A Silver Lining (18 page)

‘You’ve got a big black smut on the end of your nose.’

Charlie removed a spotless white linen handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket and rubbed at his nose.

‘Fooled you,’ William laughed as he turned the pad of wire wool over in his hand.

‘Keep working. I won’t be long.’

‘Give her my love.’

‘Who?’ Charlie paused by the door and looked back.

‘Whoever she is. It must be love; I’ve never seen you so half-soaked before.’

‘If it’s love, you’re looking at it,’ Charlie said unsmilingly, indicating the shop as he closed the door.

‘As if you could be in love with this bloody filthy place,’ William muttered, staring miserably at the thick layer of grime that coated everything in sight, and wishing that

Vera would walk through the door.

Charlie turned left and headed towards the Fairfield end of town.

‘You moving in next door then, Charlie?’

‘Yes.’ Charlie paused in front of Frank Clayton’s radio shop, the one shop in town that was always bursting at the seams with people, who, unfortunately for Frank, only came to listen to his radios and radiograms, not to buy them.

‘Meat won’t go down well here,’ Frank warned sternly.

‘It’s one thing for people to come across pig’s heads and tripe in the butcher’s market where they expect to find such things, quite another for them to see offal in a window next to a luxury goods shop like mine.’

‘I expect they’ll get used to it, Mr Clayton.’

‘In summer you’ll bring nothing but smells and flies around here. It’ll be unhygienic. Don’t intend to do your killing out the back in the yard, do you?’

‘No, Mr Clayton.’ Charlie smiled wryly. Frank Clayton knew as well as him that if he tried to slaughter anything at the back of the shop the authorities would close him down overnight.

‘Well I’m telling you now, the first whiff of a stink that upsets one of my customers, and I’ll be reporting you to the Public Health.’

‘I wouldn’t have it any other way, Mr Clayton.’ Charlie placidly tipped his hat.

‘Bloody foreigners,’ Frank swore to his son, inadvertently slamming the door in a customer’s face as he retreated inside his shop. ‘You’d think we’d have the sense to keep them out of this country. Instead what do we do? We let them in, give them the best shops in the prime trading positions, allow them to make money off the backs of people who were born and bred here and can ill afford to keep body and soul together as it is. Our own starve, while the likes of Russian Charlie grow fat. You mark my words, lad, that man’ll be riding around in a car soon if he isn’t stopped.’

Outwardly oblivious to the town’s interest in his affairs Charlie carried on walking down Taff Street, tipping his hat to customers and acquaintances, nodding gravely to the traders who were standing on their doorsteps looking out for potential customers. He turned the corner by the YMCA building, and a few moments later found himself the other side of Gelliwastad Road. He remembered someone saying the night Alma had been taken into hospital that she lived in Morgan Street, and although he’d never had cause to go into that area, he found it without too much trouble.

Though it hadn’t rained that day, the unmade stretch that separated the double terrace of houses was covered with a thick layer of sticky mud, peppered with surprisingly deep puddles.

Ducking his head to avoid hitting a washing line laden with sheets stretched between the houses, he almost fell over two small street urchins who were sailing newspaper ‘ships’ across an unwholesome looking ‘sea’ speckled with mountainous islands constructed from stones and rubbish.

‘Haven’t seen you around here before, Mister.’ The boy was thin, ragged and small. He was dressed in patched grey short trousers, and a jersey that was more holes than wool; his feet and legs were bare. His sharp, ferret-like face looked older than Charlie would have expected to see on a child of his size.

‘That’s because I haven’t been here before.’

‘You don’t talk as though you come from round here either.’ The second boy was as emaciated and threadbare as the first, and his hands and face were encrusted with thick brown running sores.

‘That’s because I come from another country.’ Charlie pulled two halfpennies from his pocket and held them high, just out of the boys’ reach. ‘Can you tell me where Alma Moore lives?’

‘My mam says she’s a tart. You one of her fancy men?’

The boy with the sores wasn’t interested in scandal.

