‘Just let me – if you wouldn’t mind – catch my breath,’ he said, with laughing gasps, though she could not for a long time lift her face from his shoulder. Nor was she able to form a coherent sentence, so Fred did the talking for both of them, and merely the sound of his voice – with nobody there to interrupt it – assured her that she was, incontrovertibly, a free woman. A policeman on duty at the gates was looking on in idle curiosity; she wondered how many such reunions he had witnessed at this spot. To him she was just another member of the criminal classes.
Fred had picked up her suitcase. ‘We could wait here for a cab, if you like –’
‘No, let’s just walk,’ she said. ‘I’d rather not spend another minute around this place.’ They started up Hillmarton Road, and Connie linked her arm through Fred’s. A low sun glistened over the rooftops. To tread this pavement, to feel the nipping February air on her face – these things she would never take for granted again. On Caledonian Road they caught a ’bus heading south, and sat on the top deck. Fred took a packet of Sullivans from his pocket, and they lit one each. She watched an aproned waiter sluicing down the pavement outside one of the poky dining rooms that lined the way, and noticed the bill of fare in its window. Chops, steamed pudding, cocoa; what a treat in store after five months of Holloway’s food. Would she ever be able to banish the taste of that tea?
Fred meanwhile was praising the good offices of Mr Fotheringham, who had called at Thornhill Crescent in person to tell them the news of her imminent release. ‘Very decent of Mr Tamburlain to hire him, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes … astonishingly decent,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘He’s a friend of – William Maitland.’ She suffered a sharp little pang as she said his name, and wondered how long it might take her to forget him. Fred glanced warily at her.
‘Heard anything from him?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t expect to. He made his feelings quite plain when he came to visit.’
Fred nodded, and gave a slight grimace. ‘I should warn you – there’ll be a reception committee waiting at home. Ma says that the family needs to pull together in a crisis –’
‘A bit late for that, I would have thought. And if she really believes in pulling together, why did she never visit me?’
Fred looked embarrassed, unable to defend his family’s negligence yet unwilling to be disloyal. ‘Well, I suppose it was hard for her –’
‘No need to explain, Fred,’ she cut in, not wishing to hear about her mother’s delicate nerves. ‘I’m only glad that I had you to rely on.’ And she hugged him fiercely again.
‘Steady on, old thing,’ he said, blushing. Fred was never quite at ease with public displays of affection. They alighted from the ’bus and turned into Lofting Road. The streets looked the same to Connie, yet felt subtly different; they had taken on a queer new vivacity in her absence, she thought. Life had been going on as usual while she was away. It would go on as usual when she was dead. On past St Andrew’s Church they walked, and she felt a hollowing nervousness as they rounded the crescent towards the house. At the front window a face appeared, and then withdrew – Olivia’s? At the steps she took a last drag of her Sullivan and extinguished it beneath her heel. She realised she had been holding Fred’s hand, something she’d not done since they were children.
The front door opened, and her aunt Jemima stepped onto the porch, and Connie walked into her embrace.
‘Welcome home, dear,’ she said, patting her back like a child. ‘I’m so glad to see you again.’
‘Not as glad as I am to see you,’ said Connie, trying to keep her voice steady. She walked into the hallway, and Fred took her coat and hat while she wondered where the rest of the family was. Jemima gestured silently towards the drawing room, and Connie followed her in. The first person she saw was her mother, swathed in blankets on the couch; her face looked pale, waxy and drawn. Olivia and Lionel, both stationed by the fireplace, seemed rooted to the spot. Seated near the piano, his knobbly hand resting on his cane, was her grandfather, with his ‘helpmeet’ Mrs Rhodes, and next to them Louis. It was almost as if they were all waiting for her to do something. Then, amid the dithering, Louis sprang forward to plant a kiss on her.
‘Hullo, Con,’ he said, and taking courage from his gesture she went around the room offering her hand to shake and her cheek to kiss. She sensed a wariness in their reception, but also a sort of pride, as though she were a notorious royal returning from exile. She supposed there had never been a jailbird in the family before. Folding herself onto her knees she kissed her mother, who, still supine on the couch, said in a broken voice, ‘Oh, darling, what have they done to your lovely hair?’ And with a trembling hand she stroked Connie’s shorn head.
