Spoils of War (36 page)

‘It’s such a big house,’ she commented as they passed the sitting- and dining-room doors and walked through the second sitting-room into the kitchen.

‘And in summer we’ll live in every room of it.’

They entered the kitchen to see Peter sitting at the table, finishing a meal of fried potatoes, beans and salt fish.

‘The tea’s all ready but I haven’t wet it, Mr Charlie. There’s a fruit semolina in the small top oven that needs taking out in ten minutes. If you want anything else I’d be happy to oblige.’

‘You’ve done everything there is to be done, thank you, Mrs Lane. We’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘As you wish, Mr Charlie. What about the dishes and your tea?’

‘We’ll do the dishes ourselves and with all the food in the cupboards tea won’t be a problem.’ He pulled a chair out from the table for Masha.

‘You’re looking smart, Peter,’ Masha commented. He was wearing a new shirt Charlie had given him, with a collar and tie.

‘I am going to see about a job. As a mechanic. A policeman told me about it last night.’

‘A policeman? What were you doing talking to a policeman?’ Her voice rose precariously.

‘He’s a friend of mine.’

‘You have a friend who’s a policeman. Feo, they are dangerous …’

‘Not in Pontypridd. Huw’s a nice man, Masha; you’ll like him. He saw Peter in town last night, recognised him because he looks like me, and told Peter about this job.’

‘See, I told you not to worry about me, Mama.’

‘Fish and fried potatoes?’ Charlie passed the bowls to Masha so she could help herself.

‘Thank you. It’s so strange to be here sitting in this lovely house in the middle of the day, eating, all three of us, and me having just got out of bed. I am used to working.’

‘Not today. If you want anything done in the house, ask me and I will ask Mrs Lane to do it for you tomorrow.’

‘You will have to learn English, Mama. I will teach you.’ Peter took the pudding out of the oven and spooned a sizeable portion into a bowl for himself.

‘We will not be here long enough for me to learn English.’

Charlie gave Peter a warning glance. ‘First you eat and then I will take you round the house, Masha, so you can tell me what changes you would like to make. And if you wrap up warm we can go outside. There’s a garden, it’s small but there are a few things growing there.’

‘Cherry trees?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘I so loved the cherry trees in spring, Feo. Do you remember the blossoms the year we married? People said there would be such a crop but we weren’t there to harvest it. I wonder if anyone did or if they were left to rot and fall off the trees. Or even if the cherry trees survived. Once you helped my father replace half the stock in his orchard – cherry, apple, pear .. .’

Neither interested nor embarrassed, Peter continued eating and Charlie realised just how much of the sixteen years since they’d been separated Masha had spent in the past – probably even more than him.

‘I can’t meet your mother for the first time like this,’ Gabrielle protested tearfully. ‘Not with Tony in jail.’

‘Don’t you see that because Tony is in jail and we have no idea how long he is going to be there, someone else in the family is going to have to run the café? And as that someone is going to be either me or Alfredo it would be better if one of us slept in the café and you stayed with my mother.’

‘I have made such a mess of everything. I wanted people to like me but no one does. Your mother doesn’t even want to meet me …’

‘Tony’s the one who’s made the mess, not you,’ Angelo contradicted vehemently, deliberately ignoring her comment about his mother. ‘Him and his fists, he’s always making trouble.’

‘He has hit people before?’

‘Didn’t he hit anyone in Germany?’

‘No.’ Wide-eyed, she shook her head.

‘Then you must have been a good influence on him,’ Angelo replied shortly, not wanting to lie to her, but not wanting to elaborate about Diana either. ‘Why don’t you go upstairs and pack, and I’ll bring round the Trojan to take you, your case and that enormous box to my mother’s house?’

‘You’ll come with me?’ she asked anxiously.

‘Yes, I’ll drive you,’ he replied, thinking of Liza and the afternoon he had been looking forward to. Ronnie wasn’t the only brother Tony had annoyed to the point of never wanting to see his face again. He was beginning to think that if Tony wanted to disappear into the Foreign Legion, he’d buy the boat ticket to North Africa.

‘Well?’ Ronnie pushed his rickety chair back from the steel table in the garage office and looked to his mechanic.

‘The truth?’

‘He’s all shit and bull, as we used to say in the army.’

‘He knows more than me.’

‘No kidding!’ Ronnie almost dropped the pen he was holding.

