One Blue Moon (23 page)

‘Bitter please, Albert.’

‘Your usual?’ the barman asked.

‘Two pints.’ Evan carried them through to the half-empty back room where Charlie was sitting staring into the fire.

‘Cheers, mate.’ Charlie picked up his pint and supped it slowly. He’d bought the first pint they’d drunk in the Graig, and he knew Evan had drunk a pint or two earlier, with Ronnie. One was usually Evan’s limit on a weekday, so he was obviously troubled by something. But Charlie knew that if Evan wanted to talk about it, he would do so in his own good time.

Will glanced in through the door. Seeing his uncle and Charlie, he walked over to them.

‘Pint?’ Charlie asked, putting his hand in his pocket.

‘No thanks,’ Will shook his head. ‘I only came in to see if anyone was about. I’m going down the gym to meet Eddie. We’ll probably wait until it’s time for Haydn to finish, then pick up some chips on the way home.’

‘Overtime burning a hole in your pocket?’ Charlie smiled.

‘No.’ The truth of the matter was, Will couldn’t wait to tell someone he’d finally walked Tina home. And he was hoping that three heads would be better than one when it came to finding a solution to the obstacles that stood in their way: principally Papa Ronconi and Ronnie. ‘Tell Di I’ll see her in the shop tomorrow, Uncle Evan,’ he said as he went out.

‘I’ll do that.’ Evan went back to his pint. Charlie continued to sup his and study the flames that played between the glowing embers in the fire.

‘Ronnie went into the Central Homes and saw Maud tonight,’ Evan volunteered eventually.

‘So he said in the club,’ Charlie murmured.

‘So he did.’ Evan put down his pint. He screwed up his face thoughtfully. ‘Damned fool!’ he swore absently.

‘Did he say how Maud was?’ Charlie asked, wondering if Evan’s black mood had been caused by a worsening in her condition.

‘Conscious but no better, from what I can work out. Ronnie wants to marry her,’ Evan said suddenly. He looked suspiciously at Charlie. ‘You don’t seem surprised.’

‘I thought it might have been something like that when he came into the club looking for you.’

‘She’s dying,’ Evan said bitterly.

‘We’re all dying.’

‘Some sooner than others.’

‘Ronnie’s an intelligent man. I’m sure he knows that.’

Something in the tone of Charlie’s voice made Evan look him squarely in the eye. ‘You think I should let him marry her?’ he demanded incredulously.

‘Provided Maud wants to marry him, I can’t see any objection,’ Charlie said evenly. ‘He’s a hard worker, he has a share in two cafés, and he’s busy building up a third. I would have thought that any father in the town would be proud to have him for a son-in-law.’

‘The idiot wants to give up all he owns to take her to Italy.’

‘Italy!’ This time Charlie had the grace to look surprised.

‘He thinks the air in the mountains will cure her.’

‘It might,’ Charlie agreed cautiously.

‘Do you really think there’s a chance? Trevor Lewis more or less told me that she’s pretty far gone.’

‘All I know is doctors aren’t God. My sister had lung disease. My mother took her to live with our uncle in the Ural Mountains. She died in the end, but at least she had ten years of life she wouldn’t have had if she’d stayed with us.’

Evan knew better than to question the veracity of Charlie’s story.

‘So you think I should let him take her?’

‘That’s your decision to make, not mine. All I’m saying is that sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.’ He shrugged his massive shoulders and finished his pint. ‘And then again he must think a lot of her to want to give up his share in the cafés. Last one for the road?’ Charlie held out his hand for Evan’s glass. Normally Evan would have protested about the uneven rounds, but this time he handed over his glass.

‘What would you do if you were Maud’s father?’ he asked seriously.

‘If I was Maud’s father,’ Charlie said gravely, ‘I think I’d begin by talking to Maud.’