His attention was firmly fixed on Charlie’s money. ‘Over there, Mister.’ He jumped up and snatched the coins from Charlie’s hand. Holding them out of his friend’s reach, he pointed to a house with a dilapidated front door.

Trying to avoid the mud by stepping carefully around the puddles, Charlie walked towards it. Seeing no knocker, he tapped lightly on the door.

‘Come in.’

He pushed gingerly at the wood around the knob. The door opened into a cold passageway, floored in well-scrubbed, almost white flagstones, amazingly free from the taint of the mud that coated the street. He scraped his shoes on a sacking mat, and seeing a door to his left he pushed it.

It swung open to reveal a bare room: no rug, furniture, nothing except a pair of faded curtains hanging at the window. He closed the door and walked down the passage. A piece of sheeting at the far end twitched aside and Alma’s face, drained of colour by her vivid red hair and bright green eyes, peered suspiciously at him.

‘Charlie? You’re the last person I expected to see.’ for the first time she wished she could call him by something other than the nickname that served him as both Christian and surname.

‘Charlie’ seemed appropriate enough in the café, particularly when he sat with the boys like Glan, William and Eddie, but here, in her own home, it sounded insulting and disrespectful.

‘Won’t you come in?’ She pulled back the curtain.

‘Thank you.’ The smell of soapsuds and washing soda assailed his nostrils. Then he picked up on something else; something he recognised from the last year he had spent in Russia. Cold, clean poverty. The kind of poverty that is spawned when proud people try to hang on to their sense of decency in the face of overwhelming odds. He shivered involuntarily as he entered the chill atmosphere of the kitchen. It was colder than the street, with a damp, wintry frostiness that had been stored in the unheated stone walls of the old house for years.

Flustered, Alma pulled the chair with the cushion into the centre of the room. ‘Won’t you sit down?’

He took the seat she offered.

‘I’d like to offer you tea, but I’m afraid I can’t. Today’s my day for cleaning out the range, and we don’t have a gas stove, so I can’t boil water.’

He glanced at the range. The brass fenders and rails were brightly polished, the ironwork newly black leaded. It was spotless and, he suspected, ready for lighting, if there’d been any coal.

‘Would you like a biscuit?’ Alma opened a tin that contained three oatmeal biscuits that were left from the trayful her mother had made when the stove had last been lit.

‘No thank you.’

‘I’m fine.’ He fingered the plaster that had replaced the bandage on his head.

She stood in front of him, wiping her hands on her apron, feeling unsettled and awkward, wishing he’d say whatever he’d come to say, then go away and leave her in peace.

‘I heard you lost your job in the tailor’s,’ he said apprehensively, wary of provoking a scene.

‘That’s old news,’ she retorted.

‘Are you looking for full-time work?’

‘Of course. It’s impossible for my mother and me to live on what I bring in working in the café.’

‘That’s what I thought. I’m opening a shop.’

‘I don’t think I’d be able to run a shop,’ she broke in swiftly. ‘You saw what happened in the café.’

‘I wasn’t going to ask you to run it. I already have a manager. What I need is someone to supervise the cooking.’

‘Cooking? You’re opening a café then?’

‘No. A cooked meats shop.’

She laughed mirthlessly as she waved her hand around the sparsely equipped and furnished kitchen, ‘I know very little about cooking the kind of meat you’d find in a shop.’

‘You can read, write and follow a recipe, can’t you?’

‘Yes, but –’

‘It will be quite straightforward. Cooking, pressing, pickling, curing, potting, collaring, smoking and boiling meats,’ Charlie recited, automatically going through the full range he envisaged stocking and selling. ‘Slicing them when they’re cold. Making faggots, croquettes, pies, pasties, rolls and brawn from off-cuts and offal. Arranging everything on display plates ready for sale.’

‘But I’ve never done any cooking professionally.’ Alma could have kicked herself. Here was Charlie offering her an opportunity to make ends meet and she was putting obstacles in his path.

