Authors: Catrin Collier
‘Your brother, no. But Tina appeared about an hour ago, piled a tray with food and disappeared upstairs. I think they’re making the most of his leave,’ he added superfluously. ‘So tell me,’ he asked, as she stared down into her tea and stirred it. ‘How’s business?’
‘The shops? Not too bad. Of course the sweet shop in the New Theatre is barely ticking over, with sugar so heavily rationed.’
‘But you are selling something?’
‘“Something” being the operative word. “Don’t ask what’s in it, just eat it” seems to be the motto in the food trade these days. The toffee and boiled sweets we stock would have been thrown in the bin before the war. It’s amazing what people will eat when there’s nothing else on offer.’
‘You run a pie shop as well, don’t you?’
‘Wyn and I have gone half-shares with Alma. She supplies us with cooked meat, brawn and pies, we own and run the shop and we’re generally sold out by midday.’
‘We’re so short of things to put on the menu I was wondering if she could supply us. I’ve been meaning to talk to Tina about it, but it’s pointless trying to discuss anything with her until William goes back.’
‘You’ll also have to check with Alma. I think she’s hard pressed to supply two shops at the moment, although she was thinking of expanding.’
‘The kitchen in our High Street café isn’t being used at the moment. She’s welcome to take it over if she wants to. I’ll talk to her about it when she’s had a chance to get over the funeral. She seems to be having a rough time lately.’
‘She’s had worse.’ Diana coloured as she recalled that the most difficult time for Alma was just before she’d married Charlie, right after Ronnie had deserted her to marry Maud. ‘Her mother had been ill for a long time, so it was expected. But to go back to the shops, Alma and I were hoping to open more places that could be run along the lines of the High Street shop, which is supply only, so your idea of utilising your kitchen in the High Street café could be a good one. But that will be up to Alma. It all depends on what stock she can get from the slaughterhouse.’
‘The figures will need going into. We haven’t much capital set aside. This café’s takings are down on what I remember, but like your sweet shop we’re ticking over. Seems to me that’s all any legitimate business can expect to do in wartime. More tea?’ As he turned the tap on the urn, the door opened. Diana looked up and saw Tony standing in the doorway, a thunderous expression clouding his clean-cut Italian features.
‘I see you’re very busy,’ he mumbled, swaying on his feet.
‘As busy as trade warrants,’ Ronnie answered, assuming Tony had spoken to him. ‘Can I get you anything? Black coffee, for instance?’
‘All I want is five minutes alone with her.’ Grabbing Diana’s wrist with one hand, he lifted the flap in the counter with the other. Too stunned to protest, Diana didn’t make a sound as he dragged her off the stool.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Ronnie remonstrated, as one of the tram drivers walked out of the back room to pay his bill.
‘Stay out of things that don’t concern you,’ Tony snarled.
‘Your brother’s in the kitchen, Diana,’ Ronnie said in a loud voice for the customers’ benefit as Tony pushed her through the swing door. Smiling at the driver, he muttered, ‘Sorry, must go. Family reunion. I’ll send someone out to take your money.’
Jane was sitting in the back kitchen with Phyllis. Between them they’d cleaned the house, finished the washing, hung it on the line and done what little baking they could with the stores on the pantry shelves. Although they had Bethan’s two children as well as Brian and Anne, both babies were sleeping and Brian and Rachel were playing happily on the floor with a collection of old wooden trucks that had once belonged to Haydn and Eddie.
‘Is the mending basket still in the same place?’ Jane asked.
‘I haven’t found anywhere new to hide it. But you don’t have to work all the time. You’re supposed to be taking it easy so your ribs will heal.’
‘If I don’t do something, I’ll start screaming.’
‘It will be easier, once you get used to living here again.’
‘If you really are serious about looking after Anne for me, perhaps I ought to take up Jenny’s suggestion of working in munitions.’
‘And what would Haydn say about that?’
‘Not a lot, seeing how he isn’t here. And then again, he didn’t exactly ask me what I thought about him touring the front. In fact he didn’t even tell me he was going until the night before we came here.’
‘So you want to get your own back on him by working in munitions when you know he wouldn’t approve?’ Phyllis suggested gently.
