Past Remembering (4 page)

‘Of course, you must have things to talk about. Congratulations on marrying Alma …’ A door opened and closed and Ronnie found himself talking to the empty street.

*……*……*

Cocooned in a soundproof studio, his thoughts concentrated on putting out a good show that would give the serving troops a taste of home and a momentary escape from the harsher realities of war, while observing the official line of ‘not too strong lest it bring on homesickness and undermine moral’ Haydn managed to push his anxieties about Jane to the back of his mind; but the minute transmission ceased and the door opened he heard it – the sickening roar of what sounded like thousands of planes flying overheard. Before he could speak, the guns opened up in a barrage that made speech unintelligible and thought impossible. With the whole building shuddering around him, he retreated into the booth with Joe, his sound engineer.

‘I don’t remember it being this noisy before,’ Joe complained.

‘Probably because it wasn’t.’ Hands shaking, Haydn pulled a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and offered them to Joe.

‘We can’t stay here. You game to make a run down to the basement?’

‘You go if you want to, I’m for home.’

‘Home! Don’t be an ass. You’ll never get there in one piece.’

The tea lady burst through the door, dragging her trolley behind her. ‘It’s like bonfire night in the OK Corral out there,’ she announced cheerfully, as soon as the door shut out the din. ‘I’ve never seen anything like the size of the flares, and you should have heard the gun barrage -’

‘We did,’ Joe interrupted, instinctively ducking as the room shook and a chunk of plaster fell from the ceiling. Missing his head by a few inches it landed on the floor, shattering into crumbs on the polished cork tiles.

‘Good, I thought I saw the tea trolley heading this way.’ A sub-editor from the newsroom joined them. ‘If I’d known it was this quiet in here I would have made a beeline for a studio when the sirens started.’

‘Any word on where they’re targeting yet?’ Haydn asked as the tea lady started filling cups from a lukewarm teapot.

‘We’ve had the first unofficial estimates. It looks as though there’s at least five hundred and fifty enemy planes up there, so you tell me, where aren’t they targeting?’ The news hound turned Haydn’s question back on him.

‘The river? The East End?’

‘That’s a fair guess. They always come a cropper.’

‘Come on, Haydn, you know it’s too early to say for certain.’ Joe took his arm. ‘Let’s go down to the basement and sit it out. I know where we can find a bottle of whisky.’

‘I’d rather try to get home.’

‘You got a death wish?’ the sub-editor enquired tactlessly as he picked up his tea and left.

‘It’s not far,’ Haydn protested to Joe, as soon as the door closed and he could be heard.

‘Far enough for you to get blown to bits on the streets? And how do you expect me to explain that to a nice, sensible girl like Jane? “Sorry, love, but he insisted on viewing the blitz first hand?”’

‘But she could be …’

‘In the cellar, tucked up fast asleep with the baby.’

It was Joe’s voice, calm, matter-of-fact, that finally broke Haydn’s resolve to tear out of the building right then and there.

‘You really think she will be all right?’

‘As all right as anyone can be in this God-forsaken city tonight. Come on, let’s find that whisky, go downstairs, and get plastered. At least we’ve a bloody good excuse this time.’

‘She’s still awake …’ Mrs Lane faltered when she saw a man walking up the stairs behind Alma. ‘Oh it’s you, Mr Charlie,’ she stammered in relief, embarrassment scorching her cheeks. But then, it was hardly her fault for thinking the worst. Not when Ronnie Ronconi was back and everyone was waiting to see if he and Alma would pick up where they had left off, now that poor Maud was dead and Charlie away soldiering. And it wasn’t just Alma. It was practically all the young women in town. Munitions money had given them the wherewithal to visit pubs – and drink. An unheard-of phenomenon before the war. Morality was being flung out of the window as all the unmarried girls and half the married ones used the war, their husbands’ absence, and loneliness as an excuse to comfort any and every soldier who passed through Pontypridd.

‘Mrs Lane.’ Charlie touched his cap-as he swung his kitbag down on to the landing.

‘Thank you for sitting with Mam. I’ll go in and see to her now.’ Alma pushed past Mrs Lane and went into her mother’s room, closing the door behind her.

‘It’s nice to see you home.’ Mrs Lane reached for her coat. ‘These past months have been hard on Alma. You away, her mother on her last legs, all the responsibility of trying to run two shops at opposite ends of the town …’

The news of Alma’s mother’s illness and a second shop came as a complete surprise to Charlie, but skilled in the art of concealing his emotions, he gave Mrs Lane no indication that Alma hadn’t written to inform him of all the happenings.

