One Blue Moon (6 page)

‘No luck, Tessie?’ One of the girls’ mocking laughter followed him along the narrow corridor.

‘Boys, they’re all the bloody same!’ Tessie muttered savagely. ‘Don’t know what to do with it.’

Haydn heard the remark as he banged on Ambrose’s door. It slid away like jelly from a spoon. None of it stuck, or hurt. Not any more. The manager of the Town Hall had warned him when he’d taken him on that the first six months would be the worst. They had been: crawling past in red-faced embarrassment, he’d answered cries for help from the girls’ dressing room, only to walk in on crowds of half-naked, giggling girls, who had nothing better to do than torment him by drumming the tips of their fingers on his flies. More than once he’d found himself running messages along the corridors with vital buttons undone. His boss had said nothing. He’d seen it all before.

And there was more than just teasing. Offers of intimacy had come thick and fast, and not only from the girls. Naturally easy-going, he’d made an effort to remain pleasant and friendly while turning them down, but his refusals hadn’t always been well received. The kinder ones gave up when they realised that they could neither embarrass nor use him; others went out of their way to humiliate him.

When he got to know variety girls better, he began to understand them. Every revue carried about four times as many girls as men. Moving to a new town every week, or at best fortnight, they spent their days bored out of their skulls, and their evenings prancing around with next to nothing on, while strange men ogled every inch of flesh that the Lord Chamberlain allowed them to bare. And no matter how they tried to live their private lives they were regarded – and treated by the locals of the towns they played – as little better than prostitutes. It wasn’t a lifestyle that allowed for sanity, or morality, but he could honestly say he’d never been tempted. Not with Jenny to go back to. Jenny who – he slammed the door shut on the painful memories of that afternoon, valiantly suppressing the urge to try to leave the theatre early so he could go knocking on her door.

As Will would say, there were plenty of other fish in the sea. And not all of them were like Tessie.

For once he wouldn’t rush home. He’d go to the last-night party, that’s if he was invited. Take a good look round. Watch the girls; not Tessie – perhaps one of the quiet ones like small, dark haired Betty. If he was lucky, word would get back to Jenny. Then she’d realise he could survive without her.

Yes that was it. He’d really give her something to think about. And for once perhaps her nagging would be justified.

Diana walked the long way round to Graig Avenue. She didn’t want to take the short cut up past Leyshon Street, and through Rhiannon Pugh’s house. One look at her old home had been enough for one day, and she’d met too many old friends and neighbours as it was. She was tired of telling people why she and Maud had left Cardiff. She couldn’t take any more sympathetic, knowing nods from women who’d soon be baking for Maud’s funeral. And it would be even worse if her aunt didn’t listen to the boys and her Uncle Evan, and threw her out. The disgrace of trying to explain why she’d moved away from Will, across town to Bonvilston Road to live with her bachelor uncle, would be the final, bitter straw.

The first thing she saw when she walked over the rise past the vicarage was her uncle’s horse and cart. He and Eddie were struggling up the steps with the spring base of Will’s old bed.

‘It seems you’re moving in then?’ Elizabeth said acidly, as Diana walked slowly up the steps behind them.

‘I told Diana she had no choice in the matter. It would look bloody funny, a girl of her age moving in with her bachelor uncle when her brother and married uncle are living here,’ Evan panted as he and Eddie hauled the bedstead on to the doorstep.

‘I’ve a job, Aunt Elizabeth,’ Diana announced proudly, too excited to wait for a more propitious time to announce her news.

‘You’ve a
what
?’ Evan dropped the bedsprings on to the hall floor.

‘Don’t you dare scuff that lino, Evan Powell’ Elizabeth shouted angrily. ‘Lino doesn’t grow on trees. And with what you bring in we’ll never be able to replace it.’

‘It’s resting on my foot, woman,’ Evan snarled. ‘Where are you working?’ he asked Diana in a gentler tone, as he turned his back on Elizabeth.

‘Ben Springer’s.’

