One Blue Moon (32 page)

‘Ronnie?’ she called out weakly.

‘I’m here.’ His hand grasped hers, strong and reassuring.

‘Ronnie, don’t leave me,’ she pleaded.

‘Not now darling,’ he murmured. ‘Not ever.’

Epilogue

It had been a glorious summer, and the weather showed no sign of abating even in late September. The harvest had been a rich and golden one. The vines had never been as full, nor the grapes as sweet. Ronnie had even suggested to his grandfather that for once the wine might not need watering down. The sheep grazed, bald and contented, on dried grass that was already hay on the lower slopes of the valley. The cattle chewed on a sweeter cud nearer the stream and the farmhouse. The sow suckled her thirteen piglets, and even the runt that Aunt Theresa had taken to feeding wrapped in a shawl in the farmhouse kitchen was doing well enough to warrant a prognosis of continued life rather than a sticky end as a glazed suckling pig for Sunday dinner.

The animals lazed in the sties and the fields, Aunt Theresa and grandmother spun wool as they sat on the wooden kitchen chairs that grandfather had carried outside for them, and held their noses as they watched Ronnie carry buckets in and out of the stone tank beneath the farmhouse.

There’d been so many things he had forgotten about Bardi, he reflected, choking on raw sewage fumes as he lowered himself and his buckets into the murky depths of the cesspit. Not least the ritual, twice-yearly emptying out of the huge stone waste pit beneath the house.

The animals in the barn rested their hooves on a slatted stone floor. The slats were carefully spaced, close enough to allow the hoofs a firm grip, but not too close to obstruct the animal waste from falling into the tank. It didn’t help that the waste from the farmhouse drained into the same pit from chutes that led out of the kitchen sink and outhouse.

He carried his buckets to another tank, two fields away, built conveniently close to the vegetable plot. Stopping to breathe in clean air for a moment, he doused his hands in a horse trough before picking up his wooden buckets again. The walk back and forward across the fields he enjoyed; it was the short descent into the pit that was unpleasant. Only this time, he noted with satisfaction, the job was done. He was hard pushed to fill both buckets.

‘Dear God, I never expected to see Ronnie Ronconi, the immaculate Ronnie, dressed in work dungarees and up to his eyes in ...’

‘You don’t have to say the word.’ Ronnie struggled out of the pit. Putting down his buckets, he extended his hand.

‘I’d rather not, if you don’t mind,’ Trevor shook his head.

‘Coward,’ Ronnie smiled. They walked together across the fields. Trevor watched while Ronnie emptied the buckets and washed them in the wooden trough, before tipping it out on its side.

‘Shouldn’t you have stepped in there?’ Trevor asked gravely.

‘I’ve a better place lined up,’ Ronnie grinned. A set of perfect white teeth gleamed through the grime on his face. He walked on down to the stream. Trevor followed. Ronnie stepped straight into the cold water, still wearing his grandfather’s old working dungarees. He scrubbed the worst of the filth from them with sand, then, taking them off, he scrubbed himself with a crude wooden brush and bar of strong carbolic soap that he’d had the foresight to place on the bank before he began his job.

‘Looks like you’ve done this before,’ Trevor commented, squatting on his heels.

‘Second time this summer. Did you and Laura have a good journey?’

‘No. And as you’ve done it yourself, how can you even ask?’

Ronnie lay down, full length in the stream, and allowed the water to rinse off the soapsuds.

‘By the time we reached Bardi –’

‘You were tired, hot and hungry. And as the last straw, you found you had no other choice but to walk here.’ Ronnie left the water and pulled a pair of rough black cotton trousers over his slim, soaking flanks.

‘Aren’t you going to dry yourself?’

‘No need to in this heat.’ He picked up an unevenly woven linen shirt, and a leather belt.

‘How on earth did you manage with Maud, when you reached here?’ Trevor asked.

‘That was difficult.’ Ronnie’s face fell serious. ‘She was so done in by the time we got to Bardi, she was barely conscious. I met one of my grandfather’s friends. He had a sled –’

‘Don’t tell me,’ Trevor groaned. ‘One of those wonderful contraptions pulled by an ox, with no wheels, that bumps over every lump in the road.’

‘Good God, man, don’t tell me you and Laura tried to sit on it?’

‘For about five minutes.’ He watched Ronnie tuck his shirt into his trousers and pull the leather belt tightly around his waist. ‘You’ve lost weight,’ he said critically.

