One Blue Moon Read Free

quickly. If her brother William’s friend Giacomo ‘Ronnie’ Ronconi was working in his family’s café on the Tumble, his Trojan van wouldn’t be far, and once he saw the state Maud was in he could hardly refuse to drive them up the hill. ‘Carry her across to Ronconi’s café,’ she ordered Pugh, as she picked up her bags from the older porter’s feet. ‘Ronnie’s a friend of ours. He’ll see us home.’
    ‘Pugh, you know you’re not allowed to leave station yard during working hours,’ the older porter lectured, ruffled by Diana’s offhand dismissal of his services.
    ‘That’s all right. I’ll take the lady from here.’ A tall thickset man with light brown curly hair, who for all of his size, weight and athletic build had a soft feminine look about him, lifted Maud from Pugh’s arms.
    ‘Wyn Rees!’ Forgetting her brother’s antipathy to Rees the sweetshop’s son, who was more commonly known in the town as ‘Rees the queer’, Diana hugged him out of sheer joy at seeing a familiar face. ‘Where did you spring from?’
    ‘Saw the commotion as I was on my way back to the shop from the post office,’ Wyn explained. ‘Dear God, Maud’s lost weight!’ he exclaimed, shifting her to a more comfortable position. ‘What have you two been doing to yourselves in Cardiff?’
    ‘Working ourselves to the bone.’
    ‘So I see. Did I hear you say you wanted to go to Ronnie’s?’
    Diana nodded.
    Tenting his coat over Maud’s head, he walked out of station yard and crossed the road quickly, avoiding a milk cart laden with churns that came rattling down the Graig hill at full tilt. Sidestepping a couple of boys on delivery bicycles, he pushed through a gawping group of gossiping women, and into the café.
    Struggling with the two Gladstones, Diana failed to keep up with him. By the time she’d opened the café door, Tina Ronconi, Ronnie’s sister, had taken Maud from Wyn, uprooted two customers, stretched Maud out across their chairs and was bathing her temples with cold water.
    Hot, steamy air, and mouth-watering warm aromas of freshly ground coffee and savoury frying blasted welcomingly into Diana’s face as she dropped her bags and closed the door. The interior of the café was dark, gloomy and blessedly, marvellously, familiar. A long mahogany counter dominated the left-hand side of the room, with matching shelves behind it, backed by an enormous mirror that reflected the rear of the huge mock-marble soda fountain, and stone lemon, lime and sarsaparilla cordial jars. A crammed conglomeration of glass sweet jars, open boxes of chocolate bars, carefully piles packets of cigarettes, cups, saucers and glass cases of iced and cream cakes filled every available inch of space on the wooden shelves.
    She paused and listened for a moment, making out the distinctive voice of her old schoolfriend, Tony Ronconi, as it drifted noisily above the din of café conversation from behind the curtained doorway that led into the unseen recesses of the kitchen. All the tables she could see were taken. They were every Saturday morning, especially those around the stove that belched warmth into the ‘front’ room of the café. Through the arched alcove she could see a tram crew huddled round the open fire in the back area, shoes off, feet on fender drying their soaking socks.
    ‘I see you looked after Maud all right?’ Ronnie, the eldest and most cynical of the second generation of Ronconis, called from behind the counter where he was pouring six mugs of tea simultaneously.
    ‘I’d like to see you look after anyone where we’ve come from, Ronnie Ronconi,’ Diana scowled, moving the bags out of the doorway and closer to the chairs Maud was lying on.
    ‘Here,’ Ronnie pushed a cup of tea and the sugar shaker across the counter towards her. ‘Tony?’ he called out to the brother next in line to him, who was working in the kitchen. ‘Take over for me.’
    ‘Who’s going to do the vegetables for the dinners if I