Authors: Catrin Collier
‘My friend and I,’ Mary simpered in a false ‘refined’ voice, ‘do not want to be served by the likes of her.’ She pointed her finger at Alma.
‘Tough,’ Tina snapped. ‘She’s the waitress here. If you don’t like it, you can lump it.’
Tony hearing his sister’s voice raised in an anger that surpassed his own decibel level, left the kitchen and barged into the back room, towel and spatula in hand.
‘I could hear you in the kitchen, Tina ...’
‘These ladies,’ Tina almost spat the word as she indicated Mary and Freda, ‘don’t want to be served by our waitress.’
Alma retreated from the table and leaned white-faced against the wall close to William’s chair.
‘Miss Moore has been a waitress here for many years,’ Tony began evenly. ‘She is perfectly competent to deal with your ...’
‘It’s not her competency but her morals we’re calling into question,’ Mary snapped self-righteously. ’Decent women have the right to object to being served by someone who’s carrying a ... a ...’
She faltered; lowering her eyes while glancing slyly beneath her eyelashes to make sure she held the attention of everyone in the room. ‘A bastard,’ she divulged triumphantly to the hushed café, revelling in the consternation she was creating. ‘And if
you
aren’t prepared to take our complaint seriously then we’ll just have to take our custom elsewhere. Freda?’ Pulling the lapels of her coat high around her throat she rose majestically from her seat. ‘We may be the first, but I promise you, Mr Ronconi,’ she swept the skirt of her coat from her chair, ‘we won’t be the last women of the town to refuse to eat here.’
Confused, Tony turned, just in time to see Alma collapse. Charlie dived out of his chair and caught her, but not before she hit her head on the kerb of the tiled hearth.
‘I’ve got her.’
Alma recognised Charlie’s accent. She opened her eyes briefly and stared up into the Russian’s deep blue eyes. The last thing she was aware of before plunging into unconsciousness was his strong arms wrapped around her body.
‘Run up to Graig Street and get Doctor Lewis,’ Charlie ordered Tony as he took control of the situation. ‘You’ve got the keys to the Trojan?’
‘I have but ...’ Tony’s cheeks reddened as he squirmed in embarrassment. He didn’t want to look ridiculous in front of the entire clientele of the café by admitting that he’d never got the hang of driving the van.
‘Here, give them to me,’ William shouted impatiently, holding out his hand as he stared at Alma’s deathly pale face, now streaked by a single scarlet ribbon of blood trickling from her temple down to her chin.
‘They’re behind the counter.’
William ran to get them. Neither Charlie nor Tony thought to ask where he’d learned to drive.
‘Is there anywhere private I can take her?’ Charlie demanded as customers strained their necks in an effort to get a good look at what was going on.
‘Upstairs,’ Tony suggested, as Mary and Freda banged the front door behind them.
‘Over here, Charlie.’ Tina lifted the flap on the counter and preceded Charlie up the narrow flight of stairs.
The air was freezing, musty with disuse. There was no electricity on the first floor of the café. The only light that illuminated the upper staircase came in from the street lamp outside, through the window of a landing littered with cardboard boxes and catering tins of coffee, beans and cocoa. Tina had to put her shoulder to the door before it finally grated over the damp, swollen floorboards.
‘Put her on the bed. I’ll get a glass of water.’ Tina disappeared back down the stairs.
Charlie laid Alma on the bed, but as the cover felt damp he shrugged his shoulders out of his jacket and lifted Alma again to wrap it around her. He stared at the cheap flowered cotton curtains hanging limply at the window and the paper dangling loosely from the walls. The floorboards were bare, and apart from the bed and a single chair the room was empty. A stub of candle, glued by a puddle of wax to a saucer, balanced on the seat of the chair. He reached into his pocket for a box of matches.
‘Ronnie?’
Charlie struck the match and held it to the wick. It flared briefly before settling into a small flame that scuppered low, finally dying in a draught that blew in from the door.
‘It’s Charlie,’ he answered softly.
‘What happened?’ Alma tried to sit up. Reaching out frantically she clutched at Charlie’s shirt-sleeve before falling back on to the bed with a moan.
‘You fainted. Try and rest.’
‘You don’t understand. I’ve got to work,’ she insisted hysterically. ‘You can’t stop me. I need the job ...’
‘Has she come round?’ Tina reappeared in the doorway with a glass of water.
‘I’m fine. I ...’