‘Giacomo, please,’ Ronnie’s mother begged, calling him by the baptismal name that was hardly ever heard, even in his own family. She was standing in the kitchen as far as she could get from the two men. She had seen her husband angry many times, but had never been unduly perturbed. His type of anger was typical of many Italians: quick to rise, and quick to blow over – until now. This anger was different. He’d never quarrelled so vehemently with any of the children before, and for the first time since she’d met him, twenty-eight years before, she could see real and bitter pain beneath his anger.

Their eldest son was special – to both of them: the only one of their children born in Italy, in her father-in-law’s farmhouse in the tiny, primitive, backwater hamlet outside Bardi. Her husband had stayed with her until the birth, then he’d left her for five long years, while he went to Wales to work in his brother’s café. He’d promised to send for her the minute he made enough money to provide a comfortable home for her, and his son. But when she waved him off on the bus that left the square in Bardi, neither of them had imagined that it would take so long for him to get established.

While she’d sat and waited in her father’s small Spartan farmhouse, all she’d had to remind her of her young, passionate husband was her baby, and the monthly money orders he sent, which, no matter how carefully she counted them, never quite reached the figure needed to pay for her and their child’s fare to Wales.

She’d cashed the orders in Bardi, spent sparingly and saved prodigiously, and in the meantime her son grew into a fine boy, and as his grandfather had said, ‘old beyond his years’.

Giacomo had been born old. When the tickets to Wales finally came, it had been five-year-old Giacomo who’d helped her pack, deciding what was to go and what was to be left behind. Giacomo who’d dried her eyes when the grandparents and maiden aunt had wailed at their leaving. Giacomo who’d taken charge of their tickets, checking the train times, and pronouncing the strange place names that he’d made one of their neighbours (who’d been to Wales and returned) repeat time and again to make sure that he’d got it right. And even after they’d arrived in the two tiny rooms that were their first home, it had been Giacomo who’d helped his father mix the ice cream and stock up the handcart every morning. Giacomo who’d rushed home from school every day to wash dishes in their first café in High Street. Giacomo who’d helped her husband to make his first serious decision to borrow from their uncle to buy the second café on the Tumble. Giacomo who was, even now, steering the plans through for their first restaurant. Giacomo – always Giacomo.

She couldn’t bear to see her husband and much beloved eldest son at loggerheads. The pain was vicious, cruel, almost physical.

‘You want to throw up your whole life, everything we’ve built here,’ her husband raged and ranted at Ronnie, ‘for a sick girl. A dying girl!’

‘I love her,’ Ronnie said directly, as though those three words were enough to explain everything.

‘You can’t remember Bardi ...’ his father began earnestly.

‘I remember Bardi,’ Ronnie replied. ‘Probably better than you. After all, I left it later,’ he pointed out drily.

‘But this girl. She’s not Italian,’ his mother said reasonably, as though she were afraid of her words hurting him. ‘She’s not even healthy, Giacomo. Listen to me, please. I had a brother who died of the lung disease, but he died after he gave it to my sister, and then she died ...’

‘Mama, please don’t cry.’ Ronnie wrapped his arm around his plump, diminutive mother. ‘I want to get married, not die,’ he smiled.

‘What makes you think that Bardi is such a healthy place?’ his father shouted scornfully. ‘There’s less money there than here. There’s no work, except back-breaking farm work. The most you can make is enough food to eat. No coins to jingle in your pocket. It’s poverty-stricken. In summer there’s nothing but flies ...’

‘At least you can be sure of having a summer in Bardi,’ Ronnie retorted.

‘Surer than you can be of having food on the table,’ his father taunted. ‘There were times when we didn’t have enough to eat. Why do you think your uncle and I left home?’

‘There were a lot more of you in those days, Papa. There’s only your father, mother and Aunt Theresa there now. With a young able-bodied fellow like me around the place, we’ll soon produce more than enough,’ Ronnie asserted forcefully.

‘You?’ his father ridiculed. ‘You? What do you know about farming?’

