One Blue Moon (16 page)

‘Not charity,’ Charlie said evenly, making Diana wonder if anything ever rattled him. ‘It’s gone nine o’clock. I’ll be way behind with cutting up the small joints that the old people are always after. You can help Will serve, while I see to the butchery side. All right?’ His ice-blue eyes focused confidently on Eddie.

‘All right,’ Eddie agreed, all belligerence and fight subsiding at the thought of spending what was left of the day on the market. His sister had been rushed to hospital. Was probably dying, if not already dead. And life was going on as though nothing had happened. Nothing at all.

The hands on St Catherine’s church clock were pointing to a little after nine-thirty when Diana walked into Ben Springer’s. She looked around, and her heart sank into her boots. She’d been so busy thinking of Maud that she’d forgotten about work, and Friday was the busiest day of the week next to Saturday. When the pits had been open, Thursday night was pay night, and the wives had got used to going into town to buy their dry goods and any bits and pieces they needed for the week, saving Saturday for fresh vegetable and Sunday joint shopping. There were no longer any pay packets given out in the closed and derelict pits on Thursday nights, neither was there enough money to stretch to buying all the necessities a family needed, but old habits died hard, and people still came into town in droves. And some of them even ended up in Ben Springer’s. Not many: most children in the town went barefoot, even in winter. A few of the lucky ones – whose parents had succumbed to the demands of the parish and sold off everything they had that was worth selling in order to claim parish relief – were wearing boots that had been provided by the ‘Miners’ Children’s Boot Fund’, a charity Ben had campaigned vigorously against, until he had been awarded the contract to supply them.

But that Friday morning Ben’s shop looked as though the depression had ended. The tiny area that served as both shop and fitting room was packed. Ben Springer was bending over the shapely, elegant foot of Anthea Llewellyn-Jones. He was crouched at just the right angle to look up her skirt, Diana noticed cynically as she surveyed the array of expensive gold leather spangled sandals laid out on the floor around them.

‘You’re late,’ he barked as soon as he caught sight of her.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Springer,’ she apologised quickly. ‘My cousin was rushed into hospital. She ...’

‘I’m sure no one here is the slightest bit interested in the comings and goings of your family,’ he sneered, still smiling up at Anthea Llewellyn-Jones. ‘Get your coat off and start work.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Diana ran out to the back and tore off her coat. Hanging it and her handbag on a hook in the storeroom, she tucked in her blouse, pulled down her skirt and tried her best to smile. After all, she had something to smile about. She still had a job, and that job meant she could stay in the same town as Maud and William. Anything had to be better than going into service. Even working for Ben Springer.

The first thing Maud saw when she opened her eyes was a shaft of brilliant sunlight cutting diagonally across the room. It illuminated a fairy world of gently swirling dust particles. Baby fairies waiting to be born, her sister Bethan had once called them. Overhead was a high, high ceiling. Far higher than anything she had ever slept under before. Green-painted metal rods stretched across it, locked into place three or more feet below the cracked plaster. She moved her chin down and saw dark green painted walls, the iron headboards of the bed opposite. Then, she realised where she was.

Tears escaped from beneath her eyelids as she closed her eyes and stretched out her body. She moved cautiously, feeling stiff, strange and awkward. But for all of that she was warm and reasonably comfortable. Crisp cotton sheets brushed against her skin, so different from the warm fleecy flannelette sheets that her mother insisted on using until the end of May. She could almost hear her lecturing, hectoring voice ...

‘Don’t cast a clout until May’s out.’

A rough, hollow coughing shook her back into harsh reality. She opened her eyes again and looked at the bed next to her own, where a painfully thin, dark-haired girl was sitting up, spitting into a jar that she held cradled in her hands. Seeing Maud, she smiled weakly in embarrassment as she closed the lid on the jar and returned it to the top of her locker.

‘I hate doing it, but they make you,’ she explained as she plucked at her bedcover with a claw like hand and fell back on to her pillows.

‘No one can make you do anything,’ Maud retorted, unthinkingly voicing one of Eddie’s favourite opinions.

‘They can here. You’ll see.’

‘Our new arrival is awake, I see.’ A sister, resplendent in dark blue uniform, the long sleeves finished with a set of immaculate stiffly starched cuffs, walked over to Maud’s bed, a trainee nurse trailing in her wake. Maud categorised her as a trainee from the uniform. She knew it well: her sister Bethan had worn it, and not that long ago.

