Authors: Catrin Collier
‘Thank you, Dr Ronconi. I didn’t know you’d studied medicine in Italy.’
‘Ronnie’s right, I’ve done worse than this at home.’ Diana took another clean towel from the pile on the work surface and threw it into the sink.
‘Do you think Tony needs a doctor?’ Tina asked.
‘He took a lot more punishment than this in training camp.’ William crouched beside him and lifted his eyelid.
‘You mean he’s done this before?’
‘Get drunk? We all do from time to time,’ William confessed.
‘And pick fights?’
‘I never do, especially after I’ve had a few drinks. It’s difficult to gauge the other man’s strength. Some of the small blokes can be surprisingly strong, especially the Scots …’
‘I wasn’t talking about you, I was asking about Tony. Has he picked fights before?’ Tina demanded furiously.
‘Now and again.’
‘And got knocked out cold?’
‘This isn’t the first time I’ve seen him like this.’
‘With a lump this size on his head?’ Tina enquired caustically.
‘I doubt he even feels it. It will soon go down. People in his state usually develop rubber skulls. But boy is he going to have a hangover tomorrow.’
‘William’s right,’ Ronnie confirmed. ‘Once he sleeps off the whisky he’ll be fine. I’ll give you a hand to get him upstairs, Will. He can sleep it off there.’
‘Not in my rooms he can’t.’
‘Be reasonable, Tina, he’s in no condition to go anywhere else.’
‘William and I had a ten-hour honeymoon when we got married, and I haven’t seen him between then and now. The last thing I need is a drunken brother cluttering up the place while I’m getting to know my husband.’
‘We’ll put him in the living room, he’ll be out of the way there,’ William proposed.
‘I’ll keep an eye on him. As soon as he comes round I’ll send him on his way.’
‘And you really look as though you should be running up and down stairs looking after a drunk as well as a café, Ronnie,’ Tina snapped.
‘My shoulder’s bruised, not broken,’ he said as he pulled on his shirt and buttoned it.
‘If you ask me, this is a bloody mess all round.’ William looked from Ronnie to Tony, the spilt whisky, fat and scattered saucepans.
‘I’ll clear it,’ Tina announced in a martyred voice as she picked up a bucket of sawdust and sprinkled a couple of handfuls over the rapidly congealing lard on the floor.
‘Come on, sis.’ William held out his arm. ‘The sooner I get you home, the sooner I can come back and help Tina to sort this out.’
Diana leaned against the sink, shaking her head. ‘I still have the banking to do.’ She couldn’t bear the thought of walking out into the café and facing the cook and the customers.
‘The banking can wait until tomorrow.’
‘No it can’t. You’ve no idea how much thieving goes on under cover of the blackout. I daren’t leave the takings in the shop tills overnight.’
‘Then I’ll do it.’
‘You wouldn’t know how.’
‘So tell me.’
‘Take her out the back way,’ Ronnie suggested, sensing why Diana was so reluctant to move. ‘There’s two doors in the yard: left-hand one connects to the slaughterhouse the other to the yard at the back of the White Hart. Take your pick.’
William put his arm around Diana. This time she didn’t protest. He looked back at Tina as he led her to the door.
‘You take care of Diana, I’ll see to these two fools,’ she said briskly. ‘And you don’t have to worry about me coping, I’ve been coping for years. Italian women are brought up to it, but Gina, not me, nursemaids that one.’ She pointed to Tony. ‘I’m not giving up our time together for anyone, especially a drunk.’
‘Want to tell me about it?’ William asked Diana as he escorted her through the side entrance into the yard of the White Hart.
‘Didn’t you hear?’
‘Shouting, and crashing, that’s why Tina and I came downstairs. Whatever it is, Di, I’d rather hear it from you than someone else.’
‘As you saw, Tony was drunk. He said a lot of stupid things.’
‘Is there any truth in them?’
‘What do you think?’
He led her across the road past the New Theatre. Compared to Saturday afternoon, the town was deserted.
‘So, is Tony Billy’s father?’ he asked bluntly.
‘Then you did hear what he said?’
