A Silver Lining (4 page)

‘That’s it,’ Alma agreed as she pocketed her money. ‘And thank your Iorwerth for me will you please, Mrs Hopkins. It was good of him to carry my tree and parcels back from the market.’

‘Think nothing of it, love. He’s always looking for an excuse to flex those muscles of his. Especially in front of Madge.’

‘She seems a nice girl.’ Alma bit her lip to stop herself from crying out.

‘That she is. He’s done well for himself there.’

‘Nice to see someone happy.’ There was an unmistakable edge to Alma’s voice: she wondered if Mrs Hopkins would have made her as welcome if she’d been the one Iorwerth had brought home.

Lillian nodded knowingly as Alma made her way unsteadily out of the shop. ‘She
is
looking peaky. Did you know about that one and Ronnie Ronconi?’ –her penetrating voice followed Alma to her own house, but by then she was too ill to care what was being said.

She turned the knob, taking care not to kick the rotten panel on the bottom of her door. It needed replacing, but the last time she had tackled Bobby Thomas about it he had told her in no uncertain terms that the rot was due to her neglect, and all tenants had a responsibility to keep their houses in good decorative order, which meant painting them at least once every two years. The price paint was, he might as well have suggested her financing the redecoration of the Town Hall.

Keeping her coat on, she walked down the bare, cheerless passage. Pushing aside the curtain that hung in place of a door, she went into the kitchen. If there was any residue of Christmas warmth, she couldn’t feel it. The room was cold and uninviting. Her mother had economised again by not lighting the kitchen stove. The table had been cleared of their breakfast things, and a clean cloth laid; the floor swept, and the rag rug shaken. It had probably cost her mother a few knocks and all morning to complete the simple tasks, but she knew it was useless to remonstrate. Her mother would only deliver her standard martyred reply: ‘If you stop me doing what little I can, I may as well lie down in my box now. At least then I’ll no longer be a burden to you.’

Her mother’s chair, the only chair in the house that boasted a cushion, was cold. She opened the door to the washhouse and called out, ‘Mam!’ There was no point in looking in the tiny parlour. The three-piece and piano her mother had bought with her father’s first year’s wages had long since been sold to pay pressing bills.

She went into the back yard and opened the door to the ty bach. Another griping pain came and she fell in front of the thunder box.

She retched, but there was nothing left in her stomach except bitter green bile. As she lay on the stone floor she heard her mother’s voice echoing over next door’s wall.

She should have known. Betty Lane made a point of asking her mother over on days when their chimney failed to smoke. There was always an excuse –her mother was needed to unravel old sweaters for wool so that larger striped ones could be re-knitted for Betty’s eight growing children, or to tell stories to keep the little ones amused while Betty coped with the family wash or the baking.

Alma was grateful because it meant her mother could sit in the warm, but that didn’t stop the intimation of charity from hurting.

She returned to the house and walked up the stairs to her bedroom. The temperature was no warmer than outside. Condensation on the window had dripped into icicles that hung like stalactites from the sash. The water in the jug on the rickety chair she used as a washstand had frozen, and even the bowl she washed in was fringed with hard, beaded droplets.

Her entire wardrobe of waistcoat and skirt, second white blouse and ‘best’ summer sprigged cotton dress hung from bent wire hangers hooked on to the curtain rail behind the old chintz curtains her mother had bought years ago from Wilf Horton.

She laid her coat over the patchwork quilt that her mother had stitched eight years ago. It was the last thing she’d made before losing her sight, and Alma thought of it as a patchwork of her life.

In the centre were the thin cotton pastel squares of her baby dresses, stitched double thickness for extra strength. Around them were six large pieces of rich red velvet, all that remained of the only party dress she could remember, which her mother had made from her own ‘best’ pre-marriage dance dress.

Then came circles of navy cut from her school gymslips interspersed with the white of old sheets and blouses, and the green and gold striped silk lining from the only suit her father had ever owned. He had been killed in a pit accident when she was three years old, but the suit hadn’t been unpicked until four years ago; her mother couldn’t bring herself to take the shears to it before then. Alma had asked her to, time and again, because she had wanted to remodel the cloth into a skirt and waistcoat, the same skirt and waistcoat that now hung from her curtain rail.