She had often wished for her sister’s presence since Bethan had gone to London, but never more so than at that moment. If only Bethan could walk into the ward right now. Down the central aisle, pause at the foot of her bed ...

‘Turn back the sheets, Jones,’ the sister demanded. The trainee speedily did as the sister asked. The sister retrieved Maud’s wrist and proceeded to take her pulse.

‘Am I in the Graig Hospital?’ Maud asked, already knowing the answer, although she’d never been inside the place before.

‘You are.’

‘How soon can I go home?’ Maud ventured timorously, remembering all the times she’d heard people say, ‘It’s easy enough to go into the Graig, plenty do it. But precious few ever come out other than feet first.’

‘You’ve only just been admitted, my girl,’ the sister said curtly. ‘We’ll have no talk of going home from you. Not yet.’ She dropped Maud’s hand abruptly, and went to the bottom of the bed where she picked up a clipboard that hung from the foot-rail. She scribbled something on it then peered at Maud over the top of her thick-lensed, metal-rimmed spectacles. ‘You ever been in hospital before?’ she demanded.

‘No,’ Maud faltered, debating whether to tell her that her sister Bethan had nursed on the maternity ward. Then she remembered all the gossip generated by Bethan’s elopement and pregnancy, and decided against it.

‘Well the rules here are simple and few,’ the sister lectured in a voice that boomed down the long ward and back. ‘If you need anything, anything vital like a bedpan that is, you call out loud and clear for a nurse. Understand?’

‘Yes sister,’ Maud squirmed in embarrassment.

‘And give yourself, and us, plenty of time. My nurses and ward maids have more than enough to do without clearing up unnecessary messes. Understand?’ she repeated.

‘Yes sister,’ Maud whispered, thoroughly humiliated.

‘Just as long as you realise that you’re only to call us when it’s really essential. If you do that we’ll come running when you shout. If you start calling us for any trivial reason we’ll soon slow our pace. It’s as simple as that. And you’ll be the loser, because you, young lady, on doctor’s orders are not allowed out of bed at all. Not to wash, not to toilet, not to anything. Your foot is not to touch the floor, under any circumstances. Am I making myself clear?’

‘For how long?’ Maud asked, horrified by the thought of doing absolutely everything – washing, eating, sleeping, even ‘toileting’ as the sister put it – within the confines of this one narrow bed.

‘Until the doctor says otherwise. Are you comfortable now or do you want a bedpan?’ the sister asked insensitively.

‘I’m fine,’ Maud lied wretchedly, fighting back the tears that were pricking at the backs of her eyes.

‘When you cough, spit out whatever you bring up into the sputum jar on your locker. And mind you do just that. Don’t try to swallow it. It will only contaminate your stomach. And then you’ll have a sick stomach as well as sick lungs.’

‘My father and mother?’ Maud ventured.

‘Your family know where you are.’ The sister tucked in the sheet the trainee had wrenched out in order for her to take Maud’s pulse, effectively sealing Maud back into her bed again. ‘Visiting is for one hour every Sunday afternoon from two to three, and on Wednesdays from six to seven at doctor’s discretion. If you get over-excited, you risk what little health you have, and that could result in doctor being forced to cancel your visiting.’

When Maud didn’t reply to this standard conclusion to her pep talk, the sister actually wondered if she’d been too hard on the poor girl. She brushed aside the thought almost as soon as it entered her head. With only two qualified nurses, three trainees and two ward maids to see to the needs of thirty-five female patients in the various, but invariably messy, terminal stages of tuberculosis, it was probably just as well that the girl knew the full facts of her position from the outset.

Chapter Fifteen

Jenny Griffiths knew that Maud had been taken into the Graig Hospital less than ten minutes after the ambulance had left the street. Glan’s mother had waited only as long as it took her to check with Haydn (the politest and therefore the least likely of the Powell clan to tell her to mind her own business) that it was the Graig that Maud was being taken to, before walking into her back kitchen to take off her apron and put on her coat. As an afterthought she tied a scarf over her metal wavers, and picked up the worn and string-mended wicker basket that had held her shopping for the entire thirty-two years of her married life. Then she hurried down the Avenue (she hadn’t used the short cut through Rhiannon Pugh’s house since Rhiannon’s lodger, Phyllis Harry, had given birth to an illegitimate child a few months before) and headed for Griffiths’ shop, confident in the knowledge that
she’d
be the first one to impart the news to whoever was gathered there.

