But at least she had won her fight to allow Sidney to follow the desire of his heart and continue his education with a view to attending university and then medical school, rather than be drawn straight into the family business as John had demanded. But she didn’t fool herself that her husband had given in to her wishes or those of his son. Surprisingly Ann had found an ally in Edith when the matter had been brought to the matriarch. A medical man in the family? Possibly even a surgeon or a consultant? Edith had weighed John’s desire to have his only son working alongside him and under his control against the prestige connected with her grandson’s ambition, and there had been no contest.
‘Mother?’ The expensive private school Sidney was now attending on the outskirts of Newcastle had taken ‘mam’ from his vocabulary, but Ann didn’t mind. She knew her son loved her.
‘It’s all right, Sidney.’
John knew what the exchange had meant and he stared at them both for a moment, resentment and deep bitterness burning inside him. She had been determined he would have nothing to do with his son from the moment the child had been born, damn her. She’d fed him poison along with her milk, a toxin which had warped the normal feeling a son should have for his father, until now the lad had an aversion to him. If he could have had his way a year ago – got him away from his mother’s skirts and working with him in the business – he might still have been able to reach him. But not now. Sidney was as good as dead to him now. He didn’t want it to matter-the lad was a milk-sop, a weakling with all his namby-pamby, mawkish ideas of working for the good of humanity, ‘the good of humanity!’ what was that? – but it did matter. Damn them both, it did matter.
‘I’ll be back before twelve.’ He was speaking directly to Ann and when she merely shrugged, lifting her eyebrows as she turned away, the desire to strike her was strong. She’d push him too far one of these days with her airs and graces, the mealy-mouthed’ dried-out bitch. She’d always been skin and bone from a young girl and as plain as a pikestaff; she ought to be down on her knees thanking him for being prepared to take her on in the first place.
He glanced at them both one last time – or at their backs to be more precise as they walked across the room – and then turned on his heel, walking out without looking to left or right or returning the salutations that one or two of the distinguished company sent his way, and his face was as black as thunder.
Connie was sitting in the corner of a comfortable chesterfield sofa, a plate of food on her lap and a glass of wine on the small occasional table at her side. She was beginning to feel more at ease. This was partly due to the fact that the sofa was in an alcove, and the recess engendered a feeling of privacy, although it was still on view to the rest of the room, but she could see Mary and Wilf – who at first had stood stiffly to attention – chatting to another couple and laughing and smiling, and this pleased her.
‘They’re fine.’ Dan had followed her glance and now he brought her attention back to himself as he continued softly, ‘Don’t worry about your friends.’
‘I’m not.’ And then Connie smiled self-consciously as she added, ‘Well, perhaps I am. They don’t know anyone and they only came to keep me company.’
‘She doesn’t like me, your friend, does she.’ It was a statement not a question and followed with, ‘Not that I blame her of course.’ He gave a short laugh.
‘She doesn’t know you.’
‘No, she doesn’t.’ There was an awkward pause and then Dan said, his voice so low she could scarcely hear it, ‘That’s all I’m asking you to do, Connie. Get to know me a little.’
It was the first time he had said her name and she shivered. The silence was longer this time, and after a moment or two she forced herself to turn her head and look at him, and she knew his eyes would be waiting for her.
‘Connie, listen to me.’ He rubbed his hand tightly across his mouth. ‘I know what you’re probably thinking and you have every right to think the worst. I can’t undo the past, or what happened to your mother and brother and grandmother in the fire, but if I could I would. Do you believe that?’
She stared at him and felt the colour sweeping over her face. She had the urge to jump up from the couch and leave the house, quickly, before either of them said another word. But she couldn’t do that. Neither could she sit here and let him say anything else without getting a few things straight. ‘My mother wasn’t killed in the fire,’ she said flatly. ‘She died the week before of a heart attack.’
‘Oh.’ He looked faintly surprised. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘She was worn out, physically, mentally and emotionally, and that was partly due –
mainly
due – to the work she did. She’d had a choice, you see, after the baby died, to put us all in the workhouse or to try and get a job. But there were no jobs.’
‘Connie, you don’t have to say anything else.’
‘I do.’ Her voice was quiet but intense. ‘And I tell you now that I’m not ashamed of her. She was a good mam, wonderful, and she did what she had to do to keep the family together. She hated it and it killed her, but she did it for us, for me and Larry and my grandmother. And it was only after Jacob had gone, not before. She was married to my father but he left us before I was bom. . .’ She went on talking, telling him everything, and he said not a word. The party flowed on in the perimeter of their vision, but their world was narrowed down to the sofa and Connie’s low voice.
And then she was silent, and the silence continued for a long moment before Dan said, ‘I should say something but frankly I don’t know what to say.’
‘That’s all right.’ It was finished before it had started and that was probably the best thing, she told herself fiercely, willing herself with every fibre of her being not to cry. She should have known how he would react – she
had
known she insisted silently, refusing to acknowledge her hope that he would understand, really understand. But it didn’t matter, she wouldn’t let it matter. She was not going to hang her head in shame – society could make its judgements and snap decisions but she knew what her mam had really been like. She hated him. She hated him and his whole rotten family. She had to get out of here. . .
‘Connie?’ It was the timbre of his voice that raised her drowning eyes to meet his, and what she saw there overwhelmed her for a second. ‘I’m sorry your mother was driven to do what she did, and that Larry and your grandmother died like that. I’m sorry you had all those years in the workhouse and for the struggle –’ He stopped abruptly, taking an audible breath. How did you express the inexpressible? How did you tell someone you had only met five times in your life – and two of them thirteen years ago – that they filled you with such a raw and painful and ecstatic feeling that you felt you didn’t know yourself any more? He was twenty-seven years old and he knew now he had never been alive until that moment twelve nights ago when he had glanced across the restaurant and seen her. And if he told anyone that they would either laugh their heads off or think he’d gone mad. Perhaps he had gone mad? Maybe that was why he was eating and drinking and sleeping her every second of the day and night?