‘I think the whole street did, and you haven’t answered my question.’
‘You’re my brother. I shouldn’t have to defend myself to you.’
‘Whether Tony is or isn’t Billy’s father, he obviously has reason to think he might be.’
‘You saw him, he was drunk. He didn’t know what he was saying.’
‘You’re avoiding the issue, Di.’
‘I don’t think he was happy about the way we stopped seeing one another.’
‘If I remember rightly, neither were you.’
‘Things are different now, I’m married.’
‘For how long, after Wyn hears about what just happened?’ William asked.
‘He’s stood by me through worse.’
‘I’m trying to help, sis, but I can’t unless you tell me what’s going on.’
‘You heard Ronnie. Tony came into the café fighting mad and half out of his mind with drink.’
‘And that’s what you’re going to tell Wyn?’
‘Wyn and I have no secrets. He already knows all there is to know about me.’
‘More than me?’
‘More than anyone. And we’ve lived through gossip before, and survived.’
‘Don’t you think this has more serious implications? Not just for you and Wyn, but Billy. Bastard is an ugly word, and allegations like the one Tony’s just made have a habit of sticking. How are you going to feel when Billy has to face the taunts of the other kids when he starts school?’
‘Billy’s not a bastard,’ she contradicted forcefully, ‘and Tony will soon be gone. Then this whole thing will be forgotten. ‘
‘I hope you’re right, for all your sakes, especially Billy’s,’ he said fervently as they turned the corner into Market Square.
‘It will be all right. You’ll see.’ It wasn’t a pronouncement, more a prayer, but she didn’t succeed in convincing herself, much less William.
‘Thank you for a lovely day.’
‘It’s not quite over yet.’ Huw helped Myrtle from the train and reached into his sports coat for their train tickets.
She followed him, trying to read her watch in the pool of light from the collector’s torch.
‘It’s only just half-past nine,’ Huw informed her as they walked down the steps into station yard. ‘How about a coffee in the New Inn?’ he hazarded bravely, deciding that if she wasn’t ashamed to be seen with him in the lounge of the best hotel in Pontypridd, he’d risk his pride by asking her to go out with him again.
‘I really should be getting home. I feel guilty leaving Megan to look after my father on my day off.’
He knew Mr Rees was invariably in bed by eight every evening. What he didn’t know was that the old man rarely fell asleep before midnight, and the front parlour that had been converted into his bedroom was ideally placed to monitor all the comings and goings in the household.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ He failed to keep the disappointment from his voice.
‘Perhaps just a quick one,’ she relented, daring to put her own wishes above her father’s for the first time in her life.
‘It will be as quick as they can serve us. Did you really enjoy the film?’ He reached the bottom of the steps and held out his arm. Secure in the knowledge that they couldn’t be seen in the blackout, she took it.
‘It was lovely. Do you think that’s what Jesse James was really like?’
‘Most crooks I’ve met looked more like Boris Karloff than Tyrone Power.’
‘That’s because the only ones you’ve met are from Pontypridd.’
‘You think they breed a better-looking lawbreaker in America?’
She laughed, and his step lightened at the sound. He felt as though he’d caught a glimpse of the real Myrtle behind the facade of polite, dutiful deference her father had instilled into her. ‘Do you have a day off next week?’ he asked impetuously.
‘Tuesday.’
‘Two days before mine. By the look of it we could wait months for our days off to coincide again, but I’m on days all this week, so my evenings are free.’
‘So are mine.’
‘I’ll be finished by six, but I’d have to go home to wash and change afterwards, which means I wouldn’t be able to meet you much before seven. Is that too late for you?’
‘I never go to bed before half-past nine.’
‘Although you have to be up at four?’
‘I try to catch an hour’s sleep when I come home.’
‘Well if we only have two and a half hours, that rules out Cardiff, but we could go to the pictures. If we time it carefully we might be able to see the main feature, or I could book tickets for the second house in the Town Hall if you prefer.’
‘There’s a new variety there this week.’
‘Shall we risk it?’
‘Yes please.’
He closed his hand around the fingers nestling in the crook of his arm. ‘I’ll get the tickets, then. Is tomorrow night too soon?’