‘I want to do something more than just sit around, cooking, cleaning and looking after Anne. Being trapped in that cellar was horrible. Everything was so dark and quiet after the bomb fell that for a long time I wasn’t sure whether I’d been deafened by the blast or killed. It was only when Anne started crying that I realised we’d been buried alive. And even then it seemed to take an eternity for them to dig us out.’
‘I can’t even begin to imagine what it was like,’ Phyllis said, dropping her knitting on to her lap.
‘I would like to help build a bomb that would do to Berlin what the Germans did to our house.’
‘That’s only natural, but you have to consider Haydn’s feelings. Some men hate the idea of their wives working.’
‘You know Haydn isn’t like that.’
‘I’m not so sure.’
‘I’ve been reading the paper,’ Jane continued, glossing over Phyllis’s suggestion of Haydn’s disapproval. ‘They say it takes seven factory workers to keep one front-line soldier supplied with arms. If we are going to win this war thousands more women are going to have to volunteer.’
‘Perhaps you could talk to someone at the Labour Exchange. I know, from what Myrtle Rees has said, there’s three shifts a day in the factory. They might take into account that you’re a mother and let you work part time. But I still think you ought to write to Haydn and let him know what you’re thinking of doing.’
‘Only if you really wouldn’t mind looking after Anne.’ Jane neatly evaded giving a direct answer. ‘Now that I can’t feed her any more, it won’t matter who gives her a bottle.’
‘Get well first.’ Phyllis patted her arm as she picked up the kettle and went out to the washhouse to fill it. ‘You may feel differently about the idea a few weeks from now.’
‘Not after losing my home and everything we owned in London.’
‘All I’m saying is don’t make any decisions in a hurry. It will take you a while to recover.’
‘And helping to put together a bomb might be just the medicine I need to get better.’
‘Watch the counter.’
‘Mr Ronconi …’
‘The counter,’ Ronnie repeated to the cook, ‘and take off that apron. It’s spattered with grease. Here,’ he slipped off the khaki jacket he was wearing and handed it over as the man walked past.
‘What do I do if anyone wants anything from the kitchen?’
‘Knock on the hatch.’ Ronnie closed the swing doors as soon as he left, pushing the bolt across so no one could get in. ‘You all right, Diana?’ he asked, as she sank, white-faced and dark-eyed on to a stool.
She nodded unconvincingly. He turned to his brother who was leaning against the wall, looking as though he’d collapse without its support.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, coming into the café drunk in the middle of the day and pushing Diana around? The customers will be talking for months.’
‘What I do, or don’t do, is no concern of yours,
big
brother,’ Tony retorted belligerently, as he reached into his pocket for his hip flask.
‘No? You create a scene in a business that’s owned by the family. Harass a customer who happens to be Tina’s sister-in-law and a friend of all your sisters, and you think it’s none of my business?’
‘Friend?’ Tony mocked. ‘She’s no one’s bloody friend.’ He took a step towards Diana. As Ronnie moved between them Tony shoved him aside. Ronnie tottered unsteadily, forced to put all his weight on his crutch.
‘You’d better go and sleep it off in Laura’s before you make even more of a fool of yourself than you already have.’
‘Not until I’ve talked to her.’
‘You’re in no fit state to talk to anyone, let alone a lady.’
‘Now she’s a lady?’ Tony sniggered, then upended the flask into his mouth.
‘You’ve insulted her and me enough. Go now, before I make you.’
‘Make me! All you can make me do is laugh. You look like a bloody scarecrow and you haven’t even got the strength of one.’ He sidestepped as Ronnie reached out to take his flask. The crutch slipped and Ronnie went crashing to the floor, hitting his shoulder on the cooker on the way down.
‘Look what you’ve done now, you fool!’ Angrier with Tony for causing Ronnie pain than for manhandling her, Diana was on her knees in an instant.
‘He’s all right.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘I’m fine,’ Ronnie protested as he struggled to his feet looking anything but.
‘I want … no, I
demand
to see my son. It’s my right -’
‘Get out of here, Tony, before William comes down.’ Diana helped Ronnie on to the stool she’d been sitting on. Picking up his crutch she handed it to him.
‘What son?’ Ronnie asked in bewilderment, as he rubbed his shoulder.
‘Ask the slut. That baby of hers is mine.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Diana countered forcefully as she helped Ronnie unbutton his shirt.
‘I can count as well as any other man. Why the hell didn’t you tell me?’
‘There was nothing to tell, even if you’d been in a mood to listen.’