‘About as much as you did about the café business when you came to Wales.’ He waited for his father’s explosive temper to cool to the point where he could make himself heard again. ‘From what I remember of farming in Bardi, the main qualities needed are hard work, brute strength, and the ability to stand foul smells.’

His father’s features hardened to a stern, intractable mask. ‘You go, and I cut you off with a penny. You will no longer be my son. You will not be welcome in this house. You will not darken my door again. I will give you nothing. Do you understand me? Nothing!’ He spat into the fire. ‘You leave this house with this girl, and to me you are dead.’

‘I am sorry, Papa. I have no choice to make. I am going to marry her, and take her to Bardi.’

His mother burst into tears.

‘Go ahead. Go,’ his father sneered. ‘What will the pair of you do for money? I know that the Powells have none ...’

‘I’ve worked in the business for thirteen years.’

‘You’ve been fed and clothed. You won’t see a penny more than you’ve already had.’

‘The Trojan’s in my name. I’ll sell it,’ Ronnie threatened. ‘Even a quick sale will bring in enough for two tickets to Bardi.’

‘The van belongs to the business,’ his father shrieked.

‘It doesn’t. I bought it in my name. And I hold the logbook.’

Ronnie matched his father’s antagonistic glare. ‘And I wasn’t so dull as not to put a little aside,’ he lied, wondering just how much today’s takings would be. He’d have to get down to the café quick. The minute he left here ...

‘You, you dared to rob me? Your own father –’

‘No, just took some wages.’

His father knew when he was beaten. Terrified of losing Ronnie, and having got nowhere with his bullying tactics, he tried a different approach.

‘Please Ronnie, I’m asking you, begging you, please don’t give up. Not now, not when everything is going so well. The new restaurant ...’

Ronnie found this approach much harder to deal with. ‘Tony knows as much as me,’ he said simply.

‘Tony is destined to be a priest.’

‘Not the Tony I know. Ask him what he thinks of girls.’

‘Girls!’

‘Papa, it doesn’t matter,’ Ronnie said wearily. ‘I didn’t come here to fight. I came to tell you that I will be working this weekend, after that no more. I intend to marry Maud as soon as I can. And if we can get tickets we’ll be gone by Monday.’

‘Then go and be damned for it!’ His father turned his back on him.

‘Giacomo!’ His mother flung herself at him. He kissed her and helped her back into her chair, then opened the kitchen door.

‘Where are you going?’ his father screeched.

‘To pack my clothes,’ Ronnie replied. ‘I presume that I can take them. They won’t fit anyone else.’

‘Five minutes. That’s all you have, then I call the police and have you thrown out.’

Chapter Twenty-one

Tina and Gina were sitting on the edge of the double bed they shared. The three younger girls were huddled together in the other bed in the room, their eyes wide, fearful at the sounds of the argument coming from the kitchen below. Tina’d left the door open so she could listen to every word that was being said. And never in her life had she felt so much sympathy for her eldest brother.

She watched Ronnie walk upstairs. He passed the door to the girls’ room as he went into the box room. It was the smallest room in the house, but until that night he’d been able to call it all his own. As the oldest child by nearly six years, his parents felt he was entitled to a room of his own, even if it was only six foot six inches by five foot.

‘Ronnie.’ Tina dried her eyes before she crept to the door of his room. She watched as he went to the narrow old wardrobe that scraped alongside the bottom of his small bed and lifted down the same battered cardboard suitcase he had struggled with when he had left Bardi at the age of five. He opened the wardrobe door and began packing his shirts, pants and vests, cramming them into the case anyhow, just as they fell.

‘Ronnie, where are you going?’ she whispered, as he picked up his one good linen shirt.

‘For tonight, the café, afterwards, we’ll see.’

‘Ronnie, will you and Papa make up?’

‘Not this time,’ he smiled grimly.

‘Is it true?’ she ventured. ‘Do you really love Maud Powell?’

