Connie’s Courage (4 page)

Listlessly Connie made her way back to her room. She felt weak and light-headed, and she couldn't remember the last time she had eaten, but she wasn't hungry anyway. Perhaps if she was lucky she might just go to sleep tonight and never wake up again.

Self-pityingly she thought about how her family would react to her plight. They would be happy to see her dead, she was sure! Her aunts would not have dreamed of hiring a servant who lived in the kind of conditions Connie now did. Her grimy, darned clothes were shabbier even than those worn by her aunt's scullery maid.

She touched her concave belly, and turned her face into the grimy pillow to weep.

Three doors away, Connie's new neighbours were exploring their new home.

‘Mother, you can't stay here,' Harry Lawson protested, as he looked around the shabby parlour.

‘Harry, we'll be fine,' Elsie Lawson tried to reassure her son, but in reality she was as appalled by her surroundings as he was. Her elder daughter was yet to join them, so Elsie told Harry brightly,
‘When Mavis gets here we'll set to and clean it up.'

It was only just a month since she had lost her husband. Thieves had broken into his grocery shop and bludgeoned him to death.

Elsie was still in shock. The shop had been a rented property, as had the pretty house they had lived in, and her husband had only left her a small amount of money. Of her three children, only one was working, and Harry's job as a junior schoolteacher at Hutton Grammar School paid him only a pittance.

She had been told that property was much cheaper to rent down in this part of the city, and naively she had not fully understood why!

‘You can't stay here, Mother,' Harry was repeating. ‘I'll leave Hutton when my contract finishes at the end of next term, and I'll look for another teaching job.'

‘You will do no such thing, Harry Lawson,' Elsie stopped him angrily. ‘What do you think your poor father would say if he could hear you saying that? He was that proud of you, Harry. Getting a scholarship and all! And there's no better public school hereabouts than Hutton. You said when they took you on, that you were lucky and what an honour it was to be chosen to teach there. I know they don't pay you much now, but when one of the older teachers retires, they're bound to give you a promotion,' she finished proudly.

Harry shook his head. Everything she had said
was true, but he couldn't leave his mother and sisters to live here.

‘This place will be all right for now,' Elsie assured him again, with a cheerfulness she was far from feeling. ‘Once I've given it a good clean and got some of our own things in, it will look a lot better – you wait and see.'

Harry smiled. He knew how proud both his parents were of him. But he had seen the pretty young girl crossing the yard earlier, her face pinched with cold and hunger, her dress shabby and faded. His heart had gone out to her. There was no way he wanted to see his own sisters ending up like that. He had been granted some special leave because of his father's death, and he decided he would spend that time making enquiries to see if he could get a teaching post with a less prestigious school. He needed to find somewhere where he could live out, and not in, as he had to at Hutton, and to try to get some extra part-time work to help with the family finances.

‘Titanic
Sinks – Hundreds Feared Dead!'

Gideon's stomach lurched with disbelief as he stared at the headlines in his morning paper.

He picked it up and scanned the front page article. It was true! The liner its owners had claimed was unsinkable, had sunk!

That news, in itself, would have been shocking enough, without the fact that Connie had been on board it.

Ellie was upstairs in the nursery, and he had a mad impulse to throw the papers on the fire before she could see them.

He heard her footsteps crossing the hall and she came into the room, her eyes bright with happiness and love; her mouth curved into a delighted smile.

‘Gideon, you'll never guess what! Joshua has just smiled at me! Nurse says he is still too young, but I know that he did. Oh, I wish you could have seen –' Abruptly she stopped speaking as she saw the look on his face. ‘What. What is it?'

He went to her and gently led her to a chair, holding both her hands as he told her quietly, ‘There is bad news, Ellie. The
Titanic
has sunk with a terrible loss of life.' He kept hold of her hands, and watched her as she struggled to assimilate what he had said.

‘The
Titanic
… But no! That can't be true! She's unsinkable! It was in the papers! She cannot have sunk … Connie is on board her!' Ellie protested pathetically, before catching her breath and denying frantically, ‘No, Gideon! No! No!' Shocked tears streaming down her face, Ellie turned to him. ‘There will be survivors though, surely?' she begged.