‘I could afford to,’ Ronnie said carelessly. ‘Those sleds are all right for luggage.’

‘That’s what we ended up using it for.’

Ronnie picked up his filthy overalls. Wrapping them in a bundle and grabbing the soap and brush, he began to walk up the hill, back towards the farmhouse. ‘I carried Maud here,’ he said quietly.

‘She must have been exhausted.’

‘Half dead might be a better description,’ Ronnie told him.

They reached the top of the hill. Trevor was panting from the heat and the unaccustomed exertion, but Ronnie was as fresh as if he’d just left his bed.

‘As I said, I carried Maud here. It’s only about four miles.’

‘Dear God, Ronnie, weren’t you tired yourself? I could barely drag myself up the hills to here. The thought of carrying Laura as well ...’

‘Maud’s lighter than Laura,’ Ronnie pointed out. ‘And by that time I’d seen enough to jog my memory. I remembered enough of my grandmother and my aunt to be sure of our welcome. I wasn’t disappointed. My grandmother had already stripped, cleaned and made up the biggest bed, in the best bedroom, for Maud. Not that they wanted me to share it with her,’ he complained drily. ‘Between them, Aunt Theresa and my grandmother elbowed me very nicely out of the way. They must have been bored out of their minds before we turned up, because judging by the amount of time they spent nursing Maud they couldn’t have had anything to do before. They spoonfed her the best spaghetti, the freshest vegetables, the richest cream. They stayed with her day and night, pouring weird concoctions of herbal teas down her throat. They talked to her, sang to her – not that poor Maud understood a single word they were saying – and I couldn’t swear to it, but in my opinion I think they even resorted to casting a spell or two.’

Ronnie looked to the back of the house where his grandfather had carried out three more chairs and a small table. The older women had put away their spinning, and a bottle of his aunt’s strawberry wine stood on the table together with four glasses. Maud, still thin, but more robust than she had been in Wales, was sitting engrossed in conversation with Laura.

‘You had a chance to examine her before you came looking for me?’ Ronnie asked Trevor.

‘Only a third of her right lung is functioning, and her left is badly scarred, you do know that?’

‘The local doctor told me she’ll never be strong.’

‘He’s right,’ Trevor agreed flatly. ‘And if you’re asking for my opinion I think a return to Wales would be as good as a death sentence for her.’

‘Who wants to go back to Wales?’

‘You’re happy here?’ Trevor asked incredulously, staring at the primitive farmhouse, and Ronnie’s rough clothes.

‘Blissfully,’ Ronnie laughed. Maud looked up, saw Ronnie and smiled. He smiled back, and Trevor saw everything.

‘Good God, she’s now as besotted with you as you were with her!’ he exclaimed.

‘Of course. Did you doubt my ability to make her fall in love with me?’ Ronnie slapped his brother-in-law soundly on the back.

‘Come on, I’m still waiting for you to tell me what you think of Maud’s progress.’

‘Considering she’s only been here a few months, it’s incredible. She might not be strong, might never be strong, but the disease is no longer active. Provided she takes things quietly –’

‘As if my aunt will allow her to do anything else,’ Ronnie interrupted.

‘It’s a complete and utter miracle.’

‘No, not a miracle.’

‘Then what?’ Trevor asked.

‘Just my wife.’ Ronnie went to the well and pulled up a rope. Attached to the end of it was a bottle of his grandfather’s rough wine.

‘It’s not best brandy, but I guarantee you won’t have tasted anything like it before,’ he warned, handing the cool bottle to Trevor after pulling the cork with his teeth and taking a deep and satisfying draught himself.

‘What are we drinking to?’ Trevor asked.

‘Life, health and happiness.’

Trevor looked across at Laura, remembered the secret she had told him that morning, and saw the bloom it had already brought to her cheeks.

‘I must be the luckiest man alive,’ he murmured as he put the bottle to his lips.

Ronnie walked towards his wife, smiling, thinking of what they had to look forward to that night once they were closeted in the privacy of their bedroom.

‘You’re wrong,’ he said firmly, taking the bottle from a coughing, spluttering Trevor. ‘If there’s such a thing as a luckiest man alive, I’m it.’

