One Blue Moon (27 page)

Touched by everyone’s generosity Maud didn’t even notice her mother standing in the doorway, a strange expression on her face.

Gina, Tina, Diana and Laura worked hard on Maud for two solid hours. They waved her hair, puffed perfumed talcum powder over her body, lightly rouged her cheeks and powdered her face, adding as the final touch before the dress went on, a lavish sprinkling of ‘dabs’ of Evening in Paris.

‘You’d better pack Maud’s things, Diana,’ Laura said suddenly.

‘There’s no need, I’m coming back tonight.’

‘No you’re not,’ Laura smiled. ‘Ronnie has a surprise for you.’

‘We’re not leaving today, are we?’

‘No,’ Laura said mysteriously.

‘Then if they’re not leaving until tomorrow I think Maud should spend tonight in her own bed,’ Elizabeth said quickly, as she carried a tray of biscuits and home-made lemonade into the room.

‘You’ll still be able to wave her off tomorrow morning.’ Laura fingered a wave on Maud’s forehead, sharpening its edge.

‘But with the journey and everything she’s going to need her rest,’ Elizabeth said sharply.

‘Don’t worry, she’ll get plenty of that.’ Laura’s hackles rose at the shadow Elizabeth was casting over her and Trevor’s surprise, and that was without taking into account the inference that Ronnie wouldn’t allow to Maud to rest.

‘I would like to know where my own daughter is going ...’

‘If you come downstairs with me, Mrs Powell, I’ll tell you.’ Laura propelled Maud’s mother out of the room, leaving Diana to pack in peace. There wasn’t much to stowaway. The contents of two drawers and the wardrobe still left plenty of room on top of the Gladstone for the new underclothes and nightdress that the Ronconi girls had given Maud, together with her well-used sponge bag and bottles of Evening in Paris perfume and Essence of Violets.

At a quarter-past three Laura returned and helped Maud on with the dress. It was the right length but about six inches too wide everywhere. It took the combined efforts of all four girls to tie the sash to their communal satisfaction, but once the bow was finally pulled out as wide as it would go, the veil secured with combs to Maud’s head, and the lace allowed to fall gently over her shoulders, the general consensus was that she was the most stunning bride that the Graig had seen since Laura had walked down the aisle with Trevor.

‘Now remember,’ Laura ordered as she walked around the chair that Maud was sitting on. ‘Rest until it’s time to go, let Diana do everything.’

‘If we’re going we’d better go,’ Elizabeth said firmly from outside the door. Thinking that Elizabeth would want some time alone with her daughter, Laura swept everyone out of the room.

‘I have something for you too.’ Elizabeth took Maud’s hand and folded something into it.

‘Not your mother’s locket, Mam, I know what it means to you.’

‘It’s all I have left to give you, so I’d appreciate you taking it with good grace, Maud,’ Elizabeth said briskly. She kissed her daughter, grazing her cheek with chapped, dry lips.

‘This wedding, and Italy. It is what you want, isn’t it Maud?’

Maud looked up at her with her enormous blue eyes. ‘More than anything else in the world,’ she affirmed.

‘That’s all right then,’ Elizabeth said as she walked out through the door.

Ronnie sat impatiently in the front pew of St John’s church and waited. The church was strange, peculiar, unlike any he’d sat in before. It not only looked different – chilly, barren and spartan in contrast to the glitteringly gilded, image-strewn interior of the Catholic church in Treforest. It even smelt different. The sweet, lingering perfume of incense that he’d associated with prayer and God, ever since he had first been carried into a church in his mother’s arms, was absent. In its place was a rank, musty odour of damp, mixed with beeswax polish and decaying flowers.

He glanced behind at the empty pews, hoping to see Trevor, not only because he felt he needed a sympathetic being next to him to lend moral support, the advent of Trevor also meant the advent of Maud in Trevor’s car, and he wanted the ceremony to be over and done with as quickly as possible. He wouldn’t be able to relax until the brand new gold ring he’d bought in a Cardiff jeweller’s yesterday afternoon was firmly fixed on Maud Powell’s finger, signalling the irrevocable change of her name to Ronconi. Once that was done, it would be too late for Evan Powell to change his mind about giving his consent to the marriage. Too late for his father to make a scene, and even too late for Maud herself to have second thoughts – a prospect that had concerned him ever since he walked away from the Graig Hospital, too worried by the ease with which she’d acceded to his proposal to be elated by his success in wooing and winning her.

