by Anne Bennett
‘And I will wear it with pride,’ Angela said, and she felt such contentment as Stan’s arms went around her.
Noel Lampeter had decorated the pub beautifully and the back room of The Swan looked better than Angela had ever seen it. Streamers festooned the room and lanterns spun in the heat from the candles that graced every table. Angela knew the tables grouped around the room were old and probably scratched to high heaven, but all had been transformed with white tablecloths, candles and small bunches of flowers. And if that wasn’t enough, the long table at the back of the room was piled high. Angela’s eyes opened wide in delight and Maggie, who had come to greet them, said, ‘The food’s not all from the pub. So many wanted to contribute, they worked it out with the Lampeters.’
‘Oh, how kind of them!’ Angela cried, and thought even though their houses and the area generally might have looked a bit run down, the neighbours were exceptionally kind. With her arm linked in Stan’s, she felt surrounded by love. She looked back to the door to see that Connie hadn’t even got right into the room yet, as so many people wanted to shake her by the hand or give her a hug. Stan followed Angela’s gaze and said, ‘Popular girl, your Connie.’
Angela nodded. ‘So many were upset by what had happened to her. They all wanted to do something.’
‘Contributing to this party is one way, I suppose,’ Stan said. ‘Now we have to do our level best to make sure she has the time of her life.’
Angela agreed happily and she swung around with a smile on her face. But suddenly she didn’t see the splendour of the room or hear the good wishes from friends and neighbours, because she’d spotted Eddie McIntyre at the other side of the room. Stan felt her stiffen and followed her gaze, and knew by the expression on Angela’s face that he was looking at the infamous Eddie McIntyre. Angela felt sick; this was the moment she’d been dreading.
But then their view of Eddie was restricted by the crowds of people surrounding both her and her daughter with cries of welcome, and when the ring was spotted glistening on Angela’s finger there was further excitement and many ‘Ooh!’s and ‘Aah!’s. Angela wondered whether she should just ignore Eddie altogether, but that might be noticed, and as few knew what Eddie had done to Angela, they’d just think her very ill mannered. Anyway, she would not give him the satisfaction of thinking he had disturbed her in some way. No, she decided the best thing was to greet him as just a casual acquaintance, a person of little or no account. And that was what she did when she saw Eddie weaving his way between the crowds to reach her. ‘Oh hello, Eddie,’ she said as if she had just noticed him. ‘Come and meet my fiancé, Stan Bishop.’
The news shook Eddie, as did the offhand way Angela had greeted him. But in a moment the scowl vanished from his face and he was the charming Eddie again, as he shook hands with Stan and offered him hearty congratulations.
Watching him, Angela felt as if the scales had fallen from her eyes, and she saw Eddie for the person he was. She realised he was a fake who could don a cloak of respectability or charm as a lover, but beneath that cloak was a vicious, cruel, self-centred bully. She didn’t understand why she had been so besotted by him. She stole a look at Stan’s dear, familiar face and felt her heart swell with love for him, and she smiled.
Stan was holding himself back with difficulty. When Eddie leant forward to shake his hand, he said to Stan quietly, ‘Got a real goer there, buddy. Proper little goer, is our Angela McClusky.’
For two pins Stan could have hauled Eddie outside and given him the hiding of his life for making such a comment about Angela. He sorely wanted to, and his fists balled in readiness. However, he had promised Angela he would not harm the man, so he let his hands hang by his sides.
Muriel, though, had also heard the remark and was surprised Stan hadn’t gone for Eddie, though she was pleased he hadn’t. She didn’t think Eddie should be able to say things like that unchecked, and so she said sharply to him, ‘Less of that sort of talk!’
‘What?’ Eddie said, throwing his hands wide in mock innocence. Then with a leering smirk he added, ‘T’isn’t as if I’m saying anything that’s not true. And I know that from experience.’
