One Blue Moon (4 page)

‘What about you?’ Diana pressed Ronnie as he rose from his seat and cleared the dishes from the table.

‘With two sisters and two brothers over fifteen out of work, I always live in hope of hearing something, but at the moment there’s nothing about.’ Ronnie stacked the dishes on the edge of the counter.

‘Your family all work here!’ Diana remonstrated.

‘Work? Call that work?’ Ronnie pointed to where Tina was sitting perched on the back of a chair, deep in conversation with a couple of chorus girls from the show that was currently playing in the New Theatre. ‘My family visit here every day. They eat and drink the profits of the place, but they don’t work. They don’t know the meaning of the word.’

‘It’s that bad around here?’ Ignoring his grumbles, Diana stared glumly at her pie.

‘I’d start eating that while it’s hot,’ Ronnie advised. ‘The situation’s bad,’ he modified his opinion a little, ‘but it’s not that bad. Not for a smart girl. Pity I can’t call either of my sisters that.’

Diana cut the pie and began to chew it slowly, savouring its rich meaty taste. She made a mental list of places she could try for vacancies. If there had been anything going on the market or in the Town Hall, William or Haydn would have known about it, but then the market was only open on Wednesdays and Saturdays. A few of the food stalls, like Charlie’s, opened on Fridays too, but it was hard going, trying to keep yourself on three days’ pay a week. The only places that were open five and a half days were the big shops like Wien’s, Rivelin’s, Gwilym Evans and the Co-op, the three cinemas, and the theatres. If the New Theatre had needed help, Ronnie would have known about it with half the company eating in the café. As she scraped the last of her pie from her plate she decided to start on the big shops first.

‘Will you be working very late?’ Jenny asked Haydn as they pushed and jostled their way through the miserable, wet crowd of evening shoppers in the glistening, black and gold lamp lit market square.

‘You know Saturday nights.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘One company moves out, another in. They’ll want a hand to move their costumes, props and scenery into the vans.’

‘And with their last-night party.’ Her voice held a bitterness she couldn’t have concealed, even if she’d wanted to.

‘Jenny,’ he pulled her into the brightly lit shelter of the Co-op Arcade. ‘Don’t let Will’s teasing upset you. You know they never invite the likes of the callboy to the after-show party.’

‘I know no such thing. I saw the way that – that – chorus girl’, she almost exploded in indignation, ‘ogled you when we were sitting in the café yesterday afternoon.’

‘The girls do that to everyone,’ he said wearily, already tired of the conversation. It was one she insisted on having at least twice a week. ‘It’s habit. Nothing more. They’re so used to making eyes and smiling on stage, they don’t know when to stop. Half the time they don’t even realise they’re doing it. Will you wait up for me?’ he pleaded, grasping her hand.

‘That depends on what time you walk past the shop.’ Her voice was brittle. ‘I’ll be in bed by twelve.’

‘As I’m not likely to be walking up the hill much before one, I’ll not bother to call in.’

Devastated by the news about Maud, up at five to help set up and work on Horton’s stall, cold, tired, wet through and dreading the prospect of coping with keyed-up comics and chorus girls during an exhausting, final double house of revue which would last at least another seven hours, he was too numb to rise to Jenny’s bait. At that moment he decided if that was the way she wanted to play their relationship, she could play alone. Pulling down his cap, and turning up the collar of his good, partly worn overcoat that had come courtesy of Horton’s stall in lieu of wages, he stepped out into the rain-soaked throng milling around the stalls. Too proud to follow, Jenny continued to wander up the arcade towards Gelliwastad Road.