‘You’re not fine,’ Tina answered without realising Alma was raving. ‘You can’t work like that, and I can’t breathe in here. This room smells like a tomb. I don’t think anyone’s been up here since Ronnie left,’ Tina said, anxiety making her even more tactless than usual.
She handed Charlie the glass, walked over to the window and wrenched down the sash. ‘I know it’s freezing outside,’ she babbled, ‘but then it’s freezing in here too, so I don’t suppose it will make any difference to you, Alma.’
Neither Alma, nor Charlie who was busy with the candle, answered her. The second flame he’d nurtured flickered weakly as he sat beside Alma on the bed, propped her against his chest and held the glass to her lips.
‘You’re going to be fine, Alma. Isn’t she, Charlie?’ Tina demanded.
Charlie sensed that Tina was looking for reassurance, but he had never lied in his life, and wasn’t about to begin now. He brushed Alma’s hair away from her clammy forehead and pulled his jacket closer round her shoulders.
Alma writhed in his arms but didn’t open her eyes.
Tina crept closer and he handed her the glass. ‘If you see to Alma, I’ll wait outside.’ Shivering in his thin shirt and waistcoat he left the room and sat on the top stair, conscious that it wasn’t right for a man to be in a bedroom –any bedroom –with a woman who wasn’t his wife.
‘Has she come round yet?’ Tony called from the kitchen as he heard Charlie’s measured tread on the rickety floor.
‘Not really,’ Charlie answered.
‘Tell Tina to stay with her. We’ll manage somehow until Trevor gets here.’
Charlie settled his back against the cold wall and waited. Tina glanced at him from time to time, glad not to be alone with the unconscious Alma. His pale face and athletic body reminded her of the picture postcards of marble statues her Italian relatives sent her father on his birthday. She could read nothing in the dispassionate set of his features, but inside Charlie’s head, thoughts and emotions spiralled and whirled like dead leaves in an autumn wind.
It had been a long, long time since he, Feodor Raschenko (in his thoughts he always referred to himself by his Russian name, never the nickname that had been bestowed on him in Pontypridd market), had held a woman. He was still young. Only twenty-eight, but sometimes, surrounded in his working and lodging life by younger men like William and Eddie Powell, he felt like a grandfather.
He’d compartmentalised his life into sections: the proscribed past, and the allowable present. (He
never
attempted to forecast what the future might hold.) The problems of childhood, adolescence and early manhood paled into insignificance when set against the traumatic events that had marked his entry into Russian adult life.
Afterwards had come the numb, desensitised years of exile. Five long years during which he had tried valiantly, with varying degrees of success, not to feel anything of a remotely emotional or personal nature.
And now –now –the simple act of carrying a sick woman up a staircase had reminded him that life didn’t have to be cold and solitary. That human existence could encompass warmth, physical contact with people – and even –the possibility hovered tantalisingly, almost beyond his present conception –a relationship with a woman.
He looked into the bedroom. Tina was sitting on the bed. All he could see of Alma was a mass of red hair lying on the pillow, the same hair that had flowed over his arm when he had carried her up the stairs.
Perhaps that was it! The combination of red hair and green eyes. Nothing more. A passing physical resemblance. An attraction that was not born of his feelings for Alma, but Masha ... Masha ...
‘Charlie?’
The shadowy figure of Trevor Lewis stood before him on the staircase. ‘William tells me Alma collapsed.’
‘Yes. I’m sorry, I’m in your way,’ Charlie apologised, rising quickly.
‘Hello Charlie.’ Trevor’s wife Laura, who had been a Ronconi before her marriage, acknowledged him before following her husband into the room. ‘I’ll take over here,
Tina, you go and help Tony downstairs,’ Laura Lewis murmured in her brisk no-nonsense nursing voice.
Charlie waited for Tina, then followed her down the stairs into the café where Tony’s raised voice and Angelo’s intensified crashing of pots and pans testified to the chaos that the temporary shortage of staff had created.
‘It’s appendicitis and mild concussion,’ Trevor announced through the open door at the foot of the stairs.
‘That isn’t too bad, is it?’ Tina enquired uneasily from behind the counter.
‘I don’t think the mild concussion will present much of a problem, and appendicitis is usually straightforward,’ Trevor agreed, ‘but Alma’s appendix is on the point of bursting. I’m going to have to operate right away.’
‘Here?’