One man gave a grim laugh, and though he spoke to Stan, he also addressed the other men grouped around as he said, ‘If anyone disrespected my missus like that, I’d take the head from his bloody shoulders!’ There was a murmur of agreement to this, and Muriel realised it could get very ugly if she didn’t put a stop to it. So she said, ‘Eddie, I think you’ve outstayed your welcome.’
‘You’re not putting me out because of one innocent remark?’
‘Yes, I am,’ Muriel said. ‘I didn’t find it that innocent, to be honest. And let me remind you that today we are celebrating Connie’s recovery after being trapped in a collapsed building for a long time. Nothing shall get in the way of that, including any snide innuendos from you, Eddie. Now, are you going to go quietly, or shall I ask a few of the boys to help you on your way?’
Eddie knew when he was beaten, but as he slunk out, he said to Angela, ‘See you, Ange.’
Angela replied coolly, ‘I very much doubt it. There would be no point.’
Eddie’s eyes narrowed and Angela knew he was cross, but she still had hold of Stan, and with him she felt safe. ‘We will both face your demons together,’ he had said, and that was what she intended to do.
Eddie wondered what had got into Angela, to talk to him in that offhand way. Maybe she spoke that way in front of her fiancé, but he knew she would sing a different tune if he got her on her own. But he said nothing further, for Muriel was looking at him quite savagely, and he thought she might easily hit him on the head with something heavy.
Angela didn’t breathe easy till the door closed behind him.
After that the party was wonderful. The drink flowed and vast inroads were made in the food, and the band on the stage made sure that everyone was up dancing, and neither Angela nor Connie sat down much that night. Dancing in Daniel’s arms for the first time, Connie felt a little stiff initially. Holding her close, he murmured, ‘Relax, darling.’
‘Oh, Daniel …’
‘Darling, you aren’t putting on a performance,’ Daniel said. ‘Move to the music how you want to, and enjoy the feeling of my arms around you, holding you safe, as I longed to do in that hell-hole we were buried in, but I couldn’t get close enough.’
‘I wanted that too,’ Connie said, ‘but I couldn’t get any nearer because I had a roof beam pinning me down.’
Daniel gave a brief nod. ‘I saw that,’ he said, ‘when they brought down the torches. It was over your legs too, as I remember.’
‘Yes, the doctors were surprised my legs weren’t broken,’ Connie said. ‘It ripped sinews and muscles and almost crushed my kneecaps, though.’
‘It’s surprising that you were eventually able to walk again.’
Connie nodded, ‘I know. Even the doctors didn’t know whether I would or not. I would say that was down to the physiotherapists, who refused to give up on me. I did exercise after exercise and spent many hours using a walking frame. Sometimes it hurt like the very devil, but it worked, and here I am.’
‘And very lovely you look too,’ Daniel said and added, ‘I suppose they advised you to keep exercising?’
Connie nodded vigorously. ‘They kept on and on about that.’
‘And I know the best exercise to do.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Dancing to good music in the arms of your beloved,’ Daniel said with an impish grin as he took Connie’s hands and swung her onto the dance floor as the music started up again.
Angela looked at Connie’s glowing face and knew she was happy. She realised that it was Daniel who brought that glow to her whole face, and she accepted the fact that he might become the most important person in Connie’s life before she was much older. Angela thanked God that the unfortunate incident at the beginning of that evening hadn’t marred the rest of it. Though it was Connie’s night, many folk wanted to
talk to Angela and Stan too, and all seemed more than pleased to see them together. Those who hadn’t had a good look at the ring to start with, because of the crush of people, had a better look at it now. Angela was hugged by so many men and women, and Stan’s hand seemed to be shaken continuously.
‘Sorry,’ Angela said to Connie.
‘For what?’
‘Stealing your thunder. Do you mind?’
‘Not at all,’ Connie said. ‘I am delighted, as most of the street are, that you and Stan have seen sense at last. I’m happy for you, Mammy, really!’
Many hours later, Stan walked Angela and Connie home. ‘Don’t let them go in by the entry door,’ Maggie had warned Stan. ‘It will be pitch black. Tell them to go in the front door.’