He was still looking at her and she was returning his glance, and when his hand moved over hers she blinked once and then became very still, and it was in that moment, with their senses heightened to breaking point, that Connie became aware of a figure standing close to the edge of the sofa behind Dan and raised her eyes.
‘Very touching,’ said John softly.
At the sound of his brother’s voice Dan spun round and rose swiftly to his feet, and as though they were connected by a wire Art was there in the next instant, his voice low as he said, ‘Why are you here? I thought you were all at Mam’s?’
‘We are.’ John took his gaze from Connie’s white face long enough to cast his eyes on his brother and then take in the crowded room before he looked at Connie again and said, ‘Mam wanted you to come round, that’s all, but of course she didn’t realise you were having a. . . get-together of your own.’ The hesitation was deliberate and covertly insulting and he still didn’t raise his gaze from Connie.
His face straight and his voice flat, Art said, ‘Aye, well we are as you can see, so you can tell her that, can’t you.’
‘And more besides.’ This was from Dan, and as Connie rose to her feet he reached out and drew her close to him with his hand at her elbow.
‘You’re encouraging this, you and Gladys?’ John was speaking to Art and his voice was derisory.
‘This?’
Connie was aware of one or two glances coming their way, and a sick agitation was adding to the deep shock that had first filled her when she had glanced up and seen the man she loathed and detested staring at her with those devilish eyes.
‘Dan consorting with the likes of her.’
‘That’s enough. You shut your filthy mouth.’ The words were wrenched up from Dan’s stomach, and they were dark and ominous.
‘Me filthy?’ A mocking smile spread over John’s face as he looked at his youngest brother. ‘By, there’s none so blind as them that can’t see. Saint Dan! Holier than thou, Dan. I’ve had you rammed down me throat since you were a bairn by our mam, perfect you were. But your halo’s slipped now, lad, it has that. She’s fooling you and you can’t see it, can you. She’s got you tied up in knots –’
‘I’m warning you, John. If you don’t shut your mouth I’ll shut it for you.’
‘Do you know what her mother was? Do you? The last time I saw Sadie Bell she was whoring in a bar down in –’
‘You’re not fit to say my mother’s name
.’ For a moment all three men thought Connie was going to spring at John, and John actually took a step backwards before he checked himself, facing the woman whose flashing eyes were on a level with his. ‘You are scum,
real
scum,’ Connie hissed quietly but in a voice which vibrated with the depth of her emotion.
‘You,
you to call my mam after the damage you’ve caused, and all because you wanted her. It was jealousy of Jacob that brought you to the cottage all those years ago, wasn’t it. You might fool the others but you don’t fool me. You wanted my mam but she didn’t want you. No woman in her right mind would want you.’
To say that Dan and Art were flabbergasted was putting it mildly. This wee slip of a girl with the face of an angel and the poise of a lady had just voiced what both of them had thought for years but never had the nerve to articulate. And the effect on John was riveting. The blood had surged into his face; even his eyes were coloured with it.
By now most of the room had realised there was some sort of disturbance going on although they had been unable to hear anything clearly, but as Connie finished speaking Gladys appeared on the other side of John, taking his arm as she said, ‘Come away out of it, John, this is New Year’s Eve for crying out loud. Trust you to spoil it for everyone,’ and Wilf and Mary were pressing close to Connie and forming a triangle with Dan, enclosing her.
‘One day.’ John wasn’t shouting, in fact his voice was eerily low, but it had the same effect as if he were shouting on the group clustered around him, causing them to wrinkle their faces against its content. All of them except Connie and Dan, whose countenance was like granite. ‘I’ll see you brought low one day, you see if I don’t, you dirty little baggage –’
No power on earth or beyond could have stopped Dan’s fist from shooting out and making crunching contact with John’s jaw, and as a woman somewhere in the background screamed, Connie was conscious of thinking, Oh no, no, for this to happen! Everything’s been spoilt, before the room seemed to erupt as Dan and John were at each other’s throats.
It was over in seconds as Art and two or three of his friends yanked the two men apart and then held on to them, and as Gladys shouted, ‘Get him out of here! Go on!’ in John’s direction, her brother-in-law shouted back, ‘I’m going, don’t worry! I wouldn’t stay here with the scum you’ve invited if you paid me a hundred pounds,’ which made Dan tense against the hands constraining him and struggle to get free.
Connie stood as though turned to stone, and even after John had gone she still didn’t move even though Mary was fussing for her to sit down. It wasn’t until Dan’s sympathetic captors released him and he drew her down beside him on the sofa that she came out of the whirling confusion of her thoughts. She could feel herself diminishing and shrinking, even though everyone was studiously not looking her way. How much anyone had heard she didn’t know, but one thing was for sure, they all knew she wasn’t like them. She was different.
She shut her eyes for an infinitesimal moment and then opened them as Dan said, ‘He’s mad, he always has been, and my mother makes him worse. They’re. . . they’re unbalanced, the pair of them.’
She couldn’t bring herself to reply for a second, and then she said, with Mary’s hand pressed comfortingly on her shoulder, ‘Perhaps, but. . . they’re your family, they have more right to be here than I have.’
‘No, it’s not like that, really. You don’t understand, this has been brewing for years.’
Connie stared at him dry-eyed, but she was drenched with tears inside. Mary had been right and she had been wrong. This had been foolish, worse than foolish, and she should never have come. She had tried to pretend to herself that she could fit in and look what the result had been. ‘I have to go.’