Connie’s Courage (3 page)

As always when he was angry, his accent broadened and Connie flinched at the venom she could hear in his voice.

‘But you love me!' she protested. ‘You -'

‘There's only one of us will be sailing on the
Titanic,
and it won't be you.'

The cup she was holding slipped from her fingers to smash on the bare floorboards.

‘No. No! Kieron, you don't mean that. You can't mean that, Connie protested frantically, as she ran toward him and took hold of his arm, clinging to it in desperation.

‘Who says I can't? Not you! You brung me down, that's all you done t' me. Persuaded me to run off with you like that and against what me family wanted. Me Uncle Bill says as how I'm to mek a fresh start for mesel' wi' out you!'

Connie couldn't believe what she was hearing. ‘We're going to America to start a new life together,' she persisted.

‘You're goin' nowhere!' he told her. ‘I'm t' one what's going t'ave a new life.'

Bill Connolly had instructed Kieron to leave Connie behind, and there was no way he would dare to cross his uncle. Not that he needed much persuading.

‘But you've got us both tickets. I gave you the money, and the jewellery that my mother left me. You can't leave me here, I won't let you!'

As she flung herself against him in desperation, Kieron gave her a savage push that sent her careering into the bed. Connie cried out as her temple struck the sharp wood of the frame. Pain exploded inside her head, and she felt herself slide down into heavy, thick darkness, as she lost consciousness.

When she came round Connie was on her own. Frantically she tried to stand up, and then had to sit down again as nausea overwhelmed her. She was cold and shivering, and it was a long way down the stairs to the filthy outside privy they shared with everyone else in the house. Somehow she managed to will herself to get to her feet.

She had to get to the
Titanic.
Kieron could not have meant what he had said. She knew him. She knew his temper. He would be regretting what he had said to her now, she reassured herself pathetically, and besides he had their tickets. She had to get to Southampton and find Kieron. They
would make up their quarrel like they always did, and everything would be all right.

Feverishly, Connie gathered her things together.

At the station, the guards shook their heads and averted their eyes from Connie's obvious distress. It was too late. There was no train that could get her to Southampton before the liner sailed, and anyway she had no ticket, nor any money to buy one.

She spent the rest of the day wandering round Liverpool in a daze, unable to accept what had happened – that Kieron had deserted her, cheated her not just of her money and her mother's jewellery, but also of her future.

It was dark when she finally let herself into the empty, cold room. Not bothering to undress, she crawled into the bed and wept until there were no tears left. It wasn't fair. It had been her idea that they should go, and now she was left behind whilst Kieron went without her.

On board the liner, Kieron joined in the excited celebrations. A pretty, blonde girl, overcome with excitement, threw herself into his arms and kissed him. He kissed her back enthusiastically, before releasing her to go and stand at the rail to watch Southampton and England disappearing. He had
sold Connie's ticket to someone on the dock who had been desperate for one, aye, and got double what he had paid for it!

Around his waist he could feel the pleasing heaviness of the money belt secured there – filled with the money his Uncle Bill had given him in exchange for his promise that he would not take Connie to America with him.

‘America she wants t'go, does she?' he had commented when Kieron told him of Connie's plans, and showed him the tickets he had bought with the money he had taken from the gambler, in an attempt to forestall his uncle's anger at the murder he had committed. Bill Connolly did not like anyone doing anything that might draw the attention of the law back to him.

‘Aye, well, it ‘ud be the best place for you right now, lad, there's no denying that,' he had acknowledged grimly. ‘Arthur Johnson's dead. You were a bloody fool to go at him like that, and in public. Have you learned nothing, you bloody hot head! A quiet word to me and I could have had it sorted, no one the wiser and no danger of you being blamed for it either. Lucky for you that someone had their wits about them and got you away and cleaned up.