He’d had so little time with her, and what he’d had, he felt he’d wasted. He hadn’t told her any of the things he’d wanted to. Nothing that would make her want to be with him as urgently as he needed to be with her.

In an effort to suppress the image of Maud shaking her head and hesitating that insisted on intruding into his mind, he studied his surroundings. The plain, bare, whitewashed walls. The severe lines of the rather utility pulpit, and the unadorned wooden crucifix above it. The altar, covered by a white, gold-embroidered cloth, that looked positively empty spread with its meagre furniture of brass candlesticks and matching cross.

The Reverend Price, who unknown to Ronnie had incurred a great deal of wrath from his parishioners for agreeing to perform a marriage ceremony for an avowed Catholic and a Chapel girl, came out of the vestry, bowing and smiling at the people who’d begun to shuffle into the pews behind Ronnie. His young and astonishingly pretty wife struck up the organ – and Ronnie continued to wait. He stared at the wooden plaque that hung above the vestry door, displaying the hymn numbers for evensong. He contemplated the Reverend Price’s receding hairline and attempted to divine at what point in time he would go bald; he abandoned the diversion when he realised that he might never know, as he wouldn’t be there to witness the transformation.

Bardi! Did he really want to go to Bardi? He ransacked hazy, obscure, half-forgotten corners of his memory. From somewhere came an image of a farmhouse. A long, low-built, greystone building that blended into a rock-strewn, barren hillside. He remembered a stone passage running right through the house, which was cold – ice-cold on even the warmest days. People – his black-garbed, cuddly grandmother, and sharp-featured, angular grandfather –lived on one side; cows on the other. A stone pigsty in the corner of the field next to the house, a huge, fat old sow grunting and snuffling in and around the soiled straw. Vines growing against the south-facing back wall of the house, blocking the light from the few tiny windows that punctured the ancient stonework.

And inside – inside, the house was cool. He saw again his spinster aunt sweeping the dirt from the flagstoned floors out through the open door into the yard. There were rough wooden chairs and tables, so rough that if you weren’t careful you picked up splinters in your hands. And everywhere the smell of garlic and strong purple onions that wafted down from the racks hoisted close to the ceiling, out of reach of the mice. The air, dark and heavy with smoke from the wood-burning stove, and the aroma of his grandfather’s wine fermenting in its wooden barrels. A wine so coarse and sour that even his grandfather cut it with water from the well before he drank it.

Aunt Theresa, his father’s sister, who had never married because of some great tragedy, often hinted at but never openly spoken of, spinning wool in the evening after he and his grandfather had brought the sheep down from the top fields for the night – or had it been for the summer? He simply couldn’t remember any more, except the warmth. The sun, and the clean, clear air. Sun and air that Maud needed. But at what cost? Could he go back to Bardi? Live there again? Fit in? Work as a farmer?

The music changed. Red-faced, Trevor rushed up, taking his place breathlessly beside him. He turned, and saw Maud walking slowly, unsteadily down the aisle towards him. She was leaning heavily on Evan Powell’s arm, her dress a fairytale princess’s gleaming gown of satin, that he didn’t even recognise as his sister’s. Her pale, thin face was radiant beneath the lace veil. She saw him looking at her, and smiled. That smile stilled every doubt: if Bardi would give Maud a chance of life, then Bardi was what he wanted.

Chapter Twenty-five

‘Giacomo!’

‘Mama, you came!’ Ronnie put down the pen he’d used to sign the register in the vestry and clasped his mother’s bulk in his arms. Tears poured down her cheeks on to the sleeve of his best suit.

‘We all came. Even little Robert and Theresa. But not Papa.’ She dabbed her eyes with a preposterously tiny square of lace edged linen. ‘He wouldn’t listen to me,’ she wailed. ‘But then, when would he ever listen to anyone except you, Giacomo? The rest of us, we told him, we told him straight,’ the borrowed Welsh colloquialism sounded strange couched in her Italian accent. ‘We said we were coming, and that was an end to it. He couldn’t stop us. He didn’t even try,’ she sobbed. ‘But he wouldn’t come with us, and you our eldest son ...’

‘Mama ... Mama!’ Smiling, he drew her gently round the table and put her hand in Maud’s. ‘Please Mama, say hello to my wife.’