‘… and of course it’s only a matter of time. Days, or so old Dr John told us this morning. That’s why I was so pleased when that nice Nurse John persuaded Alma to go to the restaurant tonight. Not that it was really a party. More of a wake for poor Maud Ronconi, Powell that was. To think of her being dead and buried for over a year and a half, and her own father and sister not knowing a thing about it. God only knows, none of us have much to be happy about these days, but poor Nurse John has less than most. One brother dead at Dunkirk, now her sister gone, and her husband in a prison camp for the duration. And then there’s the Ronconi girls. What with the rest of the family being enemy aliens and forced to leave Pontypridd, and now their brother coming home a widower …’ Alma’s mother’s bedroom door opened and Mrs Lane started guiltily. ‘Well, listen to me going on when you’re on leave. You got long, Mr Charlie?’ she asked, utilising Charlie’s nickname as both Christian and surname, because like the majority of people in Pontypridd she couldn’t get her tongue around his Russian names.

‘A couple of days,’ he answered briefly, glancing at Alma.

‘I’ll see you to the door, Mrs Lane.’ Alma preceded Mrs Lane down the stairs, leaving the woman no option but to follow her. ‘Constable Davies is waiting in Ronconi’s to walk you home.’

‘There’s no need. I’ll be fine.’

‘He insisted. You know his ideas on preventative policing in the blackout. Thank you again.’ Silencing her old neighbour’s protests with a kiss on the cheek, Alma ushered her into the street. She slammed the bolts across the door then she mounted the stairs, hearing her mother’s querulous voice crying out before she even reached the first floor.

‘You didn’t tell me your mother was ill,’ Charlie admonished.

‘There was no point when you couldn’t do anything about it.’

‘What else haven’t you told me?’

‘I’m sorry, I have to see to my mother.’ Ignoring his question she laid her hand on the bedroom door. ‘I told her you were here.’ Without waiting for him to reply she walked into the room, leaving the door ajar for her husband to follow. Her mother was lying, a smaller, more shrunken figure than Charlie remembered, in the centre of a vast double bed. Alma walked towards her. ‘Charlie’s home, Mam. Here he is, come to see you.’

The old woman’s eyes, the only part of her that seemed alive, although she had been blind ever since Charlie had known her, moved restlessly in their sockets.

‘Mrs Moore,’ Charlie greeted her softly as he wrapped his fingers around the old woman’s hand.

‘We think she can hear, but she can’t talk. It’s a stroke.’

Charlie kissed the old woman’s forehead before retreating into the living room. Leaving the light burning in the passage he closed the door, opened the blackout and looked down on the moonlit street. Ronconi’s restaurant was open, the room behind it in darkness. He stared at the crowd milling outside, picking out Ronnie, Bethan John’s arm locked into his. Understandable, he allowed grudgingly, considering Maud had been her sister. There were other men behind Ronnie, one a tall, fair-haired fellow he recognised as a conscientious objector who’d been given a job in the pit. He had his arms around the shoulders of two girls, neither of whom appeared to be unduly concerned by his familiarity.

Hearing Alma’s step in the passageway he pulled down the blind and switched on the lamp as she walked through the door.

‘I’m sorry, she’s very restless. She hasn’t slept through a night in over six months now,’ Alma apologised as she stood before Charlie, staring at him as though she couldn’t believe he was really there.

‘You should have written to tell me she was ill.’

‘Even if I had, you couldn’t have done anything except worry. Besides, we both know you can’t always read my letters when I send them.’

‘Mrs Lane told me you’d opened another shop,’ he broke in harshly. ‘Didn’t you have enough to do with running one?’

‘It was too good an opportunity to miss. I’ve gone into partnership with Wyn and Diana Rees. When he closed his sweetshop in High Street we restocked it with our pies and reopened it. It’s doing so well we’re thinking of opening another, perhaps in Treforest or Rhydyfelin.’

‘You’ve become quite the businesswoman.’

‘I thought you’d be pleased.’

‘At finding my wife in another man’s arms?’ He raised his eyes to meet her steady gaze.

‘Ronnie only came back late last night. Maud’s dead.’

‘Mrs Lane told me.’

‘He’s heartbroken, Charlie.’

‘And he needs you to comfort him?’