‘You'd better make sure that Protestant whore of yours keeps her gob shut as well. America is it,' he had continued musingly. ‘Aye, well, there's no denying that a fresh start is what you need now, lad. I've got a couple o'contacts there – men who ull be pleased to have someone who knows Bill
Connolly working for them, but mind what I'm saying, lad, yer'll be a lot harder to trace without that Connie with yer. You don't want to be dragged back here and hanged for murder. So if yer've any sense, and yer tek my advice, yer'll leave her behind. In fact, yer can tek it that that's an order! And mind that yer obeys it, and does what I'm telling yer!'

Kieron knew better than to risk crossing his uncle. If he did, even in New York, he knew he wouldn't be safe from his vengeance. And besides, the truth was that he would be glad to be rid of Connie. She had been a novelty to him; a challenge, but now he was ready for fresh novelties and new challenges. ‘So give us yer word, lad!'

Eagerly Kieron had done so. And had been rewarded by his uncle's approving, ‘Yer da and mam will be right pleased t'ear you've come t'yer senses,' as he counted out a sum of money that made Kieron's eyes widen in greedy pleasure.

He felt neither guilt nor compassion for Connie or the man he had killed.

The blonde girl was giving him a poutingly inviting look. Whistling cheerfully, Kieron pushed his way through the crowd toward her.

Reluctantly Connie opened her eyes. It was still dark, but she was too cold to go back to sleep. It had been four days since Kieron had left, but, as she had now discovered, he had not left her without something to remember him by.

She moved underneath the thin, poor blanket that was all she had to wrap around her cold body, and immediately the small action made her stomach heave.

As she retched into the basin she had placed on the floor the previous night, Connie wept dry tears. She had missed her monthlies twice now, and had thought nothing of it at first, beyond being relieved to be spared its inconvenience, but now with this sickness, she was shockingly aware that the unthinkable had happened, and that she was carrying Kieron's child.

Running away with the man she loved had seemed a thrillingly romantic adventure, but the knowledge that she would bear an illegitimate child was neither thrilling nor romantic; it was a horrifyingly shameful prospect. She would be ostracised by everyone, not just her own family, and no decent people would want anything to do with her. There was no greater shame or disgrace for a woman than to have a child outside marriage.

Alone, and without anyone to turn to, she might as well be dead, Connie recognised bleakly. And, in fact, those closest to her would probably prefer her death to a disgrace that would contaminate them as well as her.

She retched again, as sick terror filled her. The room was cold with a dampness that was worse somehow than any sharp frost. Connie made no move to get up. What was the point? She wanted to hide herself and her shame from everyone.

She had no food, other than a stale half loaf, and no money to buy any, not even a couple of tatties from Ma Grimes' shop in the next street, never mind a juicy hot pie from the pie shop; but even if she had had the money she knew she would not have wanted to go out, fearful lest someone might guess her condition.

She had heard tales from her mother's servants, when she had sat listening in the kitchen to their gossip, of women being driven from their lodgings by their neighbours – sometimes physically – because of their sin in conceiving a child outside wedlock.

No one had any sympathy for a woman in such a situation. Connie shuddered, terrified of the fate that lay ahead of her. Perhaps if she didn't eat she would somehow starve what was growing inside her of life, she thought desperately. Or even better, perhaps if she just went to sleep, when she woke up everything would be all right: she would be back at home in Friargate with her parents and Ellie and John. Oh, how she longed for that! To be a little girl again safe with her family; with her mother still alive to look after her and love her.

Shivering, she pulled the blanket round her body. Tears of despair and fear filled her eyes. The rent was only paid until the end of the week, after that … Even if he agreed to give her back her old job, the landlord at the pub wouldn't keep her on once her belly started to swell … Miserably she huddled into her blanket, unable to imagine what the future held for her.

Ellie Walker stood tensely in the elegant drawing room of her Winckley Square house and looked anxiously at her husband, Gideon.

The trauma she and all the other Pride children had suffered with the death of their mother might have ended for her with her marriage to her childhood sweetheart, but Ellie wanted it ended for all her siblings: Connie, who had so recklessly run away with Kieron Connolly; John, their brother, who had endured so much misery before he had become apprenticed to the Preston photographer for whom he now worked, and young Philip, who was in danger of growing up not knowing that he had a brother and two sisters. Ellie longed to have Philip safely here under Gideon's roof, and in the nursery with their two young sons, Richard and Joshua. But right now, it was Connie who concerned her the most.