‘It’ll grow back, Ma. You’ll see.’ On her way home she had promised herself that, having succumbed to tears on seeing Fred, she would not cry again that day. But the tenderness of her mother’s touch proved too pathetic to bear, and Connie fell against her, eyes flooded and unseeing.
Later, encouraged by the benign midwinter temperature, she drifted out to the garden and held her face to the thin silver brilliance of the sun. She had made a particular point of talking to Mrs Rhodes, who seemed pleasantly surprised to have been invited to the house after being excluded from Olivia’s wedding last September. Connie knew it must have been Fred’s unthinking generosity that had secured her invitation. Louis had just lit a cigarette for her when she saw her grandfather tottering towards them.
‘My dear,’ he wheezed, ‘splendid to have you back in the land of the living.’ His eyes were rheumy and rather bloodshot.
‘Grandpa,’ she smiled.
‘I’ll have you know I wrote to The Times about that blackguard doctor,’ and he proceeded, with pauses and many nyuff-nyuffs, to recount the burden of his outraged missive. ‘Didn’t print the damned thing,’ he concluded vaguely.
‘It was good of you to take the trouble,’ she said, patting his hand.
He eyed her worriedly. ‘You’re looking a bit scrawny, my dear. What say I take you and feller-me-lad to dine at the club one of these days?’
‘No ladies permitted, I think …’
He looked confused for a moment. ‘Oh … well … Verrey’s, then. We’ll have a good feed at Verrey’s.’
Out of the corner of her eye Connie saw Olivia coming down the garden towards them, Lionel and Fred in tow. Her sister’s greeting in the drawing room had, not untypically, lacked warmth: she had a habit of leaning in and offering her cheek, while keeping her lips firmly pointed away from the recipient, as if in fear of a contagion. Connie could not recall the last time they had embraced. Even their long separation had not inclined Olivia to soften her glacial manner. She was staring at the cigarette in Connie’s hand.
‘I suppose it barely matters inside a prison, but it is rather common to be seen smoking on the street.’ So it had been her face at the window. Connie looked hard at her, then shook her head.
‘Is that really the first thing you wished to say to me after five months?’
Olivia, flinching, pursed her lips. ‘I’m – very glad you’ve recovered from your illness. Fred kept us informed. But I’m appalled that you could have put your life at risk in that way. Your behaviour … I sometimes wonder how we could possibly be related to one another.’
‘I wonder about that, too,’ said Connie, surprised to find herself so quickly on the defensive. ‘I suppose you think I’m a danger to myself.’
‘As a matter of fact I do,’ Olivia replied, ‘though short of having you put away somewhere there’s not much we can do about that.’
Fred interposed himself at that. ‘Olivia – please. How can you talk of putting Con away when she’s only just got out?’
Lionel, whose thunderous brow was writ large with disapproval, now began to address Connie. ‘I do think you might start with an apology to your mother.’
‘Oh, really – an apology?’
‘Yes. For bringing disgrace on the family.�
��
Connie gasped out a little laugh at this, and then stopped. She fixed Lionel with a gaze of incredulous scorn, and said, very coolly, ‘I’m sorry, but I haven’t the smallest notion as to why you feel qualified even to speak to me, let alone advise me.’ Lionel made to reply, but Connie was now addressing herself to Olivia. ‘I’m quite prepared to continue this conversation, but I’m afraid it must be without … him at my elbow.’ Olivia looked to Lionel, who seemed to rear back as though his face had been suddenly slapped.
‘Of all the impudent –’ he began, until Olivia cut him short.
‘Lionel, that’s enough.’
Connie, her arms folded, would not even deign to look in his direction, but she knew from the sharpness of her sister’s tone that Lionel had overstepped. Some moments passed, and then, following some heated whispers between husband and wife, Connie heard Lionel turn sullenly away and recede from earshot. She looked round at Fred, who had gone pale. The air felt abruptly charged, and the three siblings stood there waiting for the tension to subside.