‘Oh! Oh! Oh! You’d better watch that one.’ Eddie forgot Elizabeth’s presence for a moment. ‘We may have to punch him on the nose.’

‘What do you mean?’ Diana asked, knowing full well what he meant.

‘If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you,’ Eddie mumbled, looking at the floor as his mother cast her disapproving eye on him.

‘And I’ll have none of that filthy double talk in my house, Edward Powell,’ Elizabeth ordered.

‘I can look after myself,’ Diana asserted, lifting her chin defiantly.

‘If you get any trouble from him, love, just tell me.’ Evan picked up the bed again. ‘How much is he paying you?’

‘Six bob for the moment, but he said he’d review it if I suited the job.’

‘That’s bloody slave labour,’ Eddie cursed.

‘And how much do you intend paying me out of six shillings a week?’ Elizabeth demanded, too concerned with the changes in the family’s income to chastise Eddie for swearing.

‘Whatever Will and Charlie are paying you,’ Diana said boldly. ‘I can afford to make it up until I get a pay rise. I’ve got savings,’ she said boldly.

‘They’re paying seven and six a week. Each.’ Elizabeth folded her arms and stepped aside so Evan and Eddie could move the bed on to the stairs.

‘There’s no way a slip of a girl like Diana will eat the same as those two great hulking men,’ Evan protested. ‘Four bob a week is more than fair.’

‘Evan!’ Elizabeth exclaimed.

‘I’ve spoken, Elizabeth,’ he said decisively. ‘Right, Eddie?’

Carefully, so as not to tear the twenty-year-old jute carpet on the stairs, they manhandled the bedstead into the hall and over the banisters. It was tricky manoeuvring it through the narrow passageway and into the box room, but eventually they managed it, and laid it on its side beneath the window opposite the door.

‘I don’t know where you think you’re going with all that furniture,’ Elizabeth said as she peered through the darkness at the lumpy tarpaulin on the cart. ‘That box room is full as it is.’

‘Eddie and I will empty what’s there into the attic,’ Evan said calmly, refusing to allow himself to be rattled.

‘Like as not, on top of the plasterboards, so you’ll bring the ceiling down.’

‘I hope tea is about ready, Elizabeth,’ Evan reminded her. ‘As soon as we’ve finished here, Eddie and I’ll be wanting to eat.’

Elizabeth knew when she was beaten. Muttering under her breath, she retreated to the back kitchen.

‘This room could do with a bit of a sweep out.’ Evan brushed aside the dust as he handed Eddie the first of the boxes.

‘I’ll do it.’ Diana called out from the hall, smiling in response to Eddie’s wink, as he walked along the landing. Happy at the thought of making herself useful, she took off her wet coat and hung it on one of the hooks behind the front door, then rushed through to the washhouse to get a duster and a broom.

‘As you’re intent on staying here, you may as well know first as last that I’ll have no barging around in this house,’ Elizabeth shouted, stepping out of the way as Diana entered the kitchen.

‘Sorry, Aunt Elizabeth,’ Diana murmured. But she wasn’t really downcast. She’d forgotten just how nice her Uncle Evan could be. And Eddie. She glanced at the clock. It was past seven. Another couple of hours and Will and Charlie would be home. Maud might wake up at any minute. Living in Graig Avenue wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

Chapter Six

‘We closing early tonight then, Ronnie?’ Alma asked as Ronnie switched off the electric lights in the front of the café, and locked the door after the shop’s last customers left.

‘Hardly early, that was the last bus down from Ferndale.’ He pulled a cigarette out of the top pocket of the boiled white shirt he was wearing beneath his jacket, and pushed it into his mouth. ‘Rake the coals out of the fire on to the hearth and douse them, there’s a good girl,’ he ordered absently. ‘I’ll sort out the kitchen.’

Alma topped up the salt, pepper and vinegar bottles on the tables while Ronnie did what little had to be done in the kitchen. She wiped down the tables and chairs and swept the floor, as he opened the till and counted the money. It was their normal routine, and had been for two years.

