It was the first time he had said her name and she shivered. The silence was longer this time, and after a moment or two she forced herself to turn her head and look at him, and she knew his eyes would be waiting for her.
‘Connie, listen to me.’ He rubbed his hand tightly across his mouth. ‘I know what you’re probably thinking and you have every right to think the worst. I can’t undo the past, or what happened to your mother and brother and grandmother in the fire, but if I could I would. Do you believe that?’
She stared at him and felt the colour sweeping over her face. She had the urge to jump up from the couch and leave the house, quickly, before either of them said another word. But she couldn’t do that. Neither could she sit here and let him say anything else without getting a few things straight. ‘My mother wasn’t killed in the fire,’ she said flatly. ‘She died the week before of a heart attack.’
‘Oh.’ He looked faintly surprised. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘She was worn out, physically, mentally and emotionally, and that was partly due – mainly due – to the work she did. She’d had a choice, you see, after the baby died, to put us all in the workhouse or to try and get a job. But there were no jobs.’
‘Connie, you don’t have to say anything else.’
‘I do.’ Her voice was quiet but intense. ‘And I tell you now that I’m not ashamed of her. She was a good mam, wonderful, and she did what she had to do to keep the family together. She hated it and it killed her, but she did it for us, for me and Larry and my grandmother. And it was only after Jacob had gone, not before. She was married to my father but he left us before I was bom. . .’ She went on talking, telling him everything, and he said not a word. The party flowed on in the perimeter of their vision, but their world was narrowed down to the sofa and Connie’s low voice.
And then she was silent, and the silence continued for a long moment before Dan said, ‘I should say something but frankly I don’t know what to say.’
‘That’s all right.’ It was finished before it had started and that was probably the best thing, she told herself fiercely, willing herself with every fibre of her being not to cry. She should have known how he would react – she had known she insisted silently, refusing to acknowledge her hope that he would understand, really understand. But it didn’t matter, she wouldn’t let it matter. She was not going to hang her head in shame – society could make its judgements and snap decisions but she knew what her mam had really been like. She hated him. She hated him and his whole rotten family. She had to get out of here. . .
‘Connie?’ It was the timbre of his voice that raised her drowning eyes to meet his, and what she saw there overwhelmed her for a second. ‘I’m sorry your mother was driven to do what she did, and that Larry and your grandmother died like that. I’m sorry you had all those years in the workhouse and for the struggle –’ He stopped abruptly, taking an audible breath. How did you express the inexpressible? How did you tell someone you had only met five times in your life – and two of them thirteen years ago – that they filled you with such a raw and painful and ecstatic feeling that you felt you didn’t know yourself any more? He was twenty-seven years old and he knew now he had never been alive until that moment twelve nights ago when he had glanced across the restaurant and seen her. And if he told anyone that they would either laugh their heads off or think he’d gone mad. Perhaps he had gone mad? Maybe that was why he was eating and drinking and sleeping her every second of the day and night?
He was still looking at her and she was returning his glance, and when his hand moved over hers she blinked once and then became very still, and it was in that moment, with their senses heightened to breaking point, that Connie became aware of a figure standing close to the edge of the sofa behind Dan and raised her eyes.
‘Very touching,’ said John softly.
At the sound of his brother’s voice Dan spun round and rose swiftly to his feet, and as though they were connected by a wire Art was there in the next instant, his voice low as he said, ‘Why are you here? I thought you were all at Mam’s?’
‘We are.’ John took his gaze from Connie’s white face long enough to cast his eyes on his brother and then take in the crowded room before he looked at Connie again and said, ‘Mam wanted you to come round, that’s all, but of course she didn’t realise you were having a. . . get-together of your own.’ The hesitation was deliberate and covertly insulting and he still didn’t raise his gaze from Connie.
His face straight and his voice flat, Art said, ‘Aye, well we are as you can see, so you can tell her that, can’t you.’