Next to her bed was a wooden orange crate she’d begged from the market and covered with a tablecloth the Ronconis had discarded because it had one too many cigarette burns. She had darned the burns and used the cloth to conceal her underclothes and jumpers. Two pictures were pinned to the faded blue paper that covered the walls.

One was of her and Ronnie. The photograph had been taken in the café by Bruno the cook just before he had left Wales for Italy. The other had been cut from an illustrated magazine: a highly coloured portrait of an idyllic rural summer scene complete with lurid yellow sun, improbably blue sky, white-tipped mountain peaks and greener grass on the lower slopes of the hills than she had ever seen on the slag heaps of Wales.

She had cut it out before Maud Powell had come between her and Ronnie, because she had associated the scene with Italy the land of Ronnie’s birth.

She stretched out her hand intending to tear down both pictures, but another pain came. Aching at first, it soon honed itself into a sharp, agonising point. Without bothering to undress she crawled into bed, leaving the quilt and coat on top of the blanket. She closed her eyes and tried to conjure images of a blissful world where young girls were allowed to have stomach cramps without everyone assuming they were pregnant. And where Ronnie waited for her just over the horizon with open arms, a smile on his face and no Maud Powell at his side.

But no matter how she concentrated she failed to picture him. His features blurred into indistinct shadows, replaced by the grinning, lecherous face of Bobby Thomas.

Boxing Day found Charlie Raschenko confused and disorientated. It was a Wednesday, a market day only marginally less important than Saturday, yet it would have been ridiculous for him to have opened up his stall because most of his customers had bought enough meat on Christmas Eve to see them through to the following Friday; and those who hadn’t, wouldn’t have any money left from Christmas to spend anyway.

He’d whiled away the morning hunched in his overcoat watching his fellow lodger William play rugby in the park, and trying to stem his irritation with Alma Moore for creating a scene outside the YMCA. He usually succeeded in containing his emotions, priding himself on never feeling very much of anything. Anger, irritation, displeasure, or happiness –especially happiness, because that sooner or later gave rise to memories bitter experience had taught him inevitably led to pain. No, it was better to live life as it came. One day at a time.

Still trying to forget Alma’s outburst he’d returned to Graig Avenue with William and Eddie Powell for a midday dinner of Christmas leftover ‘fry-up’. Afterwards he tried to spend the holiday the way he usually spent Sundays; and as he never attended chapel –much to his landlady’s disgust –that meant passing the hours playing chess and reading.

But this Boxing Day was different to a Sunday, when everything in the town except the Italian cafés was closed.

Before the dishes were cleared from the table, William and Eddie disappeared to a special showing of
Song of Freedom
featuring Paul Robeson, in the White Palace. And Diana Powell, William’s sister, wasn’t around; she was working at her job in the sweet shop in High Street. It would have been madness for her boss to have closed it with all the Christmas pennies burning holes in small children’s pockets.

Charlie’s only consolation was that his landlord Evan Powell, who ‘called’ the streets on a rag and bone cart, was at a loose end too. It was his landlady, Elizabeth Powell’s habit to sit in the icy front parlour reading the Bible after she had cleared and washed the Sunday dishes, and she took advantage of the extra holiday to do the same. As soon as she left the warm back kitchen, Charlie went into the downstairs ‘front’ room he lodged in and returned with a long, flattish wooden box, crudely varnished with alternating dark and light squares. Lifting the catch he opened it out on the table and removed the chess pieces carefully, handling them as though they were delicate, precious objects, not roughly carved chunks of stained wood.

He set up the board on the side of the table closest to the stove, and Evan joined him.

An hour and one game later, Evan had smoked half the pipe tobacco his son and nephew had bought him for Christmas, and shared all of the chocolate that Diana had given him with Charlie. The room was warm from the kitchen stove, and fragrant with the smell of pine logs and the chicken soup Elizabeth was simmering from the carcass of their Christmas dinner.

Both men were content and pleasantly drowsy when their peace was shattered by a knock that echoed down the passage from the front door. The knock in itself was bizarre, as all the Powells’ friends and neighbours simply walked into the house.

Evan opened the kitchen door and shouted irritably down the passage, but not soon enough. Elizabeth had put aside her Bible with a martyred sigh and opened the door.

‘Doctor Lewis?’ She successfully concealed her surprise. Trevor Lewis, the young local doctor, had been a friend of their eldest daughter, Bethan before she had left Pontypridd for London.

