One Blue Moon (15 page)

Stripping off to his underpants, he flung back the sheets. They too felt cold and damp to the touch. He would have given a great deal to have had ... have had who? Alma next to him? In her present mood?

For the first time he thought, really thought about what she had said. The woman was truly mad. It simply wasn’t possible. He couldn’t love Maud. Little skinny Maud, the baby he had warmed milk for when Bethan Powell had carried her into their High Street café after school. Bethan and his sister Laura, and Maud and Gina, two little girls playing with babies instead of real dolls. There had to be eleven years between him and Maud. Almost half his lifetime. He’d never thought of Maud as anything other than a kid. Sick as she was, she was still annoying and irritating, like ... Gina and Tina. Surely he couldn’t be in
love
with her?

Love was something else he’d hardly ever thought about. On the few occasions circumstances had forced him to consider it, he’d decided it was faintly ridiculous, and embarrassing. Something that affected others. Fools like Trevor Lewis and his half-baked sister Laura, who’d fussed and fretted for months before they finally managed to organise themselves a wedding. A wedding ... was that what Alma wanted? Was that what all this fuss and emotion had really been about?

He shook a packet of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and lit one on the flame of the candle. If she was unhappy with their ‘arrangement’ as it stood, all she had to do was say. He’d assumed that she was as content as he was. But for her to be jealous of Maud...

He puffed a smoke ring and watched it rise gently in the candlelight. The problem undoubtedly lay between him and Alma. The question was, did he want to marry her? Now marriage was something he
had
thought about. Even if he’d wanted to, he couldn’t have avoided it, when his father brought up the subject every time they spent more than ten consecutive minutes together. And he only had to hint that he’d be home at a mealtime for his mother to invite one of the daughters of a fellow café owner. Italian, of course. Not that they’d ever made Alma feel less than welcome on the rare occasions she had attended any of their family gatherings. But then perhaps they’d never realised that Alma meant more to him than any other waitress they’d employed. Why should they, when he hadn’t taken the time or trouble to explain his relationship with Alma to them? Possibly because both parents, Papa especially, had said enough to Laura when she’d brought home a non-Italian boy. Poor Trevor.

He wondered if he wanted Alma enough to go through what Laura had gone through to marry Trevor. Then he thought beyond the ceremony. Marrying Alma would mean settling down with her; living in a small house like Laura’s; being with her all the time, in and out of the café; having no time to himself. And with his luck there’d soon be a parade of squalling babies who would grow into kids every bit as obnoxious and demanding as his younger brothers and sisters. If that’s what marriage to Alma meant, he definitely preferred his present life.

But then, what was his present life? Work, more work, followed by the occasional foray into this bed with Alma, or a sneaky visit to one of his other ‘ladies’. He had a sudden, incredibly vivid and real image of Maud. They were sitting side by side next to the fireplace in her back kitchen. She was smiling at him, and he could feel the weight of her hand in his. Only something was wrong. He sat up, almost dropping the cigarette when he realised what it was. The Maud in his vision had been plump, well; her cheeks bright with the warm glow of health, not the sickly spots of tuberculosis. The concept of Maud being well elated him. Then it hit him. Alma was right. He did love her.

He was in love with a girl eleven years younger than him who had terminal tuberculosis. The thought wasn’t a pleasant one. He’d always assumed that love would be something he’d be able to control, subjugate to his will. Maud was hardly the robust beauty he pictured whenever he’d thought of his future wife.

In a sudden, inspirational flash of self-knowledge, he realised why he’d never asked Alma to marry him. He didn’t love her. Had never loved her. Instead he was in love with a scrawny kid who was going to die. He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another, staring up at the ceiling until the light from the candle flickered out.

He continued staring and smoking all through the night, watching the shadows move on the ceiling as Huw Griffiths paced at hourly intervals past the lamppost outside the window. He listened to the creaks and groans of the building, and heard the thunder of the milk train as it rattled noisily over the rails and out of the station. He didn’t close his eyes once. And in the morning when the first customer tried the door of the café, he left the bed and dressed next to the untouched bottle of brandy.

He’d decided one thing and one thing only during his long vigil. He couldn’t let Maud die. Not without putting up a damned good fight.

Chapter Fourteen

‘Were you very late last night?’ Laura asked as she lifted two pieces of bacon and an egg out of the frying pan on to Trevor’s plate.

‘Not very.’ Struggling to push his collar studs through both his collar and his shirt, he leant across the table and kissed her. ‘I was back in bed by twelve.’