An excerpt from

SILVER LININGS

Book Three in the
Hearts of Gold
series
by

CATRIN COLLIER

Chapter One

Oil lamps glowed, a straggling line of beacons wavering in the damp wind that whistled and tore through the sodden canvas that tented the market stalls. The cobbled gangway between the trestles that lined Market Square was far too narrow to accommodate the swell of late-night shoppers who spilled continuously into the area from both sides of the town. And not only the town: the lilting speech of those who lived in the multi-stranded valleys above Pontypridd could be heard mingling with the sharper, more commercial accents of the traders and the softer intonations of the townsfolk who were attempting to push their way through the jammed throng.

The air, even beneath the canvas shroud, was thick, heavy with moisture; the atmosphere rich with the eye stinging pungency of paraffin oil, the sour odour of unwashed clothes, and the reek of seasonal nips of whisky and brandy wafting on the tides of the traders’ breath as they called their wares.

‘Last chance for a bargain before Father Christmas comes down the chimney to burn his bum on hot ashes tonight, love. Come on, two a penny. You won’t find cheaper anywhere.’ A tall, thin man with a pockmarked face, shabby clothes and military bearing held up a pair of unevenly hemmed, coarsely woven handkerchiefs.

‘Not today, thanks.’ Alma Moore tucked her auburn curls beneath her home-knitted tam without relinquishing her hold on the cloth purse that contained her wages from both the tailor’s shop where she worked mornings, and the café where she waitressed most nights and weekends.

Once she’d secured her hair she thrust her purse deep into her pocket, burying it securely beneath her hand.

Nearly all the money she carried was earmarked for necessities – rent, coal, and paying something off the ‘tab’ on their endless bill in the corner shop. She knew if she spent the remainder on Christmas cheer for her mother and herself, there’d be nothing left for coals or food at the end of the week. But then – she gripped her purse so tightly that the edges of the coins cut into the palm of her hand – it
was
Christmas. And if she couldn’t treat her mother to a little luxury at Christmas, what did she have to look forward to?

Using her shoulder as a wedge, she nudged and jostled through the dense crowd until she reached an alleyway fringed by an overspill of stalls that led off Market Square. Two minutes later she was outside the old Town Hall that housed the indoor second-hand clothes market.

She forged ahead towards Horton’s stall.

‘Come for your mam’s coat?’ Seventeen-year-old Eddie Powell, resplendent in an almost-new blue serge suit that had been knocked down to him for two days’ work in lieu of wages, smiled at her. It was a smile she didn’t return. She couldn’t forget that it had been Eddie’s sixteen-year-old sister Maud who’d captured the heart and hand of Ronnie Ronconi, her ex-employer and ex-boyfriend of more than four years.

‘The coat, and-’ she pulled her purse from her pocket – ‘I was hoping you’d have a good woollen scarf to go with it. Real wool, mind. None of your cotton or rayon mixes.’

‘We’ve sets of matching gloves and scarves. All brand spanking new,’ Eddie suggested eagerly, scenting a sale in the air. ‘Boss bought them in as specials for Christmas. So many customers came asking he looked around for a supplier. We don’t get many second-hand accessories.’

He was proud of the ‘trade’ word he’d heard Wilf Horton mention and had never used himself before now. He picked up a woollen bundle from the top of an enormous, roughly crafted pine chest behind him. ‘Just feel the quality in this. Go on, feel.’

He thrust the grey cloth into Alma’s blue face. ‘It’s the best machine knit you’ll find anywhere,’ he continued, still imitating his boss’s sales patter. ‘A lot smoother than anything that comes off your mam’s needles, and pure wool. Soft wool,’ he said persuasively. ‘Not the scratchy kind that brings you up in red bumps.’

Alma reached out with chilled fingers and tentatively rubbed the cloth.

‘That’s a real crache scarf, just like the nobs on the Common wear.’ Eddie leaned over the counter and she jumped back warily as his mouth hovered close to hers.

‘You won’t find finer than that, not even in there.’ He pointed down the lane where the gleaming electric lights of the Co-op Arcade cast strange elongated patterns over the shiny black surfaces of the pavements behind the stalls. ‘Or even at Gwilym Evans’,’ he added recklessly, conjuring images of the silver and gold tinsel-bedecked windows of the most exclusive and expensive shop Pontypridd had to offer. ‘Go on, take it. Try it. Wrap it around your neck. Think what that will do for your mam on a cold winter’s night,’ he concluded on a hard-sale note, his mind fixed on the shilling bonus Mr Horton had promised him if the takings outside of what had been ‘put by’ on penny a week cards, topped fifteen pounds that day.