‘You were my girlfriend.’
‘You were the one who stopped talking to me, remember?’ She peeled back Ronnie’s shirt. White shreds of skin hung from a rapidly swelling, reddened area that covered his upper arm and shoulderblade. She threw a tea towel into the stone sink and turned on the tap.
‘And whose fault was that?’ Tony grabbed her, pushing his face close to hers. His warm, whisky-soaked breath wafted over her. She recoiled swiftly in disgust.
‘It didn’t work out between us, Tony. Leave it at that.’ She wrung out the cloth and pressed it against Ronnie’s shoulder. Tony caught her arm and spun her round.
‘I’m not leaving anything, not until I’ve seen my son. I know my rights,’ he added vehemently.
‘What exactly do you want, Tony?’ she charged angrily. ‘Billy? You intend to take care of him in an army camp? You have a woman waiting in your barracks who can change his nappies and feed him?’
‘You can keep him,’ he muttered. ‘But I’ve a right to see him. To tell him who is father is.’
‘Rights! Even if he was yours – which he’s not – you have no rights: not over me, and certainly not over Billy.’
‘I’ll go to court.’
‘That will be a new one for Ponty magistrates and the
Observer.
A man wanting to acknowledge a legitimately-born child as his bastard! Are you that eager to see Wyn put me out on the streets? Do you want to make me destitute enough to go to the courts to sue for whatever the magistrate will order you to pay in maintenance? Because if you do, I’m telling you now, five bob a week will be nowhere near enough to keep us. We’ll take all your guardsman’s pay and more.’
‘I … I …’ He dropped his flask to the floor. The whisky trickled out on to the red tiles, forming a puddle in a dip beneath the butcher’s block. He stood there watching it grow, while his drink-fuddled mind groped for words to explain what he wanted. It was impossible. The more he tried to think, the less certain he was of what he expected from Diana.
‘Is that what you want?’ she reiterated. ‘Because you’ve made a fine start by pushing me in here. Ronnie’s right, you’ve created a scene that’s going to keep the gossips going in this town for years. God alone knows what Wyn’s going to say about this.’
‘Bloody queer,’ Tony mumbled, regaining some of his belligerence.
‘He’s
my
husband and the father of
my
son.’ She stood her ground for a moment, then tackled the bolt on the door.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To get help for Ronnie.’
‘Oh no you don’t. You’re not walking away from me, not a second time.’ He clamped his hand over her neck and forced her into the corner of the room. Fighting for breath, she backed into the gas cooker and hit her arm on a pan of hot fat. She cried out in pain, knocking over a stack of clean saucepans piled on a shelf behind the stove as she struggled to free herself from his grip. Ronnie hauled himself to his feet as someone hammered on the other side of the door. He lifted his crutch and brought it down on Tony’s head just as the door finally gave way.
Eyes blurred by tears of pain and humiliation, Diana watched William step through the doorway into the kitchen. He took in the situation at a glance. Leaving Ronnie to Tina who followed him in, he stepped over Tony who was half-sitting, half-lying in a dazed stupor and went to Diana. Leading her to the sink, he slid back the scorched sleeve of her jacket, exposed the skin on her forearm and ran the cold tap over it.
Tina peeled back more of Ronnie’s shirt, tutting at the red marks that were already bruising purple-black. ‘I told you when you came home that you looked dreadful. A breath of fresh air would have been enough to flatten you, but what do you do? Take it easy? Oh no, not you. You have a go at Tony who’s done nothing but live off the fat of the land for the last year.’
‘Great – my shoulder hurts and I get a lecture from my sister.’
‘What happened?’ William asked, as he examined Diana’s arm.
‘Tony came in drunk and looking for trouble, so I laid him out. Diana was at the counter when he arrived and very foolishly tried to help.’
‘Sis?’ William asked sceptically.
‘I thought I could calm him down.’
‘Stupid girl. Especially considering you two had a bust-up before he joined up. This arm is a right mess. I think we should call the doctor.’
‘I’m shivering from shock, not the burn.’
Ronnie looked across at her, then reached out to the fat-fryer with his fingertips to check the temperature at the bottom of the pan. ‘We haven’t had any orders for chips for over an hour so it couldn’t have been that hot. Her arm is red now, but I doubt it will blister. Slice a raw potato over it, bind it with a tea towel soaked in cold water and it should be right as rain in a few hours.’