Authors: Catrin Collier
‘You all right Alma? I heard shouting.’
‘I’m fine, Mam.’ She struggled to keep her voice calm and even, knowing that her mother was sensitive to the slightest tremor.
‘Was there someone out there with you?’
‘Only Bobby Thomas the rent man.’
‘We don’t owe anything do we?’ Mrs Moore asked anxiously.
‘Nothing,’ Alma replied firmly. ‘If you don’t want anything I’ll go to bed, Mam. I’m tired.’
‘Alma, are you in the family way?’
‘No!’
‘Mrs Lane told me you were. She heard it in the shop tonight. She said she thought she ought to tell me before someone else did. I would have rather heard it from you.’
‘I’m sorry people are telling you lies, Mam. But I promise you, I’m not anything of the kind.’
‘Then why are people saying that you are?’
‘Because I was ill. Because I went into hospital, and,’ she took a deep breath, ‘because Ronnie Ronconi has gone to Italy.’
‘But Alma, you can’t just let people say what they like about you. You’ve got to do something. Otherwise your reputation –’
‘Mam if you can think of something I can do, I’ll do it,’ Alma interrupted angrily.
‘Ronnie Ronconi –you didn’t do anything you shouldn’t have with him, did you? I warned you how dangerous talk can be to a young girl like you, with no father to care for her. If men think you’re not a decent woman they’ll try to take advantage ... they’ll ...’
‘I’m beginning to find out just what
they’ll
do, Mam.’
‘I suppose there’s nothing you can do except brazen it out.’ Lena Moore’s voice was tired, resigned, and tremulous with unshed tears. ‘I only hope the minister doesn’t get to hear any of this.’
‘I couldn’t give a damn if he does.’
‘Alma, your language. If you talk like that no wonder people are gossiping. They say there’s no smoke without fire. Mr Ronconi never did anything to you, did he? I mean ...’
‘He never did anything to me that I didn’t want him to,’ Alma interrupted shortly.
‘What kind of an answer is that?’
‘Whatever he did, it’s not important now. He’s gone and he won’t be back.’
‘Well I suppose there’s nothing for it. I’ll have to stand by you no matter what. A lot wouldn’t. Mrs Higgins down the road had her daughter put away for less.’
‘I know, Mam.’
Alma stood in silence for a moment listening to the mattress creak and groan as her mother turned over.
‘There never was any insurance money, was there?’ her mother whispered as she settled back on her pillows.
‘No, there wasn’t,’ Alma admitted harshly.
‘Then how are we going to live?’
‘As best we can, Mam.’ Alma closed the door and went into her own bedroom. ‘As best we can,’ she repeated as she arranged the threadbare curtains over her window.
‘Don’t worry, Sis, we’ll manage somehow, we always do.’ Eddie pinched Bethan’s cheek gently as she scooped fried bread on to his plate.
‘I wish I could be as optimistic as you. You sure Mam didn’t say any more to you last night?’
‘Not a word. I told you, she wouldn’t even sit next to me on either of the buses. I carried her case to Uncle Joe’s door for her. She rang the bell, he opened it, they went inside, and that’s the last I saw of her. No goodbye, nothing.’
‘You sure he didn’t throw her out later?’
‘I waited ten minutes. Any longer and I would have missed the last bus home. Look Beth, we’ll manage without Mam. We’ll be fine.’
‘It’s not us I’m worried about.’
‘After what she said to you about the baby, you’re worried about Mam?’
She tried to smile at him as she sat on the chair that had been hers. What was it her grandmother used to say? ‘Count your blessings.’ Well she’d better start now.
The first night without Elizabeth had gone remarkably peacefully, and already she could detect an absence of strain without her mother’s presence lying like a frost over the household. Even the morning rush had gone well. Will, Diana and Charlie had raced around the kitchen like whirlwinds while she’d fed the baby, making their own breakfasts, cleaning their shoes, and all in a mad dash that would have had her mother shouting at them a dozen times over about opening doors, causing draughts and carrying dirt through to the kitchen from the outside yard.