‘I’ve seen you in the café. Like all good workers, you learn fast. Ronnie ... the Ronconis,’ he amended diplomatically, ‘have always thought a lot of you. You’re conscientious, honest, not afraid of hard work, and’ –he turned to face her – ‘I thought you might like to leave the café.’ He didn’t elaborate on his reasons for coming to that conclusion.

Colour flooded into her cheeks as he continued.

‘I was hoping to turn the Ronconis’ loss to my gain.’

‘But I –’

‘I’m not afraid of the gossips,’ he said simply. ‘Do you want the job or don’t you?’

She remained silent, wondering if Charlie realised the importance most people in Pontypridd attached to the rumours being spread about her. What was it her mother had said? ‘No smoke without fire.’ Her presence could result in a boycott of Charlie’s shop, but she needed full time work.

‘I’m not having a baby, Charlie,’ she said at last, lifting her chin defiantly, her green eyes glittering antagonistically.

‘I never thought you were. Do you want the job, or not?’

‘You really don’t give a damn about gossip, do you?’ she asked incredulously.

‘I don’t have to listen to it.’ He rose from his seat unable to stand the cold a moment longer without moving. ‘My father always used to say that the best and most loyal workers are the ones who need the money the most, and from what I can see, you need the money,’ he said with devastating simplicity. He walked over to the window that overlooked the tiny back yard. ‘There is one problem, however.’

‘What?’ She steeled herself, half expecting him to make the same obscene overtures that Bobby had.

‘Anything to do with cooking demands an early start. I was thinking of five at the latest. Four would be better. That would give us a couple of hours to do the cooking and set out the counter before the first customers come in at six. You could probably finish by midday as there’d only be the shop to run after that, but it would mean that you couldn’t work late nights at the café.’

‘I could if I had a rest in the afternoon.’

‘I’d rather you didn’t. Tired staff are inefficient. And as I’d be paying you a pound a week ...’

‘A pound a week?’ Her eyes grew round in disbelief.

‘It’s not as generous as it sounds. I’d be taking eight shillings back for the rent and meat allowance.’

‘You mean you want me to live in this shop of yours?’

‘There are three rooms, a small kitchen and a bathroom on the second floor. I’m happy living on the Graig, but I can’t afford to leave the place empty, and as you’d have an early start every morning it would make sense for you to live on the premises.’

‘Let’s get this straight.’ Alma stiffened her back and looked him straight in the eye. ‘You’re offering me twelve shillings a week, meat and rent paid ...’

‘And electricity and fuel.’

‘This shop of yours has electricity, even upstairs?’

‘Even upstairs,’ he echoed drily.

‘You want to give me all that for eight hours’ work a day?’

‘It will be for six days a week,’ he reminded her. ‘Early closing on Thursday won’t affect the cooking you’ll have to do. If anything, there might be more as we’ll have the weekend rush ahead of us. And I’ll expect you to do all the cleaning. The shop and bakehouse as well as the flat and stairs.’

‘I’ve already been accused of being the kept woman of one businessman in town. I’m not about to move on to another,’ she snapped.

‘Take it or leave it.’ He met her look of suspicion with equanimity. ‘The job is there if you want it. If you turn it down I’ll advertise it in the Labour Exchange.’

‘You’d offer the same pay and conditions to anyone?’

‘They go with the job.’

‘How do I know you don’t want anything else from me?’

‘You don’t.’ He crossed the room and pulled aside the curtain. ‘Let me know what you decide. I hope to have the shop open and trading within the month. That only gives you a week to make up your mind.’

Chapter Eleven

Andrew passed his neighbour on the communal staircase. It was the same woman who’d spied on him the night he’d come home drunk. He recognised the sharp, beaky features beneath the glossy waved hair and thick bright red lipstick. Her Eau-de-Cologne wafted around him, the clip of her heels on the marble treads of the stairs resounded in his ears, a door opened and closed, there was quiet, and she was gone.

She had looked right through him. Either her eyesight was failing, or she had seen him and hadn’t felt the need to acknowledge his presence. But then, neither had he attempted to acknowledge hers. He should be proud of himself, he decided sourly: he had taken the first major step towards becoming a Londoner.