Alma didn’t need the sales pitch. She was already envisaging her mother wrapped snugly in the scarf and their old patched quilt, sitting next to the kitchen stove which was blasting out heat in imagination as it was never allowed to do in the cold reality of frugal coal rations. Her mother deserved warm clothes. Particularly on the four days a week she economised by not setting a match to the stove.

‘There’s gloves and hat to match. All the same quality.’ He rubbed his frozen hands together and danced a jig. Centre doorway might be a good spot from a trade point of view, but it played hell with his circulation.

Alma extricated a glove from the bundle Eddie pushed towards her. She pulled the woollen fingers, stretching them, looking for dropped stitches, signs of unfinished seams or loose knitting. There were none. Then she picked up the second glove.

‘This one is bigger than the other.’ She held up the offending garment. ‘And the wool is different. It’s coarser, greasier.’

‘Then try these.’ Eddie reached behind him and withdrew a pair of gloves from another bundle.

‘They’re two right gloves.’ Costly experience had taught Alma every trick the market boys with their second-quality wares had to offer.

‘How about this set, then?’ Undeterred, Eddie opened the chest and produced a new pack from its depths. Hat, scarf and gloves were stitched together with huge tacking stitches in thick brown twine. Alma carefully loosened the threads and went through each piece. She put the hat and gloves to one side but held up the scarf.

‘Dropped stitch in this.’

‘Then swap it with the other one.’ Eddie’s patience was wearing thin; he’d just caught sight of his boss eyeing him suspiciously from the other side of the stall in a way he wouldn’t have if Alma had been old, or ugly.

‘Colour’s not the same.’

‘Tell you what.’ Eddie glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was listening. ‘I’ll knock it down to you at a special price.’

‘What kind of special price?’

‘For you, two bob the lot. Hat, scarf and gloves.’

‘Two bob!’ Alma tossed the bundle aside in disgust. ‘It’s not worth that. Besides ...’ she dangled the promise of extra trade. ‘It wouldn’t leave me enough to pick up the coat I’ve put by, or buy the jumper my mam needs.’

‘You’ve come for your coat, Alma?’ Wilf pushed Eddie out of his way. ‘Mrs Edwards needs seeing to, boy,’ he ordered brusquely. ‘She’s after a suit for her son, and she wants you to try the jacket to check the size.’

‘Right away, Mr Horton.’ Eddie wasn’t sorry to leave Alma. She might be a looker, but she was nineteen; far too old for him, and boy, was she fussy! No wonder Ronnie had taken off for Italy with Maud.

‘You looking for something besides your coat, Alma?’ Wilf lifted the tips of his fingers to his wrinkled, red veined face, and blew on them.

‘I’d like to buy my mother a scarf, gloves, and if I’ve enough money left over, a jumper, Mr Horton.’

‘Right, let’s see what I can do for you.’ He bent beneath the counter and rummaged among the boxes under the trestles.

‘I’d like the jumper to be the same quality as this, please.’ Alma held up the only perfect scarf Eddie had shown her.

‘You know what to look for. This suit you?’ He held up a mass of purple, green and red wool. ‘Colours ran in the dye batch, but they didn’t affect the quality. It’s lamb’s wool like the scarf. I’ll be with you now, Edith!’ he shouted to a woman who was pushing a man’s shirt under his nose.

‘I want it for a present, Mr Horton,’ Alma retorted icily.

‘That’s what I thought. It’s warm and your mam wouldn’t know the difference,’ he said bluntly, too preoccupied with the buying potential of the customers pressing around his stall to concern himself with Alma’s sensitivity.

‘My mother might be blind, Mr Horton, but that doesn’t mean I’d allow her to walk around looking like something the cat dragged in.’

‘Suit yourself. That one I can do for one and six. Perfect like this –’ he tossed an emerald green pullover at her – ‘I can’t do for less than five bob, and then I’d be robbing myself. Got your card for the coat?’ Wilf turned his back on Alma and took the shirt from Edith. ‘A shilling to you, love, and seeing as how it’s Christmas I’ll throw in a hanky for free. How’s that for a bargain?’

‘I’ll take it, Wilf.’ The woman opened her purse as Wilf threw the shirt and handkerchief at Eddie to be wrapped in newspaper.

Mesmerised, Alma stared at the jumper. It was such a deep, beautiful green. A jumper like that could make even the old black serge skirt she was wearing look good. She brushed her hand lightly against the surface; it was softer than any wool she’d ever touched. But five shillings!

