One Blue Moon (22 page)

‘You just said it Mr Powell. “If”.’

‘I said if, because she’s just as likely to die on the boat or the train, and then what will you do, Ronnie? Tell me, what will you do?’

‘I’d bring her body home to you, Mr Powell. I’d be devastated, but at least I’d know that I’d tried everything humanly possible to save her. Could you honestly say that, if you refuse me permission to even try?’

Even stared down into his half-empty glass.

‘Please, Mr Powell,’ Ronnie begged. ‘Please, let me at least try to save her. I love her.’

Evan looked up into Ronnie’s dark, brooding eyes. ‘So do I,’ he said slowly. ‘So do I,’ he repeated thoughtfully. ‘Far too much to allow her to die amongst strangers.’

Chapter Twenty

‘You’re going to get me shot, Will Powell,’ Tina complained as they sneaked around the corner of Danycoedcae Road, creeping close to the damp garden walls of the houses.

‘No one is going to shoot you for going roller skating with Gina, you silly girl,’ he murmured, squeezing her hand.

‘When I come home without her?’

‘For pity’s sake,’ he grumbled. ‘You spent long enough plotting your story. You wanted a cup of chocolate in Jenny’s house, and Gina didn’t. Now what could be simpler than that?’

‘Nothing as long as Gina remembers the story, and Papa doesn’t interrogate her until she breaks.’

‘You’re not living in a gangster film, Tina.’

‘You don’t know Papa,’ she retorted briskly. ‘He asks more questions than the Spanish Inquisition. And generally gets better results,’ she added gloomily.

‘And you worry too much.’ He pulled her into the shadows. ‘Any chance of seeing you after work tomorrow?’

‘You don’t finish on the market until ten o’clock on a Saturday night.’

‘More like eleven, but a fellow can live in hope.’

‘Not that much.’

‘Shoni’s, three o’clock Sunday?’

‘What if it’s raining?’

‘I’ll bring an umbrella.’

‘Fat lot of good that will do in Shoni’s.’

‘All you ever do is meef,’ he complained playfully. ‘Meef, meef, meef.’

‘What on earth is meefing?’

‘You should know, you do enough of it.’ He was wondering whether he dare risk a kiss, when her eyes grew alarmingly round and large.

‘Holy Mother of God,’ she exclaimed. ‘Here comes Ronnie! See you.’ She ran round the corner, just as Ronnie thundered his Trojan to a halt outside their front door.

‘Close the café early?’ she asked, trying desperately to look as though she hadn’t a care in the world.

He gazed straight past her, completely ignoring her, then ran up the short flight of steps to their front door.

‘Serve him right if he tripped over his big flat feet,’ she muttered under her breath, reaching the front door just in time for him to slam it in her face.

‘Hey, what about me?’ she shouted irritably, turning the key and walking in behind him. He was half-way down the passage. He didn’t bother to glance back and look at her, let alone apologise. She shook her umbrella outside the door, propped it in the corner on the old tin tray that her mother put there for the purpose, threw her coat over the multitude balancing on the rack, and followed Ronnie down the long flagstoned passage that led from the front to the back of the house.

The radio was blaring into the hot, steamy kitchen. Friday had been her mother’s day for making Saturday’s fish soup out of the heads and tails of Friday’s dinner for as long as she could remember, and the smell of herrings lingered tartly in the air.

‘Hello everyone,’ she shouted, going to the biscuit barrel and helping herself to a home-made oatmeal crunch. Gina looked up from where she was teaching thirteen-year-old Maria and ten-year-old Stephania how to apply lipstick, and raised her eyebrows. She was dying to ask Tina if William Powell had kissed her, but knew her questions would have to wait until their sisters slept. Nine-year-old Alfredo and six-year-old Robert swept past, sword-fighting with a pair of ill-matched wooden kitchen spoons. Her mother, oblivious to the noise and chatter, smiled absently, continuing to mend a great, long tear in eight-year-old Theresa’s school skirt.

‘Where’s Papa?’ Ronnie demanded as he emerged from the washhouse. They all turned towards him, Tina and her mother both noticing a keener edge to his voice than usual.

‘He’s next door. He and Mr Morris are drilling a hole so they can pass a wire through the wall to set up a wireless speaker for them,’ Maria explained. ‘Papa thought it would be nice for them to listen to ours. After all, it’s on all day.’

‘Is everything all right in the café?’ Mrs Ronconi shouted above the laughter that greeted Arthur Askey’s latest joke. Something in the expression on Ronnie’s face made her uneasy.

‘Everything’s fine, Mama.’ He glared at the milling children.

‘Everyone under sixteen to bed,’ he ordered brusquely.

‘Aw Ronnie!’ Maria, Stephania, Theresa, Robert and Alfredo chorused in protest.

