Ragamuffin Angel (49 page)
Chapter Twenty-Three
They sat and loved and talked into the early hours of the New Year in Connie’s little home. They joined Mary and Wilf briefly at twelve o’clock before withdrawing to the flat again as soon as they could without appearing rude.
Connie cooked them a meal, but interspersed with everything they did they would kiss and hold each other close, their arms locked about each other and their passionate murmurings inarticulate half of the time.
Connie was shocked at the change in him, although she made no reference to his appearance, but his prematurely grey hair, unnaturally pale face in which the bones showed prominent beneath the drawn skin, and his sunken eyes, created in her an inexpressible desire to make him better.
At two o’clock they were sitting quietly, so close as to be inseparable, with their fingers interlocked and Connie’s head resting on his shoulder. Every so often Dan would nuzzle the soft silk of her golden hair, shutting his eyes as he inhaled the sweet, fresh fragrance that was reminiscent of apples and orchards and hot summer days. He couldn’t believe Art had gone. He felt the pain stab him again. And John, both legs. He had been shocked when Connie had related that Ann had left his brother, although on reflection he supposed he wasn’t surprised – neither could he altogether blame her. John had made Ann’s life hell for years, they had all known it. But to leave him in that state . . . Anyway it was none of his business and he’d call and see Ann some time to tell her she was still his sister-in-law as far as he was concerned; he didn’t want to lose touch with her and his nephew.
And then, as though she had sensed the direction of his thoughts, Connie stirred and raised her head to look into his face as she said, ‘You
are
intending to go and see your mam and John, aren’t you? After everything that’s happened, this war and all, it’s time to make peace don’t you think?’
are
intending to go and see your mam and John, aren’t you? After everything that’s happened, this war and all, it’s time to make peace don’t you think?’
Peace. Peace with his mother. He took the words into his mind and considered them and he knew they were futile. He had done a lot of thinking in the camp, and veil upon veil had been lifted from his understanding. His mother was an unnatural woman; cold, virtually without conscience, unloving and unlovable, and part of her obsession with Sadie Bell – and now Connie – was that she recognised in them a drawing power. They drew and held men to them like bees to a honey-pot, and not through fear or emotional blackmail or any of the other tricks his mother used. Women like Sadie and Connie had an elemental warmth, something soft and tender and flowing that made men want to envelop them and in turn be enveloped. It was a voluptuous thing, inexplicable, like the redolence given off by a flower when it was ripe with pollen. He had made his choice – he had made it four years ago – and peace with his mother was not an option. Neither was any form of understanding with John.
‘I shall go and see them, Connie.’ He stroked a wisp of hair from her forehead as he spoke. He intended to sell his share of the family business; he wanted out. And he wanted to tell them he was marrying Connie as soon as it could be arranged; it needed to be said face to face.
‘Don’t say it like that.’ She straightened now, taking his emaciated, dear,
dear
face in her hands as she turned towards him. ‘They might have mellowed, Dan. Four years is a long time and they’ve suffered too.’
dear
face in her hands as she turned towards him. ‘They might have mellowed, Dan. Four years is a long time and they’ve suffered too.’
‘Do you believe they’ve mellowed?’
She looked at him and the answer was in her eyes.
‘No, neither do I, but I will go and see them after I’ve got Gladys to call Kitty to the square so I can say hallo to her first. She’s such a dear soul, Kitty. How she has stood my mother all these years I don’t know.’
‘You’re all her family I suppose.’
‘Aye.’ He nodded. ‘Aye, that’s it sure enough.’
But family or no the ties had been irrevocably broken with his mother and John and there was no turning back. Even if things had turned out differently and Connie had found someone else there would have been no meeting point. Perhaps there never had been.