Even Trevor smiled at the panic on Tony’s face. ‘Not in that bedroom, with only the stub of a candle for light and the wind whistling in and flapping the wallpaper! But I could move her into the kitchen. You do have a scrub down table and sharp knives to hand?’
‘You’re joking?’ Tony wasn’t absolutely sure, even after the smile.
‘My car’s outside. I’ll take her up to the cottage hospital. I’ll need help to carry her downstairs,’ Trevor frowned, thinking of the narrow staircase.
‘I’ll carry her down for you, Dr Lewis.’ Wanting to help, but uncertain how, Charlie had been hovering close to the counter.
‘She has to be held steady,’ Trevor warned.
‘He took her up there without any trouble,’ Tina replied for him.
‘Then if you’ll be kind enough, Charlie. The sooner we get started, the sooner I can operate.’
‘Someone’s going to have to tell Alma’s mother.’ Tina hoped it would be her. High drama was infinitely preferable to the boredom of waiting at tables.
‘I’ll go,’ William offered. ‘If I take the Trojan I can drive Mrs Moore to the hospital.’
‘There won’t be anything for her to do there,’ Trevor protested. ‘Better you stay with her until it’s all over. I’ll call in and see her on my way back.’
‘A woman should go with him,’ Tina pressed urgently. ’Mrs Moore will need some sympathy ...’
A fleeting expression of annoyance crossed Tony’s face and Tina fell silent. Ever since her family had detected the signs of budding mutual infatuation between her and William Powell, her father and brothers had dedicated themselves to keeping the pair of them apart.
‘If Charlie comes with me to the hospital, Laura can go with William to Mrs Moore’s.’ Trevor’s attention was fixed on Charlie as he walked slowly down the stairs with Alma, still wrapped in his coat, in his arms.
‘She’s just regained consciousness.’ Laura followed Charlie into the café.
‘Go with William to her mother’s house.’ Trevor gave his wife an absentminded peck on the lips much to the delight of the customers. ‘You’ll know what to say to her.’
He held the door open for Charlie to carry Alma outside.
‘I can’t go to hospital,’ Alma protested vehemently as Charlie deposited her gently on the back seat of Trevor’s car before walking around and climbing in next to her.
‘I don’t think you have any choice in the matter, young lady.’ Trevor extracted the starting handle from beneath the seat and handed it to Tony, who was fussing round them. ‘You’re very ill, and you’ll be even worse if we don’t sort you out –and quickly.’
The cottage hospital on the Common was a long, low, colonial-type structure built on the top of the hill that overlooked the town. Flanked by the big semis and detached houses of the crache it was high enough, and far enough away from the collieries to ensure a plentiful supply of good clean air –a commodity often in short supply in Pontypridd.
‘I haven’t paid a subscription to the Cottage,’ Alma gasped, biting her lip and grasping Charlie’s hand in an effort to control the pain.
Trevor turned the corner by the old bridge, pointed his ancient car up the hill and pressed the accelerator down to the floor. ‘You pay me my penny a week.’
‘Yes, and the penny a week for the Graig Hospital, but I’ve never been able to afford the guinea a week for the Cottage,’ she repeated dogmatically, wondering why
Trevor was finding it so difficult to understand. ‘I should go to the workhouse.’
‘There’s a better operating theatre in the Cottage than the Graig. Your father was a miner, wasn’t he?’
‘The union membership doesn’t cover widows and orphans my age and we’re –’ she clutched Charlie’s hand again, crushing his fingers as the pain became almost too great to bear.
‘Yes it does,’ Trevor contradicted flatly turning a sharp left through the gates of the hospital.
‘Are you sure?’ Alma’s eyes were rolling and she could only speak in short staccato gasps, yet her primary concern was still money.
‘You have my word. You will not get a bill either for the hospital or my services. Is that good enough for you?’ Trevor wrenched the handbrake of the car. ‘Can you manage?’ he asked Charlie.
Charlie nodded, lifted Alma out of the car and followed Trevor up a short flight of steps on to a veranda and through a pair of glassed wooden double doors into the foyer. A nurse stepped briskly out of an adjoining room. The expression of annoyance on her face was replaced by a smile when she saw Trevor.
‘Dr Lewis,’ she curtsied to him as he explained the situation and called for a trolley and porter.
A few seconds later Charlie laid Alma on the trolley and watched as Trevor, the nurse and a porter wheeled it down a corridor that led to the hidden recesses of the hospital.