She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and faced him head on. ‘You of all people should know that my relationship with Ronnie ended when he fell in love with Maud.’

‘But now Maud’s dead he’s looking to you for consolation?’

‘No more than from any of his other friends. And that’s all we are to one another now, Charlie. Friends,’ she emphasised, pitching her voice deliberately low in an effort to keep her temper. ‘It’s you I married, and you I love.’

‘And if I hadn’t come home just now?’

‘I would have held Ronnie’s hand, kissed his other cheek and sent him on his way. Please, Charlie, I don’t want to waste whatever time we’ve got talking about Ronnie.’ Slowly, tentatively she walked over to him. When he didn’t step away from her she wrapped her arms around his chest, ‘It’s been so long. I was beginning to wonder if you were ever coming back.’

Despite the jealousy that seeped like poison through his mind, Charlie returned her embrace, but there was an awkwardness between them that was rooted as much in their long separation and the reason for his leave as in the incident he had witnessed between Alma and Ronnie. Before either of them had time to ask any more questions, a soft moan echoed down the passage.

‘That’s Mam again.’ Alma reluctantly pulled away from him. ‘I’m sorry, I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

Charlie unlaced his shoes and shrugged off his jacket. Stretching out in what had been his favourite chair, he laid his head against the backrest watching the minutes tick by on the clock on the mantelpiece. One minute … two … was it wrong of him to be angry with the men who’d stayed at home? Men who’d been given work in the pits and the munitions factories, as Ronnie probably would be. Work that enabled them to make free and easy with his wife, and not only his wife. Bethan John’s husband, Andrew, was in a German POW camp for the duration, just like Angelo Ronconi. And William Powell and Tony Ronconi were away on active service somewhere. Tony and Angelo weren’t married, but he had recognised William’s wife, Tina, and Jenny, Eddie Powell’s widow, in the crowd.

Would William and Andrew be greeted on their return by wives who’d become accustomed to receiving the attentions of other men? Wives who’d made lives for themselves that no longer included husbands? Even aside from the incident with Ronnie, Alma had seemed like a stranger. All he had was seventy-two hours, less travelling time, to make her remember who she was married to – but knowing what he did about his future, did he have a right to?

Woken by the whine of the all-clear, Haydn wondered why the bed was so hard. He reached out for Jane and his arm hit the empty whisky bottle. Disorientated, he opened his eyes in alarm as it clattered noisily, rolling over the stretch of concrete between the straw mattress Joe occupied and his own. A chorus of disgruntled voices rose around him, protesting at the din, then he remembered the raid that had driven him to take refuge in the basement.

He peered into the gloom. A candle flickered forlornly in the corner of the cellar. The effort it took to focus hurt his eyes. It had been months since he had experienced this kind of morning-after feeling. Just lifting his head off the makeshift pillow he had concocted out of his jacket brought a sickening tide of nausea. The last thing he recalled was watching Joe drain the dregs from the bottle, and thinking that as the whisky had gone, he might as well leave the building, raid or no raid, as he’d never be able to sleep for worrying about Jane and Anne.

‘What time is it?’ Joe mumbled thickly.

Haydn held up his wrist in the direction of the candlelight and peered at his watch. ‘Just after four-thirty.’

‘Bring me tea and shaving water at nine.’ Joe pulled the improvised bedding over his head and burrowed down as deep as the thin layer of straw would allow.

Haydn threw off the army surplus blanket, sending a shower of dust over Joe as he climbed to his feet.

‘Where are you going?’ Joe’s head appeared over the edge of his overcoat.

‘Home. See you later?’

‘At showtime. No offence intended, but I’d prefer to limit our relationship to work and social from now on. No more all-nighters. You snore a bloody sight louder than my wife.’

‘Only when I’m fed whisky.’ Haydn stooped and picked up the empty bottle.

‘Your turn to supply the goods tonight.’

‘I’ll be happy to lay one down for the future, but I’m hoping the Luftwaffe has run out of bombs after last night.’

He slipped on his uniform jacket when he reached street level. The air was bracing after the close, humid atmosphere of the cellar, but London seemed unnaturally quiet, even for early morning. There wasn’t a milk cart, policeman or paper boy in sight. He dropped the empty whisky bottle into a glass salvage bin set by the door, turned up his collar and walked to the corner. Stunned, he stopped, looked, and looked again, his mind refusing to believe the evidence of his eyes.