Inwardly she burned with righteous indignation, but the display windows either side of her grew misty as her eyes clouded with unshed tears. She loved Haydn with all her heart, but she felt threatened by the facets of his life that took him away from her. His job as callboy swallowed every night of the week except Sunday, and that meant they could never spend an ordinary night when the cinemas or theatres were open ‘courting’, like every other young couple on the Graig. Even the busiest and best market mornings were out, because he helped out on Horton’s second-hand clothes stall. She had to count herself lucky if he stole enough time, as he had today, to grab a quick cup of tea in Ronnie’s before going to the Town Hall to begin his shift there. She knew his family needed the money, but she only wished he could earn it somewhere alone, in isolation, not in the Town Hall which was full of half-naked, predatory chorus girls, or Horton’s stall which acted like a magnet to all the would-be man eaters and vamps in the town.

Whenever she saw him standing beneath the canvas that covered Horton’s trestles, he was surrounded by admiring and giggling groups of females, and whether they were twelve years old or pushing thirty, they all looked at him with blatantly plaintive and adoring eyes. ‘Cow’s eyes’, she’d called them the last time she and Haydn had rowed. Every word he exchanged with them, every smile he sent their way, sliced agonisingly through her heart.

She’d frequently crept away from Horton’s stall before he’d noticed her presence. Running home where she could assuage her wounded pride by indulging in mild flirtations with the boys who picked up their mother’s groceries or bought odd cigarettes from her father’s shop. But no matter how late the shop closed, Haydn was inevitably still at work, and she was left with the dreary routine of supper eaten in a grim, oppressive silence with her mentally, if not physically, estranged parents. Followed by the door closing on her father as he left for the Morning Star to drown his sorrows over the loss of his one true love, Megan.

Her mother was no comfort. She lived out her life in a sweetly smiling torpor which enabled her, outwardly at least, to ignore most of the unpleasant aspects of her life, including and especially her husband. Desperate for conversation and companionship, some nights Jenny walked up the Graig hill and called in on the Ronconi girls. The large, warm family overflowed into every corner of their double-bayed terraced house on Danycoedcae Road, but their company, pleasant and amusing as it was, only seemed to accentuate her evening loneliness; and when she’d tried to discuss her problems with Tina Ronconi, Tina had laughed, telling her frankly that if she was tired of Haydn there were plenty of others, herself included, willing to take him off her hands.

What made her present row with Haydn all the more unpalatable was that she’d seen it coming. For weeks now her jealousy had simmered dangerously close to the surface. Lying in bed at night she’d rehearsed the scene a hundred times over. Even down to the final bitter words she’d flung at Haydn. Only in her imaginings he had always apologised, reaching to her with outstretched arms and tears of contrition in his eyes. If only she’d known that he would walk away ... Would he come back? Or was this the end?

Last night she’d dared to interrupt the Mother Riley show in an attempt to discuss her confused feelings with her mam. Her mother had merely smiled wanly as she’d strained to catch the punch line of a joke. During the subsequent laughter of the radio audience, she’d murmured that she simply couldn’t understand why Jenny should want a boyfriend at all. Jenny had dropped the subject. At eight years old she’d caused great amusement in the playground of Maesycoed junior school by innocently mentioning her parents’ separate bedrooms. That casual remark had made her the laughing stock of the girls’ yard. Glan Richards’ sister Annie had taken her to one side and told her in graphic and fearsome detail exactly what married men and women did when they went to bed together, and as if that wasn’t enough, Annie had concluded by telling Jenny that her own father didn’t want to do it to her mother because he did it every night to Megan Powell, William and Diana Powell’s widowed mother.

She’d called Annie a liar and hit her, but Annie was bigger than her, and pushed her over. She went home that day with a bloodied nose and a torn pinafore, but when she answered her mother’s probing questions, telling her precisely and truthfully what had happened, her mother slapped her legs hard and told her never to repeat such wicked stories again. And she’d learned to do just that.

Five years later she’d noticed Haydn Powell. All the girls had, with his handsome regular features, shining blond hair and piercingly blue eyes. The miracle was, he’d noticed her right back. When she knew him well enough, she told him the story and he laughed. But her mother hadn’t laughed when she found out that Haydn was ‘walking out’ with her daughter. Instead she’d taken Jenny into her own prim, virginal bedroom, shut the door, sat with her back to it, and told her in words every bit as cold, clinical and sordidly detailed as the ones Annie Richards had used, what marriage and lovemaking really meant.

