One Blue Moon Read Online Free PDF Page A

take long, Maud.’ Diana lifted Maud’s feet on to a kitchen chair. Taking her coat off, she draped it over Maud, who was still wearing hers.
    ‘There’s spare blankets in the ottoman at the foot of my bed,’ Elizabeth said. ‘You can bring one down. It will be a sight more serviceable than your damp coat.’
    ‘Yes, Aunt.’ Inwardly seething, Diana left the room. She brought down a thick grey blanket that smelt of moth-balls and folded it around Maud. Her cousin was already asleep. Slumped sideways in the chair, her fair hair was plastered close to her head in tendrils that had been curled into tight ringlets by the rain. Her face was flushed with illness and the heat of the fire. An overwhelming sense of guilt washed over Diana as she tucked the blanket around Maud’s emaciated figure. She should have done something weeks ago: persuaded Maud to leave the Infirmary when the signs of tuberculosis had become increasingly apparent; rushed her home when she had first coughed up blood, not a couple of weeks ago as Maud had told Trevor, but months back. During the first week they’d spent in Cardiff.
    It was four o’clock in the afternoon before Elizabeth had organised Maud’s bedroom to her satisfaction. Spotlessly clean furniture had been dusted and polished unnecessarily. The immaculate linoleum had been scrubbed with a bucket of warm water, lye soap and a well-worn scrubbing brush. The fire had been laid, lit, and the grate cleaned and blackleaded – by Diana. As soon as she’d finished, Elizabeth propped the double mattress against the dressing-table stool in front of the flames for airing, and it was two hours to the minute before she allowed Diana to lift it back on to the bed. The sheets, blankets and pillowcases that Elizabeth had removed from her ottoman were carried downstairs and hung over the wooden airing rack and hoisted above the range for the same magical two hours before they too were allowed on the bed.
    When the bed was finally made up to Elizabeth’s exacting requirements, she and Diana woke Maud from her unnaturally deep sleep and helped her upstairs. Elizabeth undressed her while Diana unpacked Maud’s bag. Diana’s own bag still stood ostentatiously alone and abandoned in the hall.
    ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting something to eat,’ Elizabeth muttered as she pulled the curtains against the light. Maud didn’t reply. Worn out, she was asleep again, curled comfortably into the depths of the great bed.
    ‘I’m not hungry,’ Diana answered curtly. She would have died rather than admit she was starving.
    ‘If you want a cup of tea, I’ll make you one,’ Elizabeth offered brusquely. The bread pudding was cooked, but she wouldn’t have dreamed of cutting into it before the men came home.
    ‘I’ll wash and change, and go into town.’ Diana glanced at the clock as they returned to the kitchen. ‘I need a job and the sooner I start looking, the sooner I’ll find one.’
    ‘There’s plenty of advertisements in the Observer for live-in kitchen and parlour maids in England,’ Elizabeth suggested in a marginally lighter tone. ‘There’s an agency opened in Mill Street. You can find out more there.’
    ‘One stint in the Infirmary was enough,’ Diana insisted. ‘I don’t intend to go back into service. Besides, I really would like to stay in Pontypridd close to Will.’
    ‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ Elizabeth recited in a schoolmarm voice. ‘I didn’t say too much in front of Maud because I didn’t want to risk upsetting her, but we’ve no room for you here. Your brother and your lodger Charlie are sharing the downstairs front room as it is. Haydn and Eddie are in one bedroom, your uncle and I in the other and there’s no way Maud can share a room in her condition. The box room as you well know isn’t even furnished, and we’ve no way of furnishing it. Not with the way things are at the moment.’
    ‘In that case I’d better see if I can find somewhere else.’ Diana