Connie’s Courage (32 page)

‘Beggin' your pardon, Sister, but he's already gorn. ‘Gone?'

The nurse nodded her head vigorously. ‘Yes. Left bright and early he did. Said as how Mr Clegg had given special permission like, and how
he couldn't wait to get home and have a decent breakfast again.'

Connie nodded her head briskly, not wanting the other nurse to see how her relief was making her tremble slightly. Just recently she had felt as though he was watching her like a cat at a mouse hole, and although she had tried not to show it, she had felt vulnerable and afraid.

‘Can I go and have me own breakfast now, Sister, seein' as how I should be off duty now anyway?'

‘Yes, of course,' Connie agreed absently.

The door to the Captain's room stood open and Connie walked out of the ward and into the small room. The empty bed was still there, but in all other respects it was empty of any sign of the Captain's occupation other than the sharp smell of the cologne he had worn.

Connie sniffed and tensed, and then whirled round, alerted by some latent sixth sense, but it was already too late. The Captain was standing between her and the door.

Just outside it, Jinx, who must have followed her, was standing fearfully, watching. The moment the Captain saw him, he swore and grabbed him by the throat, banging his head brutally against the doorjamb.

As Jinx howled in pain, and then collapsed, Connie rushed automatically toward him demanding, ‘Stop that at once!' But the Captain slammed the door closed and stood in front of it.

‘You like giving orders, don't you, Sister, telling
others what to do, and poking your nose in where it isn't wanted? Well I don't like others poking their noses into my affairs, and when they do, I make sure they feel the full weight of my displeasure. Like you are going to now!

Connie could see the hot, feral glitter of enjoyment in the Captain's good eye as he witnessed her shocked reaction, and then suddenly the room was plunged into darkness as he extinguished the light.

Instinctively she tried to push past him to reach the door, crying out as she did so. Instantly, he covered her mouth with one hand, whilst the other turned the key in the door.

She could feel his breath against her ear, as he whispered savagely, ‘Ah ha, got you now, Sister, and guess what I'm going to do with you. I'm going to make you pay me what you owe me, starting with this.

As he wrenched open the front of her dress, Connie sank her teeth into his hand. She heard him curse as he lifted his free hand and hit her hard across her face, the impact of the blow jerking her head back painfully against the door.

‘You had that coming. And you've got this coming, too, bitch …

His voice was thick with lust and savagery.

Frantically Connie tried to claw at his hand as he grabbed hold of her breast and squeezed it painfully. In retaliation he placed his hand round her neck and banged her head against the door,
before seizing hold of her hair and dragging her over to the bed.

Beyond the door she could hear Jinxy rattling off rounds of machine-gun fire mingled with dying screams.

Against her ear the Captain told her tauntingly, ‘Listen to him, good, isn't it? No one is going to pay any attention no matter how much you scream – they'll just think it's that madman.'

His finger touched her face and Connie froze.

‘C is for coward,' he whispered in her ear, ‘and C is for Connie as well …'

She could hear him laughing as he pushed her down onto the bed, whilst she tried to break free, kicking out wildly at him.

‘Bitch!' he told her roughly, hitting her again.

It was like being back in Back Court all over again, abandoned by Kieron and left at the mercy of his uncle, only this time it was worse. Much worse.

Bill Connolly had only threatened to let others rape her.

Connie tried to scream through the sickening dizziness of her pain, turning her head frantically from side to side, as the Captain forced open her mouth and thrust a wad of fabric into it. Terrified and hardly able to breathe, she felt him push up her skirts and then straddle her, pinning her beneath him with his weight.

She tried her best to resist him, pushing at him with her hands, but he simply laughed at her resistance, hitting her so hard that her teeth rattled.

‘See, this is what you are going to get, he boasted to her.

Her eyes had adjusted to the faint light in the room now. Helplessly Connie closed her eyes against the sight of the dark red, pulsing male organ with its thick raised veins.