Only by then Jenny knew better. She’d spied on her father, peeping through her bedroom curtains as he stepped lightly along the street and in through the door late at night. She’d heard him whistling as he walked up the stairs after his evening visits to Megan Powell’s house, and she’d seen Megan. A happy, plump, good-humoured woman who had a hug and a kiss for everyone. So different from her mother, who for all of her smiles, flinched from physical contact even with her own daughter, and especially with her husband.

So Jenny had watched, listened, learned how to return Haydn’s kisses, and drew her own conclusions about the way relationships should progress. Most nights she stole downstairs after her parents went to their separate rooms. Slipping the latch against a piece of woollen cloth to muffle the click, she sat on the boxes of tinned sardines, cocoa and tomatoes in the back storeroom, and waited for Haydn to call in on his way home. And when the months of their courtship turned into years, she allowed him a few ‘liberties’ as befitting his status of long-standing boyfriend. Afterwards she lay on the boxes of canned and dried goods and revelled in his whispered protestations of true, single-minded and everlasting devotion. But now ... now had she had destroyed all that?

But while Haydn worked endless evening shifts, it was what she wanted, wasn’t it? The freedom to find a real and devoted boyfriend who could be by her side all the time.

She tried to remember if she had ever been happy with the situation. In the beginning perhaps, before Haydn had begun to work in the Town Hall. Even later it hadn’t been so bad, not just after he had got the job. The worm of discontent had only really begun to gnaw when Laura Ronconi had married Doctor Trevor Lewis, and Bethan, Haydn’s sister, had run away to London with a posh doctor. Laura and Bethan were only two years older than her. And after Laura’s wedding it hadn’t been enough for Haydn to tell her that he loved her. She’d wanted him to declare it publicly, and she’d told him so. She wanted to wear his ring, to be with him all the time. By his side where she could keep him away from all the other girls who made eyes at him.

Why had he allowed a simple thing like lack of money to come between them? Why wouldn’t he change his job for a daytime one and marry her? They’d find somewhere to live even if it was only a rented room. Then she’d cook and clean for him. Be there whenever he came home. Why couldn’t he realise that she needed him all to herself? That every time he talked to, or smiled at another girl it hurt. Enough for her to create the scene that had driven them apart.

Chapter Four

Evan and Eddie hadn’t had a bad day. Leaving home at half-past five, they’d paid their sixpence to hire a shire horse and cart for the day from the yard down Factory Lane. It had become easier since they’d been counted as regulars. They no longer had to fight their way into the stalls to get one of the better horses or sounder carts. Ianto Watkins kept back one of the best rigs for them, and Goliath, a huge shire whose ferocious appearance and rolling eyes belied his sleepy nature.

By eleven they’d unloaded and sold two cartloads of rags to the pickers’ yards. Rags that they’d called in on the streets of Cilfynydd. But it had cost them. Eddie had had to hand over every last farthing, halfpenny and penny of the three shillings’ worth of change Evan had set aside to tempt the women into selling their family’s worn clothes; clothes that of choice they would have kept until the cold weather had abated. But then, Saturday mornings were special. Good days for the rag and bone men with every household trying to scrape together the ten pennies they needed to buy a beef heart for Sunday’s roast.

Between eleven and three they’d delivered goods to customers of Bown’s second-hand furniture shop, one of the few that was surviving the recession comparatively unscathed. Evan was proud of his Bown’s contract, and justifiably so. It didn’t bring in much – seven shillings a week at most – but as he pointed out to an unimpressed, scornful Elizabeth, it paid for the cart rental.