Angela seldom used the front door, for another door opened from the entry, which was seldom locked. But that night, when Stan suggested she go in the front door, to please him she got her front-door key out of her handbag.
‘What a good night,’ she said to Connie as she turned the key. She wanted to relive it. She’d talked to many old friends that night, some of whom she hadn’t seen in years. She’d danced to the foot-tapping music from the band on the stage. They’d all belted out the old Music Hall songs in the sing-song at the end, and the whole thing had been made even more enjoyable by the sumptuous food on offer. ‘What say we have a cup of tea before bed?’
Connie felt the same about the evening. ‘Oh, yes please,’ she said. ‘I’m tired, but I’m not ready to sleep just yet.’
Angela opened her mouth to reply to this, but the words froze in her throat, because Eddie McIntyre was sitting in the chair before the fire, as if he had a right to be there, with a supercilious smile on his face. She was surprised and unnerved, but overriding all that was total outrage and anger, such as she had seldom felt before. ‘What are you doing here?!’ she almost barked.
‘Waiting for you?’ Eddie replied mildly. ‘We didn’t have much time together earlier tonight, before I was thrown out.’
‘You were thrown out because of your bad behaviour,’ Angela snapped. ‘And I had no desire to talk to you then anyway, and I have even less desire to do that now. You had no right at all to enter my home uninvited, and I would like you to leave now.’
Connie heard her mother’s voice and saw her face with some relief, for it seemed to her that her mother felt very differently towards Eddie McIntyre than she had in the past.
Then Eddie said, ‘Oh yes, Angela, we never did that much talking, as I recall. We did things you much preferred – things you’re probably missing now.’
Angela bounced on the floor in rage and shouted, ‘That will do! You disgust me, do you hear?! I am engaged to a man I love dearly, so I want no truck with you, or what you have to say. Just go now, before I lose patience altogether.’
‘I presume your intended knows what a sex-crazed harlot you are?’
Connie gasped and put her hands over her eyes, but Angela was made of sterner stuff. She was glad she’d heeded her daughter’s advice to tell Stan everything, and she was able to face Eddie squarely and say in a determined voice: ‘Those are the filthy words you choose to use, Eddie, but I have told Stan everything. There are no secrets between us, and he loves me in spite of it. So, nothing you say is of any importance.’
Angela’s words shook Eddie, for he didn’t think for a minute she would have confessed her past to anyone, and certainly not to a man she hoped to marry. But he didn’t doubt what she’d said, and Angela saw the slight hesitation and said angrily, ‘So you have no business here, and you can get out right now.’
‘You’re asking me to go without a farewell kiss?’ Eddie asked in mock incredulity.
Connie had had enough, and she leapt to her feet. ‘You heard my mother. Just go, why don’t you, and don’t ever come back!’
‘Isn’t it your bedtime?’ Eddie asked Connie witheringly.
‘Don’t you dare try and order my daughter about!’ Angela snapped. ‘Connie, stay right where you are.’ And she faced Eddie and said, ‘Are you going to go under your own steam, or will Connie and I have to push you out and go for a policeman?’
In the entry, Stan straightened up. Maggie had advised him to wait on for a while after he delivered Angela and Connie home. ‘Just in case,’ she said. ‘Eddie has waylaid Angela in the entry before – she told me that.’
‘I’ll suggest she goes in the front door,’ Stan said, ‘as you advised.’
‘Yeah, but the lavvies are down the yard,’ Maggie said. ‘Angela is bound to go there before she goes to bed, and if I know that, so will Eddie.’
Stan realised Maggie had a point, and ducked into the entry when he saw Angela and Connie go through the front door. He was even more glad he’d agreed to do that when he tried the entry door and found it unlocked, and he realised anyone could have got into the house unseen. And so he heard the entire argument that took place when Angela found Eddie already ensconced in her house. He was totally astounded by the way McIntyre was verbally abusing the woman he loved, and by the suggestive and downright insolent remarks he was directing her way. He could listen no longer. He remembered the promise he had made to Angela, but a man could only stand so much.
