One Blue Moon (11 page)

‘Married bliss,’ Ronnie mocked.

‘You can’t beat it,’ Trevor replied gravely.

Ronnie fell silent. He looked around the warm, cosy kitchen. There was nothing worth more than a pound or two in the entire room. Laura, with Tina and Gina’s help, had made the rag rugs that lay on the floor. The furniture was pine, second-hand, mellowed and scarred with age. The dishes and saucepans, plain and serviceable, had been donated by his parents as wedding presents. But with the aid of a few beautifully embroidered cloths that his mother and aunts had passed on to Laura for her ‘bottom drawer’, and a couple of cheap vases filled with dried bulrushes from Shoni’s, Laura had contrived to make the room look homely and welcoming. He was suddenly very ashamed of his earlier, derisive comments. Picking up his glass he finished his brandy in one gulp and reached for the bottle.

‘Tony and Angelo still minding the shop?’ Trevor asked, holding out his own glass for a refill.

‘Yes.’

‘It’s not like you to leave them in charge for so long.’

‘It’s high time they learned that running a business means more than emptying the till at the end of the day.’ Ronnie lifted his feet on to the fender and pulled his cigarettes from his top pocket.

‘Abdicating your responsibilities in the Tumble café in readiness to open the new place?’

‘No, just trying to get lazy little brothers to do more.’ He lit his own and Trevor’s cigarette and rested his head on the back of the chair. ‘This is the life. People who stay home evenings don’t realise how lucky they are.’

‘You could be lucky if you’d learn to walk away from work, at least one day a week.’

‘Fat chance with Papa wanting the new place open in eight weeks.’

‘Anything I can do to help?’

‘Persuade the Hospital Board to hold their annual dinners’ there.’

‘It’s Doctor John you should be talking to about that, not a mere minion like me.’ Trevor sipped his brandy, allowing its heady warmth to percolate through his veins. His body was glowing from the rub-down Laura had insisted on giving him, which had inevitably led to something even more enjoyable. The quarrel of earlier that afternoon forgotten, he felt cosseted, loved and just a little bit smug to have landed a wife as warm and passionate as Laura. He wondered why Ronnie had called, but his curiosity wasn’t keen enough for him to disturb the peaceful atmosphere with extraneous talk. If Ronnie wanted anything he would get round to telling him in his own good time. Meanwhile there was his cigarette and glass of brandy to enjoy.

‘That William Powell is a menace,’ Ronnie said at last.

‘William?’ Trevor raised his eyebrows.

‘He won’t leave Tina alone. Encourages her to behave like a fool. Whenever he’s around, all she does is gaze at him vacantly, like a stupid kewpie doll.’

Trevor recalled the interference he’d been forced to put up with from his in-laws when he’d been courting Laura, and almost said ‘Perhaps they want to stare vacantly at one another’, but he managed to keep his opinion to himself. The subject of his beginnings with Laura was still too raw to joke about.

‘Has anything new in the way of TB treatments come out lately?’ Ronnie asked casually, as he picked up the brandy bottle for the third time.

‘You’re thinking of Maud Powell?’

‘Has she got it bad?’

Trevor looked carefully at Ronnie before he answered. ‘If you’re worried about Tina or Gina catching it off her, don’t,’ he reassured. ‘Tuberculosis is rife in this town. They’re as much at risk from the customers in the café as they are from Maud. The fact that they’ve reached the age they have without getting it says something. They’re healthy girls, and in my opinion likely to remain so.’

‘You didn’t answer my question,’ Ronnie continued impatiently. ‘Has Maud Powell got it bad?’

‘I’ve only examined her briefly,’ Trevor procrastinated, then looked at Ronnie again and saw that he knew. ‘If you want my opinion, very bad,’ he admitted finally.

‘She told me tonight that you want to put her in the Central Homes.’

‘I suggested the idea to her father. It’s probably the best place. She’s going to need a lot of nursing, and warmth. The Respiratory wards are kept at a constant high temperature. The Powells can barely afford to heat their kitchen.’

‘Supposing she did go in. Could you do anything for her once she was there?’

‘Difficult to say. We’d have to do a whole lot of tests first, including X-rays. If one lung is more affected than the other it might be possible to deflate it –’

‘How?’ Ronnie demanded, moving to the edge of his seat.

‘Cut through the ribcage, collapse it manually. It sounds much worse than it is. It’s a bit like letting air out of a balloon.’ Trevor refused to elaborate, or linger over the details.