Mrs Ronconi wiped her eyes, clasped Maud to her ample bosom, and succumbed to another outburst. Laura looked at Trevor and rolled her eyes heavenwards.

‘Everyone in our house,’ she said firmly. ‘For tea. You’re invited too, Reverend Price, and your wife.’

‘Most kind, most kind,’ the Reverend Price mumbled, frantically trying to think of an excuse as to why he couldn’t go. But as it was too late to walk up the hill to the vicarage and back before evensong, he didn’t really have one.

‘Come on, Ronnie.’ Laura prodded her brother in the ribs. ‘If you’ve finished signing your life away to Maud, you may as well get on with whatever is left to you. Lead the way.’ She watched critically while Ronnie helped Maud out of the chair that the Reverend Price had thoughtfully placed in the vestry for her. ‘Mr Powell, I believe you lead Mama out,’ she said, briskly taking charge. ‘Trevor gets the bridesmaid. Diana, where are you?’ She looked around impatiently until she saw her leaning against the wall next to the outside door. ‘Mrs Powell, if you don’t mind walking with another woman, you can have me.’ She extended her arm to Elizabeth.

‘I don’t mind,’ Elizabeth said stiffly, in a tone that clearly said she did. But then, Laura’s suggestion was just one more insult in a day that had been filled with insults and peculiarities. She dreaded having to walk into chapel that night. When the new minister and her Uncle John Joseph got to hear of this, they’d have something to say about it. Of that she was sure.

Maud clung to Ronnie’s arm as the vicar opened the door for them. She gasped in amazement. She’d seen people when she’d walked down the aisle, but with eyes only for Ronnie, she hadn’t realised just how many were there. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how they’d all heard, when the date had only been fixed the day before. The Graig grapevine must have gone into overtime. Mr Griffiths and Jenny were there, but not his wife. Mrs Richards and Glan from next door, some of her Aunt Megan’s old neighbours from Leyshon Street, their neighbours from the Avenue, the Ronconis’ neighbours from Danycoedcae Road, and all the tram crews who were off duty, presumably to represent the café’s customers.

‘Just smile sweetly at everyone, and get into Trevor’s car as quickly as you can,’ Ronnie said quietly as he slipped his arm from Maud’s and supported her round the waist.

‘But Laura’s only across the road,’ she protested.

‘I thought I just heard you promise to obey me.’ He glared at her in mock anger. ‘Let’s start as we mean to go on. In Trevor’s car, woman,’ he ordered.

Ensconced in Laura’s front parlour with a plate heaped high with Mrs Richards’ egg sandwiches, Jenny Griffiths’ sausage rolls, Tony’s cream cakes, and Laura’s ham and egg pie balanced in one hand, and a glass of home-made blackcurrant wine that Laura had poured her in the other, Maud watched in bewilderment as Ronnie thanked everyone for the envelope that had been presented to him by Harry Griffiths.

‘It’s not much,’ Harry said gravely, ‘but as most of us didn’t know about the wedding until this morning, there wasn’t time to get you anything. And then again, seeing as how you’re off to Italy first thing in the morning, it’s probably just as well that we didn’t get you anything bulky to carry.’

Used to dealing out largesse, not receiving it, for the first time in his life Ronnie was at a loss for words. Unable to mutter more than an inadequate ‘thank you’, he shook the hand of everyone who’d managed to cram into Laura’s tiny parlour, before his mother called them out into the kitchen for a slice of the cake she’d baked that morning in defiance of her husband’s disapproving glares.

‘We’ll be going in five minutes, Maud.’ Ronnie crouched before the chair Maud was sitting in as soon as they were alone. ‘Trevor’s taking us to town in his car,’ he said.

‘Wherever we’re going, I should change.’ She looked around for her case, forgetting that Trevor had left it in his car.

‘No you most definitely should not, young lady,’ Laura contradicted as she bustled into the room and closed the door behind her. ‘Go as you are and there’ll be no argument from the desk in the New Inn about wanting to see your marriage lines. Damn, I shouldn’t have said. Now I’ve spoilt the surprise. Your boys are all hovering outside wanting to say goodbye to you Maud; you can have as long as it takes me to find Trevor.’

Eddie, William and Haydn trooped in awkwardly together. They held out a parcel.