Ellie knew that Connie had disgraced herself beyond redemption in the eyes of the world by what she had done, but she couldn't help but love her.

‘Is there any news of Connie yet, Gideon?' she demanded, clasping her hands together. Gideon Walker frowned as he looked at his distressed wife. ‘Come and sit down,' he urged her.

Waiting until she had done as he asked, he began gently, ‘You know that through the agent my late mother used to find me, we've discovered that Connie and Kieron Connolly have stayed at a variety of addresses.' Gideon hesitated, not wanting to distress Ellie further by telling her that these addresses had, more often than not, been in areas no respectable person would ever want to admit living in.

‘But where is she now, Gideon?' Ellie pressed him worriedly. ‘Have you found her?'

‘In a manner of speaking,' Gideon responded heavily. The last thing he wanted to do was to upset Ellie, but he knew that she had to be told the truth.

‘Kieron Connolly bought tickets for them to sail on the
Titanic.
According to the passenger manifest he bought one in his own name and one in Connie's,' he told her quietly.

‘What?' Ellie stood up, her hand to her mouth. ‘But that means … You mean she's left England. She's going to America? Has he married her, Gideon?'

‘Not as far as we can tell. Her ticket was in her own name, Connie Pride.' Gideon answered her, adding firmly, ‘Under the circumstances, perhaps it will all be for the best.'

Gideon knew how much his wife's tender heart ached for her disgraced sister, but privately he acknowledged that Connie's departure for America was probably in all their best interests, including Connie's own.

Her reputation had been destroyed, and no one on her mother's side of the family was prepared to so much as speak her name any more, never mind find it in their hearts to forgive her and welcome her back into the fold, as his soft-hearted Ellie wanted to do.

Tears welled in Ellie's eyes, as she struggled to accept what Gideon was saying, but she didn't argue with him.

It had been nearly a week now since Kieron left, and Connie had done little other than sleep, and stagger weakly downstairs and across the yard to use the privy. She refused to refer to it as the ‘bog' as her neighbours so cheerfully did.

It was on one of these occasions that she saw a new family, all wearing mourning, moving in to one of the other houses, and she smiled bitterly to herself to see how the mother, a small, fragile, obviously middle-aged woman, whose facial features were obscured by her heavy widow's veiling, glanced around herself in numb despair.

The small group were huddled together, the mother trying to comfort the young girl who clung to her skirts, whilst a tall, too thin, young man
hurried to open the door for them. A lock of soft, brown hair flopped over his forehead, and would have fallen into his eyes if it hadn't been for his spectacles. He looked pale, and moved slowly, as though he had been ill.

Well, his health certainly won't mend living here, Connie acknowledged cynically. That they were not used to the kind of surroundings they now found themselves in was obvious. Their clothes might not be fashionable but they were clean and pressed, the young girl's apron immaculately starched.

Did they believe they were the only people here to think themselves above such a place, Connie wondered angrily, as the mother lifted her skirt above the dirt of the yard.

‘Oh, I am sure the house will be better inside, Harry,' the woman murmured bravely.

The young man was shaking his head and looking very unhappy. ‘Mother you cannot live here. We must find somewhere better.'

Connie glared at them. Better was it! Well, good luck to them. Normally the only place a person moved to from one of these poverty-ridden slums was either a wooden box or the poorhouse. Which reminded Connie, her own landlord would be calling soon for his rent money, and she had no idea how she was going to pay him. She cast an anxious look toward the entry to the back alley, half-afraid to see him suddenly appear.

One of her neighbours, making her way to her own house, gave her a curious look. Connie hadn't
made any friends amongst the other women living in the court. She and Kieron hadn't been there long enough, and besides she knew that they would shun her if they knew that she and Kieron weren't married.