‘I've been dreaming about this … do you know that? Dreaming about punishing you for daring to interfere with my plans … my pleasure …

He was forcing open her legs. Connie kicked out at him and then almost fainted as he grabbed her ankle and twisted it until she thought it was going to break.

She heard him grunt in satisfaction as her body went limp and then he was thrusting into her; hurting her; forcing her; defiling her.

He was breathing heavily and hard, thrusting hard, grunting, lost in his own obscene pleasure, Connie recognised, as she lay sickly beneath him barely conscious.

‘Whore. Whore … whore …' He gave one final triumphant thrust, his weight pressing her into the mattress, as he relieved his lust, and then he was pulling away from her, and calmly dressing himself.

‘I always get what I want, Sister – one way or another, he told her tauntingly.

Connie heard the door open, and his voice sharp with loathing, as he demanded, ‘Get out of my way, imbecile! followed by Jinx's scream of pain, but it still took her several seconds to realise that he had actually gone.

She felt weak and sick, and her hands were shaking so much it took her what felt like a lifetime to remove the gag from her mouth and then straighten her clothes. Her face felt swollen and she could taste blood on her lip.

When she opened the door, to her relief the corridor outside was empty apart from Jinx, who was huddled on the floor, his face badly bruised.

Later Connie had no memory at all of how she got back to her own room or who might have seen her. A quick look in her mirror confirmed everything she had feared. Her face was swollen almost out of recognition and by tomorrow would be black and blue. No amount of bathing it with cold water or applying arnica to it was going to make any difference.

As for the rest. She simply wasn't going to allow herself to think about it. Far better to pretend it had never happened. Shudders were wracking her body but she ignored them. It had never happened. Nothing had happened. The Captain had gone and she was safe.

So why was she crying?

In the bathroom she scrubbed her skin as though she wanted to scrub it off, leaving it red raw.

She told everyone who asked that her bruised face and body were the result of a fall outside on the ice, and that was what she told herself she had to believe as well.

At Christmas, she thought she had succeeded.

By February, she knew she had not and never could. She had missed her monthlies – twice – and not just that. She was wretchedly, heavingly sick on rising, and had come close to fainting in the operating theatre.

Thoughts of intense rage and bitterness filled her. She tried every old wives remedy she knew to dislodge the hated life growing inside her, including drinking a bottle of gin before immersing herself in a bath of water so hot it scalded her skin – but to no avail.

There were other methods, crude and rarely successful, which were too horrific to try. She had seen young women on the wards who had attempted them dying in agony from septicaemia – even wealthy young women sometimes, who had thought themselves safe in the hands of the doctor who had operated illegally on them.

Instead she clung to the hope that she would miscarry naturally, and that life wouldn't be so cruel as to make her endure a fate she surely did not deserve.

But then they were in March, and she was over three months gone. Soon she would start to show. She would lose her job; she would lose everything and be right back where Kieron had left her. Her hope had gone, and in its place all she had was mindless dread and fearful panic.

She couldn't endure what lay ahead of her. It was too much for her to bear. Connie had never felt more wretched.

‘'Ere look there's a photo of the Captain and his new Missus in the paper.'

Connie fought back her nausea as the newspaper was passed up and down the ward whilst everyone looked at the photograph.

Would the Captain treat his new bride as he had done her? Bitterness filled her. What had she done to deserve such a fate? Surely she had already paid for her youthful mistake?

She had nothing left to live for now. Nothing! She had lost the man she loved, and now she was going to lose what had been left. Her respectability; her job; her home. She would be destitute and out on the street, pregnant with a child she already hated.

She had virtually stopped eating, unable to keep food down through a mixture of nausea and sick distress. As a result she was weak and constantly light-headed, gripped by spells of dizziness and stomach-churning despair, which she battled to hide from everybody else.