‘Sorry I wasn’t awake.’

‘I didn’t want you awake. Just warm. And you were exactly what a poor fellow needed after an hour spent in a freezing dressing room.’

‘Dressing room?’ Laura’s eyes shone as she nosed out potential gossip. ‘Anyone exciting?’ she asked, taking the last piece of bacon for herself and sitting across the table from him.

‘One of the chorus boys,’ Trevor answered, through a mouthful of bacon and bread. ‘The others insisted that he knocked himself out. Slipped while changing.’

‘But you don’t believe that?’

‘Good God, woman, I can’t keep anything from you, can I?’

‘Don’t blaspheme,’ Laura lectured. ‘And no, you can’t. I know you too well. Tea?’ she asked, picking up the pot.

He nodded, his mouth still full.

‘What happened then?’ she persisted, ferreting out the story with the dogged determination of a terrier in a rabbit burrow.

‘Put it this way, he had one hell of a bruise on his chin. It almost matched the one I noticed on Haydn’s fist.’

‘Not Haydn Powell?’

‘I don’t know of any other Haydn who works in the Town Hall, do you?’

‘You’ve got to be wrong on that score,’ Laura remonstrated. ‘Haydn wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

‘A fly maybe. After last night, I’m not so sure about chorus boys. The whole time I was there, he hung back in a corner, looking incredibly sheepish. And that’s not Haydn.’

‘Well?’ She stared at him, an uneaten bacon sandwich in her hand.

‘Well what?’ he asked blankly.

‘What did the chorus boy do to deserve it?’ she demanded in exasperation.

‘How should I know?’

‘You were there,’ she grumbled. ‘If it had been me, I’d have found out a whole lot more.’

‘I don’t doubt that you would have,’ he murmured drily.

A frown marred Laura’s smooth forehead as a loud banging at the front door interrupted them. ‘Oh heavens above, not again!’ she said peevishly.

‘Now who’s blaspheming?’ Trevor cut an enormous piece of bacon. Holding it poised only as long as it took him to shout, ‘Come in’, he shovelled it into his mouth.

‘I hardly ever get to see you. We can’t even eat a meal in peace ...’

‘You should have thought of that before you married me,’ he broke in, taken aback by the vehement tone in Laura’s voice.

‘I did, I just assumed people would have the common courtesy to get taken ill outside of mealtimes, especially breakfast. And you’re going to get indigestion eating like that.
Do
come in,’ she shouted with exaggerated politeness, just as Charlie burst through the door.

‘Sorry Doctor Lewis, Mrs Lewis,’ Charlie apologised in his heavy Slavic accent. Not even an emergency could make inroads into Charlie’s formal, courteous way of speaking.

‘It’s Maud.’ Trevor rose from the table without waiting for Charlie to confirm his suspicions. ‘My bag’s in the front room,’ he said as he picked up his coat from the back of the chair and disappeared into the passage.

‘I’m sorry for disturbing your breakfast, Mrs Lewis,’ Charlie apologised again as Laura made another sandwich of the remaining bacon on Trevor’s plate.

‘Can’t be helped.’ She gave him a tight little smile. ‘How are they all coping?’

Charlie shrugged his massive, heavily muscled shoulders.

‘They’re coping,’ he repeated unconvincingly.

‘I know, they’re coping because there’s nothing else for them to do,’ she murmured sympathetically.

‘Charlie, if you’re going back up, I’ll give you a lift,’ Trevor shouted from the hall. Charlie hung back as Laura preceded him. She thrust the sandwich she’d made into Trevor’s hand.

‘Give them all my love, especially Diana,’ she said quietly. ‘And tell Mrs Powell I’ll be up to see her later.’

Trevor kissed her cheek as he opened the front door. Charlie followed him out on to the pavement.

‘Jump in,’ Trevor said to Charlie as he removed the starting handle from beneath the front seat. Charlie needed no second bidding.

‘Don’t forget to tell Mrs Powell I’ll be up just as soon as I’ve washed the breakfast things,’ Laura shouted to Trevor above the noise of the firing engine. He nodded to show he’d understood.

‘How bad is it?’ he asked Charlie as he steered the car up the Graig hill.

Charlie turned away from Trevor and stared out of the car window. As far as Trevor could see there was little except early morning workers and shoppers to hold Charlie’s interest, but he seemed to find them fascinating.