She threw all ladylike hesitation and caution to the wind. ‘Not a bit. I’ll really look forward to it.’
Diana woke with a start, and looked around at the familiar furniture in the bedroom. The light was burning on the bedside table, illuminating the alarm clock. She read the time, ten o’clock, and sat up abruptly.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Wyn pressed her back on to the pillows.
‘Billy …’
‘Your mother gave me a hand to bath him and put him to bed. If you make any more noise you’re likely to wake him.’
‘I didn’t mean to sleep so long,’ she whispered, looking over to the cot where her son was sleeping peacefully.
‘How’s your arm?’
She tried to move her forearm. It felt stiff and strange. She looked down at the bandages and it all came flooding back to her. Tony – the awful scene in the café – William walking her home. Her mother sending for Bethan, who had dressed her burn, given her a pill and sent her to bed.
‘Oh God, Wyn …’
‘It’s all right. I heard what happened.’
‘From William?’
‘He told your mother, and he met me off the train.’
‘What are we going to do?’
‘Nothing.’ He sat alongside her on the bed and put his arm around her shoulders.
‘You weren’t there. You didn’t hear what Tony said, but Ronnie did. He knows everything …’
‘Whatever he knows, he’s kept to himself so far. And seeing as how it involves his brother I think it will stay that way. All William told me was that Tony came in drunk and looking for a fight and you stepped in between him and Ronnie.’
‘He didn’t tell you that Tony said Billy was his child?’
‘No, but Tony shouting out allegations in a drunken stupor doesn’t prove anything.’
‘It proves that I slept with him.’
‘If anyone says that to William’s or my face they’ll get the same treatment Ronnie meted out to Tony.’
She peered up at him in the soft glow of the lamplight, seeing the cuts and bruises on his jaw and his swollen black eye for the first time.
‘It’s already started, hasn’t it?’ She reached out, touching his battered face tenderly with her fingertips.
‘No. I got these in work. And before you go taking all the credit, some of my colleagues don’t like new men coming in, especially friends of Erik’s. The factory nurse cleaned me up. It’s nowhere near as bad as it looks.’
‘I don’t believe you.’ She wrapped her arms around his chest as tears welled up in her eyes. ‘None of this would have happened if you hadn’t married me.’
‘Of course it would have.’
‘I don’t mean the factory, I mean Tony.’
‘It will soon blow over. Ronnie told William that he intends to put Tony on the first train to Birmingham tomorrow morning. If we stick together, sit it out, the gossip will die down, it always has before.’
‘There’s still my mother and William.’
‘If you want to tell them the truth, go ahead. I doubt that it will come as a shock. I think your mother has suspected it for a long time, and if William had been around when we’d got married, we would have had to face a lot more questions than we did.’
She clung to his arm, burying her head in his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry Wyn, so sorry …’
‘Come on now, love. This isn’t like you.’
‘More gossip and scandal is the last thing we need right now.’
‘I don’t think anyone needs it at any time. I’ll see the boss tomorrow, ask him to put me on the night shift. That way I can help out with the shops and the banking. I don’t want you walking around town by yourself until we’re sure Tony’s gone.’
‘That’s silly.’
‘No it isn’t. Promise me you’ll stay in the house tomorrow?’
‘But the shops -’
‘Alice is capable enough, she can look after things until I can change my shifts.’ The front door opened and closed. ‘That’s Myrtle coming home.’ He left the bed.
‘Are you going to tell her?’
‘Only that Tony got drunk and said some stupid things. Would you like some supper?’
She shook her head.
‘Your mother said you haven’t eaten since breakfast.’
‘I couldn’t eat, not now, Wyn.’
He tucked the counterpane around her as though she were a child. ‘Nothing’s going to change,’ he said firmly. ‘You’re my wife, and you were right in the park. That is my son sleeping over there. No one else’s.’
She looked up at him. ‘I love you.’
He dropped a kiss on to her forehead. ‘And I love you too. You sure I can’t get you anything?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Then try to sleep. I’ll be up in a while.’