‘Well even if we’re going to be "all right" I still need to know what the bills are on this place if I’m going to manage the money,’ she said at last. ‘Do you know what the mortgage is?’
‘Seventeen bob a week.’
‘Seventeen shillings! But Dad’s been paying it off for years and his father before him.’
‘He remortgaged it to buy out his mother and brother, and ...’ Eddie concentrated intently on the bread on his plate, slicing it into small triangles.
‘And?’ Bethan demanded.
‘You’re not to tell a soul this.’ Eddie looked over his shoulder; even though he’d heard the others leave for work. ‘He borrowed another twenty a while back. I only know about it because he dropped the papers when he was climbing down from the cart one day. I salvaged them out of the gutter for him.’
‘And you didn’t ask what he needed that kind of money for?’
‘Come on, Beth. Would you have?’
‘Was he in trouble of any kind? Had he been backing horses?’
‘Dad!’
‘It must have gone somewhere!’
‘Wherever it went, there wasn’t any obvious sign of it that I could see.’
‘How much have you and Dad been clearing on the round?’ she enquired, giving up on the subject.
‘Thirty bob in a good week. Twenty to twenty-five shillings on the not so good.’
‘Is that all?’ Andrew gave her a pound a week housekeeping, and she hadn’t had to pay rent or electricity out of that.
‘Don’t forget we’ve got nineteen shillings a week coming in from the lodgers. Charlie and Will pay seven and six each and Diana pays four shillings. She pays less because she used to help Mam with the housework.’
Bethan did some rapid calculations in her head. Looking on the black side, if Eddie only brought in a pound, she’d have one pound one and sixpence a week to feed four adults and one baby, and that was without taking things like coal and electricity into consideration.
She’d never do it. What had she been thinking of when she’d decided to come home? The only money she had, or was likely to have for some time, was in her purse. And that wouldn’t be enough to keep her and Edmund for more than a month. If her father had been around it might have been different, but she could hardly expect her brother to support her.
‘Post.’ Eddie mopped up the last drops of grease with his bread before going to the door. He returned with two letters. ‘Bloody electricity bill,’ he swore.
‘We’ll have less of that language in the house, thank you.’
‘Since when have you taken after Mam? Here, there’s one for you.’ He tossed a white envelope with a London late-evening postmark on to her lap. ‘You didn’t say how long you’d be staying Beth,’ he probed as she stared at the handwriting.
She’d know it anywhere as Andrew’s. ‘Mm ... oh as long as you need me, I suppose.’
‘Have you left him?’ Eddie asked earnestly.
‘Who?’ she replied unthinkingly as she ripped the envelope open with her thumbnail.
‘Cashmere coat.’
‘Do you know I’d forgotten about that nickname until Will mentioned it last night.’ She looked up. Eddie was watching her. In London it had been easy to ignore her brother’s antagonism towards Andrew, but here it wouldn’t be so simple. ‘No, I haven’t left him,’ she answered.
‘Then when are you going back?’
‘When I’ve sorted a few things out.’
‘Powell family things, or John family things?’
‘Bit of both I suppose.’ She glanced across to the little cot, bright and gleaming with polish, snugly furnished with an assortment of crocheted woollen blankets Diana had unearthed from the deepest recesses of her mother’s ottoman. ‘We’ve got a few problems,’ she admitted reluctantly.
‘Little ones by the look of it,’ he said astutely, following her line of vision.
‘It’s nothing we can’t work out. And,’ she laid her hand over his, ‘it is good to be home, and with you.’
‘Don’t try to soft-soap me, Beth. It won’t wash. Good God is that the time! If I don’t get a move on I’ll miss the good rigs in Factory Lane again. See you, sis.’
