Hearts of Gold (4 page)

When Caterina died after contracting pneumonia Elizabeth expected her children to stop visiting Leyshon Street, but if anything their visits became more frequent. It was as if Caterina’s death drew the children, Evan and Megan closer, and shut out Elizabeth all the more.

Caterina had always been the one to contact Elizabeth, and invite her to all the family births, deaths, marriages and celebrations. After she died Megan never climbed the hill as far as Elizabeth’s house again, although she cleaned the Graig Hotel, which was practicality on the corner of Graig Avenue, six mornings a week, including, much to Elizabeth’s disgust – Sunday mornings.

Bethan, like her brothers and sister learned early in life that if she wanted anything other than plain food and carbolic soap and water she would get it in Leyshon Street, not at home.

After Caterina’s death Megan assumed the role of family confidante that had been Caterina’s. And it was Megan who presented Bethan with her first lipstick and pair of real silk stockings, on her all-important fourteenth birthday. Thrilled, Bethan had rushed home to show them off. Tight-lipped, Elizabeth took them from Bethan’s trembling hands and threw them into the kitchen stove.

Bethan retreated sobbing to the bedroom she shared with Maud, and later, when Evan came home from work, he wormed what had happened out of her.

He said nothing to either his wife or his daughter, but on pay day Elizabeth’s housekeeping was short by the amount he’d taken to replace Megan’s gifts. Elizabeth learned her lesson. From that day forward she confined her disapproval of Megan and her presents to verbal lashings, nothing more.

Whenever Bethan, Maud or the boys returned from Megan’s with something in their hands, Elizabeth would enquire coldly if it had “been bought with Harry Griffiths’ money”.

The children too learned their lesson. They hid the presents Megan gave them and ceased speaking about their aunt, their cousins and the visits they made to Leyshon Street in their mother’s presence.

‘It’s ten minutes to six,’ Elizabeth said loudly, looking at the grease-stained face of the black kitchen clock that had been a wedding present from her Uncle John Joseph.

‘I know, Mam. I’m not meeting Laura until six.’ Bethan finished her tea and opened the cupboard set into the alcove between the range and tiny square of window that looked out on to the walled in back yard. She took her toothbrush from the cracked coronation mug that held all the family’s brushes, and went into the washhouse. Rubbing the brush in the thick damp grains of salt that were spread out on an old saucer she cleaned her teeth thoroughly under the running tap.

‘Five to six, Bethan.’

‘Yes, Mam.’ She returned to the kitchen, replaced the brush and put on her cloak.

‘I suppose youʼll be late tonight.’ Elizabeth’s pronouncement was more of a condemnation than a question.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘There’s no celebration arranged then?’

‘Not straight after work, Mam, no. If …’ she crossed her fingers behind her back, not to irritate Elizabeth, who abhorred all “things superstitious”. ‘If I pass, we’ll celebrate at the hospital ball tonight.’

‘You’re going then?’

‘I said I was, Mam,’ Bethan replied patiently.

‘Fine state of affairs,’ her mother railed bitterly. ‘In my day a young girl would sooner die than be seen entering a public hall where drink was sold.’

‘It’s a ball, Mam. Dr John and his wife are going, and Matron, and Sister Church.’

Elizabeth sniffed loudly to emphasise her disapproval.

‘I’ll be home about seven then,’ Bethan said quietly with a touch of her father’s resignation in her voice. She laced on the boots she’d cleaned the night before, and exchanged the warmth of the kitchen for the cold of the passage.

The wind seared, needle sharp, into her face as she opened the front door. Drawing her cloak close, she stepped cautiously on to the doorstep and slammed the front door.

A frost haze haloed the street lights and her breath clouded foggily in her face as she pulled on a pair of knitted gloves.

Placing one foot warily in front of the other she descended the sloping path and half a dozen steps that led down to the Avenue.