Reluctantly she dropped the jumper on to the counter, and picked up the one that looked as if it had been attacked by a colour-blind artist. Wilf Horton was right: the colouring hadn’t affected the quality. She pulled her card out of her pocket and looked at it. Not that she needed to. She knew exactly how much she owed.

‘Coat was ten bob, less ...’ Wilf took Alma’s card and peered short-sightedly at the numbers scrawled on it. ‘Fifteen weeks at sixpence a week. That leaves half a crown Alma. What do you want to do about the jumper?’

Alma heard the clock on St Catherine’s strike the half hour. Tina Ronconi was covering a double station of tables in the café, but Tina wouldn’t be able to do that for long. Christmas Eve was always busy, and she still had to buy the other things on her list. She clutched the scarf and fingered the multi-coloured pullover.

‘How much for everything?’ She comforted herself with the thought that it cost nothing to ask.

‘This pullover, the scarf, hat and gloves?’

‘The lot.’

‘You broken a set there?’ Wilf looked suspiciously at the garments she was holding.

‘The gloves that went with this scarf were odd.’

‘Call it five bob with what you owe on the coat.’

‘I don’t want charity,’ Alma snapped, pride stinging.

Wilf sighed. You just couldn’t win with some people. It was open knowledge in the town that Alma Moore and her mother had lived hand-to-mouth since Ronnie Ronconi had left Pontypridd for Italy. Alma couldn’t even afford bargain prices, but she wasn’t past holding up business to haggle, and now, when he was offering her goods at a loss just to get rid of her, she wouldn’t take them.

‘That’s my price, take it or leave it.’

‘She’ll take it. And the green jumper.’

Alma whirled round to see Bobby Thomas, who collected her rent, holding a ten-bob note high in his hand. Hot, rum-laden breath wafted into her face as she nodded briefly before turning back to Wilf. Anxious to avoid a scene she pulled out her purse. ‘I’ll take everything except the green jumper, Mr Horton,’ she said hastily, fear of Bobby and the propositions he’d put to her every rent day since Ronnie had left making her reckless. She dug into her purse and produced a couple of two shilling pieces, and four joeys.

‘Eddie, wrap for the lady!’ Wilf ordered.

‘And the green jumper.’

Wilf looked from Bobby to Alma, wondering if Alma had found herself a new fancy man. If so, the few people who bothered to talk to her now would soon stop. Bobby Thomas had a wife born and bred in East Street, who was five months gone in the family way.

‘Thank you Mr Horton. Hope your wife likes the jumper, Bobby,’ Alma said loudly for Wilf Horton’s benefit as she walked away from the stall. She pretended not to hear Bobby calling out, asking her to wait. The last thing she needed was to get involved in a conversation with a drunk on the market. With Ronnie gone from Pontypridd people were saying enough about her as it was.

Trying to concentrate on the task in hand, Alma fought her way from the clothes to the butcher’s market. Her mother had scraped together the ingredients for a cake weeks ago, but they hadn’t been able to run to what was needed for a pudding. There was no way she could afford a chicken, and now that Ronnie had left she wouldn’t be getting one as a Christmas bonus as she had done in previous years. Christmas! Her mother was looking forward to it because it was the only day of the year Alma didn’t have to work, but what was the point in celebrating when they couldn’t even afford to buy themselves a decent Christmas dinner?

Clutching the carrier bag Eddie had given her in one hand, and fingering her lighter, slimmer purse with the other, she pictured the coins in her mind’s eye. Sixpence for a tree. That had to be bought no matter what, and sweets to hang among the old paper decorations, made and carefully treasured from year to year. It didn’t matter that her mother couldn’t see the tree; she would be able to smell it. She wondered how many boiled sweets she would get from Mrs Walker’s stall for sixpence. Then there was fruit. Two of those bright paper-wrapped oranges, two apples and some nuts: that would be at least another four pence. She was already into next week’s rent money, and that was without meat.

‘Bag of ends for four pence! Come on Missus, just what you need for Boxing Day when your old man is growling with his belly stretched by Christmas dinner.’ William Powell, Maud Powell’s cousin – Alma felt surrounded by Powells, she couldn’t seem to get away from them no matter which way she turned – was standing on a box behind Charlie the Russian’s butcher’s stall.

‘How about it, Alma?’ he shouted. ‘Bag of ends for four pence?’

‘What’s in it?’ she demanded sceptically.