He let himself into the apartment, threw his coat and hat on the empty table in the living room and walked through to the kitchen. Dirty glasses and plates were stacked haphazardly in the sink just as he’d left them that morning. The remains of the pie Bethan had left for him days ago stood congealing and mouldy in a Pyrex dish. He scraped the remains into the waste bin. Was he hungry?

Most people ate at this time of day. He did, because it was expected of him. He came home, sat down and ate the meal his wife had prepared and cooked. Only now there was no wife. And because there was no wife, he had bypassed the bachelors and dubious attractions of their company for the first time in months to come straight home from the hospital. If Bethan had still been in London he would be in the pub now, nursing his half pint, trying to make it last until the stragglers from his group left to dine in their clubs.

He opened the pantry door: half a loaf of rock-hard bread, a tray of eggs, a vegetable rack filled with potatoes, and the yellowed leaves of a cabbage of advancing age. A bowl of wrinkling apples. He picked one up and bit into it. It would do for now. He would have a bath, listen to the radio. There was a play due to be transmitted at half-past eight that someone had mentioned at the lunch table.

Afterwards he could go to the Italian restaurant round the corner. He couldn’t afford to make a habit of it, but just this once wouldn’t hurt. Tomorrow he’d ask around the hospital, find out what the clubs charged for membership and dinner. He would explain that Bethan had returned to Wales to sort out a problem with her family. It was truth –of a sort.

In the bathroom he stripped off and ran a bath. When he opened the linen basket he was mildly surprised to find it crammed full of his dirty clothes. Yet another tangible reminder of Bethan’s flight, and yet another domestic problem he’d have to tackle himself. Bethan had made a point of washing their clothes daily, even before she’d had the baby’s nappies to deal with.

Suddenly and furiously aware of her absence, from the apartment and from his life, he sat on the edge of the bath and thought about what he was doing. Immersing himself in domestic trivia so he wouldn’t have to dwell on the defection of his wife, or the child that suffered because of his shortcomings. What had been the use of all the study, all the training when he hadn’t been able to lift a finger to help his own family?

His superior had stopped him again today to assure him that no one was to blame, least of all himself. But then that was easy for Doctor Floyd to say. He hadn’t had to watch impotently while his wife had fought to bring a child who was already half dead into the world. Why hadn’t he demanded a Caesarean when things had first begun to go wrong?

He shuddered, damning himself for going over the events of that day yet again. It was no use. What was done, was done. The child had been a hopeless case from the start because he had failed Bethan at the birth – and before. Compounding neglect with negligence. She had deserved better. Much better.

An image of her invaded his mind. Smiling, laughing, her brown eyes shining with the sheer pleasure of life, as they had done the first time he had danced with her. If she had listened to him and placed the child in the care of professionals it could be like that again. Both of them happy, free to enjoy their marriage and all the attractions London had to offer.

Overwhelmed by a sudden acute sense of loss, he forgot his anger for a moment, and remembered how much he missed that young, beautiful, smiling Bethan. The pain of separation was intense, the dependency it suggested terrifying to one who had always prided himself on cool self-sufficiency, especially in matters of the heart.

If she truly loved him she would have been happy to have given the child up instead of deserting him, leaving him to fend for himself in this empty apartment. Was she trying to make him more aware of the love and passion they had once shared? Didn’t she already know how he felt?

Even the note she’d left, which he had read and reread until he had memorised every line, had ended ‘Love Bethan’. Did she really love him –or were they simply idle words written out of habit?

He had never received a letter from her before. Not even a note, so he had no way of knowing.

He still loved her. With a love he had tried to deny once before, only to cause both of them misery and heartache. But now the situation was reversed. It was he who needed her, and she who had walked away. Why hadn’t she seen his need, his desire for her ... for happiness? Why had she persisted in taking everything they had and throwing it away?