Jenny was serving old Mrs Evans who lived above the fish and chip shop opposite, with her daily ration of four Woodbines, two ounces of cheese and half a loaf of bread when Mrs Richards bustled in. Without pausing for breath, Mrs Richards interrupted the story that Mrs Evans was telling Jenny, about the boys that had taken to knocking her door after tying jam jars of unmentionable substances to her doorknob.

‘You can just imagine,’ Mrs Evans wailed dolefully, wringing her hands. ‘It flew all over me. Soaking and sticking to my skirt and jumper, and the stink ... you wouldn’t believe the stink!’

‘I would,’ Jenny enthused, before she realised what she’d said. Hopefully Mrs Evans had changed her clothes and washed, but the odour of the
ty bach
still clung to her frail and aged frame.

‘Maud Powell’s in hospital!’ Arms folded across her inadequate bosom, Mrs Richards stood back, waiting smugly for the impact of her news to hit her audience, but Mrs Evans continued to witter on about ‘filthy boys’ and ‘foul stinks’, oblivious to Mrs Richards’ presence, let alone her gossip. ‘Maud Powell’s been rushed into hospital. The Graig,’ Mrs Richards embellished her first revelation, but still failed to gain Jenny or Mrs Evans’ attention. ‘Maud Powell’s in hospital,’ she shouted at the top of her voice, yet she had to repeat herself twice before Jenny, odd cigarettes and triangular sweet bag in hand, turned to face her.

‘She haemorrhaged,’ she said proudly, airing her knowledge of the word. ‘Haydn told me all about it,’ she announced, heavily embroidering the truth. At the mention of Haydn, Jenny turned pale.

‘Mind you,’ Mrs Richards slammed a red, work-roughened hand down on the counter, ‘I said when that one came home from Cardiff – I said to my Viv and my Glan – she’s done for. They’ve worked her to death, that’s what they’ve done. You could see it in her eyes. And her mouth. It always goes to the eyes and mouth first,’ she asserted knowledgeably. ‘The eyes go sort of dead looking, and the teeth – well they suddenly seem too big for the mouth, if you know what I mean.’

‘The ... the Powells. How are they?’ Jenny stammered, concern for Haydn’s family giving her the courage to interrupt Mrs Richards in full flow.

‘They’re how you’d expect them to be,’ Mrs Richards sidestepped the question. ‘Haydn’s the one I talked to.’ She gave Jenny a knowing look that set the girl’s teeth on edge. ‘But then, he stays calm no matter what. A born gentleman, that’s what he is. Like his grandfather before him,’ she asserted fondly, referring to Evan’s father, not Elizabeth’s. The Baptist clergy might command her respect, but never her regard.

‘But what about the others?’ Jenny persisted. ‘Diana?’

‘Now there’s a baggage for you,’ Mrs Richards pursed her lips, as though she’d just tasted a sour apple. ‘She paints her cheeks and lips bright red. Curls her hair, even to go to work. After all the men. Just like her mother. And everyone knows what became of
that
one.’

‘What’s that you said, Mrs Richards?’ Harry Griffiths appeared from the musty depths of the storeroom. Mrs Richards had grace enough to blush to the roots of her tightly pulled hair.

‘Nothing, Mr Griffiths,’ she said loudly. ‘Nothing at all. Just called in to pick up a tin of tomatoes and a half-ounce of baccy for Viv’s pipe.’

Harry reached down to one of the bottom shelves and picked up a small tin of tomatoes. He didn’t have to ask what size she wanted; Mrs Richards never bought large tins. The Richards family always had toast for supper. The only one who ever had anything on it was her husband. He pushed the tin across the counter as he packed behind Jenny, who was engrossed in marking out a small portion of cheese to Mrs Evans’ exacting requirements.

‘The usual?’ he asked Mrs Richards, as he rested his hand on the shelf where he kept cigarettes and tobacco.

‘Please.’ Mrs Richards’ colour hadn’t subsided at all.

‘On the slate, I take it?’ Harry demanded coldly.

‘Only until Friday.’ Mrs Richards tossed her head and turned her back on them. ‘Good-day,’ she murmured almost inaudibly as she went out through the door.