‘Don’t forget to find out about prison visiting times if you can,’ she shouted as he picked up his boots and tore down the passage.
‘I won’t. Bye.’
The door closed and she was alone. Blessedly, wonderfully alone. Broke, and a burden on her family. She pulled out two pieces of paper from the envelope. Andrew hadn’t written her a long letter. In fact it was more of a note.
Dear Bethan,
You’re probably right about us needing to take a break from one another. I’ll send you one of these every month,
Take care of yourself,
Love Andrew.
The second piece of paper was a cheque for five pounds. Her pride told her to send it back. But if she did, what would she and the baby live on? Besides, he’d written that he’d loved her, hadn’t he?
‘I’m no builder, Charlie, but even I can see it’s in a bad way in places.’ William looked up at the ceiling of the largest room over the shop. Charlie had opened it up with a key he’d signed for at the solicitor’s. ‘Roof must have gone. That’s more than just the damp of disuse coming in there.’ William pointed to a corner where dark green patches were sprouting mould.
‘The floorboards are sound.’ Charlie stamped his feet as he walked across the empty room.
‘The windows haven’t seen a lick of paint in years.’
Charlie fingered the blackened sash. ‘But the wood’s still solid. There’s no sign of rot.’
‘You thinking of renting this, then?’ William was used to Charlie’s mysterious ways, but even he had been a little bewildered by his boss’s insistence on viewing the shop as soon as they’d finished for the day in the slaughterhouse.
‘Yes.’
‘Going to do it up yourself?’
‘Not the roof.’ Charlie pushed up the window and sat on the windowsill. Leaning out backwards, he looked up at the slates.
‘But you’ll paint the inside?’
‘There’s nothing here that you and I can’t manage.’ Charlie ducked back inside and slammed the window shut. ‘I may even get Eddie to help.’
‘Why this shop, Charlie?’ William asked as he followed Charlie into a tiny, dark kitchen at the back. ‘The town’s full of places in better nick than this.’
‘The solicitor handling them wouldn’t drop the price.’
‘And Fred the Dead gave you a good deal!’ William exclaimed sceptically. Fred’s reputation for driving a hard bargain was legendary.
‘Eventually,’ Charlie replied vaguely.
‘I suppose it could be a good spot for trade,’ William admitted grudgingly as they walked out on to a small landing and opened the doors to three other rooms. Two were as small as, and as they were built at the back of the building, as dark as, the kitchen. The third was a bathroom with a sink, bath and toilet, all in need of a good scrub.
‘My godfathers. A bathroom!’ When Charlie made no comment, William went to the front window again and looked down on the shuttered entrance to the fruit market.
‘You’ll get the town as well as the market traffic,’ he commented, ‘and depending on your prices, the idlers hanging around the fountain.’
‘Do you want to manage this place?’
‘This shop?’
‘What do you think we’ve been talking about?’
‘You’ve signed the lease?’
‘Yesterday.’
‘You bought it?’
‘Sort of. It will be mine in five years.’
‘What happens if you don’t make a go of it?’
‘I’ll be broke.’
‘I don’t know the town can stand another butcher’s shop,’ William said doubtfully. ’It’s getting hard enough on the market with most people only being able to afford the odd half-pound of tripe or brains.’
‘It’s not going to be a butcher’s shop. At least, not like the one on the market.’ Charlie led the way down the stairs and into the shop.
‘Then what are you going to sell?’ William asked, irritated at having to drag every word out of Charlie.
‘Cooked meats. Meat pies and pasties. Sausage rolls, brawn, cold tongue, slices of stuffed belly pork, cooked beef and chicken. And every day of the week, not just market days.’
‘There isn’t another shop in Ponty that specialises in savoury baking,’ William said thoughtfully.
‘Exactly. And although people can’t afford a joint of meat, most will be able to afford a slice or two if it’s ready cooked, and cold enough to slice thin. We have lots of shops like that in Russia. They did well, even when people had very little money.’