The baby had come between them, and would always lie between them. A child he couldn’t bear to look at. And while she insisted on keeping it there was no hope of them picking up the threads of their life. Couldn’t she see that she wouldn’t have to do it alone? He would support her every step of the way. Together they would walk the long, flower-bordered drive of the gabled Tudor manor house Doctor Floyd had given him photographs of. The door would open, they’d be shown inside. A white and blue gowned nurse would be waiting in an ante-room to take the bundle Bethan carried in her arms. They would walk back down the drive together arm in arm: Bethan would be free from burden for the first time in five months. And so would he. He would no longer have to face a daily reminder of the guilt he carried.

The picture he’d painted was vivid, real; so real that tears started in his eyes when he looked around the bathroom and realised he’d been daydreaming. He took off his watch. He was hungry. Tonight he could drive to the fish and chip shop down the road and he could eat in the restaurant tomorrow. He wouldn’t have to ask about clubs until the day after. Two days could change a great deal- perhaps even Bethan’s mind. Tomorrow he might return from work to find her here. Then he wouldn’t have to ask about clubs at all.

He switched off the taps and stepped into the bath. As the water flowed around him he began to relax. It was only a matter of time. She had written that she loved him. She’d be back. Wouldn’t she?

‘Rent man.’

Alma’s hands turned clammy when she heard Bobby’s clumsy footsteps in the passageway. She jumped from her chair, dropping her library book and the blanket she’d been huddling under. She was alone in the house. Her mother was out, shopping with Betty Lane. She wouldn’t have put it past Bobby to wait for them to leave; it was common knowledge in the street that Mrs Lane took her mother down to the post office every Thursday to cash her pension. From there they went to Betty’s sister’s house for tea.

What had started as a favour had become a weekly routine since Alma’s stay in hospital. One for which Alma was grateful. After a culmination of minor incidents of the Mary and Freda type she had stopped walking out with her mother, and rarely by herself, unless it was absolutely necessary. Especially in broad daylight.

In fact she never went anywhere now except the café, and she had taken to walking as much of the way down the quieter Gelliwastad Road as was possible. ‘Decent’ women, especially chapelgoers would cross the road when they saw her approaching, and despite Tony and Laura’s stout denials, she knew that trade in the café was suffering. She might be out of sight in the kitchen, but she certainly wasn’t out of the minds of the townsfolk. She had even heard mutterings among her neighbours in Morgan Street about disgraced girls who were brazen enough to show themselves in public.

She would have been only too delighted to keep herself hidden behind the walls of her home, if only she could have thought of some other way of earning money.

‘Rent’s due.’ Bobby pulled back the curtain and grinned at her. Leaving the blanket and library book where they lay on the floor, she shrank back towards the washhouse door.

‘I don’t get paid until tonight.’

‘Is that so?’ He stepped into the room, kicking aside the book and blanket with the toe of his muddy boot.

‘You can pick it up from me in Ronconi’s tonight. I’ll be there from six o’clock on.’ She could have swallowed her tongue. Now he knew what time her shift started.

‘The last thing I want to do on a Friday night is visit a temperance bar.’

‘If you give me your address I’ll bring it round to your house first thing tomorrow,’ she pleaded, resolving to ask Tony if he’d pay her on Thursday nights in future. Far better to risk upsetting Tony than Bobby.

‘I’m disappointed in you, Alma. I thought you’d remember our little chat about keeping your rent book up to date.’

‘I do. And I’ve always paid on time before.’

‘This is how it starts.’ He walked over to the mantelpiece and picked up a framed photograph of her father. ‘With one slip. Pay late once and it’s easier to pay late the next time, and the next, until before you know it you’ve missed a week. Then one week becomes two ...’

‘Not with me. Please Bobby ...’ she began, hoping he’d leave without making a scene, or worse still, attempting to touch her.

‘Oh it’s "please Bobby" now, is it?’ he smiled unpleasantly. ‘Come down off our high horse now we can’t pay our rent, have we, Miss Hoity-Toity?’

‘I told you. You’ll get it tomorrow,’ she repeated harshly, trying not to think about what her mother was spending in town.