He moved to the head of the entry, intending to go into the house and hurl Eddie McIntyre from it, but he saw that the combined efforts of Angela and Connie had managed to eject the objectionable man from the house with such force that he fell in a heap on the cobblestoned pavement outside. Stan watched him get to his feet and then followed behind the lurching creature, vowing that that night Eddie McIntyre was going to get what he had been asking for this long while.
SIXTEEN
Angela was tired the next day but she got up as usual and got ready for Mass. She hoped she would see Stan there and would then probably find out what happened between him and Eddie after he left the house. Through her attic window Connie had spied Stan following after Eddie in the light from the streetlight outside their house, but they were soon swallowed by the darkness. She told her mother and the two of them had sat into the early hours, drinking cup after cup of tea, waiting for Stan’s return. But he didn’t come back, and though worry for what might have happened to Stan pounded in Angela’s brain, sheer weariness eventually caused her to get to her feet and say, ‘Well, I’m afraid I must seek my bed.’
Connie’s mouth dropped open in astonishment. ‘But … but …’ she stammered.
‘Connie, it’s no good stopping up any longer. If Stan intended to come back this way, he would have done so by now.’
‘So, what do you think has happened?’
‘How would I know?’
‘Well, don’t you even care?’ Connie cried.
‘Of course I care.’
‘Maybe Stan was prevented from coming,’ Connie said in a panicky voice. ‘Stan followed McIntyre, so maybe he did something to Stan, injured him. He’s evil enough to do anything.’
Angela knew that full well and was agitated herself, but she knew Connie needed calming down. ‘Speculation like this does no good,’ she said, ‘and really there’s nothing we can do tonight. So let’s go to bed now, and if Stan isn’t at Mass tomorrow and we have had no word from him, we will rethink, maybe enquire at the hospitals.’
‘D’you think he might be in hospital, then?’
‘Connie, I have no idea where he is,’ Angela said with a sigh. ‘But we have no way of finding out tonight.’
‘Mammy, I couldn’t sleep.’
‘Well then, you must at least rest,’ Angela said. ‘Otherwise you will be no good in the morning, when I might need you. As for myself, if I don’t lie down soon, I will fall down.’
Before Angela made her own way to bed a little later, she climbed the stairs to the attic where Connie slept, to find that despite her claim that she couldn’t sleep if she went to bed, she was in fact dead to the world.
Angela was dead tired, but once she was in bed her mind kept jumping about from one scenario to another,
and she prayed over and over that nothing had happened to Stan, until she eventually fell into a troubled sleep, punctuated by nightmares.
Angela didn’t wake Connie that morning and was glad she still slept on, for she knew she would find it hard to cope with Connie’s agitated state when her own nerves were jangling, and she knew they wouldn’t settle till she saw Stan and he told her what had happened.
Angela surreptitiously looked all around the church when she arrived but there was no sign of Sam. Normally the Latin Mass soothed Angela, but that morning she stayed on high alert, scrutinsing the other parishioners, especially as they left their pews to go to the rails to take Communion. Still there was no sign of Stan. A knot of worry squeezed in Angela’s heart and a pulse was beating in her brain, and she could scarcely wait for the Mass to be over, when she intended looking for Stan and not stopping until she found him.
As the Mass finished and the congregation stood up to leave, she spotted Stan at the back of the church, and her relief was immense. She’d never known him go to the back like that, but no matter where Stan had stood, he was there and whole, and that was the main thing. Once outside church, she understood why he had skulked at the back and possibly snuck in when Mass had already begun, for he had obviously been in a fight.
Angela opened her mouth, but Stan put his fingers to his lips and drew her to the back of the church, away from the main congregation, before stopping and facing her. She gasped, for Stan’s right eye was nearly closed up, with a black ring already forming around it. His lower lip was split, his nose was bloody and squashed, and there was a gigantic bruise forming beneath the graze on his left cheek.