‘So – am I to be awarded the official role of the family’s black sheep?’ mused Connie.
‘It pleases you to jest,’ Olivia replied. ‘But it is our misfortune that you are blind to any sense of shame.’
‘Well, that’s not entirely –’ Fred began in objection, but was cut off by Olivia, whose face seemed to tighten with hostility.
‘From what I’ve heard Mr Maitland was also appalled by your behaviour –’
‘Who told –’ Connie glanced at Fred, who had let his head drop guiltily. With an answering coldness she said, ‘Whatever passed between Mr Maitland and myself is none of your business.’
‘Perhaps so. He has had a lucky escape, one might say. But it becomes my business –’ and here she dropped her voice to a threatening undertone ‘– when your pursuit of notoriety impinges on Mother’s health.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You must see how ill she is! Do you suppose she rejoices in the knowledge that her daughter tried to starve herself to death?’
‘But Ma has been like that ever since Pa died. She has made herself a martyr to her nerves – you know that.’
‘You selfish girl,’ Olivia hissed, colouring angrily. ‘You have no idea what she has been through. What Pa did she will never be able –’
‘That’s enough, Olivia,’ said Fred, whose interruption this time was so decisive that Connie sensed something afoot. Olivia herself looked suddenly discomfited, as though her reference to their father had been quite involuntary. Something ominous, glimpsed from the corner of Connie’s eye but never comprehended, was gathering into view. But what it was she still couldn’t say.
‘I think, perhaps, you ought to explain,’ she said. ‘I know how hard it’s been for her – but we lost a father, too, remember.’
Olivia now paused, and looked around to check that their conversation was not being monitored. Her voice sounded different. ‘I never wanted to have to tell you this, but your behaviour compels me to. This cannot happen to Ma again – it must not.’
‘What do you mean, “again”?’ said Connie, who felt her dread stirring into certainty. She knew what was coming. It was like burning your hand on the stove; the accidental touch warned you, but it took your brain a fraction of a second longer to register the pain. Olivia’s mouth trembled as she spoke.
‘Another suicide in the family – it would destroy her.’
Connie felt the shock of the words, and yet it wasn’t a surprise. If she had thought about it long enough, it would have been obvious, and so she had never dared to think about it. Her father had been brought to ruin by a financial speculation. Had she never suspected the convenience of his being felled by a heart attack so soon afterwards? She looked at Fred, whose face was averted. She could tell from the hang of his shoulders that he already knew.
‘How?’ Her voice sounded hollow in her chest.
Olivia stared down as she spoke. Their father had stayed late in his office on the evening that news of the scheme’s failure had broken. One of his business partners by chance had seen a light under the door and gone to investigate: he had found Donald Callaway slumped at his desk, his throat leaking from the blade he had taken to it. It seemed that he had used a razor instead of a gun so as not to disturb any of his colleagues with the noise. Connie pictured her father now, the lifeblood pooling out of him, his skin still warm when he was discovered. She shuddered, and looked to Fred.
‘When did you know?’
He lifted his face, taut with misery, and glanced at Olivia. ‘About two weeks ago.’
‘Why did you keep it from us? How could you keep it from us?’
Olivia, dabbing at her eyes, shrugged. ‘You were both young. The company was trying to hush up the story, so we thought – I don’t know what we thought.’ And at that she looked to Connie, who discerned in her sister’s face not the resentment of old but something closer to anguish. Olivia and her mother had wanted to protect them from the knowledge, yet they had obliged the whole family to live a lie. A bankrupt was bad enough; a suicide was beyond the pale.
They could hear Mrs Etherington calling them into lunch. Connie suddenly felt sick to her stomach, and the thought of being the centre of attention in the dining room was not to be borne.
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to make an excuse for me,’ she said. ‘I need to go …’
‘Where?’
Connie shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I just need to gather my thoughts.’ She realised that the colour must have fled from her face, because Fred had his anxious look again.
‘Connie,’ said Olivia, ‘please don’t say anything to Ma.’
Connie nodded, then slipped round the far side of the house and exited through the garden gate. On her way down the crescent she ran into her cousins, Jecca and Flora, returning from an errand.