Setting her head against the wind she waited in the shelter of the high wall that fronted the terrace. Large iron keys protruded from the front doors, as they had done ever since she could remember. No one locked themselves into their homes in Graig Avenue; the neighbours would have labelled anyone who tried “strange”. A knock, followed by the turning of the key, was all that was needed to gain admittance to any house although the neighbouring housewives seldom exercised their prerogative at Elizabeth’s door.

Thin layers of ice cracked and crunched beneath her boots as she picked her way along. The one good thing about unmade roads was that they were easy to walk on in cold weather. The frost dried the mud so it didn’t dirty boots, and the rough stones broke up my dangerously large expanses of ice.

Laura Ronconi was waiting on the corner, half hidden in the shadow of the high wall that fronted the six more forbidding grey houses at the beginning of the terrace.

‘Today’s the day,’ Laura smiled brightly, her dark eyes gleaming in the light of the lamp above her.

‘I’ve been trying to forget that ever since I got up.’

‘You’ve nothing to worry about.’ Laura led the way down the hill towards the main road. A shire horse, its nose and flanks steaming in the cold morning air, stood placidly, blinkered and harnessed, in front of the dairy as Alwyn Harries, a slightly deaf hunchback with a gammy leg, manhandled the milk churns on to the back of the cart.

‘Good morning, Mr Harries,’ Bethan shouted loudly, the clouds of her breath mingling with that of the horse.

‘Morning, Nurse Powell, Nurse Ronconi.’ He tipped his flat cap to both of them. ‘Colder than yesterday.’

They nodded agreement as they went on their way.

The Graig hill was steepest at its foot, where it left town. That’s not to say that it wasn’t steep elsewhere. The incline from Graig Avenue to Danycoedcae Road, the last road built across the mountainside, and the street where Laura lived with her enormous family, was also lung-burstingly steep. Even the fittest men, who took the short cut up through Iltyd Street, and the rough sheep track, were winded before they reached their goal. But the road below Graig Avenue flattened out, and the incline remained gentle until you reached Griffiths’ shop on the corner of Factory Lane.

So the two girls had no difficulty in crossing the Avenue below the dairy, rounding vicarage corner and out on to Llantrisant Road.

The frost on the main road had dissipated in the heavy morning traffic. Work began early for the fortunate few - those miners who’d been lucky enough to hold on to at least some of their six-thirty shifts in the depression-affected pits even on cold January mornings. And besides the miners, who left their beds confident that there was work to be done and a wage packet at the end of the week, there was a small army of men like Haydn and Eddie, who left their houses before six every day, in the hope of finding a few hours’ paid work loading brewery wagons, or helping out on the carts that left the rag pickers’ yard on Factory Lane.

The hill was nowhere near as slippery as Bethan had expected. Ice still lay in patches, but where it had been thickest it had already turned to damp slush that clung to her boots. Her only fear was that they’d be filthy before she reached the hospital and that would gain her yet another lecture and black mark from Sister Church.

‘Good morning, Bethan.’

She looked up to see her Aunt Megan pouring buckets of warm water over the doorstep of the Graig Hotel.

‘Aunt Megan, it’s lovely to see you,’ she smiled.

‘Good luck, bach. It is today isn’t it? Your results I mean.’

‘Do you know, you’re only the second person to wish me luck?’ Bethan ignored the bucket, mop and dirty water; and hugged her aunt.

‘Don’t do that, you silly girl, you’ll dirty your uniform.’ Megan pushed Bethan away with her red, work-roughened hands.

‘I don’t care,’ Bethan laughed.

‘Had a super dress in yesterday, in your size too,’ Meganwhispered, holding her mop in front of her like a weapon. ‘Red silk, just right for the ball tonight.’

‘I might not be going,’ Bethan protested.

‘You will,’ Laura chipped in. ‘She’s being silly, Mrs Powell. She stands a better chance than any of us.’

‘Even if I do go, I don’t need a new dress,’ Bethan protested. ‘I’ve hardly worn my ringed black velvet.’