Papa Ronconi had never liked any of his own girls to work the evening shifts, and as his wife was kept busy taking care of the younger children, he and Ronnie had been forced to employ part-timers in the family’s two cafés. Evening hours suited Alma. Every morning she helped out in the tailor’s shop lower down Taff Street. Work was slack because of the depression, so they could only afford to pay for her services two and a half days a week. The six nights a week she worked for Ronnie made all the difference. Apart from a small widow’s pension her wage was all the money she and her mother had to live on.

A slim, green-eyed redhead, Alma had the kind of looks that turned men’s heads, and she wasn’t unaware of the fact; but she’d set her sights high – on Ronnie. She knew she was fighting fierce competition. Tall, dark, handsome, in a typically warm-blooded Latin way, with craggy, masculine rather than Hollywood good looks, Ronnie attracted women like syrup attracted flies. And most of them came to the same sticky end. It was probably true that Ronnie’s attractions lay as much in his flourishing business as his looks. Security was a luxury few women had been able to aspire to since the pit closures.

But whatever good points Ronnie possessed, charm was most definitely not one of them. Lazy to the point of lethargy socially, when it came to wooing women he merely sat back and waited for them to come to him. Even when his friends or sisters dragged him to a late-night dance he never graced the floor. His forte seemed to be leaning on the bar, glass in hand, watching the world go by. Alma didn’t mind. Not even when he refused to take her to the few annual dances that still went on after the café closed for the evening. When all was said and done, they saw one another six nights a week. What other couple could say that? And if he hadn’t publicly acknowledged their relationship, so what? It would only be a matter of time. He simply wasn’t given to gushing displays of sentimentality or affection, that was all. Besides, the words ‘I love you’ were the most overworked in the English language. They didn’t mean anything: not when glib, flashy Romeos who fancied themselves as ladykillers used them over and over again. Men like Glan Richards, who murmured them to any girl foolish enough to go to the pictures with him, only to use the same phrase the next night, when he moved on to the next gullible female. She didn’t need Ronnie to make any declarations of love to her. He showed her in so many ways other than words. Besides, what more could she ask of him? When they were alone ...

‘Ready then?’

She looked up and smiled. ‘Ready for what?’ she asked innocently, knowing full well what was coming.

‘Upstairs, woman. Now!’ He patted her behind. ‘Then if you’re good I just might take you home.’

‘Via the mountain?’ she asked hopefully.

‘What for?’

‘Look at the scenery?’

‘It’s raining. There’s nothing to see.’

‘It might clear up. ‘

‘Even if it does, there’ll only be slagheaps lit by the moon and the stars,’ he teased, a deadpan expression on his face.

‘Men!’ she exclaimed disparagingly. But his lack of romance didn’t prevent her from running up the back stairs to the small bedroom that he’d furnished for the nights when he told his parents he was too tired, or as they privately believed, too drunk to drive the Trojan home.

Ronnie ran his hand through his Vaselined, slicked-back hair and glanced at his profile in the huge mirror that hung on the back wall behind the counter. Smiling broadly, he studied his teeth. Satisfied with what he saw, he checked around the café one last time before stuffing the contents of the till into a cloth cash bag. He pushed it into one of the capacious pockets of the loose-cut khaki jacket he kept for work. Pulling down the door blind, he tried the lock on the front door to make sure it was fastened, switched out the back lights and followed Alma.

He knew she would be undressed, ready and waiting for him between the sheets of the small single bed. If he’d ever stopped to think about their relationship he might have realised just how much he took her for granted. Almost as much as he took every other female in his life for granted, including his mother and his sisters. Used to being one of the family’s breadwinners from an early age, the responsibility had made him, if not callous, then at least indifferent to their needs and desires. Without thinking, he tended to treat those dependent on him like children. Beings to be petted when they were good, chastised when they were not, and to be kept in the dark about his private thoughts and any problems he might have, lest the need to confide in someone be misinterpreted as weakness.