‘Yes,’ he answered shortly. Strange, he hadn’t minded talking about his feelings to Maud, Mr Powell or Trevor, but Tina was different. She was his kid sister, and he very much minded talking about his personal feelings to her.

‘If you love Maud,’ she swallowed hard in an effort to gain courage, ‘then you must understand what I feel for Will.’

‘I’m not sure I can approve of Will Powell,’ he said without a trace of humour. ‘He’s not steady enough to marry a sister of mine.’

‘And Maud’s too sick and too young to marry anyone,’ Tina countered smartly.

‘Snap.’ He pushed the last of his clothes into the case and looked around. There was his alarm clock: he picked that up and dumped it on top of the clothes. Three books on the windowsill. He looked at them: there was a Bible his aunt had given him on his confirmation, a prayer book his mother had bought him one Christmas, and a western Tony had lent him.

‘Give this back to Tony.’ He handed Tina the western, and packed the other two books.

She clung to the book, pressing it hard against her chest. ‘You’re really going Ronnie, aren’t you?’ she asked, the enormity of what was happening just beginning to sink in.

‘Oh yes.’ He picked up the case and buttoned his jacket. Then he looked at her. ‘I’m really going,’ he said slowly.

She clung to him and began to cry again.

‘Come on, no tears. Pull yourself together and help Tony, he’ll be the one to make all the decisions from now on.’

‘But he’s going to be a priest!’

‘When Papa begins to talk to you again, suggest that he tries to keep that one for Robert. He’d better not try Angelo or Alfredo. I’m afraid they’re too hot-blooded. Like him.’

She heard him walk along the landing and whisper goodbyes at both the girls’ and the boys’ bedroom doors. Then the front door slammed. The Trojan started up. She was still standing there in the empty bedroom when her mother came up moments later. They sank on to his bed together and cried. More for themselves than for Ronnie.

Since his one brief, disastrous appearance on stage, Haydn had found his work at the Town Hall unbearable. The title ‘callboy’ meant a lot more than simply calling the acts to go on stage. Most of his time was spent clearing the dressing rooms of accumulated rubbish, buying evening papers, and running errands for the ‘stars’, collecting discarded props and making sure they were put back where they could be found for the next performance. And then, when the show was over and the performers and manager were relaxing, he and the rest of the staff under the direction of the under-manager had to comb through the rows of seats, checking them for cleanliness and things left behind.

The routine he’d so found exciting when he first worked in the Town Hall now became dull, boring and tedious in the extreme. The smell of greasepaint palled until the merest hint of it in the atmosphere made him nauseous. The sounds of the orchestra that had once set his pulse racing and foot tapping, now clattered, deafening and discordant, in his ears. Each and every day he came to loathe his work more and more, the loathing born of the realisation that there was no prospect of ever climbing as high as even the lowly ranks of the chorus. This was it! His life! All he had. All he was ever likely to have, unless he lost his job and sank into the mass of unemployed.

Dreams shattered, there were days when he could barely summon energy enough to drag himself out of bed. Ambition, aspirations, strength – all dissipated into a mood of sullen moroseness. There were no light spots, no highlights left to brighten his days. Not even Jenny. Whenever he walked past the shop he was tempted to linger, go in and find out if she’d talk to him, but fear of rejection always made him cross the road. He knew his family were beginning to look at him sideways. Not his parents – they were both too wrapped up in Maud’s illness to notice anyone, or anything – but the others had observed and remarked on what William termed ‘his departure from the land of the living’.

He had never found the curtailment of his social life by work so irksome. But even on those nights when he could have gone into any one of the half a dozen pubs in Pontypridd that dared to breach the strict code of licensing hours, he didn’t. Occasionally he met the landlords or barmaids of the pubs he’d frequented, and they pleaded with him to return to sing, insisting that everyone was missing him. He suspected their motives, steeped in the belief that after his last fiasco people only wanted to hear him to have a good laugh at his poor performance and failed ambitions. He invariably smiled and told them he might call in later, but never did. It was easier than announcing that he’d decided to give up singing – permanently.