‘Straight up. But there’s no way he’s sixteen,’ he said flatly. ‘It takes years to learn what he knows about cars. And he’s no Russian either.’

‘What do you think he is, then?’ William closed the auction catalogue he’d been studying.

‘He’s a bloody toff. I’ve met them, even driven their cars for them once or twice and he talks just like them. And another thing, he’s an odd bastard and I don’t know if I’ll get on with him.’

‘If we keep you both busy you won’t have to get on with him,’ William suggested.

‘Suppose so,’ the mechanic admitted grudgingly. ‘Since you two bought this place the work has been coming in non-stop. I told you, I can’t cope …’

‘And now you won’t have to. With Peter taking some of the load you might even find the time to train the apprentices,’ Ronnie hinted heavily.

‘Not if they’re like the dull buggers we got now. Can’t even train them to pee straight, out back. It was like wading through a bloody swimming pool in the ty bach this morning –’

‘Send Peter in.’ Ronnie cut the man short, knowing he would complain all day – and night – if he let him. ‘What do you think?’ he asked William, who had walked over to the window.

‘I can’t get over how much he looks like Charlie.’

‘But, to quote our employee, he’s an odd bastard.’

‘Can’t get any odder than that mechanic and, as Huw said, the boy’s had a tough time being brought up the way he has.’

‘By the look of him he knows how to take care of himself.’

‘All the better for us. No one will try to pull a fast one with him around.’

‘You like him, don’t you, Will?’

‘I owe Charlie big time for giving me a job in the depression. And you heard, the kid’s good with engines, even if he does ask girls to go to bed with him.’

‘That really tickled you.’

‘I wish I’d thought of that approach when I was his age. I might not have had to wait so long.’

‘From what I heard about you and Vera Collins you didn’t.’

‘Don’t go saying that in front of Tina.’

‘She doesn’t know?’

‘Let’s say she’s forgiven me now I’ve promised to stay on the straight and narrow and come home nights.’

‘Man said you wanted to see me, Mr Ronconi.’    

‘Yes, Peter. If you want a job it’s yours.’

‘How much?’

‘Eight-hour day, five-and-a-half-day week, four pounds. If there’s overtime at night or Sunday you can either take time off or I’ll pay you two shillings an hour.’

Peter frowned.

‘You got a problem with that?’ William asked.

‘How many half a crowns in a pound?’

‘Eight, why?’

Peter remembered what Feodor had said about two being a day’s wages and decided he was being offered better pay than his father would have given him to work in his shop. ‘I’ll work for you.’

‘Good.’ Ronnie looked carefully at him. ‘I’m now going to tell you what we tell everyone who works for us, but first a warning: you’ll get no special or different treatment because we’re friends of your father.’

‘I understand.’

‘We’re paying you good wages, we expect your total loyalty and honesty. You steal from us we go to the police and prosecute you. You want to borrow anything from the garage – a car – a tool – anything – you ask. If we say no, that’s it. If you take it without permission we’ll go to the police and tell them you stole it. If we agree you can borrow something we’ll expect whatever it is back the next day in the same condition you borrowed it in or we’ll dock the damage or loss from your wages.’

‘Dock?’

‘Take.’

‘I understand.’

‘And there’s dirty jobs in every place. Everyone here takes a turn at them and that includes cleaning the toilets.’

‘I’ve cleaned toilets before.’

‘You buy your own overalls. Here,’ Ronnie pulled two pounds from his pocket. ‘That’s an advance on your first week’s wages. You’ll need two pairs and a pair of good water- and greaseproof boots. You can buy them in town. We’ll expect you first thing Monday morning.’

‘If I started tomorrow I could have that blue lorry fixed by the afternoon.’

‘It needs a new gearbox.’

‘There’s a good one on the green lorry you’ve got for sale. Wouldn’t it be better to get the lorry that’s in for repair working and wait for the new part for the one you want to sell?’

‘Yes, it would. Tell you what, Peter, come in tomorrow after you’ve picked up your work clothes.’

‘I’ll get them today.’

‘No you won’t,’ William warned. ‘The shops are closed for half-day. How long do you reckon it will take you to swap over those gearboxes?’

‘A few hours, why?’

‘There’s a scrap yard I’d like to show you. It’s full of broken-down cars. Do you think you could sort out what’s usable from what’s not?’