Jenny finished serving Mrs Evans. She felt sick and dizzy, and it wasn’t just the smell of Mrs Evans. As soon as the door clanged behind the old woman she went into the storeroom and sank down on a pile of empty Corona crates.

‘Shouldn’t you go up there, love?’ Harry asked solicitously.

‘They won’t be wanting me there, Dad. Not now. Not at a time like this.’

‘You’ve got every right. You’re practically family. You and Haydn ...’ he looked at her closely. ‘There’s nothing wrong, is there love?’ he probed gently. ‘You and Haydn have patched up that silly row, haven’t you?’

‘Oh Dad,’ the single tear turned into a dam burst. All the emotion she had pent up since their quarrel erupted into a paroxysm of hysterical weeping.

He knelt beside her. Wrapping his arms awkwardly around her, he tried to comfort her as he had done when she’d been a small child. Only this time, his hugs and murmurs of ‘It’ll be all right, love. You’ll see, it’ll all come right in the end’ rang false, even to his own ears.

‘We had such a stupid, stupid argument,’ she sobbed. ‘I haven’t even seen him to talk to. And I don’t know what to do. I love him, Dad,’ she pulled away from her father and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘I love so much, it hurts,’ she cried poignantly.

‘I know,’ he stroked the back of her head with his hand. ‘I know,’ he repeated softly, his heart twelve miles away in Cardiff Prison.

‘I didn’t want you hearing it from anyone else.’ Trevor heaped two sugars into the tea Ronnie had brought him and stirred it. ‘Not after last night.’

‘Last night?’ Ronnie looked up warily from the stone-cold cup of tea he was hunched over.

‘Gina stopped off to see Laura on her way down to town this morning,’ Trevor said baldly. ‘I saw her when I called back to finish my breakfast after I’d settled Maud in the ward. She told us that you’d taken Maud to the café last night.’

‘The girl was all alone in the house,’ Ronnie protested.

‘And the girl should have been left all alone in the house!’ Trevor exclaimed furiously. ‘For heaven’s sake, she has terminal tuberculosis. Do you know what that means? It means she can die at any moment. She could have died here, in the café last night,’ he stressed, trying to bring home to Ronnie the enormity of what he’d done. ‘And when her family find out that she haemorrhaged the morning after you took her out on a cold, miserable night ...’

‘I made her worse?’ Ronnie looked so grief-stricken that Trevor relented, but only slightly.

‘It’s impossible to say what brought it on,’ he conceded irritably. ‘But it’s fair to say that last night didn’t help. What on earth possessed you to behave like an irresponsible lunatic? You of all people ...’

‘I love her.’

Trevor was so taken aback by the calm, matter-of-fact declaration that he dropped his cup. Tea spilled over the table and dripped down on to his trousers.

‘Gina, cloth!’ Ronnie shouted in an unnaturally flat voice for a man who had just made an earth-shattering announcement.

‘But she’s a child, she’s a ...’ Lost for words, Trevor’s spluttering ceased as Gina wiped his tea-stained trousers, and then the table.

‘And I suppose you want me to bring you more tea,’ she mumbled, picking up Ronnie’s cold cup as well as Trevor’s empty one.

‘There’s no hurry,’ Ronnie said sharply. Gina knew when to leave her eldest brother alone. She retreated quickly to the front counter.

‘I didn’t exactly go looking for this,’ Ronnie muttered as soon as Gina was out of earshot. ‘It just – well it just happened,’ he finished shortly, daring Trevor to reproach him.

‘Does Maud know how you feel?’ Trevor ventured.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You mean, you haven’t said anything to her?’ Trevor breathed a sigh of relief.

‘Hardly. I only realised myself last night.’ Ronnie looked around the café. It was half-past ten. Too early for the ‘elevenses’ rush of the market traders and bus conductors, and too late for the breakfasts of the council labourers. He and Trevor were sitting at a table for two, placed in the darkest corner of the back room. Too far away from the stove to be popular, its only advantage lay in the privacy it commanded.

‘Alma and I had a row last night,’ he explained briefly. After his sleepless, solitary night it was an incredible relief to talk to someone. And while he felt that Trevor might not understand him, he sensed that, being a doctor, Trevor was used to being entrusted with confidences and, unlike some people, would know how to keep them. ‘The last thing Alma accused me of, before she flounced out of here in a foul temper, was being in love with Maud. I told her she was being ridiculous. That I couldn’t possibly love Maud. I listed all the reasons why I couldn’t. Her age, her illness. Then I thought about it ...’