‘Charlie knocked up a fellow he knew this morning and made him open his stall,’ Eddie explained, emotion making him suddenly garrulous. ‘We wanted to give you something to remember us by.’

‘As if I’d forget any of you!’ Biting her lower lip to stop it from trembling, Maud unwrapped the brown paper parcel.

‘A clock!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s beautiful. Really beautiful. We’ll treasure it always, won’t we Ronnie?’ She fumbled for his hand, and he squeezed her fingers gently.

‘Brass bedside clock. Real brass.’ Eddie said proudly. ‘And it’s got a second hand. There’s an alarm button on the back. That small clockface at the bottom, that’s where you set the time for the bell to ring.’

Maud reached up and wrapped her arms around Eddie’s neck. ‘You look after yourself,’ she begged. ‘If you must box, please be careful. And you will write, won’t you?’

‘I’ll try,’ he murmured, screwing his cap in his hands. ‘You know I’ve never been very good at putting things down on paper.’

‘Diana and I will make him write at least once a week.’ William pushed his way past Eddie, and kissed her on the cheek. ‘And don’t worry, I’ll be behind him every fight he has,’ he joked.

Haydn was the last to kiss her, and by that time her soft blue eyes were brimming with unshed tears.

‘Hey,’ he smiled, lifting her chin with his fingers. ‘We all have to grow up and move away, that’s life.’ He sat on the arm of her chair and embraced her warmly. ‘Tell you what, I’ll give you a secret to go with,’ he whispered. ‘I’m leaving tomorrow morning too, for Brighton. I’ve finally got a job where I’ll be singing on a stage, not sweeping one.’

‘Haydn, are you serious?’ Maud stared wide-eyed at her brother.

‘I wanted you to be the first to know,’ he lied, blessing Elizabeth’s tight-lipped silence and forgetting the long talk he’d had with his father about the move earlier that morning.

‘You’re really leaving tomorrow?’ Eddie and William chorused.

‘Yes, and I’ve got you a job with Mr Horton, that’s if you want it,’ he said briefly to his brother. ‘Sorry I couldn’t get you into the Town Hall as well, but the manager knew someone. Might even have been family.’

‘Your mother and father are waiting, Maud,’ Laura prompted from the doorway, concerned that the boys were tiring her.

Ronnie ushered the boys out of the room, so Elizabeth and Evan could get into the parlour. It was a tight squeeze in the passageway, and some people had already spilled up the stairs and out on to the pavement.

‘I’ve got a couple of bottles of beer in the kitchen if you fancy some, boys,’ Trevor shouted from the back of the house. William followed the call like a dog to his dinner, but Eddie and Haydn hung back. Haydn held out his hand to his brother-in-law, but Eddie looked him squarely in the eye before offering his.

‘Just don’t ever forget one thing, Ronnie Ronconi,’ he said flatly. ‘That’s my sister you’ve got there.’

‘She’s not just your sister any more, Eddie,’ Ronnie said with a wry smile. ‘She’s also my wife, and you’d better be careful in the ring. I don’t want anyone, not even you, upsetting her.’

Elizabeth kissed Maud briefly on the cheek then left the room, sensing, yet resenting, Maud’s desire to be alone with her father. Evan hugged Maud, kissed her, then delved deep into the pocket of the trousers of the suit he’d had made for his own wedding.

‘The Italians set great store by valuables, or so they tell me. So I want you to have this.’ He pressed his father’s gold pocket watch and chain into her hand. ‘Keep it safe love, both the watch and the chain are real gold. I was going to knock up Arthur Faller this morning and swap them for a piece of jewellery, but then I thought, no. They’re solid, safe pieces. You’ll be able to sell them anywhere in the world if you need to.’

‘Dad, Granddad left them to you. I can’t take them off you.’

‘Yes you can. It’ll please me to think of you looking at them, so you must take them or you’ll upset me. Take care of yourself love, and don’t forget to write. Keep well.’

Ronnie, hovering in the passage, saw Maud bite her lip again, and nodded to Trevor. Two minutes later she and Ronnie were sitting in the back seat of Trevor’s car, their luggage safely stowed away in the boot as they sped down the hill towards the centre of town, and the New Inn.