‘I’m sorry, did you say something?’ Trevor asked. Between the noise of the engine, the accent and the distance, Trevor wasn’t certain whether Charlie had answered or not.

‘I didn’t say anything,’ Charlie replied flatly.

‘She’s haemorrhaging, isn’t she?’ Trevor said, hoping for a contradiction.

‘It started when Diana took her breakfast up.’ Charlie finally turned his head and faced Trevor. ‘Diana has taken her breakfast up every morning since they’ve come back from Cardiff.’

‘It’s what I’ve been afraid of all along,’ Trevor muttered.

Charlie was out of the car before Trevor parked it. He ran up the steps and opened the front door, slamming it straight into Evan who was sitting, head in hands, on the bottom stair.

Haydn and William, not knowing what else to do, were hovering in the passageway, effectively blocking the way into the kitchen. Eddie, anxious to be of help, had valiantly fought back his tears, and made tea in Elizabeth’s chipped and cracked everyday cups. Because everyone had congregated at the foot of the stairs he’d carried a tray into the front parlour, laying it out on top of the dustcloth that covered Elizabeth’s treasured mahogany octagonal table. He’d filled the teacups so much they’d slopped over into the spoons and saucers. The messy parody of a formal tea party was the first thing Trevor saw when he pushed his way into the house. He couldn’t help thinking that it looked totally incongruous. Like a miner sitting in working clothes in the lounge bar of a pub.

He avoided meeting Evan’s eyes as he asked, ‘Upstairs?’

Evan rose silently and made room for him to pass. Trevor ran up the stairs two at a time. Diana was waiting for him in the doorway of Maud’s bedroom. He felt as though he were walking into a hothouse. The atmosphere was stuffy, unpleasantly warm after the sharp freshness of the winter morning. He looked from Diana to the fire-grate, where lumps of coke still smouldered among the ashes. The Powells had evidently taken to heart his advice about keeping Maud warm. He recalled Elizabeth’s moans about the cost and wondered if Evan had swallowed his pride and gone to the parish for help. Then he remembered the boys. They wouldn’t have allowed Evan to succumb to the final indignity of the unemployed. There’d be no means test conducted on the Powell household while there was coal on the Maritime tip free for the thieving.

Elizabeth moved back, away from the bed, allowing Trevor his first glimpse of the unconscious Maud. She lay pale and still, like one of the waxwork effigies of murder victims in Louis Tussaud’s in Porthcawl fair.

‘There’s nothing you can help with here, Diana,’ Elizabeth voiced a harsh practicality Diana didn’t want to hear. ‘The best thing you can do is go to work. You don’t want to lose your job now, do you?’

‘I thought ... I thought ...’

Trevor sensed Diana’s reluctance to leave Maud while her cousin’s immediate future was so uncertain. ‘I’ll get Laura to call in the shoe shop and let you know how she gets on,’ he promised quietly.

‘Just go, Diana,’ Elizabeth said brutally. ‘You’re holding up the doctor.’

Diana finally did as Elizabeth asked, closing the door behind her. But she didn’t go downstairs. Instead she sat on the step outside Maud’s bedroom, shivering, cold and clammy from the fear that crawled insidiously over her skin and invaded her mouth. She heard Trevor’s footsteps echoing across the linoleum. There was a faint murmur of voices, but the thunder of her own heartbeat drowned out any intelligible sounds. One phrase kept repeating itself over and over again in her head. She mouthed the words, whispering them, not really knowing what she was saying: ‘Please God, don’t let her die. Please God, don’t let her die. Please God ...’

Trevor folded back the bedclothes; they were clean and fresh. He glanced around the room hoping to catch a glimpse of the soiled linen. He couldn’t see anything.

‘You changed the sheets?’ he asked Elizabeth.

‘I could hardly leave her lying in a pool of blood,’ she retorted defensively. ‘It was all over the sheets, the bedcover and the blankets,’ she explained.

‘Was it dark or bright blood?’ He picked up Maud’s wrist and checked her pulse. It was barely perceptible.

‘Bright, I think,’ Elizabeth faltered, suddenly unsure of her facts and wondering how much depended on the accuracy of her answer.

Trevor saw her uncertainty and didn’t press her. Most of the mothers he’d seen in similar circumstances had succumbed to hysteria when they’d faced what Elizabeth had faced that morning.

‘How long has she been like this?’ He replaced Maud’s wrist gently on the bed.

