarked to buy the next stock of meat. His boss, the Cardiff butcher who owned the stall, paid him on a commission basis on trading days. Today’s share would amount to twelve shillings, a good average for a Saturday. It made up for the weekdays when the stall was closed and he cut meat in the slaughterhouse on Broadway, for which he only got paid two and six a day, the same as William. Most weeks he cleared one pound ten shillings after he’d paid his lodge and expenses.

He had a lot to be grateful for. There were plenty worse off than him, and because he had no wife or children to keep, he’d managed to save over a hundred pounds. Enough to rent a shop and employ someone to run it for a couple of months until the profits started coming in.

He poured the day’s takings into a cloth bag and tucked it inside his shirt, tightening his belt so it nestled against his chest. Then he bent over his notebook, concentrating hard as he jotted down a set of figures. William watched him as he wrote, wondering just when he was going to lend a hand with the clearing up. Eventually Charlie straightened up, tore a page out of his notebook, and folded it carefully into his shirt pocket.

‘Lock up for me.’ He tossed his keys at William.

‘You trust me?’ William asked facetiously.

‘Not entirely, but then once the knives are locked into the meat safe, there’s not a lot worth stealing. You will clean the knives properly before you put them away?’

‘Don’t I always?’

‘When I watch.’ Charlie smiled one of his rare wry smiles.

‘Thanks a lot. May I ask where you’re off to that’s so important?’

‘The New Inn.’ Charlie took off his blue-striped apron and white overalls. Straightening his tie, he slipped on his jacket and coat.

‘Drinking with the crache. The rest of us not good enough for you now?’

‘Something like that,’ Charlie murmured as he left.

William bent his head and attacked the wooden chopping block with a wire brush. Experience had taught him that if Charlie didn’t want to talk about his business, there was no power on God’s earth that would make him.

Charlie found the undertaker, Fred Jones, known in the town as ‘Fred the Dead’ standing at the bar of the "Gentleman’s Only" in the New Inn. People who knew insisted Fred was over forty, but it was difficult to tell his exact age as, unlike most men in Pontypridd, he’d worn well and was always immaculately groomed. His fair hair was styled matinee-idol fashion and creamed with expensive preparations. The suits he sported on his thickset, bull-necked frame were well cut, spotless, crisp and new.

Mostyn Goldman’s wares were not for Fred. He patronised a Cardiff tailor and set aside a day every spring and autumn just to travel there to be measured.

Fred had left Pontypridd as a young man to join the Indian army, and in ten years had worked his way up to the rank of Drill Sergeant. He’d left only when his father, still known in the town as ‘Big Fred the Dead’, had died. ‘Little Fred’, as no-one now dared call him to his face, had kept his healthy-looking tan and his military bearing. No one ever tangled willingly with him.

He employed three men and had sons of working age who helped him in the business of undertaking and property rental that he’d inherited from his father, but he still ‘walked out’ ahead of the hearse at all of the funerals ‘F. Jones and Son’ arranged. And it was nearly always Fred himself who made the first personal call, and laid out the bodies of the crache who had money enough to purchase the best that his firm had to offer.