‘You’ve worn it to every hospital ball for the past three years,’ Laura said indignantly.

‘I’ll do you the silk at a special price. You can pay me sixpence a week,’ Megan offered persuasively.

‘It seems such a waste to buy evening clothes that are only going to be worn once or twice.’

‘It won’t do any harm to look,’ Laura suggested. ‘And I have to call in on you on the way home from work anyway, Mrs Powell. If that’s all right of course. I was hoping you’d have something to suit me. Have you?’ she demanded eagerly.

‘I’ve a lovely gold net and a blue taffeta, both small sizes. I’ll hold them for you until tonight.’

‘Would you? Gold net sounds stunning. It would look good in the ball description in the
Pontypridd Observer
. After the hospital board ladies and doctorsʼ wives of course. Nurse Ronconi, in a stunning creation of gold net,’ she murmured dreamily.

‘Don’t tempt fate,’ Bethan warned. ‘You haven’t seen the dress, and you might not be able to call yourself Nurse tonight.’

‘Job’s comforter,’ Laura stuck out her tongue.

‘I’ll see you both about seven.’ Megan threw the last of her water into the gutter.

‘Thank you, Auntie.’ Bethan kissed Megan on the cheek. Avoiding the puddles, she and Laura hurried on.

‘I really do have to call in on your aunt tonight,’ Laura explained breathlessly, running to keep up with Bethan’s long-legged strides. ‘I’m out of powder, perfume and lipstick.’

‘After what you bought before Christmas?’ Bethan asked incredulously.

‘It doesn’t go very far.’ Laura shrugged her shoulders. ‘Particularly in our house. Just be glad you’ve only got one sister pilfering your things. It’s murder having five.’

Bethan dropped the subject. Laura was one of eleven, six girls and five boys. But she’d never gone as short as some of the other Graig children. Their parents were Italian immigrants and their father had progressed from selling ice cream from a handcart in Market Square, to owning two cafes. One in the centre of Pontypridd, which Laura’s eldest brother Giacomo ‘Ronnie’ Ronconi ran, and one in High Street, just below the hospital. All the Ronconi children were well-fed and well-dressed, and whatever money they earned, they kept. Unlike Bethan. Her father along with other miners in the Maritime had been put on a three-day working week at the end of last year and, as her mother was so fond of pointing out, no one could keep a family on what he brought home. He did his best. Like every short-timer and unemployed man in Pontypridd, he tried to-pick up casual work on the days he was free.

There was a fair amount of it – the rag and bone carts, the market traders, the brewery yards. The problem was that for every hour’s work there were a hundred or more men prepared to undercut their fellows and boys like Eddie were often more successful than their fathers, for the simple reason that they were prepared to work for less money.

Bethan earned twenty-five shillings a week. ‘If (she couldn’t even bring herself to think when) she qualified, it would go up to thirty-five. Good money by any standard. She already gave her mother fifteen shillings a week, and chipped in to help with expenses whenever she could. She knew her father found it difficult to live with the notion that she was contributing more than him to the family kitty, but neither of them had any choice. The mortgage had to be paid; and the expense of keeping the boys, not to mention Maud, grew heavier with their increasing sizes.

On top of the cost of food, extra coal to supplement Evan’s reduced collier’s ration, gas and electricity, there was the question of the boys’ clothes. Bethan had been saving for months to buy both of them decent suits and overcoats. She’d managed to kit Haydn out on Wilf Horton’s second-hand stall on the market, but only because he was into a man’s size, and men who were out of work were queuing up to sell their good clothes.

Boys’ clothes were different. Every family in Pontypridd was anxious to buy their sons good outfits in the hope that smart clothes would impress a prospective employer.

Poor Eddie was walking around in an overcoat that didn’t cover his forearms, and trousers that had been twice turned. She had twenty-five shillings hidden in a wooden jewellery box that Haydn had made her in the school woodwork class, but decent overcoats Eddie’s size started at two guineas in Leslie’s stores, the cheapest shop in town. And that was without a suit.

