One Blue Moon (2 page)

‘Working ourselves to the bone.’

‘So I see. Did I hear you say you wanted to go to Ronnie’s?’

Diana nodded.

Tenting his coat over Maud’s head, he walked out of station yard and crossed the road quickly, avoiding a milk cart laden with churns that came rattling down the Graig hill at full tilt. Sidestepping a couple of boys on delivery bicycles, he pushed through a gawping group of gossiping women, and into the café.

Struggling with the two Gladstones, Diana failed to keep up with him. By the time she’d opened the café door, Tina Ronconi, Ronnie’s sister, had taken Maud from Wyn, uprooted two customers, stretched Maud out across their chairs and was bathing her temples with cold water.

Hot, steamy air, and mouth-watering warm aromas of freshly ground coffee and savoury frying blasted welcomingly into Diana’s face as she dropped her bags and closed the door. The interior of the café was dark, gloomy and blessedly, marvellously, familiar. A long mahogany counter dominated the left-hand side of the room, with matching shelves behind it, backed by an enormous mirror that reflected the rear of the huge mock-marble soda fountain, and stone lemon, lime and sarsaparilla cordial jars. A crammed conglomeration of glass sweet jars, open boxes of chocolate bars, carefully piles packets of cigarettes, cups, saucers and glass cases of iced and cream cakes filled every available inch of space on the wooden shelves.

She paused and listened for a moment, making out the distinctive voice of her old schoolfriend, Tony Ronconi, as it drifted noisily above the din of café conversation from behind the curtained doorway that led into the unseen recesses of the kitchen. All the tables she could see were taken. They were every Saturday morning, especially those around the stove that belched warmth into the ‘front’ room of the café. Through the arched alcove she could see a tram crew huddled round the open fire in the back area, shoes off, feet on fender drying their soaking socks.

‘I see you looked after Maud all right?’ Ronnie, the eldest and most cynical of the second generation of Ronconis, called from behind the counter where he was pouring six mugs of tea simultaneously.

‘I’d like to see you look after anyone where we’ve come from, Ronnie Ronconi,’ Diana scowled, moving the bags out of the doorway and closer to the chairs Maud was lying on.

‘Here,’ Ronnie pushed a cup of tea and the sugar shaker across the counter towards her. ‘Tony?’ he called out to the brother next in line to him, who was working in the kitchen. ‘Take over for me.’

‘Who’s going to do the vegetables for the dinners if I have to work behind the counter?’ Tony asked indignantly as he appeared from behind the curtain. ‘Angelo can’t. He’s still washing breakfast dishes. At half speed,’ he added. Noticing Diana for the first time, he smiled and nodded to her.

‘It’s only ten o’clock,’ Ronnie countered, quashing his brother’s complaints. ‘Papa and I used to get out seventy dinners in two and half hours on a Saturday in High Street with no help, and only an hour’s preparation. Time you learnt to do the same, my boy.’

Maud began to cough.

‘Prop her up, you stupid girls,’ Ronnie shouted at his sister and Diana. ‘Can’t you see she’s choking?’ Lifting himself on the flat of his hands he swung his long, lithe body easily over the high counter. He pushed his hand beneath Maud’s back and eased her into a sitting position. Startled by how light she was, he failed to stop the shock from registering on his face. He looked up. Diana was watching him. ‘I’ve seen more meat on picked chicken bones,’ he commented. ‘Didn’t they feed you in the Infirmary?’

‘Slops and leftovers, and not enough of those,’ Diana said harshly.

‘You back for the weekend, Diana?’ Tina asked brightly in a clumsy effort to lighten the atmosphere generated by Ronnie’s insensitive questioning.

‘No, back for good,’ Diana said flatly.

‘Job didn’t work out then?’ Tina asked.

‘They gave us all a medical yesterday. Afterwards they told Maud she was too ill to work. Swines handed over her wages along with her cards. I could hardly let her come home on her own.’

‘Language!’ Ronnie reprimanded. ‘If you were my sister I’d drag you into the kitchen and scrub your mouth out with washing soda.’

‘Then it’s just as well I’m not your sister.’

‘One more word from you, young lady, and I’ll put you outside the door.’

Diana fell silent. Although Ronnie was eleven years older than her, and more her brother’s friend than hers, she knew him well enough. He wasn’t one for making idle threats, and she was too worried about Maud to risk being parted from her now, when they were so close to home.