‘And more besides.’ This was from Dan, and as Connie rose to her feet he reached out and drew her close to him with his hand at her elbow.
‘You’re encouraging this, you and Gladys?’ John was speaking to Art and his voice was derisory.
‘This?’
Connie was aware of one or two glances coming their way, and a sick agitation was adding to the deep shock that had first filled her when she had glanced up and seen the man she loathed and detested staring at her with those devilish eyes.
‘Dan consorting with the likes of her.’
‘That’s enough. You shut your filthy mouth.’ The words were wrenched up from Dan’s stomach, and they were dark and ominous.
‘Me filthy?’ A mocking smile spread over John’s face as he looked at his youngest brother. ‘By, there’s none so blind as them that can’t see. Saint Dan! Holier than thou, Dan. I’ve had you rammed down me throat since you were a bairn by our mam, perfect you were. But your halo’s slipped now, lad, it has that. She’s fooling you and you can’t see it, can you. She’s got you tied up in knots –’
‘I’m warning you, John. If you don’t shut your mouth I’ll shut it for you.’
‘Do you know what her mother was? Do you? The last time I saw Sadie Bell she was whoring in a bar down in –’
‘You’re not fit to say my mother’s name.’ For a moment all three men thought Connie was going to spring at John, and John actually took a step backwards before he checked himself, facing the woman whose flashing eyes were on a level with his. ‘You are scum, real scum,’ Connie hissed quietly but in a voice which vibrated with the depth of her emotion. ‘You, you to call my mam after the damage you’ve caused, and all because you wanted her. It was jealousy of Jacob that brought you to the cottage all those years ago, wasn’t it. You might fool the others but you don’t fool me. You wanted my mam but she didn’t want you. No woman in her right mind would want you.’
To say that Dan and Art were flabbergasted was putting it mildly. This wee slip of a girl with the face of an angel and the poise of a lady had just voiced what both of them had thought for years but never had the nerve to articulate. And the effect on John was riveting. The blood had surged into his face; even his eyes were coloured with it.
By now most of the room had realised there was some sort of disturbance going on although they had been unable to hear anything clearly, but as Connie finished speaking Gladys appeared on the other side of John, taking his arm as she said, ‘Come away out of it, John, this is New Year’s Eve for crying out loud. Trust you to spoil it for everyone,’ and Wilf and Mary were pressing close to Connie and forming a triangle with Dan, enclosing her.
‘One day.’ John wasn’t shouting, in fact his voice was eerily low, but it had the same effect as if he were shouting on the group clustered around him, causing them to wrinkle their faces against its content. All of them except Connie and Dan, whose countenance was like granite. ‘I’ll see you brought low one day, you see if I don’t, you dirty little baggage –’
No power on earth or beyond could have stopped Dan’s fist from shooting out and making crunching contact with John’s jaw, and as a woman somewhere in the background screamed, Connie was conscious of thinking, Oh no, no, for this to happen! Everything’s been spoilt, before the room seemed to erupt as Dan and John were at each other’s throats.
It was over in seconds as Art and two
or three of his friends yanked the two men apart and then held on to them, and as Gladys shouted, ‘Get him out of here! Go on!’ in John’s direction, her brother-in-law shouted back, ‘I’m going, don’t worry! I wouldn’t stay here with the scum you’ve invited if you paid me a hundred pounds,’ which made Dan tense against the hands constraining him and struggle to get free.
Connie stood as though turned to stone, and even after John had gone she still didn’t move even though Mary was fussing for her to sit down. It wasn’t until Dan’s sympathetic captors released him and he drew her down beside him on the sofa that she came out of the whirling confusion of her thoughts. She could feel herself diminishing and shrinking, even though everyone was studiously not looking her way. How much anyone had heard she didn’t know, but one thing was for sure, they all knew she wasn’t like them. She was different.
She shut her eyes for an infinitesimal moment and then opened them as Dan said, ‘He’s mad, he always has been, and my mother makes him worse. They’re. . . they’re unbalanced, the pair of them.’