As soon as she was off duty, Connie left the ward and crossed the hospital's busy entrance hall, heading not for the exit to the nurses' home but instead for the main doors. Wild thoughts of taking her own life filled her head, even though she knew it would be a dreadful sin. The sour taste of her own nausea made her retch and grip her stomach, too caught up in her own despairing thoughts to be aware of anything or anyone else.

In such cold, icy conditions a person could surely slip easily and unnoticed into the cold waters of the Mersey. It would be over quickly if she didn't struggle, the water filling her lungs, and drowning out the unwanted life within her along with her own.

She would be safe then. Why she might even see Harry again! But of course Harry would go to heaven and she would not. People who broke God's law and took their own lives went straight to hell, everyone knew that! That's why they were not allowed to be buried in consecrated ground.

Numbly she started to cross the road, lost in her own dark painful thoughts. She was oblivious to everything bar her own despair, including the car bearing down on her. The driver tried to avoid her, but the road was icy.

Connie heard the screech of brakes and realised, too late, her danger. Her eyes widened as she saw the car coming toward her. She was going to be killed! In a split second she recognised that she did not, after all, want to die.

Panic filled her as she tried to turn and run, but it was too late.

A bystander witnessing the accident cried out in horrified shock. The car skidded to a stop whilst a crowd gathered anxiously round Connie's prone, still body.

A tall, striking-looking woman emerged from the back of the car and pushed her way through the
crowd commanding sharply, ‘Make way, please, I'm a doctor.'

‘A doctor! And her a woman, too! Catch me letting her doctor me,' one of the onlookers commented in disapproval, as the tall woman knelt down in the road beside Connie. She frowned as she saw the blood trickling stickily from Connie's mouth. Then suddenly she tensed, as she looked closer and into Connie's face …

As the car turned into the familiar square, Connie closed her eyes as tightly shut as she could. She had fought so hard against coming here, but in the end she had had to give in. Where else, after all, was there for her to go now that she was well enough to leave hospital?

Everyone kept telling her how lucky she had been to have suffered nothing more than a nasty bump on the head and a few sprains. And she supposed she ought to be grateful to Iris for her quick-wittedness in inventing Connie's fictional widowed status for her the moment it became obvious that she was pregnant.

And since she herself had still been unconscious at the time, Connie had not been in a position to reject the timely invention, learning of it only when one of her fellow nurses had come to see how she was, and told her breathlessly, ‘My, but you are a dark horse, married and widowed, and in the family way and saying nothing of any of it to us!'

Now of course, it was impossible for her to remain at the Infirmary even if she had been well enough to do so.

But to have to come here!

She flinched as Iris drove past the house that belonged to her Aunt Amelia Gibson, refusing to glance toward it.

The house was ahead of them, elegant and immaculately kept. The gravelled carriageway crunched beneath the tyres of Iris's car, the same tyres beneath which Connie herself had so nearly met her death.

Despite her determination not to do so, Connie started to shake. Although she had not said so to anyone, she still experienced flashbacks to that moment when she had thought she must die. In those last, dark seconds before she had collapsed, she had thought instinctively of Harry, and even believed she had felt his presence.

But when she recovered consciousness she had been not in hell or heaven, but far more prosaically in a hospital bed, with Mr Clegg and Iris standing over her.

Iris, it appeared, had just been given the role of acting as a medical go-between by the Government, to direct injured soldiers to the hospitals in the area best able to deal with their injuries. Iris had been on her way to see Mr Clegg at the time of Connie's accident.

It had been a few days later that she had briskly explained to Mr Clegg, who had been examining
Connie's injuries, that she suspected that it was Connie's grief at the loss of her husband that had caused her to lose concentration and step out into the road as she had.

The front door to the house was opening, Connie started to tremble again as she saw the familiar figure standing there.

‘Let's get you out of the car, Connie, and then it's straight to bed with you,' Iris was telling her firmly, but Connie couldn't respond to her. All her attention was concentrated on the woman hurrying toward them.