Gideon felt the pity grip his throat. Connie had been a steerage passenger, but he couldn't bring himself to remind Ellie of this, and take her hope away from her. But something in his expression must have betrayed him because suddenly she demanded, ‘You think that she's dead, don't you?

Oh, Gideon! This is all my fault! I should have done more for her, Gideon. If I had she would never …'

Gideon was not going to allow that!

‘Ellie, you have nothing to blame yourself for,' he assured her immediately. ‘Connie was always headstrong and wilful, and you did your best for her.'

‘The family will have to be told,' Ellie whispered, as though she hadn't heard him.

‘I shall do everything that is necessary,' Gideon assured her.

‘She might have survived. There will be survivors, won't there, Gideon?' Ellie repeated helplessly. ‘Such a new modern liner, there would have been lifeboats and …'

Gideon said nothing. According to the papers there had not been enough lifeboats to hold all the passengers, and those travelling steerage, like Connie, would have had the least chance of surviving.

As tears filled Ellie's eyes, Gideon took her in his arms. ‘I'll get young John round here, aye, and send a message to your father as well. And your ma's family – the posh lot – will have to be told, I suppose.'

Ellie couldn't speak. How could it be possible that Connie could be dead, drowned? Wilful, naughty, reckless Connie. Connie, her little sister.

‘Well, what I want to know is, what on earth Connie was doing on the
Titanic
in the first place?'

Amelia Gibson's voice was sour-apple sharp as she looked accusingly at Ellie. Gideon had informed Ellie's mother's family, the Barclay sisters, of the news via Ellie's aunt, Amelia Gibson, who was also their neighbour.

Ellie shook her head and looked at Gideon. Connie had not been on the list of survivors posted by the White Star Shipping Line and published in the national papers, and nor had Kieron Connolly.

‘Well, if you want my opinion Ellie, it's probably all for the best,' Amelia Gibson was continuing virtuously.

‘All for the best!' Ellie's whole body trembled as she stopped her. ‘Aunt, Connie is probably dead. How can that be for the best!' Tears welled in Ellie's eyes.

Immediately Amelia bristled and fixed Ellie with an angry glare.

‘I shouldn't have thought it was necessary to explain my words to you. I refuse to sully my lips by discussing any of your sister's disgraceful behaviour. She has brought shame on herself and shame on our family as well. If my poor sister had lived to see –‘

‘If Mama had lived, then none of this would have happened,' Ellie couldn't stop herself from bursting out.

Ignoring her, Amelia continued grimly, ‘When I think of what she made your poor Aunt Jane suffer with her wilful ways. She and your Uncle
Simpkins did their best for her, taking her in and giving her a good home, just as your Aunt Parkes did for you, and we all know how Connie repaid their generosity.' Her thin lips folded in a forbidding line. She was a disgrace to our family. She could never have returned to live amongst decent respectable people!' Amelia went on. ‘And, in my opinion, she is better off dead!'

‘Aunt, I won't have you speak of her like that,' Ellie protested immediately. ‘How can you say such things about her?'

‘I say them because they are true, Ellie! When a woman behaves as Connie has done and loses her reputation, she loses everything, and there can be no purpose to her continuing to live. Had Connie ever dared come to my door, I would not have let her in, and neither would any of my sisters. Indeed, I would not have spoken to her if I had seen her in the street. She was already as good as dead so far as I was concerned. I cannot understand why you waste your tears on her, Ellie, for she certainly did not deserve them.'

After they had gone, Ellie wept in Gideon's arms.

‘Oh poor Connie, Gideon … How could my aunt speak so, and be so cruel!'

Gideon held her tightly.

‘I know that Connie did wrong, but …'

‘You would forgive her and take her in, I know that, Ellie, but there would be many people like
your aunt who would not forgive or forget what she did, and who would shun her for it.'

Ellie knew that what he was saying was true. But she knew she would have forgiven her sister had she done a hundred times worse, if only she could have her back alive and safe!

There was a sudden commotion in the hallway, and her younger brother John came bursting in.