She couldn’t bring herself to reply for a second, and then she said, with Mary’s hand pressed comfortingly on her shoulder, ‘Perhaps, but. . . they’re your family, they have more right to be here than I have.’
‘No, it’s not like that, really. You don’t understand, this has been brewing for years.’
Connie stared at him dry-eyed, but she was drenched with tears inside. Mary had been right and she had been wrong. This had been foolish, worse than foolish, and she should never have come. She had tried to pretend to herself that she could fit in and look what the result had been. ‘I have to go.’
‘No, no, don’t go, Connie. Please, not like this.’
‘I’ve ruined your brother’s party.’
‘Of course you haven’t.’ He was patting her hand in his agitation and now he tried to make a joke and lighten the proceedings as he said, a smile on his face, ‘We provided a bit of entertainment to brighten up the evening if nothing else.’
It was the wrong tack to take and he knew this immediately as the words registered in her eyes like a blow.
‘I really do have to go now.’
‘I’ll see you home.’
‘No.’ And then more quietly, ‘No, Dan. I – I don’t want you to. I’ll be perfectly all right with Mary and Wilf.’
‘But I can see you again? I mean, we could go for a meal, or to the theatre? I hear The Merchant of Venice at the Empire is very good, or if you prefer there’s a moving picture show at the King’s Theatre.’
She didn’t reply for some five or six seconds and then it took all her control to say quietly, ‘I think we both know that would not be a good idea.’
‘On the contrary, I think it’s an excellent idea.’
‘I’m sorry, Dan.’ Connie rose quickly. She really couldn’t take any more of this, not with him sitting there with that bewildered look on his face and his cheek showing the mark of one of John’s blows. It could never work. She knew it and he knew it really, he was just trying to be a gentleman now. He’d perhaps even feel relief when she had gone. That thought stiffened her back and enabled her to say quite steadily, ‘Goodbye, and. . . and thank you for asking me to come.’
‘You aren’t even going to stay and see the New Year in?’ Dan asked desperately as he too rose to his feet.
‘No, I’m sorry.’ She turned from him and made her way towards the door. She didn’t turn round to see if he was following her, but when she reached the hall there was only Mary and Wilf behind her, their faces strained and concerned.
Art and Gladys and the two men who had ushered John out were standing whispering in a huddle by the front door, and as the two men nodded to Connie before making their way back into the sitting room, Gladys came forward saying, ‘You aren’t leaving? Not yet? Oh, lass, stay. Don’t let our John spoil things.’
‘We really do have to go, but thank you for a lovely evening.’
It was a ridiculous statement in the circumstances but no one commented on it, and as Wilf collected their coats from the large mahogany hall-stand Art joined them, looking enquiringly at his wife but asking no questions.
The goodbyes were hasty and awkward, but then they were outside in the bitingly crisp air and walking quickly out of the square, not a word passing between them.
And it wasn’t until they were nearly home and just about to enter Walworth Way from Crowtree Road, and the sudden din of the ships’ hooters in the docks and the muffled shouts from the public house they had just passed told them they’d entered 1914, that Mary stopped and drew Connie’s stiff figure into her arms. She glanced at Wilf’s worried face over her friend’s shoulder, and her voice was quiet and not at all as one would expect on New Year’s Eve, as she said, ‘A happy New Year, lass. A happy New Year.’
Chapter Fifteen
It was half past seven on Thursday morning, New Year’s Day, and Connie hadn’t slept at all. It was strange; she didn’t even feel tired. She hadn’t done since they had got back to Walworth Way the night before, and Mary and Wilf had joined the others in the kitchen. She had come straight into her room intending to blot the events of the evening out in the soporific escape of sleep.