‘So that’s why you wanted this place. Because it was a bakery years ago.’
Charlie opened a door in the back wall behind the counter. Two huge black iron ovens faced him; in front were three zinc-coated tables and two wooden ones. There were even dusty mixing bowls on the open wooden shelves, and rows of grimy metal utensils.
‘They went bankrupt,’ he explained. ‘Fred Jones was the main creditor.’
‘And he didn’t think it was worth emptying this place before renting it to Meakins. Charlie you’re a genius.’
‘Not a word about what we’re going to sell to anyone,’ Charlie warned, well acquainted with Will’s garrulous tongue.
‘Not until we open. You crafty old devil,’ William looked at the counter, which despite the years spent displaying china still showed the grey residue of old flour mixed with dust in the cracks around the glass front and marble serving slabs.
‘Then you’ll manage the shop?’
‘Of course. Thank you for asking, but I warn you now I’m no cook.’
‘I want you to sell, not cook. I have someone else in mind for that.’
‘But what about the stall? I won’t be able to do the two.
Or are you giving that up?’
‘Not for the moment.’
‘You’ll never manage it on your own.’
‘I’ll get Eddie to help.’
‘He won’t like that. He’ll miss the cart.’
‘He can still take that out on the days I don’t need him.’
‘But you’ll be cutting more meat than ever in the slaughterhouse.’
‘
We’ll
be cutting more meat,’ Charlie corrected. ‘I forgot to tell you, the manager of this shop works long hours. He has to start work in the slaughterhouse at five in the morning, and doesn’t finish in the shop much before eight at night.’
After a discussion on priorities, Charlie and William set about scrubbing down the ovens and water boilers in the old bake house kitchen. Although Charlie began with a better will and more energy than William it soon became obvious that his mind wasn’t on the task. His hand slowed as he rubbed the brown patina of rust from the ironwork.
He paused frequently, staring into space as he imagined Alma dressed in a white overall and hat, moving around the kitchen as it would look once he’d transformed it. She would be busy cooking, cleaning, lifting trays out of the oven on to the tables, smiling at him as he worked alongside her, in that same distant, preoccupied way she had once smiled at Ronnie Ronconi. Perhaps she’d talk to him as they worked –but what about? Trade in the shop. The weather? If she learned to trust him, something more personal? What had he talked about with Masha when they’d sat side by side in front of the stove every night after the day’s work? Everything and nothing. The past, the future. His grandfather’s funeral, what their unborn children would look like...
‘Know anything about cooking meats then, Charlie?’ William asked after he’d watched Charlie idle away a good ten minutes of working time.
‘A little.’ Charlie reluctantly faced the stove again.
‘Seems to me you’ve got to know more than a little to cook on the scale you’ve been talking about.’
‘You’re right.’ Charlie dropped his scouring pad on to the stove, and went to the tap. He turned it on but no water came out.
‘Stopcock’s off,’ William informed him as Charlie stared blankly at the dry tap. Charlie bent below the sink and turned the small wheel set there. Water gushed fiercely downwards, splashing out of the sink over his neck.
‘Not with it are you, mate? You feeling all right after that blow to the head?’
‘I’m fine. I have to see someone.’ Charlie unfastened his overall, now stained with black filth from the cooker as well as dried blood from the slaughterhouse.
‘Want me along?’ William asked hopefully, fed up with scrubbing at the rusted ironwork.
‘No.’
William watched as Charlie rubbed the dirt from his square, capable hands in the stream of water that flowed into the sink. When they were as clean as he could get them, he replaced the collar and tie he’d removed before starting work, and buttoned his waistcoat and jacket. Taking a comb out of his pocket he flicked his thick blond hair straight back from his forehead before putting on his overcoat.
William had observed Charlie transform himself from worker into well-dressed businessman many times, and never ceased to marvel at how he could do it so proficiently without the aid of a mirror.