The moment she saw John, Henrietta – Ellie's stepdaughter, the child of her late husband and his Japanese lover – ran eagerly toward him. After her first husband had committed suicide, Ellie had made herself responsible for the frail Japanese woman who had travelled all the way from Japan with her young daughter to find the man she loved. But Ellie's compassion and care had not been enough to heal Minaco's broken heart. After Minaco's death, and Ellie's own subsequent marriage to Gideon, Ellie had insisted that they adopt the orphaned little girl, knowing herself how hard it was to grow up without loving parents.

Henrietta was both pretty and sweet-natured, and Ellie and Gideon loved her as though she were their own child.

‘And how's my beautiful girl, today?' John asked Henrietta mock-severely as he set her on his shoulders. ‘Have you been good and learned your lessons?'

As Henrietta giggled at his teasing, Ellie said quietly, ‘John, there is bad news about Connie.'

Someone was banging on her door. Reluctantly Connie opened her eyes and stared at it in confusion. Had Kieron forgotten his key again?

Pushing back the bedclothes, she scratched absently at the marks the bedbugs had left on her skin, slid her feet to the floor, and stood up. To her shock, her legs refused to support her and she had to cling on to the bed. Her head muzzy with confusion, she went to unlock the door.

‘By Our Sainted Mary, so you are here after all then, are you!'

Connie staggered back as Kieron's uncle, Bill Connolly, thrust open the door and strode in. Connie had never liked him, and she knew that he returned her feelings.

As he loomed over her, she could smell the drink on his breath and her stomach heaved.

‘Murdering bitch,' Bill yelled at her. ‘Murdering whore. Sendin' our Kieron to his death. It should have been youse who was drowned, not our Kieron.'

He had slammed the door closed and Connie started to shiver, as she tried to make some sense out of what he was saying to her.

‘Drowned,' she repeated uncomprehendingly, whilst she tried to control her nausea.

‘Aye, drowned, when he went down in the
Titanic!'

The room spun round and Connie struggled to grasp what he was saying.

‘Aye, and you were the one as sent ‘im to his death. It was you as nagged ‘im into leaving – he told me all about it, how you were goin' at ‘im and how as he were right sick of youse, and were feared to come home in case you followed him there. He knew his ma would never tolerate having the likes of you ‘angin' around. A God-fearing respectable Catholic woman she is.' Bill's face darkened as he mopped the tears filling his eyes.

‘I didn't send Kieron to America,' Connie defended herself weakly. ‘I was supposed to be going with him, but he left me behind because you told him to – just like you told him to tell me I had to lie, if anyone came round asking where he was the night he didn't come home,' she added bitterly, forgetting her fear of him in the heat of her emotion.

Instantly Bill Connolly stiffened. ‘What was that you just said?' he demanded menacingly.

How much had Kieron told her? More than he damn well ought to have done, that was for sure. Kieron might be dead and therefore no longer
accountable for the murder he had committed, but if the stupid bitch in front of him started tattling, there were plenty enough people who would leap at the excuse to start sticking their noses into Connolly affairs.

Kieron had broken one of the cardinal rules of the Connolly family, which was never to talk to a woman about business. Had he been here, nephew or not, drowned or not, Bill would cheerfully have broken his neck.

Connie refused to answer him. She could feel the fear and shock trickling through her veins like ice.
Titanic
had sunk, and Kieron was dead. How was that possible? She was shaking so much that she turned back to the bed to sit down on it. She had barely eaten for days, and she felt sick with weakness and shock.

‘I give our Kieron a hundred guineas afore he left, and that's a debt you are going t'ave ter pay back,' she heard Bill Connolly telling her menacingly.

Connie stared at him. ‘But how can I do that? I haven't got any money! I haven't got anything,' she told him bitterly. ‘Kieron took everything.' Her face twisted with misery, but Bill had no sympathy for her.

‘How? Same way as yer earned it from our Kieron,' he told her in an ugly voice. ‘On yer back, just like any other whore. I'm tekin you back ter Preston wi' me. I've got a place down by the river where you'll feel right at ‘ome. Plenty
o' sailors callin' so you won't feel lonely,' he told her leeringly.