He settled Connie back in his arms again, tucking her head under his chin. He was going to book into a hotel tomorrow, there was a small one at the end of the street which would serve him very well, and it would mean he was just two or three minutes’ walk away from Connie. Any further and he wouldn’t be able to bear it. She had already said he could stay in her spare room but he wasn’t going to have any gossip about her – this was going to be done properly, he loved her too much for anything else. But tonight, tonight was a night apart. Tonight they would hold each other, like this, so close they could feel each other’s heartbeat and they would watch the dawn rise. And tomorrow he would go and see her old friend, Father Hedley, and arrange for them to be married as soon as the priest could arrange it – Connie wanted that as much as he did. They had waited too long as it was . . . He was asleep on the last word and it was a deep, dreamless sleep, like a bairn’s, and there were no nightmares that night.
The next day Connie and Dan went to St George’s Square and there was an emotional reunion with Gladys and the children, followed by an equally poignant one with Kitty later in the morning after Gladys had sent Catherine to tell her the good news.
There were flurries of snow showers that could at any time turn into the blizzard which was forecast for New Year’s Day, but inside Gladys’s snug house all was warmth and light and wet faces as Kitty hugged Dan as though she would never let him go.
‘Oh, lad, lad.’ The plump Irishwoman was incapable of saying anything else for a good few minutes, her eyes streaming as she held on to the tall, painfully thin, bony figure of this, her favourite ‘bairn’. ‘Lad, lad, lad.’
‘He’s home, Kitty. He’s home.’ Kitty’s naked joy had touched something very tender in Connie’s heart, and her voice was soft and understanding as she put her arms round the other woman. ‘We’re going to get wed as soon as we can, and we want you to know that there will always be a place for you with us if ever you want to leave Mrs Stewart. And of course you’ll be welcome to call any time, any time, Kitty.’
Connie knew Dan thought of this woman as his mother, and it was as a mother that Kitty now said, her face close to theirs as the three of them remained joined, ‘Thank you, lass, thank you, but I’m a great one in believing a married couple should start off on their own where they can. But I’ll remember the offer, aye, I will, lass, an’ it’s thanking you I am for it. And I won’t be a stranger to your door, I can promise you that. You’re a good lass, aye, a good lass.’ The last words held an inflexion that made them a statement. This young woman Dan had fallen for was no strumpet, whatever her mother might have been.
Silently now, Kitty gripped Connie’s hand that was resting on her arm, and then her voice was purposely bright as she said, ‘Aye, well I’d best be getting back. I had to make some excuse about seeing me Aunt Ida after Catherine had tipped me the wink in the kitchen afore she went in to see her granny, but she didn’t like it. Not that she could say much considering I haven’t even had the sniff of a day off in weeks.’
‘How . . . how are they both?’
It was noticeable that in the time Kitty had been with them Dan hadn’t mentioned his mother or John, and now Kitty looked directly at him as she said, ‘’Bout as you’d expect, lad.’
‘Why do you put up with it, Kitty?’ This was from Gladys. ‘You could easily get another job with your experience. What with all the big houses and such having to give up their’ – she almost said servants – ‘staff in the war, there’s a shortage of housekeepers and the like. Half of them who have come out of service won’t be going back, you can bet your life on that; you could be sitting pretty somewhere else.’
‘Better the devil you know, lass, better the devil you know.’ Kitty was smiling as she spoke and Gladys smiled back, but once the goodbyes had been said and Kitty was hurrying back along Burdon Road in the direction of Ryhope Road, she came back to the question Art’s wife had asked. Why did she put up with what Edith Stewart dished out? Better the devil you know, she had said to them back there. She gave a small, mirthless laugh to herself. And Edith was a devil all right; since she’d been obliged to take John in when Ann went life hadn’t been worth living in that mausoleum of a house. She had never thought to see the day she’d feel sorry for John, but she did. Aye, she did, wretched piteous individual that he was now. Was it for him that she stayed?
The sky was low and heavy, the wind cutting through her like a knife, and she put her head down as she scurried along the pavement.