She had felt tired at that point – bone tired, exhausted – but then she had opened the top drawer of the oak chest-of-drawers she had bought a few weeks previously, and her eyes had fastened on the small engraved box next to her clean nightdress. It was a beautifully carved little thing decorated with animals and birds, and it housed the most precious thing she possessed. She had taken it out of the drawer, walked over to her bed and sat down before she opened the hinged lid. The piece of rag was just as Larry had given it to her, and as she took it out of its resting place and held it against her cheek the pain in her heart became unbearable.
She had still been sitting there rocking to and fro, the rag clutched between her fingers, when the lodgers had gone to bed and Mary had said goodnight to Wilf over an hour later, and the agony of loss and guilt and regret and a hundred other emotions besides hadn’t subsided. It had been nine years since her baby brother – and he would forever stay in her mind as her baby brother – had died, but it could have been yesterday such was her anguish. John’s venom and the violence of the scene that night had resurrected all the misery that the opiate of day-to-day living normally kept under wraps, and Connie felt desolate. Desolate and confused and alone.
She had pretended to go to sleep for Mary’s sake, but once her friend’s faint rhythmic snores had rumbled the air waves she had sat up in bed and pulled the curtain nearest to her slightly to one side, peering out of the chink into the dark cobbled street of grim terraced houses. She had remained like that until the night sky had changed to silver grey and it was time to get up, but by then her mind was more at peace.
She hadn’t been responsible for the accident which had taken her loved ones, although she would always regret that she hadn’t started work a day or two later. If she had been there she knew she would have saved them that night. Whatever it had taken, she would have saved them.
But she was responsible for the travesty of the night before and she had to shoulder the blame for this. She had known it was foolish to see Dan Stewart again. It was his kinsfolk who had destroyed her own family, and whatever way you looked at it it was wrong to let her attraction for him – and she was attracted to him, she had to face that – overrule her conscience. Dan, and Art too, weren’t like the others, and she had felt their remorse for what had occurred was genuine, but they had made their personal apologies and she had accepted them and that was that. It was settled, and it had to remain that way. For all their sakes.
She rose quietly, pulling her coat over her nightdress and thrusting her feet into her ankle boots before creeping out into the kitchen. There had been a half-hearted attempt to clear the debris from the jollifications of the night before, and at least someone had had the sense to bank down the fire in the range so it hadn’t completely burnt away, alt
hough the kitchen was still icy-cold.
Connie soon had the fire blazing and once the kettle was boiled she had a hasty wash before making a cup of tea for herself and Mary and carrying it through to the other room. They would have to get a move on if they weren’t going to be late for work, and it was work she was going to concentrate on in this new year. She knew where she was with her job – it was orderly and controlled and there were no nasty surprises – and it was the means of the sweet jar growing fatter. And the sweet jar held the key to the future. A future in which she would be working for herself within the next few years if she had anything to do with it.
The image of a tall dark man with soft brown eyes and a handsome, somewhat autocratic face, swam into her mind for a moment and she brushed the shadow of Dan Stewart aside irritably, angry it had surfaced again. Last night had proved how futile any thoughts in that direction were, and no doubt within a couple of days he would have forgotten about her completely. And she would forget about him. She nodded to the thought purposefully, and such was her determination that she marched into the bedroom like a small virago, causing Mary to awake with such a start that her heart didn’t stop galloping for a whole minute.
New Year’s Day. The year was starting like this and she knew exactly who was to blame for the current state of affairs between herself and her son. Edith brought the fragile china cup, held between her finger and thumb, to her lips and sipped at the tea before placing the cup gently back on the saucer and glancing round the breakfast room. She always breakfasted alone in here now that Dan was gone. Kitty had suggested she might like a tray in her room but she wasn’t starting any of those slipshod habits and she had told Kitty so.
She breakfasted light – she was aware that her stout, chunky build was not conducive to large cooked breakfasts – and normally confined herself to one poached egg, a slice of toast and two cups of tea. Moderation in all things led to a long life. She nodded to the thought. And she intended to live for a long, long time.
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