‘That means an operation?’

‘Yes, but the technique can only be used on one lung. The idea is to render the most diseased lung useless in order to give the other a chance to work healthily and recover from any contamination it’s been exposed to.’

‘Does it work?’

‘Not often,’ Trevor replied brutally, his tongue loosened by brandy. ‘But then, she hasn’t much chance anyway.’ There was a peculiar expression on Ronnie’s face that Trevor couldn’t quite fathom. ‘I know Maud’s the same age as Gina, and that must cut deep, but the chances of anyone surviving tuberculosis as bad as she has it aren’t good,’ he murmured.

‘Then it’s not simply a question of money?’

Trevor was touched. Most people in Pontypridd looked only as far as the well-stocked shelves in the Italian-owned and run cafés, and the food that came out of the kitchens, and assumed that all the owners were millionaires. They didn’t realise just how small the profit margins were, or see the coal and electricity bills that had to be paid in order to keep the places warm and open all hours just to serve a cold bus driver and conductor a cup of tea at a thumping great loss. What little money the Ronconis had made they’d earned the hard way, and there were a lot of them to lay claim to it.

‘No, Ronnie,’ he said quietly, ‘it’s not simply a question of money, at least not the kind of money you’d find in this town.’

‘Explain that.’ Ronnie reached for the brandy again, pouring it out with an unsteady hand.

‘If she was the daughter of a rich man, a very rich man,’ Trevor qualified, ‘there are clinics in Switzerland, set high in the mountains. Fresh air, good diet centred around dairy foods might do the trick, and then again it might not. You could spend hundreds if not thousands of pounds looking for a cure for Maud Powell and still not find one.’

Ronnie stared at him. ‘How long do you think she’s got?’

‘If it doesn’t get any colder, and we get a good, early spring and a warm summer, she might live through this winter and see the next,’ he predicted harshly. ‘But I don’t believe she’ll see more than one more spring in. It’s a pity,’ he continued, unnerved by Ronnie’s silence. ‘She’s a pretty little thing, or she would be if she wasn’t ill. Her spirit and character remind me a lot of Bethan. Not her looks, of course, they couldn’t be more unalike.’

He lifted the bottle of brandy. It was empty. Ronnie took it from his hand and carried it out to the back. Trevor heard it smash as Ronnie threw it into the ash bin.

‘I’ll go down the café, hand over the keys to Tony, pick up another bottle and drop it in on the way back,’ Ronnie said.

‘How about we open that one too?’ Trevor suggested.

‘Developed a taste for it?’

‘Sometimes, just sometimes I hate my job!’ Trevor exclaimed savagely. ‘Every time I come across someone in Maud’s state I feel so bloody, pathetically useless,’ he explained in answer to Ronnie’s enquiring look.

‘You and me both, mate. You and me both,’ Ronnie replied as he walked unsteadily through the door.

Diana stood washed, hair pristinely waved and combed, and as neatly dressed as the combined contents of her own and Maud’s wardrobes would allow, on the doorstep of Springer’s shoe shop at precisely ten minutes to seven on Monday morning. Terrified of being late, she’d run the last two hundred yards down Taff Street. She felt breathless and, for all her show of bravado in front of the boys in Graig Avenue earlier that morning, apprehensive.

She tugged down the old school skirt that had been made when her figure was straighter and skinnier, removed the home-knitted, grey woollen glove from her right hand, and slipped her numb and frozen fingers beneath her coat. She pulled the edges of Maud’s white cotton blouse together, hoping it had somehow miraculously stretched since she had last looked at it in Maud’s dressing table mirror. It gaped a good half-inch across her bust, straining the buttonholes to their utmost. There was no getting away from the fact: Maud was at least four inches narrower across the chest than her, if not more. Perhaps if she stitched the plackets together it wouldn’t gape. On the other hand it might be better if she went to the post office and broke into the five pounds she’d saved. She’d get a good white blouse for half a crown in Leslie’s, only then she wouldn’t have five pounds any more, she’d have four pounds seventeen shillings and sixpence. And once she went down that road it would be easier to draw money out the next time she needed it – and the next; and before she knew it the five pounds would be four pounds, or even less.