Alma was undoubtedly the prettiest, brightest and longest lasting of his many girlfriends, but he had never allowed her to be the only woman in his life. Their physical relationship, satisfying as he found it, didn’t prevent him from paying regular visits to a shy little widow in Rickards Street. Not to mention Molly the flower and peg seller who had a stall on the market, Lucy the usherette who worked in the New Theatre ... Ronnie, like all Italian men of his class, saw unblemished virtue, abstinence and chastity as an integral part of the make-up of every decent woman. A vital and essential attribute in his sisters, his mother, and the woman he would eventually marry; but something he, his father and his brothers could comfortably ignore when it came to their own affairs.

‘You took your time coming upstairs,’ Alma complained, wriggling between the sheets as he walked into the bedroom and shrugged his arms out of his jacket.

‘Just checking around.’ He felt in his shirt pocket for his cigarettes, and lit one. Throwing his coat on the only chair in the room, he sat on the bed, rested his ankle on his knee and pulled his shoe off. He glanced across at Alma. She was lying on her back, the sheet tucked demurely beneath her chin. He reached over and yanked it down.

‘Ronnie!’ she cried out angrily. Blushing, she grabbed the top blanket and hastily covered herself.

‘Can’t see any point in you doing that.’ He took off his socks and tossed them on top of his shoes. ‘Not when you consider what we’re going to be up to in five minutes.’

‘I don’t like it,’ she said petulantly.

‘Only when I can see, and the lamp is lit.’ He slid his hand beneath the sheet, and reached for her breast. ‘You never object to this when I do it in the dark,’ he whispered, as he fondled her.

‘Come to bed,’ she snapped touchily.

‘Is that an order, Miss?’

She tried and failed to suppress a smile.

‘That’s better,’ he laughed. Turning his back on her, he pulled the collar and tie from his neck and began to unbutton his shirt.

‘Ronnie?’ Alma asked hesitantly, wondering if she dare mention Liz Williams and Dickie Shales’ engagement, or if that might be a bit obvious. She knew he reacted angrily when she talked about anything that could be remotely construed as ‘pressurising’, and it wasn’t as if she was unhappy with their relationship. Last month he’d even asked her to stay on in the café after hours, so she could attend his parents’ wedding anniversary celebrations. Granted she’d ended up by acting as waitress and helping Tina and Gina clear up, but the invitation was more than any other girl had received from him. She knew that for a fact, because Tina, fishing for gossip about her brother, had told her so.

That marvellous, wonderful evening, all the Ronconis, senior as well as junior, had been incredibly kind to her. So much so, she’d wondered if any of them other than Tina had their suspicions about her and Ronnie. She wasn’t quite sure where she stood with him. From the moment she had allowed him to make love to her she had considered herself engaged, assuming that he would take their relationship as seriously as she did. That eventually it would lead somewhere, hopefully marriage. But occasionally, like now, she felt that their unspoken understanding was something that was understood only on her side.

‘Yes?’ he threw his shirt on to the chair.

‘Are you staying here tonight?’ she asked, losing courage and saying the first thing that came to mind.

‘That’s a strange question.’ He unbuttoned his vest.

‘Well, it’s just that if you are, I could always walk home. It’s not far.’

‘It won’t kill me to take the van as far as Morgan Street,’ he murmured carelessly. He took the burning cigarette from his mouth and handed it to her to hold, as he heaved his vest over his head. Unbuckling his belt, and unbuttoning his braces and fly, he pulled off his trousers, took the cigarette and climbed into bed beside her.

‘Ow, you’re bloody freezing!’ he complained as his legs met her feet between the sheets.

‘It’s this bed. It’s not aired properly.’

‘That’s because it’s not slept in enough.’ He set his cigarette down carefully in an ashtray placed strategically at the side of the bed. ‘Here,’ he pulled her close. ‘May as well get it over with.’ He held her close, rubbing his hands over her shivering body, lingering over her breasts and thighs. She knew him too well to expect words of endearment.

‘Ronnie?’

‘Yes.’