‘They only told Maud to leave yesterday?’ Ronnie demanded incredulously as he brushed Maud’s fair curls away from her face with a gesture that was uncommonly tender, for him.

‘It was as much as they could do to let us sleep in our beds in the hostel last night. New girls took over from us today.’

‘Maud didn’t get like this in a day or two, I know.’

‘She never was very strong,’ Diana insisted defensively. ‘And as soon as the weather turned really cold, she got worse.’

‘Stop talking about me as if I wasn’t here,’ Maud murmured, consciousness coinciding with yet another coughing fit.

‘See what you get for trying to talk?’ Ronnie unpinned the corners of the tea towel he was wearing round his waist and flung it at Tony. ‘I’m going to get the Trojan out of the White Hart yard. You’ll have to hurry the dishes and do the vegetables as well Angelo,’ he ordered his fifteen-year-old brother, who was peeking out from behind the kitchen curtain to find out what all the commotion was about.

‘I was going to the penny rush in the White Palace. Why should I do Tony’s jobs as well as my own?’ he complained.

‘Because Tony’s needed behind the counter, and because I’m telling you to,’ Ronnie said forcefully.

‘Well I’m not doing the cooking as well.’ Angelo slammed the pile of tea plates he was holding on to the counter. ‘And that’s final.’

‘I wouldn’t trust you to,’ Ronnie rejoined.

‘Then who is?’ Angelo demanded.

‘Tina, and before you say another word, think of Tony. He’ll have to manage both the counter and the tables for half an hour.’

‘But Ronnie, you promised I could go to the penny rush this week. You promised.’

‘Just stop your griping and get on with it, will you? It’s time all three of you learned to cope on your own for five minutes.’

‘Ronnie ...’

‘One more word out of you, Angelo, and you’ll be working every night next week.’ He looked at the girls. ‘When you hear the horn, get Maud ready. I’ll come in and carry her outside.’

‘Thanks, Ronnie.’ Diana was grateful to him for not making her beg for the lift. She finally picked up her tea from the counter and sugared it.

‘There’s no need to thank me. I owe Will a favour. And you,’ he glared at Tina. ‘Take a good look at these two and think twice before you try to nag Papa or me into letting you leave home again.’

‘See what you’ve done, Diana,’ Tina hissed as Ronnie went out. ‘Now they’ll never let any of us leave home.’

‘Except to visit our grandmother in the back end of Italy,’ Angelo crowed. He’d never had any desire to leave Pontypridd.

‘Don’t you dare go rubbing it in, Angelo Ronconi,’ Tina snapped.

‘Leaving home’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Is it kid?’ Diana helped Maud to sit up while looking around for Wyn. She wanted to thank him. The first familiar face in Pontypridd had shown her that she no longer had to shoulder the problem of Maud’s illness alone. But she couldn’t see him anywhere.

Maud closed her eyes again, too weak even to voice agreement with Diana. At that moment she would have given every penny that she’d managed to save since September to turn the clock back two years. She wanted to be fourteen again. Curled up in her big, warm, comfortable, flannel-sheeted double bed, a stone footwarmer at her feet, and her big sister Bethan to soothe and cuddle her. But Bethan wasn’t home, and before she’d be allowed go to bed she’d have to face her mother. One glance at the apprehension on Diana’s face was enough to tell her that she wasn’t the only one dreading the encounter.

Chapter Two

‘You’re going the wrong way,’ Diana protested, struggling to prevent Maud from falling on to Ronnie as he swung the Trojan around a sharp left turn a third of the way up the Graig hill. Ronnie had insisted on sandwiching Maud on the bench seat between them, but with Maud still teetering on the point of collapse, Diana was finding the drive up the hill more of a strain than the train journey.

‘I’m stopping off at Laura and Trevor’s,’ Ronnie announced. ‘What’s the point in having a sister married to a doctor if you don’t make use of him occasionally?’ The eldest of eleven children, he was accustomed to making decisions and assuming authority. Authority strengthened by the business responsibilities his father had thrust upon him at an early age, and his mother’s habit of deferring to him almost as much as she deferred to her husband.

‘I think Maud should go straight home to bed,’ Diana said forcefully.