‘This finishes at nine, Ronnie, that’s only five minutes. Can’t we hear the end of it?’ Alfredo begged, knowing that where Ronnie was concerned, his pleading would hold far more weight than that of the girls.

‘None of you can hear it above the din you’re making,’ Ronnie observed unrelentingly. ‘Come on, bed. Now!’ He stood over them as they trooped mutinously to the washhouse in single file. When he heard the tap running and the sounds of teeth being brushed, he left. A moment later the front door banged shut.

‘The minute the show ends,’ their mother warned as Alfredo poked his head around the washhouse door, letting in an ice-cold draught of air.

‘Promise, Mama. Cross my heart,’ Alfredo beamed.

Ronnie opened the Morrises’ door and walked through to their kitchen.

‘It’s only me, Mr Morris,’ he called out as he stepped into the room, which was considerably colder and less cosy than the kitchen in his house. ‘Is Papa here?’

‘Papa is here,’ his father answered from the depths of the cupboard that filled the alcove next to the range, where he was crouched, trying to bore a hole. ‘And you’re just the man we want. Come here and hold this bit steady while I drill. You wouldn’t believe how solid this wall is.’

‘Yes I would.’ Ronnie went to the cupboard and extracted the drill from his father’s hand. ‘You’ve picked the wrong place, Papa,’ he smiled. ‘You won’t do it there, you can’t see what you’re doing. Here, let me. Near the ceiling will be easier.’ He picked up a scarred wooden chair, positioned it on the lino near the communal wall, climbed on it and, holding the bit steady in the crack between wall and ceiling, proceeded to drink steadily. ‘Get a cloth please, Papa,’ he shouted, as a stream of black mortar poured out of the hole he was making. Mr Morris rushed out the back and returned with a ragged pair of pants.

‘I always keep the old clothes, especially the cotton underwear,’ Mrs Morris wheezed from her easy chair next to the range. ‘They make such good dusters.’

‘Yes they do, Mrs Morris. Absorbent too,’ Ronnie the knowledgeable café owner called out cheerfully. He persevered, working at a steady pace. ‘Have you a drill with a longer bit?’ he asked.

‘I don’t think so.’ Mr Morris raked over the few odds and ends of tools that he kept proudly in a wooden box that his eldest son had made in woodwork class before he’d gone off to join the army.

Ronnie balanced the drill in one hand, wiped his eyes with the other, pushed forward, and almost fell off the chair.

‘Steady,’ his father shouted.

‘We’re through.’

‘There, what did I tell you?’ His father rubbed his hands and beamed at the old couple. ‘Now all you have to do is put that speaker on top of the dresser. We’ll poke the wire from it through the wall, and our Angelo can connect it when he gets back from the café!’

‘It’s very good of you to go to all this trouble, Mr Ronconi,’ Mrs Morris gushed. ‘We never thought we’d have radio in our own kitchen, did we Joe?’ she smiled up at her husband.

‘Never ...’

‘What are you doing out of the café?’ Mr Ronconi demanded of his son, suddenly realising that he was home at a peculiar hour. ‘No trouble, is there?’

‘No trouble,’ Ronnie replied evenly. ‘Here, you don’t have to wait until our Angelo gets home, Mr Morris. Pass me that wire, I’ll push it through, go into our kitchen and connect it there.’

‘Just in time for the evening theatre show,’ Mr Ronconi smiled. ‘Some of them are really good. Last week’s was about a haunted room in an old house.’

‘Ooh,’ Mrs Morris squealed. ‘Just think of it, Joe, theatre in our own back kitchen.’

Mr Ronconi looked around. Ronnie had already gone. ‘I’ll just go and see if Ronnie needs a hand,’ he said as he backed out of the door. He could stand almost anything except being thanked for his kindness. ‘When that speaker starts working, just knock on the wall. Then we’ll know to leave the wires alone.’ Following his son out of the door, he returned to his own kitchen where Ronnie was putting the finishing touches to a Heath Robinson conglomeration of wires at the back of the radio.

‘There, that should do it,’ Ronnie announced. ‘Do you want to go and check?’

‘I told them to knock if they could hear it.’ As if to confirm his words a loud bang came from the other side of the wall.

The younger children, hands and faces washed, teeth cleaned and hair brushed, trooped out of the washhouse and stood in a line waiting for their father and mother to kiss them goodnight. Much to Robert’s disgust, Ronnie patted him on the head. He adored his big brother, but he hated being patronised. Ronnie, however, was too lost in his own thoughts to notice Robert’s squirming. He was preoccupied with his parents’ frequent hints that he should marry. If he’d been about to tell them that he wanted to marry one of the daughters of the Italian community he knew that his parents would have greeted the news ecstatically. He also knew that given time, and conversion to the faith, he could possibly have talked them into accepting Alma as a daughter-in-law. But not Maud. At Gina’s age, she was too young. Her religion – her illness – the hint of scandal that still clung to her sister for all of Bethan’s marriage to a doctor – taken separately he might have overcome one of the obstacles. Put together, they were simply too much.