‘Hullo, girls,’ she said with all the brightness she could manage.
‘You’ve got short hair!’ said Flora unarguably. Connie touched her hand to her head, as if reminding herself. Both girls were staring at her, their infamous cousin, the jailbird.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Jecca.
‘Oh, just for a walk. I need some fresh air.’
Flora was still fascinated by her new haircut. ‘It looks nice.’
Connie bent down and kissed her, catching the girl’s sweet breath – so different from prison breath. ‘I’ll be back shortly,’ she called over her shoulder. On the other side of Thornhill Square she stopped in front of the new public library; they still called it ‘new’, though it had opened in 1907. Her father had taken them there – it must have been the summer before he died – and Connie remembered his remarking upon the classical ornamentation within. He had delighted in the architect’s modelling of the motifs on a Greek temple, she couldn’t recall which. Her father, the enthusiast, the showman, who could cajole anyone into a good mood by sheer force of his personality. She entered the place now, and went up the stairs to the reading room, as quiet as a church on this cold, crisp morning. She settled at a desk by the window with a view across the square. How could a man so much in love with life have shown so little regard for it? Was it a failure of reason that induced him to take his own life, or was it something worse – a failure of love? Did he ever pause to wonder what it would do to them, to her? She had been his favourite – it had been a joke among them. A shocked little gasp escaped her, and she looked about the room. No one had noticed. Another suicide … Connie felt a sudden lowering hopelessness. What use had been the strike? What use had been any of their protests?
Then she remembered the envelope which Miss Ewell had given her earlier that morning. She opened it, and drew out a crisply folded ten-pound note, with a card attached to it. The handwritten text was brief.
HMP Holloway, London, N.
25 February 1913
Dear Miss Callaway,
The enclosed is a gift to the Women’s Social and Political
Union. I know that you will ensure it reaches their treasurer via the appropriate conduit. I hardly need explain why I cannot be seen to make the donation in my own name. I pray for you and your perseverance in the cause – a good and courageous one, as it now appears to me. God bless you in all of your future endeavours, and permit me to call myself,
Your friend,
Faith Ewell
13
IN THE WEEKS following her release, Connie frequently found herself at a loss, so disabling had been the habits of prison life. Things that she had once been inclined to do almost without thinking now required a careful negotiation. Even the simple process of leaving the house gave her pause: she would tell her mother that she was about to go out, and then would look for a reply, as if awaiting her permission. In her bedroom at night she found the quiet unnerving, and would stay awake listening for a wardress’s footfall that never came. At mealtimes she was distracted by the absence of the prison grace she had heard recited daily, and would mutter it under her breath. She had also become neurotic about the laying of the table, and would surprise Fred and her mother by suddenly standing up and rearranging plates and cutlery before anyone was allowed to eat. She thought of this repetitive behaviour as ‘Holloway-itis’.
Yet Connie was not the only one to have changed. Mrs Callaway seemed at last to slough off the lassitude of her widowhood, put aside her phantom illnesses, and devoted herself to her daughter’s recuperation as though in apology for her own habits of neediness. Nothing was said on the matter between them, but Connie wondered if her mother had sensed that the dark secret of her husband’s demise was now shared equally among her children. It was as if they had pledged one another to a vow of silence. Whenever his name was mentioned, they would tread carefully and watch each other like spies in possession of the same terrible knowledge. And yet it seemed to Connie that they behaved this way not out of fear, but out of love.
Olivia also appeared to notice this change, and some weeks after their momentous encounter at Thornhill Crescent she did something quite out of character by inviting Connie to dinner. No mention was made of her heated exchange with Lionel, though Connie sensed that Olivia at some level approved of her sister’s refusal to be cowed by him: perhaps she had belatedly recognised a strain of defiance that reflected well on the Callaways. She shook her head at the pompous invitation card Olivia had seen fit to send, but she was pleased by it nevertheless. The spirit of conciliation was not everywhere apparent. At the bookshop her position as manager had been usurped in her absence, and Mr Hignett’s letter in response to Connie’s enquiry about her old job was, though polite in tone, unequivocal in its rebuff.
Half of the Human Race Page 25