It wasn’t easy trying to make a living out of rags. Evan hadn’t been the only unemployed miner to think of the idea, and there were far too many carts on the streets for comfort. It had taken Evan eight weeks just to pay back the pound he’d borrowed off their lodger Charlie to set up in the trade, but now he and Eddie were clearing a steady pound a week during the bad weeks, and as much as thirty shillings in the better ones. It wasn’t good money by pre-pit-closure days, just enough to pay the bills and the mortgage. But as Elizabeth frequently and sourly pointed out, there wouldn’t be much in the way of food on the table if it wasn’t for the seven and six a week Charlie and William each paid to lodge with them, and the twelve shillings a week Haydn handed over out of the twelve and six he earned in the Town Hall, as well as the six shillings he picked up for his three short days on Horton’s stall.

They were surviving. ‘Getting by’, as his mother used to say, Evan mused as he wearily flicked the reins in an effort to keep a tired Goliath plodding on. And surviving was more than some of their neighbours were doing. Bobby Jones, whose wife was in the same jail for the same offence as Megan, had taken his five children to the workhouse and abandoned them there. An hour later the bailiffs had moved into his house, carried out the furniture, loaded it into their van and driven off. No one knew where Bobby had gone. Rumour had it he was on the ‘tramp’. And Bobby’s family weren’t the only ones who had ended up in the workhouse or were heading that way. The Richards next door would be out on the street if it wasn’t for the eighteen shillings and sixpence their son Glan earned as a porter in the Central Homes, and the five shillings Mrs Richards made scrubbing out the Graig Hotel every morning.

What worried Evan the most was having no savings to fall back on. As soon as he managed to put a few shillings aside in the hope they’d grow into pounds, they slipped through his fingers. Either his or Elizabeth’s shoes finally gave out, or a saucepan had to be replaced because it had gone too far for patching, or the price of coal went up, and rags down. There was always something ...

‘You’re quiet, Dad,’ Eddie commented, biting into a wrinkled winter apple the manager of the canal warehouse had thrown him when they’d picked up Ronnie’s flour.

‘Thinking how we can do better than we are.’

‘Give me a cart of my own,’ Eddie said impatiently.

‘There’s too many calling the streets as it is. If you go out on your own, all we’ll do is double our outlay to a bob a day for two carts, instead of a tanner for one. We’ll have no more rags to show for it at the end of the day.’

‘Don’t know unless we try,’ Eddie insisted optimistically. ‘I could always get up earlier and try further afield. The Rhondda, or down Cardiff way perhaps.’

‘There’s plenty working the trade down there without you adding to their number. There’s got to be more ways to make a living around here if only we knew where to look.’

‘I don’t see how,’ Eddie snapped. ‘We’re carting all the furniture and rags we can now, and since Fred Davies switched to lorries there’s precious little removal work going on.’

‘That’s what we need,’ Evan said decisively. ‘A lorry.’

‘Joe Craggs bought one off the Post Office last month for twenty-five pounds,’ Eddie said eagerly. ‘It only cost him ten pounds to get it ready for the road ...’ He fell silent. From what they made on the cart last month, thirty-five pounds might as well be three hundred and fifty.

Evan heaved on the reins, and slowed Goliath to a halt outside Ronconi’s.

‘Don’t pull back the tarpaulin. Ease the flour bags out from under it,’ he cautioned Eddie, ‘or you’ll soak the whole load.’ Eddie jammed his sodden cap further down on his head, leaped off the side of the cart, and pulled the first of the flour sacks from under the tarpaulin. He manoeuvred carefully, but not carefully enough. A puddle of standing water slithered off the cart and drenched his trousers. Cursing under his breath he heaved the sack on to his shoulders and pushed open the door of the café. Evan tied the reins to a lamp-post and climbed awkwardly off the cart. His joints were stiff after sitting in the cold and damp all day, but it had been worth a little discomfort. Between them he and Eddie had made eighteen shillings: a nice little cushion to set against the two bob they’d made last Monday, the quietest day they’d ever had.

He pulled out the second sack, took the weight on his bowed shoulders and staggered into the café.