When the last of the younger children had raced down the cold passage and up the stairs, he turned to Tina and Gina. ‘You two going to sit there all night?’

‘It’s too early to go to bed,’ Tina pouted. ‘I’m nineteen ...’

‘And I want to talk to Papa and Mama in private,’ Ronnie countered stiffly.

Tina went white. ‘If you want to talk to Papa and Mama I have every right to be here,’ she began haughtily.

‘You, Madam, have no right to listen in ...’

‘If it’s about me, I have every right to hear.’

‘And what makes you think Ronnie is about to say anything concerning you?’ her father enquired suspiciously.

Caught in a trap of her own making, Tina turned on her father and brother like a cornered wildcat. ‘You think I’m stupid?’ she asked furiously.

‘Must we answer that?’ Ronnie sighed wearily.

‘You think I haven’t seen you,’ she rounded on her brother, ‘sneaking around after me. You followed me tonight, didn’t you? Didn’t you?’ she screamed. ‘That’s why you want to talk to Papa and Mama. Well I’m a grown woman, not a naughty little girl. I’m old enough to make up my own mind as to who I see, where I go, what I do ...’

Terrified by the inevitable consequences of Tina’s outburst, and the thunderous expression on her father’s face, Gina would have sidled out of the door if she could have. But Ronnie blocked her path. She stepped back, and stood alongside her mother, who sat rooted to her chair.

‘And what do you think Ronnie saw that was so terrible?’ her father shouted, pushing his face very close to Tina’s. ‘What? Come on, tell me. What have you been doing that you don’t want your own father and mother to know about?’ He folded his hands inside his arms as if he couldn’t trust himself to keep them off her. ‘Did you, or did you not go roller skating in Mill Street with Gina?’ he asked coldly. ‘Or were you lying?’

‘She was in Mill Street with me,’ Gina dared to interrupt, gabbling hastily. ‘She stopped off to have a drink of chocolate with Jenny on the way home, I didn’t want to go in with them.’ Gina’s explanation sounded like a well-rehearsed speech at a children’s school concert.

‘She was home before nine, so what’s the problem?’

Tina’s mouth dropped open. She couldn’t believe her brother Ronnie had said that.

‘If roller skating with Gina and a chocolate with Jenny Griffiths was all she’d done she wouldn’t have screamed at you, or be blushing the way she is. She’s been out with a boy. That’s it, isn’t it Tina?’ her father shrieked. ‘You’ve been sneaking around with someone behind my back. The same way your sister Laura sneaked around with that, that –’

‘Husband,’ Ronnie broke in quietly. ‘Papa –’

‘Papa nothing,’ Mr Ronconi raged. ‘Tina, what’s been going on?’

‘Nothing.’ Whiter than Ronnie had ever seen her before, Tina swayed on her feet.

‘You’ve been seeing that William Powell, haven’t you?’ her father raged.

‘No!’ Tina lied defiantly.

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Papa, you’re calling your own daughter a liar,’ his wife remonstrated.

Tina’s bottom lip trembled and she began to cry.

‘There! There, I knew it!’ Papa Ronconi began a swift ascent into one of his notorious, and amongst the younger members of his family, much feared, rages.

‘All I did was walk home with him,’ Tina sobbed tearfully. ‘It was the first time ever. We didn’t do anything wrong ...’

‘You did something wrong by speaking to him. Just look at you, just look ...’ he babbled, his voice breaking into incoherence.

‘Papa, I ... I ...’

‘I forbid you. I absolutely forbid you,’ Papa Ronconi’s face turned purple. ‘I forbid you to see that boy, and what do you do? You go sneaking behind my back, you ... you slut!’

‘Papa!’ Ronnie exclaimed angrily.

‘Tomorrow you pack your bags and you go to your grandmother in Bardi. She’ll see you married off to a decent Italian boy within the month. I’ll have no daughter of mine ...’

Ronnie looked at Tina and jerked his head sharply towards the door.

‘Don’t you dare leave this room!’ his father screamed, beside himself with rage.

‘Let her go, Papa,’ Ronnie said quietly, with what seemed to Tina amazing courage. ‘In a minute I’m going to give you a lot more to shout about than Tina ever has.’

Evan pushed his way through the crowded passage of the Graig Hotel until he reached the hatch that served as bar to the back rooms. He pulled all the money he had out of his pocket, spread it on his palm and stared at it. He had just enough for two pints, with sixpence left over for the hire of a cart tomorrow, no more. And he knew there was nothing left in the old, cracked Doulton teapot that Elizabeth kept on the top shelf in the kitchen. Throwing all sense of caution to the wind, he handed over everything except the precious sixpence to the barman.