It was simple to break into savings, and an uphill struggle to replace them when you were earning reasonable money. Impossible on the pittance that Mr Springer was paying her. The five pounds was all the cushion she had against having to take live-in domestic work. It was enough money to keep her for ten weeks or more, and it could take that, or even longer, to find another job in Pontypridd if she lost this one. A new blouse would have to wait until Ronnie found her some part-time work. She’d sew up the placket on this one tonight. That would stop Ben Springer ogling her the way he had last Saturday.

The clock struck seven and still she waited in the cold, dark, inadequate shelter of Springer’s doorway. At least the rain had stopped, although a keen wind blew, freezing her ankles even through her thick lisle stockings. Heads down, coats buttoned to their chins, shop workers scurried around her. Shop doorways opened and closed, lights flickered on above counters. Gwilym Evans’ display windows grew brighter as the shop lights went on behind them. A brewer’s dray thundered down the street, pulling back sharply as a tram raced forward. She stamped her feet and swung her arms. Her coat still felt damp from the drenching it had got when she’d walked down the Graig hill to the café yesterday afternoon. She’d hung it in the passage overnight, but as the passage was never heated it was hardly surprising that it hadn’t dried out. But then, that was where the boys had hung theirs. Aunt Elizabeth might be a great believer in ‘airing’ but she obviously wasn’t a believer in drying wet coats, especially those belonging to lodgers.

‘Glad to see you on time.’ Ben Springer walked up to the door as the clock on St Catherine’s church spire struck a quarter-past seven, and just as the final vestiges of feeling were leaving Diana’s lips and nose.

‘Good morning, Mr Springer,’ she mumbled politely through chattering teeth.

‘I’d prefer “sir” if you don’t mind, Diana,’ he corrected her curtly. Unlocking the door, be preceded her into the shop and switched on the lights. ‘Hang your coat in the back, then you can start by picking up and putting away any stock that’s lying around. I’ll tell you where. Every box has its allotted place in this shop and it has to go there. If it doesn’t, we’ll soon be in a pretty pickle, ordering stock when it’s not needed, and running short of good selling lines. As soon as the general tidying’s done, I want every surface in the shop dusted and polished until you can see your face in them. You’ll find beeswax and dusters in the stockroom. When you’ve finished the polishing, you can do the floor. Well what are you waiting for, girl? Move!’

The stockroom door was in the centre of the back wall of the shop.

‘Light to the left of the door,’ he shouted as she went in.

She found the switch without any trouble. The room was really a narrow cupboard, running the entire length of the shop. It was about fourteen feet wide, but no more than five feet deep. Shoe boxes were stacked on foot-wide shelves from floor to ceiling. Bewildered by the vast array of boxes, she blinked dully, then after a few moments realised that the narrow wall on her far right sported a few hooks and two shelves that held cleaning materials and shoe polish. There was also a stiff broom, propped head upright in the corner.

‘What are you doing, girl?’ Ben appeared alongside her in the cramped doorway. ‘Come on, we haven’t got all day. Coat off, make a start.’ She took her coat off reluctantly, walked deep into the cupboard and hung it on one of the pegs.

‘Turn round,’ he barked. ‘Let’s see if you’ll do.’ She did as he asked. ‘Your shoes could be cleaner,’ he commented, studying the shabby navy lace-ups that she’d cleaned that morning.

‘I’m afraid there were a lot of puddles on the hill this morning after the rain, Mr Springer.’

‘I would have thought it might have been possible for you to avoid at least some of them. There’s a rag, brushes and shoe cream behind the furniture polish, you’d better use it. But in future you’ll have to bring clean shoes with you. The one thing I will not abide in this shop is an assistant wearing dirty, shabby shoes.’

‘I only have the one pair,’ Diana confessed.

‘In that case I’ll have to give you a pair,’ he said irritably, rummaging through the boxes. ‘But I won’t allow you to take them out of the shop until they’re paid for.’

‘I don’t have the money –’

‘And I just told you that I can’t have an assistant in this shop with shabby shoes. Wear those in here and there’ll be no point in you cleaning the place. You’ll be tramping mud all over everything. Leave them with your coat.’

She slipped her shoes off obediently and stood them neatly beneath her coat. When she turned, Ben was watching her. He held out a pair of sturdy black lace-ups. Strong, unattractive walking shoes of the ilk that Diana instinctively knew Elizabeth would approve of, and Ben would have trouble selling.

‘Try these,’ he barked. Facing him, she crouched down so she wouldn’t expose any length of leg, slipped them on, and tied the laces. Unfortunately they fitted perfectly.