‘I think so.’

‘Hello, Peter,’ Bethan smiled warily at him as she walked into the office. ‘Nice to see you again.’

‘You know Mr Ronconi and Mr Powell?’ he asked in surprise as she kissed Ronnie’s and William’s cheeks.

‘My brother-in-law and my cousin. Half the people in Pontypridd are related. I’ve been to see Diana, Ronnie.’

‘She’s all right?’ Ronnie and William asked in unison.

‘Getting better all the time physically, and looking forward to seeing you and your mother on Saturday, Will; if the ward sister will let you in.’

‘From what my mother said, she’s an old cow.’

‘Language,’ Bethan warned, looking at Peter.

‘Old cow is not so bad, Mrs John.’

‘It’s not a description I think you should learn to apply to any woman, Peter.’

‘Come on, Peter, show me what you have in mind for that gearbox.’ William led him out on to the forecourt, sensing that Bethan wanted to have a word with Ronnie in private.

‘Is he going to work for you?’ Bethan asked Ronnie as soon as Peter and William were out of earshot.

‘Would you believe the boy’s a wonder mechanic?’

‘I’d believe just about anything of him. It will be good for him to have something to do. I’m not sure Charlie is up to coping with him and his mother right now. She’s not very strong.’

‘No one can say that about Peter.’ He joined her at the window. ‘Just look at him lifting that engine. You hear about a boy who’s been brought up in prison and labour camps and you think of a half-starved weakling – well, I did – and in walks this –’

‘Thug.’

‘That’s a bit harsh, Beth. Give him a chance.’

‘I suppose I should.’

He grinned. ‘Liza told you what he said to her.’

‘Liza? I didn’t even know they’d met.’

‘According to Huw, they met last night in Ronconi’s café. Peter told her she was pretty then asked her to go to bed with him.’

‘The –’

‘Liza told Huw it was a language difficulty and got him off the hook.’

‘The only problem that boy has with language is he uses too much.’

‘You didn’t drive all the way out here to talk about Peter, did you?’

‘I didn’t even know he’d be here.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘Diana asked about you today.’

‘She remembers me?’

‘No, but she has nothing to do except lie in bed, do her exercises and think. She recalled Megan telling her that she has a two-year-old daughter; we’ve told her it’s 1946 not 1941, she knows Wyn is dead so she asked about the father of her child.’

‘You told her we’re married.’

‘I told her she was married but I didn’t dare mention your name. Dr John would have banished me from the hospital if I had.’

‘She’s going to have to find out sooner or later.’

‘The doctors are only thinking of Diana, Ronnie, and it’s the way she finds out that’s concerning them. The safest option would be to wait until she remembers without any prompting.’

‘That could take for ever.’

‘And it could happen tomorrow. You have to understand that when it comes to the mind, doctors are fumbling in the dark.’

‘And while they fumble I live in limbo land with the kids, Megan and Dino.’

‘I know it’s difficult …’

‘Between you and me, Beth, I’m going round the bend. First they tell me she may never remember, now they won’t tell her who I am. What do they want? To keep her in hospital for the next sixty years!’

‘If it’s any consolation I told her that her husband is someone who loves her very much and wants to be with her.’

‘And what did she say?’

‘She asked why you hadn’t been to see her. Dr John told her they were afraid of what the shock might do to her if you did. I told her you weren’t happy with the situation.’

‘That’s the understatement of the century.’ He shook his head as he went back to the desk. ‘Sometimes I feel like walking up to that damned hospital, battering down the door and demanding they let me see her.’

‘Now that Diana’s making good progress with her physical injuries, I’ll have a word with Andrew. Perhaps he can persuade the specialist to fix a date for Diana to leave hospital, if only for a day’s home visit. It’s not much but it’s the best I can do.’

‘But would they let her visit Megan’s, knowing I’m there.’

Bethan hesitated. ‘You wouldn’t do anything stupid?’

‘Diana’s my wife, Beth. The person I care most about in the world. She wants to see her husband; I want my wife back.’

‘Then perhaps the specialist wouldn’t have to know who exactly is in the house. With the housing shortage, people have all kinds of lodgers these days.’

‘I really don’t want to go inside if your mother doesn’t want to meet me,’ Gabrielle demurred as Angelo drew up outside his mother’s house in Danycoedcae Road.