‘Turn down the lamp.’

‘I want to see you.’

‘Please, just for me.’

‘Two years of this, and you’re still shy?’ Despite his grumbling, he leaned over and turned down the wick on the oil lamp. Some time he’d have to see about running electricity cables up here, but it would be difficult to justify the expense to his father. As he turned, she lifted her face to his so he could kiss her. He did so, thoroughly and expertly. He also knew her well. He may have been an inarticulate lover when it came to words, but he was anything but inarticulate when it came to the physical side of their relationship.

Afterwards there was no teasing, only quiet, relaxed fulfilment, and the sound of their breathing, muted, soft as Alma lay with her head on Ronnie’s shoulder. Outside the street was still. The second houses in the New Theatre and the Town Hall had long since ended. Even the staff in the cinemas had gone home, and those who had the money and the inclination to spend the early hours drinking in pubs where the landlords were brave, or foolhardy enough to defy the licensing hours, were already there.

‘Happy, Ronnie?’ she asked, satisfaction and contentment making her bold.

‘No.’ He paused for a moment, watching her eyes cloud over. ‘But I will be once I have a cigarette.’

‘You’re impossible,’ she laughed, tickling his armpits.

‘Here watch out, I might burn you.’ He struck his lighter.

‘Have you thought about the future?’ she asked, wrapping her arms around his chest.

‘Nothing but.’ He inhaled deeply. ‘How do you feel about giving up your job in the tailor’s?’

‘Giving up?’ Her eyes glittered with dreams poised on the brink of transformation into reality. Of course, he wouldn’t want his wife working. At least, not for anyone else.

‘My father has just bought the lease on the empty shop in the centre of town. You know, the one by the fountain.’

‘I know.’ Her green eyes grew large, almost luminous in the soft glow of the lamp.

‘It’s huge,’ he mused thoughtfully, flicking ash into the ashtray. ‘You’ve never seen anything like the size of the basement.’

‘Then it’s big enough to set some rooms aside for living quarters?’ Of course it wouldn’t be ideal. Living in the middle of town. There’d be nowhere to hang washing. But then, if they were both working, and making enough money, they could send their linen out to the Chinese laundry in Mill Street. Her mother would be close: Morgan Street was no distance at all from the fountain. And the park would be just around the corner. Handy when they had children. She’d never spoken to him about children, but she was sure that he’d want lots. Just like his parents. When the time was right he’d put away the ghastly, thick, rubber French letter he used when they made love and ...

‘Not living quarters,’ he laughed, ‘a restaurant. A big one. Enormous, even. We’re turning the basement into a kitchen the like of which this town has never seen before. Half of it will be used to turn out cooked meals, the other half will be a first-class confectioner’s kitchen. I’m going into cakes and confectionery in a big way. There’s a hell of a market there, and St Catherine’s café in the Arcade hasn’t even scratched the surface. When you consider it, it’s amazing no one’s thought of it before. Everyone in this town has a birthday, and not everyone’s on the breadline.’

‘Only about half the population,’ she interrupted bitterly.

‘Exactly,’ he enthused. Carried away by his grand scheme, he failed to pick up the acid tone of sarcasm in her voice. ‘And we’ll cater for the other half. We’ll make cakes for every occasion. Weddings, christenings, to celebrate someone in the family getting a job – and the bakery will be only part of it. There’s two windows at street level. We’ll fill one with pastries, the other savouries. Pies, pasties, faggots, pease puddings – you know the sort of thing. We’re knocking all the ground floor rooms into one. Putting counters and four tables in the front to cater for tea and snacks, and behind those there’ll be an archway that will lead into the main restaurant. More upmarket than this. It’ll specialise in cooked dinners and set teas. The second floor is big enough to house a function room. You wait until you see it, it’s as big as the silver and blue ballroom in the New Inn. Not that we’ll be anywhere near as pricey, because all our profit will be made on the food. I think we’ll aim for the club dinners. The Tennis Club, the Golliwog club. The store do’s like Rivelin’s ...’