The first Friday night that Maud spent in hospital dragged, worse than any other. He looked around the Town Hall and tried desperately to think of a way out, both for her and himself. He was convinced that money could buy anything – even a cure for his sister – but short of robbing a bank he didn’t know where to begin. If he’d studied harder in school he might have got a scholarship out of the boys’ grammar school to go to university – then he remembered his father on short time and realised that even if he’d won a scholarship that had paid his fees, he couldn’t have been able to manage his living expenses. And as he was only twenty he wouldn’t even be qualified yet, which meant he’d still be poverty stricken, and of no real use to Maud at all.

‘Move it, Haydn,’ one of the stagehands shouted, pushing a scenery float towards him. He caught it just before it toppled on its side. Shuffling round the back curtain, they pushed it out of the way. ‘Only the floor check to do and we can go home,’ Fred the stagehand mumbled through his toothless gums.

Haydn stared dully at Fred’s coarse, whiskery face that rarely saw a razor, noticed his broad back, curved and bowed from lifting too many heavyweights over too many years, studied his clothes, old, stained and musty smelling from lack of washing. Would this be him forty years from now? There was no one around now who could say what Fred had looked like when he’d started in the Town Hall. Perhaps he’d even wanted to go on stage, like him.

‘Did you ever think about the stage, Fred?’ he asked suddenly.

‘You say something, Haydn?’ Fred cocked his head to one side, turning his good ear towards Haydn.

‘Did you ever want to go on stage, Fred?’ Haydn shouted.

‘Oh ay,’ Fred’s face split into a large, gummy grin. ‘When I was a nipper, like, that’s why I took a job here.’

Haydn picked up a torch from the box where they were kept between houses, slammed open the door into the auditorium, and stepped down, ready for the search. That did it. He’d have to leave. He didn’t know how, or where, he only knew he had to go.

The search seemed to take three times as long as usual. By the end of it he was hot, sweaty and his hands were sticky from the discarded chewing gum, toffee wrappers and other unmentionables he’d picked up. He washed in the grimy staff toilet that never received more than a quick, cursory wipe-over; the cleaners always left it until last, knowing that the manager would never deign to enter it to check their handiwork.

He hung away his uniform jacket, bell-boy cap, collar and bow tie in the cubicle that held staff uniforms. Tying a muffler over his collarless shirt, he shrugged his arms into his own jacket and rammed his well-worn cap on his head. The night air was cold and damp, the street wet underfoot, but for the first time in days it had stopped raining.

‘Haydn?’

He looked up. William and Eddie were waiting for him.

‘How about a drink in the Horse and Groom?’ Will grinned.

‘I don’t much feel like a drink.’ Head down, Haydn walked on. Eddie and Will had to run to keep up with him.

‘We called in Ronconi’s, and Ronnie told us he’d seen Maud tonight,’ Eddie burst out.

‘Ronnie Ronconi?’ Haydn paused in amazement.

‘Apparently he delivered some eggs to the ward for the Catholic Mothers’ Union,’ William explained. ‘He said Maud was awake, and not feeling too bad at all.’

‘So you see we have got something to celebrate after all,’ Eddie chirped.

‘I’ll celebrate the day she comes out of that place,’ Haydn growled.

‘Bad night?’ Eddie ventured sympathetically.

‘No worse than any other.’

Eddie and Will exchanged glances behind Haydn’s back.

‘Come on, a pint will do us all good, and it’s on me,’ Eddie chivvied.

‘You come into money?’ Haydn asked.

‘In a way. I worked on Charlie’s stall today.’

‘And he has the makings of a fine butcher,’ William added generously. ‘Come on Haydn, don’t be a stick-in-the-mud,’ Will added his powers of persuasion to Eddie’s. ‘We thought if we went to the Horse and Groom we might see one of the porters, or even a nurse finishing the late shift. And you never know, they might have something to add to what Ronnie told us.’