‘Alma?’ He replaced the photograph and drew closer to her. Reaching out, he fingered one of her red curls. Stretching and pulling it between his fingers, he stroked her cheek. She recoiled, crashing into the washhouse door.

‘I said you’d have it tomorrow.’

‘I could give you longer,’ he murmured.

‘Get out.’ Her voice rose precariously.

‘Alma.’ His face was close to hers. Very close. His tongue slicked wetly across his lips.

‘If you don’t get out now I’ll scream for Mr Lane,’ she threatened, fumbling blindly behind her for the knob of the door.

‘I’m terrified. Do you mean that the wheezing old geezer from next door is actually likely to burst in here to ... to what, Alma?’ He frowned in feigned perplexity. ‘Protect your virtue?’ he suggested. ‘Even you have to admit it
is
somewhat tarnished. I don’t think there’s a man or woman in Pontypridd who’d believe anything you have to say about a situation like this. Let’s be practical.’ He walked to the chair, sat down and propped his boots on the polished brass rail of the fender. ‘How many years did you work for Ronnie Ronconi getting paid for more than your waitressing? You did well for yourself there, Alma. That is until a decent girl caught his eye and he took himself a wife.’

‘I said you’d have your money.’

‘Come on, Alma, don’t play games with me. Everyone knows how destitute you are. You could barely make ends meet when you earned money from two jobs. Not that I’ve heard anyone blaming Goldman for sacking you. After all, he can’t afford to have any gossip, either about his business or himself. He’s a family man, with a wife. Unlike Tony Ronconi, who’s only a kid and not at all worldly-wise. Not yet.’

He sat forward, eyeing her up and down as he tapped a cigarette from a packet he’d taken from the top pocket of his tweed sports coat. ‘But then I’d bet a pound to a penny that you’d be only too willing to educate him in the ways of the world ... for a consideration. Always supposing of course that he doesn’t mind taking up with his brother’s cast-offs.’

‘You foul ...’

‘I’m only spelling out what people are thinking about you, Alma. But as I said before, I can help you. In the same way Ronnie Ronconi did.’ He paused for a moment, giving her the opportunity to speak. When she didn’t he continued. ‘You’re an attractive woman. Bit thin for my taste, but then that’ll soon alter. And when it does no one will be around to make the kind of offer I’m making to you. Make hay while the sun shines as they say, and seeing as how I happen to know that your mother won’t be back for a while how about showing me the upstairs...’

She turned abruptly and pulled up the sash on the kitchen window, breaking her fingernails as she did so.

‘Mr Lane!’ she yelled.

‘Tomorrow morning, no later than ten. I’ll be here. If you haven’t the money I’ll be in the bailiffs’ office first thing Monday morning, and then it’ll be time for you to walk up the Graig.’ Bobby rose to his feet, kicked the chair into the hearth and left the room.

Trembling, Alma sat at the table and sank her head onto her arms. What was she doing? A theatrical bout of self-pity was a luxury she couldn’t afford. Especially now.

Opening the drawer in the rickety table she removed a stub of pencil and an old paper bag, and frantically began to jot down figures. She had been putting off this task for far too long, terrified of what her calculations might reveal.

Tony was paying her eight shillings a week. Her mother had five shillings a week pension. The rent was nine shillings. The doctor and the hospital took another penny a week each, and that was something she dare not cut back on, not with her mother growing frailer every passing year. Although they only lit the stove three days a week, a shilling went on coals. Soap was nine pence, washing blue a penny. Her mother paid eight pence a week burial insurance so there’d be enough for a decent funeral for herself and mourning clothes for Alma. That was something else they had to keep paying: her mother was terrified of the prospect of a pauper’s grave. Ten pence went on a beef heart, the only meat they ate all week. A loaf of bread a day and marge to put on it took another two and sixpence. Tea worked out at eleven pence halfpenny. Milk came to a shilling ... she was over eighteen shillings and that was without potatoes, fruit, vegetables, jam, flour, sugar, lard ... With only thirteen shillings a week coming in they had to cut back. But where?