‘And I think she needs to see a doctor,’ Ronnie countermanded, swinging the van round to the right and pulling up outside a low terrace of stone houses that fronted directly on to the pavement. ‘And if you’re worrying about Trevor’s bill, don’t. Your uncle pays Trevor his penny a week same as all the other families on the Graig. Trevor won’t charge him any more for looking at Maud now.’

‘I didn’t think he would.’ Diana flung open the door of the van and turned to help Maud, but Ronnie had already lifted her cousin from the van. Cradling Maud in one arm, he opened the front door of one of the houses with his free hand.

‘Laura!’ he shouted, walking straight past the parlour, down the narrow passage and into the back kitchen.

‘Ronnie?’ Laura answered from the range where she was stirring a pot of stew. ‘I am honoured,’ she said sarcastically. ‘What brings you here in the middle of the day, and a market day at that ... Dear God!’ She stepped back, dropping the spoon to the floor as Ronnie carried Maud into the tiny room and set her down in an easy chair comfortably placed in front of the fire.

‘She’s ill,’ Ronnie announced somewhat superfluously as Laura, still very much the nurse despite her new status of housewife, loosened the collar of Maud’s coat and checked her temperature by laying her cool hand against Maud’s flushed cheek. She looked up and nodded to Diana, who was hovering awkwardly in the passageway just outside the kitchen door. Seeing condemnation where none was intended in Laura’s glance, Diana forced back the tears that were stinging the back of her eyes.

‘The Infirmary didn’t work out then?’ Laura asked.

Diana shook her head.

‘They’ve just come in on the Cardiff train,’ Ronnie explained briefly. ‘Maud fainted in the station so I thought it might be as well if Trevor took a look at her before I take her home.’

‘He’s in the Central Homes.’ Laura glanced up at a smart black modern clock on the wall. ‘I’ll telephone and see if I can get hold of him. Morning ward rounds should be about finishing by now. I’m sure he’ll be able to spare a few minutes.’

‘I’m fine,’ Maud murmured faintly.

‘I can see just how fine you are, my girl,’ Laura said in a calm voice that reminded Maud of her sister Bethan. ‘I’ll telephone. Diana, get your hat and coat off and make us all some tea.’

Diana did as she was asked, while Laura went into the hall. Ronnie sat in the easy chair at the opposite end of the range to Maud’s. He pulled the
Pontypridd Observer
out from behind the cushion at his back, propped his feet up on a kitchen chair, and began to read.

Diana bustled around, checking the kettle was full, lifting cups down from the dresser, all the while marvelling that Laura – the Laura she’d known ever since she could remember – had a telephone in her house, and a doctor for a husband.

‘Trevor will be here in five minutes.’ Laura wiped her hands on her overall and checked her reflection in the bevel-edged mirror that hung above the table. She had to lean over the table in order to do so: there wasn’t much free space to move around in between the range, easy chairs, dresser, table and kitchen chairs.

‘Bride primping for hubby?’ Ronnie teased, peering over the top of the paper.

‘Just checking to see I don’t look as scruffy as you.’ Laura kicked the chair out from under Ronnie’s feet. ‘And don’t treat my home like a dosshouse,’ she ordered.

‘Tea’s poured,’ Diana interrupted. The fights between the Ronconis, particularly the two eldest, were legendary on the Graig.

‘Is it sugared and stirred?’ Ronnie extended his hand from behind his paper.

‘You paralysed, or what?’ Diana retorted.

‘Just looking after my driving arm.’

Conscious that Ronnie had only ferried them half-way up the hill, Diana heaped three sugars into the tea, stirred it and handed it to him.

‘Maud, do you want some tea?’ Laura asked in the slightly loud voice that nurses on public wards usually adopt when talking to their patients.

Heaving for breath, Maud shook her head.

‘Laura, I’m home.’ The door banged and Trevor strode into the house. Not quite up to Ronnie’s six-foot mark, he was dark and slightly built. His thin face flushed with pride as he looked briefly at his wife before turning to Diana and Maud.

‘Back already from the Infirmary?’

‘It didn’t work out,’ Diana muttered, embarrassed by the constant repetition of her and Maud’s failure.

‘The Infirmary’s hard on junior doctors,’ Trevor said kindly, ‘but I’ve heard it’s even harder on ward maids.’ He glanced at Ronnie. It’s good to see you, Ronnie, you should come down more often.’