Ashamed of his rage, Haydn nodded agreement. He’d been so wrapped up in what he saw as his own problems, he’d forgotten that Eddie and William were fond of Maud too.

The Horse and Groom, situated at the foot of the Graig hill in High Street, was the sort of pub that only really came to life after hours. It was packed out, and Eddie had to fight his way to the bar. A chorus of voices greeted their arrival, demanding a song from Haydn. After his fifth curt refusal, he heard someone whisper that his sister was lying seriously ill in the Central Homes; after that he was left alone. He went to a quiet corner and leant his elbow on one of the standing-height marble and iron tables, the only one that was free. William looked around, searching for a familiar face. Eventually he found one.

‘Glan?’ he shouted. ‘Just the man we want to see. Spare us a minute?’ he asked, conveniently forgetting all the time he could quite cheerfully have punched Glan’s head off his shoulders.

‘I’ll be there now.’ Smelling a free pint in the air, Glan picked up his half-empty glass and pushed his way through the throng to join them.

‘Have you heard how Maud is?’ Will asked quietly as soon as Glan was within earshot.

‘Heard she’s bad,’ Glan said bluntly.

‘Nothing else?’ Will asked hopefully.

‘Just that. We brought a body down from her ward tonight. But it wasn’t her. About the same age, though, and from what the nurse said, next bed.’

There was a supercilious smirk on Glan’s face that Will longed to wipe off.

‘Is there anyone here who works on her ward?’ Haydn asked.

‘Don’t know of any nurses who come into this bar. A few go into the Ladies only room, but not after hours.’ Glan downed most of his pint, still hoping for a free one. ‘And not many porters go up to the TB ward. There’s not much call for us unless there’s a body that needs shifting like tonight, or a patient needs an operation. And because they operate off the wards we don’t always go up for that. I’ll try to find out more for you tomorrow, if you like,’ he offered, pointedly twiddling his empty glass.

‘I’d be grateful if you would,’ Haydn replied.

‘You’re looking a bit down tonight,’ Glan commented tactlessly.

‘Anyone would, the length of time Eddie’s taking to get our beer,’ Will broke in quickly.

‘You drinking with your brother?’

‘Any reason why I shouldn’t?’ Haydn asked warily.

‘Well, all I can say is you’re more forgiving than I would be in your shoes,’ Glan said airily. ‘But then there’s no accounting for people, and as my father says, you Powells are a strange lot.’

‘What are you gabbling about?’ William demanded irritably, sensing one of Glan’s infamous ‘stirs’ coming.

‘Haydn’s girlfriend, of course.’

‘I haven’t got a girlfriend,’ Haydn countered angrily, ignoring the hard look that William was giving him.

‘Well you and Jenny Griffiths did go on for a long time and we all supposed –’

‘Then you all supposed wrong, Glan Richards.’ Haydn looked around for Eddie. All he wanted was his pint so he could drink it and get out of the pub.

‘So I see. Or at least I did after I saw her wrapping herself around Eddie tonight at the top of Factory Lane. Honest to God, I thought he was going to eat her. It’s just as well she took him into her back yard when she did. If she hadn’t they might have both been arrested. Old Mrs Evans’ eyes were nearly popping out of her head as it was. What’s the betting she’ll start a rumour on the Graig tomorrow that we’ll see a shotgun wedding before too many months have passed?’ he finished maliciously.

‘Whose shotgun wedding?’ Eddie lined three full pints up on the table.

‘You and Jenny Griffiths.’ Haydn’s voice was low. Soft. ‘Glan was just telling us how he’d seen the pair of you wrapped around each other at the top of Factory Lane tonight.’

Eddie looked up guiltily, and that look told Haydn everything he hadn’t known, and a great deal more besides. Picking up one of the pint glasses Eddie had just placed on the table, he threw its contents full in Eddie’s face.