‘Wet enough for you, Mr Powell?’ Ronnie called from behind the counter where he was sitting on a stool, watching his brothers and sisters work.

‘Could be worse, Ronnie. Could be snow.’ Evan carried the flour behind the counter and into the kitchen where Eddie was standing, wringing the water out of his cap into the square stone sink.

‘Tea, Mr Powell?’ Tony offered politely.

‘Thanks, but Eddie and I’d better move on.’ Evan thought of the Cross Keys pub a few yards up the road. A dram of brandy was what he needed before they took the cart back.

‘Tea’s no good on its own in this weather, Tony.’ Ronnie walked into the kitchen behind Evan. ‘Take over the counter for me Angelo, and bring in three teas.’ He pulled his watch chain out of his waistcoat pocket, picked out a key from amongst the fobs and inserted it into the lock of a cabinet the size of a wardrobe set discreetly behind the door. It swung open to reveal rows of bottles. Some fruit essence, some ice cream flavourings, a few wines and spirits and at the bottom, half a dozen bottles of beer.

‘Café stock for cooking,’ Ronnie explained nonchalantly, amused by the amazement on Eddie’s face. ‘Diana and Maud are home,’ he murmured, pouring a generous measure of brandy into two of the three-quarter full cups of tea Angelo carried in. He handed one to Evan and took the other himself. ‘Boxer indulging?’ he enquired, holding the bottle poised above Eddie’s cup.

Eddie shook his head. ‘Hope to be fighting next week,’ he explained defensively.

‘The girls back for the weekend?’ Evan took the cup into his freezing hands.

‘No, for good. Maud’s ill.’

‘TB.’ It was a statement, not a question. Evan had read the signs when he and Eddie had taken the cart down Cardiff way a month ago and called into the Infirmary. The only reason he hadn’t dragged Maud home with him then was the hope that she’d be better off working in a hospital than anywhere else.

‘I took her to see Trevor. He said he’d call in your house after he finished in the hospital for the day.’

‘That’s good of him.’

‘It’s what you pay him for,’ Ronnie said casually. ‘Diana went to your house with Maud, but she came back down this afternoon. She’s looking for a job and –’ Ronnie took a packet of cigarettes out of his top pocket and handed them round. Evan took one but Eddie didn’t’ ‘– she said, a place to stay. Apparently the only empty room in your house is unfurnished.’

‘We’ll manage to put her up somehow.’ Ronnie didn’t have to say any more. Evan knew precisely what had gone on between his wife and his niece.

‘William said he put all his mother’s furniture in Huw Davies’ place. Even if Huw’s on duty the key’ll be in the door. I offered to go over in the Trojan and get whatever Diana wanted, but Haydn thought it might be better if we waited for you. You know the size of the room, what it will take, and what it won’t,’ he added diplomatically.

‘Is Diana here now?’

‘She was until half an hour ago. Then she got edgy. She went to Rivelin’s with Tina to see if there’s any jobs going. Not that they’ve a snowball in hell’s chance of finding anything.’

Evan stared down at the dregs in his cup. Just when he’d been congratulating himself on keeping his head above water, two more mouths had appeared who’d need feeding. And not only feeding. Illness meant bills for medicine and extra, invalid’s food. He stubbed his cigarette out in the sink. Ronnie looked into the teacups. The tea had gone, but that didn’t prevent him from pouring more brandy into his own cup, and Evan’s.

‘Sure you don’t want a hand to shift the furniture, Mr Powell?’ he offered, raising his cup to Evan’s.

‘Sure, thank you,’ Evan echoed hollowly, downing the contents of his cup in one gulp. ‘Tell Diana to go home when she gets back. I’ll fetch what’s needed for tonight. If she wants more it will have to wait until Monday.’ He turned to Eddie. ‘We’d best be off, boy, if we want to finish before midnight.’