‘I would if dear sister didn’t live here.’ Ronnie finished his tea, stood up and stretched. ‘I’ve been meaning to check the oil in the van for days. Give me a shout when you’re ready to go, Diana. See you Trevor, Laura.’ He closed the door behind him.

Trevor took Maud’s pulse while Diana squeezed another cup of tea out of the pot for him. ‘Looks like you’ve had too much work, not enough food and nowhere near enough rest.’ Trevor released his hold on Maud’s wrist.

‘They said it was consumption,’ she said flatly, taking deep breaths in an effort to stop coughing.

‘Did they take an X-ray?’ he asked.

‘They X-rayed all of us twice. Once when we started in September, and again last week,’ Diana answered for her.

‘And they asked you to go after they had the results of last week’s tests?’

‘Yes,’ Maud whispered.

‘How long have you been coughing like this?’

‘For a couple of weeks,’ Maud mumbled vaguely.

He wrapped his hand around her fist, and forced her fingers open. Diana’s sodden and bloody handkerchief lay in her palm. ‘And how long have you been coughing up blood?’ he asked quietly.

‘A week, perhaps two,’ she replied reluctantly.

‘Home for you, young lady,’ Trevor decreed. ‘Warm room, warm bed, and plenty of rest. Tell your mother I’ll be up as soon as I’ve finished in the hospital for the day.’

‘I’ll be fine.’

‘Who’s the doctor here, me or you?’ He looked at Diana. ‘You’ll see she behaves herself?’

‘I tried my best the whole time we were in the Infirmary. I’m not likely to stop now,’ Diana replied. She felt as though the whole world were blaming her for the state Maud was in.

‘I’ll give Ronnie a shout.’ Laura opened the door. ‘Tell Mrs Powell I’ll call in and see her when I come up to visit Mama.’

‘I’ll do that,’ Diana said dully, picking-up her coat and handbag.

‘They’ll all be glad to see you safely back home.’ Laura smiled brightly as she helped Maud button her coat.

‘I’m not too sure of that,’ Diana answered as she walked down the passageway. Her Aunt Elizabeth had never attempted to hide her dislike of her, her brother Will or their widowed mother Megan, and after her mother had been arrested Aunt Elizabeth had publicly announced that none of Evan’s dead brother’s family would ever set foot in her house again. Diana had nearly collapsed when she’d received a letter from Will two weeks after she and Maud had started work in the Infirmary telling her that both he and their mother’s Russian lodger, Charlie Raschenko, had moved in with their uncle and aunt, after he’d been forced to sell their house to pay off their mother’s fines. But for all of Will’s cheery determination to make the best of a bad situation, and Laura’s sentimental forecast of a warm welcome, she rather suspected that the atmosphere in Graig Avenue would be strained enough, without her and Maud adding to the already overcrowded household.

Elizabeth was alone in the house, dredging sugar over the pastry top of an enormous bread pudding, when Diana and Ronnie walked into the back kitchen, half-carrying, half-dragging an exhausted Maud between them. Ronnie took one look at the deserted room and remained only as long as it took him to exchange pleasantries with Elizabeth before returning to the van for Maud and Diana’s bags. He left them in the passageway, shutting the front door behind him.

‘What’s this, then?’ Elizabeth demanded, although a look at Maud had been sufficient for her to sum up the situation.

‘They wouldn’t let me stay on in the Infirmary,’ Maud began to explain in a cracked whisper.

‘They gave Maud her cards yesterday,’ Diana interrupted. ‘I couldn’t let her go home by herself.’

‘Then you’ll be wanting a bed tonight too,’ Elizabeth sighed in a martyred voice.

‘Diana’s come home for good. Same as me Mam,’ Maud broke in quickly.

‘And pray tell, what are the pair of you going to live on?’

‘I’m sure I’ll find something soon.’ Diana knew full well that the question had been directed more at her than Maud. ‘I promise I won’t be any trouble, Aunt Elizabeth.’

‘And I know you won’t, my girl’ Elizabeth echoed harshly. ‘First sign of any nonsense and you’ll be out through that door quicker than you walked in. That’s something I’m promising you.’

Taking Elizabeth’s idea of ‘nonsense’ as a veiled reference to her mother’s transgressions, Diana found it difficult to hold her tongue.

‘Heaven only knows where I’m going to put you,’ Elizabeth complained, crashing open the oven door and thrusting the bread pudding inside. ‘The house is full to bursting with William and Charlie lodging here as it is.’