‘Since she stopped haemorrhaging,’ Elizabeth’s voice was brittle with emotion. He looked at her, wondering how much more she could take before she broke down. Removing his stethoscope from his bag, he unbuttoned the top of Maud’s nightdress. She didn’t even move when he examined her. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Powell,’ he said as he finished. ‘There’s nothing more I can do for her here. She’ll have to go into the hospital.’

‘The Graig?’

The mixture of fear and condemnation in her voice struck a chord, making him effusive, almost garrulous in his defence of the hospital cum workhouse.

‘The isolation ward is quite separate from the workhouse,’ he explained, with all the emphasis on the word ‘separate’. ‘It’s on the top floor, there’s a fine view over the Maritime pit ...’ he hesitated as he realised what he’d said. An abandoned pit was hardly the view to cheer a sick young girl. ‘You can see as far as the fields in Maesycoed,’ he added with a forced heartiness. The fields of the farm above Maesycoed were the closest thing to countryside that could be seen from the windows of the hospital. He looked at Elizabeth. She was staring at him. He sensed that she could see beyond his pathetic attempts at bluster, read the damning, tragic diagnosis that he was struggling so hard to soften, if not conceal.

‘How long has she got left, Doctor Lewis?’ Elizabeth asked. She might have been enquiring about a train timetable. Unused to such direct questioning from the relatives of his patients, Trevor remained silent.

‘How long?’ she repeated flatly.

‘I don’t know,’ he said slowly. ‘I’m not lying,’ he protested in the face of her obvious scepticism. ‘I really don’t know,’ he insisted. ‘It depends on how much damage has been done by the haemorrhage. On whether or not both lungs are affected ... we might be able to collapse one if the other’s healthy ...’ His voice trailed off miserably. ‘The sooner we get into the Graig and do some tests, the sooner I’ll be able to give you a fuller diagnosis,’ he finished on a more decisive note.

‘I’ll pack her things.’

‘I’ll go downstairs and send one of the boys for an ambulance. You do pay your extra penny a week for the use of one?’

‘We do,’ Elizabeth affirmed as she lifted Maud’s suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe.

Diana was still sitting on the top step of the landing when Trevor emerged from Maud’s bedroom. She looked up at him.

‘How about you go downstairs and make a pot of tea for Mrs Powell,’ he said kindly, recognising the girl’s need to do something. ‘I think she could do with one.’

‘Maud?’ she asked.

Trevor turned away from her. ‘She’s going into hospital,’ he murmured. He could see Evan waiting for him at the foot of the stairs. He gritted his teeth, preparing to repeat the whole heartrending, unpleasant process he’d just gone through with Elizabeth.

‘There really isn’t anything else left for us to do except go to work.’ Charlie wrapped his arm round Diana’s shoulders as they watched the ambulance bump its way over the rough, unmade road, down the incline, past the vicarage, and around the corner into Llantrisant Road.

‘Come on, Di, cheer up,’ William ordered, putting on a brave face.

‘I’ll get my coat.’ Diana turned and walked back into the passage. She could hear Elizabeth already filling the wash boiler. Her aunt was obviously of the same opinion as Charlie. But then perhaps they were right, work might be the best antidote. Anything had to be better than moping around here thinking of Maud, and what she was going through right now.

‘It’s too late for me and Eddie to take out a cart now, Elizabeth,’ Evan called into the washhouse from the back kitchen. ‘I think I’ll go to town and get a bucket of whitewash to do out the
ty bach.
Can you think of anything else that wants doing while I’m at it?’

‘The front door could do with a coat of paint,’ Elizabeth said sharply.

‘Same green as before?’

‘Of course. There’s half a tin going to waste in the shed.’

‘In that case I’ll make a start and Eddie can get the whitewash.’

Eddie picked up his working and only coat from the row of pegs behind the door. Shiny with age and wear, it was a hand-me-down from Haydn, and as he was now outstripping Haydn in height, if not width, it was far too short for him. He stood next to Diana in the open doorway of the passage as he put it on.

‘Beats me how they can think of things like that at a time like this,’ he said sullenly.

‘What else are they going to think about?’ Charlie reprimanded gently. ‘No one can even visit Maud until Sunday.’

‘Well, they can still think of something other than the walls of the bloody
ty bach!’
he exclaimed savagely.

‘Why don’t you come down the market with Will and me today?’ Charlie put on his own rough tweed jacket.

‘And I don’t want no bloody charity either,’ Eddie retorted moodily.