‘You’re quiet,’ Laura observed as they passed the yellow lit windows of Harry Griffiths’ grocery shop.

‘I was thinking about Eddie. He needs a good overcoat in this weather. The one he’s wearing is miles too small for him.’

‘Didn’t you see the
Observer
on Saturday? There’s a sale on in Wien’s. All ladies’ blouses and jumpers are down to a shilling from four and eleven, and youths’ lined overcoats down from twenty-nine and six to four and eleven. Sale starts this morning.

Our Mam intends to be first in the queue.’

‘Youths’ sizes will probably be too small for our Eddie.’

‘Our Joe wears youth sizes and he’s bigger than your Eddie.’

‘Oh if only I wasn’t working,’ Bethan complained in exasperation.

‘You could slip out lunch time.’

‘We’re not supposed to leave the hospital.’

‘Goody two-shoes. I’ll go for you if you like.’

‘So you can get caught instead of me? Do you think they’ll have anything left tonight?’ Bethan demanded anxiously.

‘They might and they might not. Isn’t that your Haydn?’

Bethan looked down the hill and saw her brother climbing, cap in hand, dejectedly back up it.

‘No work today?’ Bethan commiserated.

‘There were fifty in Leyshon’s yard this morning. Old Prosser said that I’d had more than my fair share and it was the turn of the married men. Can’t argue with that, I suppose.’

‘Could be just as well,’ Bethan said, trying to cheer him up. I need you to do me a favour.’

‘What kind of favour?’ Haydn asked suspiciously, his pride bristling at the thought of taking charity from his sister.

‘There’s a sale on in Wien’s and Laura says they’re selling youths’ overcoats for four and eleven. You know where I keep my money?’

‘Yes.’

‘Take it and see what you can get for Eddie. If you like it, Eddie’ll wear it.’

‘Beth, you shouldn’t have to do this …’

‘If you see anything for yourself, get that too. If you and Eddie look smart I know, I just know, you’ll get jobs,’ she pleaded. ‘You can pay me back then. Think what a difference it would make at home if you two were in regular work.’

‘You’ll let me and Eddie pay you back?’

‘Of course I will. You’ll go then? To the sale I mean.’

‘I’ll go,’ he agreed dully.

‘Thanks a lot,’ she smiled.

‘We’d best run, Bethan.’ Laura grabbed her arm. ‘If we don’t, Sister will have us for breakfast. Bye, Haydn.’ Laura flashed a look, half shy, half coquettish in Haydn’s direction.

‘Your Haydn?’ Laura began as soon as they were out of ear shot.

‘Yes,’ Bethan murmured absently, trying to walk carefully and quickly around the slush at the same time.

‘Is he still sweet on Jenny Griffiths?’

‘As far as I know.’ Bethan looked at Laura, wondering if she knew more about Haydn’s affairs than her.

‘Shame,’ Laura sighed wistfully.

‘Laura!’ ‘Bethan exclaimed. ‘He’s a year younger than you.’

Laura halted at the huge wooden gates of the workhouse, and gazed after Haydn’s retreating figure. ‘When it comes to some things, age doesn’t matter,’ she said, grinning suggestively.

‘Your father and Ronnie been chaperoning you everywhere again?’ Bethan asked as she led the way around the corner to the main gates.

‘Absolutely everywhere!’ Laura complained. ‘This morning Ronnie shouted at me for saying good morning to the paper boy. And he’s only twelve, poor lamb.’

‘Poor you, more like it,’ Bethan laughed.

‘It’s all right for you,’ Laura said testily. ‘Your father’s quite human. I told Ronnie straight last night that Italian men only lock up their wives and daughters because they know from personal experience that Italian men can’t be trusted to keep their hands off any woman between fifteen and thirty that they’re not related to.’

‘That must have gone down like a lead zeppelin.’ Bethan smiled at the porter on gate duty as he waved them through after they’d signed in.