‘I’ll pass that message on to Diana.’ Ignoring the covetous looks that Tony and Angelo were bestowing on the brandy bottle, Ronnie corked it and returned it to the cupboard. ‘But don’t expect her back too early,’ he warned. ‘I know Tina and her idea of job hunting. She’ll do all she can to inveigle Diana into the pictures. I bet you a pound to a penny they’re sitting in the back row of the Palladium this very minute on the strength of a rumour, which Tina alone has heard, that an usherette is about to hand in her notice.’

‘I just hope she doesn’t raise Diana’s expectations too high.’ Evan laid his cup down on the edge of the stove. ‘Sounds to me as though the poor girl has had enough knocks for one day.’

‘Nothing in Rivelin’s, nothing in Wien’s, nothing in Leslie’s,’ Tina opened her umbrella and held it more over her own head than Diana’s as they stepped out of Rivelin’s doorway into the street. ‘And none of the other shops are big enough to take on staff. God, what wouldn’t I give to escape Ronnie’s clutches and work for someone decent, and human!’ she swore daringly. ‘He’s a swine of a brother, but he’s an even worse boss. He never lifts a finger himself. Just stands behind the counter all day shouting orders. “Do this! Do that! And do it quicker while you’re at it.” He’s ten times worse than Papa ever was. You’re lucky to have William for a brother.’

‘I’d be luckier still if William were able to give me paid work,’ Diana snapped, irritated by Tina’s grumblings. From where Diana was standing, Tina had everything a girl could possibly want: paid work; money in her pocket; a settled home, with a mother and father waiting. It was bad enough to be unemployed, but to be unemployed without a home to fall back on was infinitely worse. She would have given her eye teeth at that moment for one of her mother’s cuddles, and a bowl of home-made cawl eaten in the warmth of the back kitchen of her old home.

She looked down, pretending to study her worn shoes. The soles were leaking. She could feel water, icy and damp, soaking through her woollen stockings, freezing her toes. She had to stop thinking about the past. It only made her cry. And crying made her weak when she had to be strong. The old days had gone. Her mother wouldn’t be released for another nine years eight months and four days, and already the woman she visited in Cardiff prison didn’t look like her mother any more. The last time she’d seen her, Megan had been pale and drawn. A painfully thin shadow of the vivacious, loving woman who’d steered her and Will through baby and childhood.

She hesitated for a moment. Glancing under the overhanging shade of the umbrella, she looked up and down Taff Street. The shop windows shone, bright golden beacons that illuminated tempting displays of the new season’s flared skirts, long jumpers and shiny glass and brass jewellery. All well beyond her pocket. Away from the pools of light, a patchwork of dismal grey and black shadows blanketed the rain-burnished flag and cobblestones. Too early for the nine o’clock market bargain rush and too late for the day shoppers, the crowds had thinned from the torrent that had flooded the street at midday, to a trickling stream. Women in cheap coats that had shrunk in the rain dumped their string and brown paper carrier bags at their feet, while they waited for trams. Men and older children, who’d escaped the discomfort of their homes by lingering in the light and warmth of the shops and cafés, were buttoning their shabby jackets in preparation for long, cold and wet walks home. The last time she was home she’d noticed that more and more people were behaving as though they didn’t have homes to go to. When she’d mentioned this to Will and Charlie they told her that most families had taken to lighting their kitchen stoves only two days a week. The price of coal being what it was, they had no choice. It was either freeze and eat bread and jam, or be warm and go hungry.

Pulling her collar higher to avoid the rain that poured down her neck from a bent spoke in the umbrella, she stepped decisively forward.

‘I’ll try Springer’s shoe shop,’ she said briskly, wanting to delay the moment when she’d have to return to the café. She knew her uncle would probably be waiting for her, but she was gripped by an overwhelming sense of urgency. It was already half-past five. She had to – simply had to find a job before the shops closed at six so that when she walked back into her uncle’s house she could look her aunt squarely in the eye and say, ‘I won’t be a burden to you. I have a job. I can pay my own way.’