‘Is Mr Powell home, Mrs Powell?’

She inclined her head. ‘In the kitchen.’

‘I wonder if I might have a word with both of you?’

‘Yes of course. Come in.’ Elizabeth stood aside to allow him to enter the house. She was curious to know the reason for his visit, but not curious enough to ask.

‘Dr Lewis. Nice to see you,’ Evan extended his hand hospitably. ‘Would you like some tea?’

‘Nothing, thank you, I’ve just had my dinner.’

‘Shouldn’t we sit in the parlour, Evan?’ Elizabeth reprimanded.

‘It’s freezing in there.’ Evan opened the door to the back kitchen. Charlie had already packed away his chess set.

‘Please Charlie, don’t leave on my account,’ Trevor said politely.

Charlie merely smiled before he left. Elizabeth walked in. She’d combed her short straight hair and pulled the creases from her skirt.

Trevor turned to face them. Thin, tall, and despite the efforts of his wife Laura, always slightly unkempt, he usually managed to look cheerful. Today was different. His cheeks seemed unnaturally hollow, his spirit crushed by the news he was carrying. ‘Mrs Powell, I think you should sit down.’ He looked into their faces. He couldn’t keep them in suspense any longer. ’Andrew telephoned and asked me to come here. Bethan’s baby was born early yesterday morning. A boy.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry, there’s something wrong with him. We call it cerebral palsy. It’s impossible for any doctor to determine at this early stage just how badly he’s affected.’ He threw them the sop of vain hope of limited damage, just as he had done to Andrew earlier.

‘You’re telling us that Bethan’s child, our grandchild, is a cripple?’ Elizabeth turned a stony face to his.

‘Cripple isn’t a word I’d choose, Mrs Powell.’

‘How’s Bethan?’ Evan’s voice was quiet, restrained.

‘She’s fine.’ Trevor was glad of an opportunity to turn the conversation away from the baby. ‘She’s upset of course, but physically she’s fine. Andrew told me to tell you they’ll write soon.’ He twisted the brim of his hat in his hands. ‘I’m sorry I can’t stay. I’ve promised to call in on a patient.’

‘Thank you for coming to tell us yourself.’ Evan opened the door. Elizabeth still sat, sphinx-like in front of the fire.

‘Goodbye, Mrs Powell.’

If she heard Trevor she gave no sign of it.

‘I’ll see you out.’ Evan followed him into the passage and closed the door behind them.

‘If there’s anything I can do for Mrs Powell ...’ Trevor ventured, concerned by Elizabeth’s unnatural composure. She’d always struck him as a cold woman. But surely no one could be as indifferent to the plight of a first grandchild as she appeared to be.

‘I’ll send for you, Doctor Lewis.’

‘I could come tomorrow. After I’ve finished in the hospital.’

‘There’s no need.’ Evan didn’t trust himself to say more. His thoughts were with his eldest daughter. Alone in a hospital bed in an impersonal, unsympathetic city. Too far for him to visit. But no, she wasn’t alone. She had a baby to care for. A baby that would be a burden to her for the rest of its life. He didn’t spare a thought for her husband. The responsibility of caring for children, especially ones that ‘weren’t right’, always fell squarely on the mother.

Trevor turned right at the foot of the steps to Evan’s house, and walked up Graig Avenue towards the patch of scrubland that marked the beginning of the mountain.

Regretting the impulse that had led him to leave his car, he turned up the collar on his thin raincoat and tried to ignore the hailstones bouncing off his back. He had walked to the Avenue via his garden, stepping over the wall straight on to the mountain.

He had lied to Evan: there was no patient waiting for him. Barring an emergency, he was free for the rest of the day, but he didn’t want to go home. Not yet. He didn’t want to face Laura. He felt helpless, ill-equipped to deal with her misery, as well as his own.

Andrew and Bethan were their closest friends, and he valued their friendship, particularly that of Bethan, for whom he had a very definite soft spot. Andrew –well, Andrew was Andrew. Everything had always come easy to him. He had been born into a comfortable moneyed home. He hadn’t had to fight for a thing in his life. Charming, good-looking, easy-going, generous to a fault, Andrew’s good points were enough to make everyone, or at least almost everyone, forgive his occasional irresponsibility, thoughtlessness and selfishness. Still, Trevor couldn’t help wondering how Andrew would cope with misfortune of such a magnitude.