‘All night, judging by the bags under your eyes,’ Trevor commented cuttingly. He couldn’t resist adding, ‘Tina told Laura you didn’t go home last night.’

‘I slept –’ Ronnie grinned ruefully as he ran his hands through his hair, which for once wasn’t smoothly slicked back. ‘Or should I say, stayed here last night.’

‘You do know she’s going to die, don’t you?’ Trevor said brutally. ‘The only question is when.’

‘Can you get me in to see her?’

‘Are you mad?’

‘Come on, Trevor, you’re a doctor in the Graig. That position must be good for something.’

‘Visiting on the TB ward is strictly limited to Sunday afternoons and sometimes, at ward sister’s discretion, Wednesday evenings. No more than two visitors to a patient, and anyone young, or deemed at risk, has to stay in the visitors’ room behind a glass screen. Even if I managed to get you into the ward I doubt that her family would look kindly enough on you to allow you to take one of their precious places.’

‘Then get me in outside of visiting,’ he pleaded.

‘It would be easier to get you into the vaults of the Bank of England. She’s on an isolation ward, Ronnie. That means she’s highly infectious –’

‘There has to be a way. If I took a porter’s job ...’

‘Now you’re being ridiculous,’ Trevor said in exasperation. ‘Have you any idea of the number of applications we get for every job that comes up in the hospital?’

‘Then at least take a letter to her for me?’

‘Ronnie.’ Trevor slowed his voice as though he were explaining complicated surgical techniques to a two-year-old child. ‘She’s seriously ill. When I saw her this morning she was in a coma. God knows what a letter out of the blue from you, telling her that you love her, could do to her at this point in her illness.’

‘If you won’t help me, then I’ll find someone who will.’ Ronnie turned away from him and pulled a loose cigarette from the top pocket of his jacket.

‘Ronnie, be realistic,’ Trevor pleaded, slightly alarmed by this strange, passionate man who had sprung from his usually laconic, always sarcastic, and generally easy-going brother-in-law.

‘I am,’ Ronnie stared intently at Trevor. ‘Totally and utterly realistic. For the first time in my life I’m facing facts as they are, not as I’d like them to be. I’m in love. I know what I want. I want Maud. And if she hasn’t got long to live, then the sooner we get together to spend whatever time she’s got left with one another the better.’ He rose from the table.

‘I’ll try to talk to her,’ Trevor conceded at last. ‘I can’t do any more.’

‘You’ll find out how she is? Come back and tell me?’

There was such a look of anguish on Ronnie’s face, all Trevor could do was nod.

Diana was still in Ben Springer’s at eight o’clock that night. He had her humping boxes from the back of the shop to the front; stacking the shelves, rotating stock that wasn’t selling to the top shelves and filling the prime positions with new stock. And while she lifted, strained and struggled to carry heavy boxes of boots up and down ladders, he delicately arranged men’s patent evening shoes next to gold and silver leather dancing slippers on the display stands in the window.

Hot, sweaty, tired, and worried because so little had been said about her late arrival that morning, Diana was too afraid to utter a single word of protest. What if he decided to dock her a day’s pay? She’d already borrowed money off William against this week’s wages. Money she knew he wouldn’t ask for, but money she also knew he could ill afford to spare.

‘Did you hear what I said?’

‘Pardon, sir?’ Jerking out of her reverie, she almost fell off the top rung of the ladder.

‘I was talking to you, girl.’ Ben had the till open, and was holding out his hand. ‘Four shillings and sixpence. A week’s wages less your shoe club money, and less tomorrow’s shilling. Not that you deserve that much.’

‘I’m happy to wait until tomorrow as usual, Mr Springer,’ Diana protested mildly, her arms strained and aching as she descended the ladder with a full load of boxes. She tried, and failed, to stop herself from shaking. The last time she’d been offered money before the end of the week had been in the Infirmary. He couldn’t be thinking of giving her notice. He simply couldn’t be!

‘Take it, girl,’ he commanded tersely. She piled the boxes on a fitting stool and reached out nervously, delicately removing a sticky two-shilling piece and a half-crown from the sweaty palm of his hand.