It was partly for John, but only partly, she admitted silently. The rest of it she couldn’t explain to herself, let alone anyone else. It was all tied up with guilt and regret and love and hate, and, not least, familiarity. And being needed. Now her mouth twisted bitterly. The greatest snare there was, the knowledge that you were needed. And she wasn’t thinking of John here, although heaven knew that poor soul needed her since he’d come home.
She had run the house for years single-handed; there wasn’t a nook or cranny that didn’t have her stamp and she kept the daily routine as smooth as cream – she was the mistress of the house in all but name. Edith would be lost without her. So was she saying she stayed for Edith? She moved her head in denial of the thought, and then clicked her tongue irritably at herself. Enough, enough of thinking; hadn’t Henry always said it was the most dangerous pastime there was and he was right, God bless his soul. She did what she knew she had to do and that was the end of it, but she had put her foot down more in the last few years. She wasn’t a stranger to the Church now, not since that time she had met Father Hedley again at her Aunt Ida’s, and it helped. Aye, it helped right enough. Everyone else had been living on a knife edge through the war and there she’d been, more at peace with herself than she’d been for years. Life was strange. It was, it was strange. There was that lad back there having been home twenty-four hours and his mother was going to be the last to know. Aye, life was strange all right.
It was exactly half past three in the afternoon when Connie and Dan walked down Ryhope Road. The wind was lashing the bare branches of the trees overhanging the road and it was already quite dark, the leaden grey sky overhead full of the forecast snow which had yet to begin falling. Connie was holding on to Dan’s arm very tightly and his face was taut and strained, but their footsteps were brisk and steady as they approached the Stewart residence. This had to be done, they both knew it, and it had to be done right, from the beginning. They needed to present a united front to the formidable woman who was Dan’s mother; it might succeed in preventing further mischief-making in the future at least.
Dan opened the gate and Connie stepped through on to the drive, then they were mounting the steps to the front door and the bell was jangling from Dan’s pull. Strangely, now the moment she had been dreading all day was here, Connie felt absolutely calm. She had wanted to be at Dan’s side to support him through whatever went on; that was the only thing that mattered. She hoped his mother, and John too, would meet him halfway because when all was said and done they were his family, but she expected nothing good from this encounter. Dan had virtually returned from the dead, but he had returned to her – that’s how his mother would see it. The woman who had screamed at her with such venom on this very doorstep four years ago was not of a forgiving nature, neither was she conciliatory in any form. And Connie was worried about Dan; he was ill, anyone could see that, and he had a hacking cough and had nearly passed out twice today. They needed to get this over and then she could start looking after him and getting him well again. And she would, and swiftly, she told herself silently.
When Kitty opened the door and saw them standing there she closed her eyes for an infinitesimal moment before saying, ‘Come in, come in the pair of you,’ her voice shaking. It was clear Kitty had been anticipating the proposed meeting with some distress; nevertheless, she led them to the drawing room door without saying anything else, merely squeezing their arms briefly before opening the door and saying, her voice now bright and excited which Dan thought was the best piece of play-acting he had heard for a long while, ‘Madam, oh Madam, look who’s here. Oh, isn’t it wonderful!’
Edith was alone in the large and imposing room and it was apparent she had been sitting reading, not – as one would have expected from the inclement weather – in front of the roaring fire which was burning in the ornate fireplace, but at some distance across the room on one of the chaise longues.
They watched her raise her head and saw her face change as she took in Dan in the doorway, with Connie just behind him, and then, as Dan walked further into the room, drawing Connie into the side of him, Edith rose slowly to her feet. ‘You’re alive.’ There was no expression in her voice at all; no joy, no vestige of greeting, nothing. ‘We thought you had perished when there was no word.’
‘No, I didn’t perish, Mother.’
‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ Kitty was giving the performance of her life. ‘All this time and no news and in he walks, as large as life! I can’t believe –’
‘Kitty!’
Connie couldn’t prevent her hand going to her mouth as the word was barked across the room.
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