‘Diana can share with me,’ Maud said faintly from the depths of her father’s easy chair, where Ronnie had left her.

‘I think not,’ Elizabeth contradicted. ‘Not with that cold. If Diana shares a bed with you, like as not she’ll catch it, and the last thing I need is two of you to nurse.’

‘Diana and I have been sharing a room for months, and it’s not a cold ...’

‘Of course it is, girl,’ Elizabeth broke in too quickly. ‘You obviously haven’t been looking after yourself the way I taught you to. I don’t expect you’ve been airing your clothes properly, or wearing the warm flannel underwear I stitched for you.’ She shook her head briskly. ‘It was the same with Bethan. She wouldn’t listen, and look where that got her. And when she was ill, what did she do? Expected me to drop everything and nurse her, same as you do now,’

‘I don’t expect anything, Mam,’ Maud croaked.

‘She has been wearing her warm underwear, Aunt Elizabeth,’ Diana protested, angered by her aunt’s lack of sympathy.

‘Seeing is believing,’ Elizabeth chanted smugly. ‘She wouldn’t be lying there like that if she had. Neglect! Pure neglect and selfishness, that’s what this is.’

‘I think Maud ought to go to bed, Aunt Elizabeth,’ Diana suggested. ‘She fainted twice on the journey here and the doctor said ...’

‘What doctor?’ Elizabeth commanded, instantly on the alert.

‘Doctor Lewis. Ronnie stopped off at Laura’s house on the way up the hill, so Maud could see him, and Doctor Lewis said Maud should be put to bed in a warm room right away, and he’d call in tonight after he finished in the hospital.’

‘And just what did Ronnie Ronconi think he was doing, taking my daughter to a doctor when he wasn’t asked?’ Elizabeth ranted. ‘Is his brother-in-law so short of work now that he has to tout for trade for him? And I suppose Trevor Lewis suggested that we go and buy some expensive concoction or other in the chemist’s, when any fool can see all that’s wrong with Maud is a common cold.’

‘He didn’t prescribe anything,’ Diana said coldly, before Maud, who was struggling for breath, managed to speak. ‘All he said was that Maud should go to bed.’

‘As if I need a doctor to tell me to put my own daughter to bed when she’s in that condition,’ Elizabeth sneered. ‘Well, doctor or not, Maud, I’m afraid you’re going to have to make do in your father’s easy chair with a stool at your feet for an hour or two while I make up and air your bed. It will do more harm than good for you to go upstairs the way it is now. I don’t think your bedroom door’s been opened more than once or twice since Bethan left. And seeing as how you’re here,’ she turned to Diana, ‘you may as well make yourself useful. You can bring up some sticks and half a bucketful of coals, and lay a fire to chase the damp out of the room. And don’t go thinking that you can have a fire in there every day either,’ she cautioned her daughter. ‘We haven’t money to waste on coal for anyone’s bedroom, ill or not. We’re hard pushed to keep the kitchen stove going, even in this weather, on what little your father and Eddie bring in. This will be a one-off treat because the room’s not been used since the cold weather started.’

‘Don’t put yourself out on my account,’ Maud bit back, her eyes heavy with anger and exhaustion.

‘Looks like I’m going to have to, whether you want me to or not.’ Elizabeth opened the washhouse door and lifted out her brushes and dusters.

‘Won’t take long, Maud.’ Diana lifted Maud’s feet on to a kitchen chair. Taking her coat off, she draped it over Maud, who was still wearing hers.

‘There’s spare blankets in the ottoman at the foot of my bed,’ Elizabeth said. ‘You can bring one down. It will be a sight more serviceable than your damp coat.’

‘Yes, Aunt.’ Inwardly seething, Diana left the room. She brought down a thick grey blanket that smelt of moth-balls and folded it around Maud. Her cousin was already asleep. Slumped sideways in the chair, her fair hair was plastered close to her head in tendrils that had been curled into tight ringlets by the rain. Her face was flushed with illness and the heat of the fire. An overwhelming sense of guilt washed over Diana as she tucked the blanket around Maud’s emaciated figure. She should have done something weeks ago: persuaded Maud to leave the Infirmary when the signs of tuberculosis had become increasingly apparent; rushed her home when she had first coughed up blood, not a couple of weeks ago as Maud had told Trevor, but months back. During the first week they’d spent in Cardiff.