He walked down the stairs and into the living room, glancing at the parlour door as he passed through the hall. He couldn’t hear his father, but that didn’t mean the old man was sleeping. If he ever discovered what had happened in the café, they’d never hear the end of it. Billy was his pride and joy, his link with the future, his immortality. He couldn’t even begin to imagine how his father would react if he suspected the child wasn’t bonded to him by blood. He pushed open the door. Myrtle was sitting in one of the easy chairs, a faraway, dreamy expression in her eyes.
‘Good day out?’ he asked, picking up the kettle.
‘Yes thanks,’ she replied blushing at the lies she’d told Wyn and Megan about Moira James and Roath Park.
‘Megan’s gone to bed. I’ll make us some tea if you like.’
‘You sit there, I’ll make it. I’d like to talk to you if you’re not too tired.’
‘Is something wrong?’ she asked, panic-stricken at the thought that one of the neighbours had seen her and Huw together and told her father. His temper had always been unpredictable, more so since he’d been ill. ‘If it’s about what happened today …’
‘You’ve heard?’
‘I suppose I should have told you, but I was afraid of what Dad would say. You know what he can be like?’
‘Only too well.’ Wyn went out into the kitchen and filled the kettle.
‘But honestly, Wyn, he behaved like a perfect gentleman the whole time we were out. You don’t think it was wrong of me to accept his invitation, do you?’
‘Wrong of you to accept what invitation?’ he asked, mystified by the question.
‘Huw’s of course.’
‘You’ve been out with Huw Davies?’
‘Wasn’t that what we were talking about?’
‘No.’ He laughed softly at the thought of his sister and Huw Davies courting.
‘What’s so funny?’ she demanded indignantly.
‘You. Huw asks you out and you think you’ve got to keep it quiet.’
‘Dad wouldn’t like it.’
‘To hell with what he’d like, and I hope the old bugger has got that empty glass he keeps next to his bed pinned against the wall to hear me say so.’
‘Wyn!’
‘Myrtle, go out with Huw. Have a wonderful time, marry him if you want to.’ He returned to the living room and picked up the teapot.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Women like me don’t get married.’
‘Like you? What makes you so different from everyone else?’
‘I’m thirty-eight.’
‘And thirty-eight-year-olds aren’t allowed to get married?’
‘This is the first time Huw’s asked me to go anywhere with him, it was a day out, that’s all. I hardly think he has marriage on his mind.’
‘You seeing him again?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Then he has marriage on his mind.’
‘Do you really think so?’ she questioned eagerly, surprising herself as much as Wyn.
‘Huw’s old enough to know a good thing when he sees it. He wouldn’t be chasing if he didn’t mean to catch you.’
‘Still, you won’t breathe a word of it, will you? Dad …’
‘You’ve got to learn to stand up to him, Myrtle. He’s going to find out sooner or later, and better from you than the chapel minister.’
‘I’d just rather he didn’t find out yet. I really like Huw, and Dad can be so intimidating.’
‘Intimidating! That’s a new way of putting it. Myrtle, Huw’s a policeman, he meets people ten times more terrifying than Dad every day of the week. And as he obviously likes you, he won’t be put off by Dad’s or anyone else’s nonsense. I wish you well, both of you.’ He returned to the kitchen to warm the teapot. ‘But it wasn’t that I wanted to talk to you about,’ he said as he walked back into the living room. ‘Tony Ronconi got drunk this afternoon. He went to the café on the Tumble. Diana was there and he attacked her.’
‘Tony? But why on earth would he do that?’
‘Because he thinks Billy is his son.’
‘His! Wyn, I don’t understand.’
‘Yes you do,’ he contradicted softly, taking the chair opposite hers. ‘Even you can’t be that naive.’
She stared at her knees as he lifted down the tin tea caddy embossed with a portrait of Edward VII that had been a wedding present of their mother’s.
‘Did he hurt Diana?’
‘Her arm was splashed by hot fat, but it’s not serious. I’ve just talked to her. She’s upset of course, but she’ll soon get over it.’ He returned to the kitchen, wet the tea and brought in the pot.