The house remained crowded, even after Maud and Ronnie left. Haydn stood in a corner of the kitchen, drinking a small glass of Trevor’s beer and surreptitiously watching Jenny Griffiths out of the corner of his eye. Charlie had arranged a lift for him with the driver of a meat lorry who was taking a load of lambs to London. The load was leaving the slaughterhouse at five in the morning, and for all he knew, if everything worked out the way he hoped, he’d never be back in Ponty again.

Finishing his beer and leaving his glass on the table, he took his courage in both hands and walked over to where Jenny was talking to Laura and Diana.

‘Hello,’ he said quietly, so quietly she didn’t hear him. But Laura did. Pulling Diana’s sleeve, she dragged her off to the front parlour. Puzzled, Jenny looked after them, then turned and saw Haydn.

‘Could I talk to you? It won’t take a moment,’ he murmured.

Jenny glanced around the packed room. ‘We could go out the back,’ Haydn suggested.

She followed him through the washhouse where the Ronconi girls were clearing and stacking plates, sorting Laura’s from those that had been lent by the neighbours. Haydn walked ahead of her; he didn’t see the winks and nudges that Tina and Gina were giving each other, but Jenny did. He stopped at the end of the small garden, and leant on the wall.

‘I can’t stay long,’ she said awkwardly, conscious of all the attention that was being bestowed on them from the washhouse.

‘Neither can I,’ he said quickly. ‘I just wanted to say sorry for that stupid row we had ...’

‘Oh, so do I,’ the words poured out in relief. She turned to him, an emotional, intense expression on her face that made his blood run cold. Did she think he didn’t know about her and Eddie?

‘Please let me finish what I want to say.’ He looked away from her over the scrubby clumps of brown and moss-green grass towards the top of the mountain. ‘I wanted to tell you,’ he was talking quickly. Too quickly. ‘I wanted to tell you that I’m leaving,’ he said finally.

‘Leaving?’ she stared at him in bewilderment.

‘Early tomorrow morning.’ He was determined to keep speaking so there would be no awkward silences between them. ‘I’ve been offered a job in Brighton.’

‘In Brighton,’ she echoed uncomprehendingly.

‘Yes.’ Her repetition of his words was beginning to irritate him. She sounded like a bad chorus echoing a lead singer. ‘I’ll be there until the end of the pantomime season, and with luck, the job might lead to another. It’s what I’ve always wanted.’

‘But you’ll be back, home I mean, for weekends?’ she asserted wretchedly.

‘No,’ he said briefly, still refusing to look at her, ‘I won’t be back.’ He finally turned to face her. ‘Hopefully, not ever. I just wanted to tell you myself before one of the others did. And of course I want to say goodbye.’ He extended his hand to her intending her to shake it, but she clung to his fingers as though they were a lifeline. ‘And I wanted to wish you and Eddie luck,’ he added cruelly. He pulled his hand from hers and walked quickly away, leaving her feeling totally bereft.

‘Well Signora Ronconi, what do you think?’ Ronnie laid Maud down gently on the huge double bed and looked around the room. It appeared vast, and incredibly beautiful to Maud’s eyes, just like a Hollywood bedroom. The walls were hung in gold brocade paper, the windows and bed draped in rich blue satin, edged with deep, crunchy ruffles of thick lace. The furniture was old, Victorian and dark oak, but she could forgive the old-fashioned look of the bedroom suite because the room was large enough to take the pieces and still leave enough space to walk around in.

‘Bathroom’s out in the corridor, first door on the left,’ Ronnie smiled. ‘So you can have a bath whenever you like. There’s electric light’ – he switched on the two bedside lights as though to prove it – ‘and there’s even a radio.’

‘It’s wonderful. Ronnie you shouldn’t have,’ she said, suddenly remembering practicalities like money. Ronnie had never discussed finances with her, and she wondered if he knew that all she had in the world was her bank book with three pounds in it, and the five pounds Diana had given her. ‘This room is a wedding present from Trevor and Laura. They said they didn’t want to give us anything we’d have to carry to Italy.’ He began to empty his pockets on the dressing table as the bellboy came upstairs with his suitcase and Maud’s Gladstone. Picking out sixpence from his loose change, he threw it to the boy, who caught it with a grin on his face.

‘Thank you, sir. I hope you’ll both be very happy, sir.’ He gave Maud, who was lying on the bed in her wedding dress and veil, a quick, shy look, before Ronnie closed and locked the door behind him.