‘No, no, don’t go, Connie. Please, not like this.’
‘I’ve ruined your brother’s party.’
‘Of course you haven’t.’ He was patting her hand in his agitation and now he tried to make a joke and lighten the proceedings as he said, a smile on his face, ‘We provided a bit of entertainment to brighten up the evening if nothing else.’
It was the wrong tack to take and he knew this immediately as the words registered in her eyes like a blow.
‘I really do have to go now.’
‘I’ll see you home.’
‘No.’ And then more quietly, ‘No, Dan. I – I don’t want you to. I’ll be perfectly all right with Mary and Wilf.’
‘But I can see you again? I mean, we could go for a meal, or to the theatre? I hear
The Merchant of Venice
at the Empire is very good, or if you prefer there’s a moving picture show at the King’s Theatre.’
She didn’t reply for some five or six seconds and then it took all her control to say quietly, ‘I think we both know that would not be a good idea.’
‘On the contrary, I think it’s an excellent idea.’
‘I’m sorry, Dan.’ Connie rose quickly. She really couldn’t take any more of this, not with him sitting there with that bewildered look on his face and his cheek showing the mark of one of John’s blows. It could never work. She knew it and he knew it really, he was just trying to be a gentleman now. He’d perhaps even feel relief when she had gone. That thought stiffened her back and enabled her to say quite steadily, ‘Goodbye, and. . . and thank you for asking me to come.’
‘You aren’t even going to stay and see the New Year in?’ Dan asked desperately as he too rose to his feet.
‘No, I’m sorry.’ She turned from him and made her way towards the door. She didn’t turn round to see if he was following her, but when she reached the hall there was only Mary and Wilf behind her, their faces strained and concerned.
Art and Gladys and the two men who had ushered John out were standing whispering in a huddle by the front door, and as the two men nodded to Connie before making their way back into the sitting room, Gladys came forward saying, ‘You aren’t leaving? Not yet? Oh, lass, stay. Don’t let our John spoil things.’
‘We really do have to go, but thank you for a lovely evening.’
It was a ridiculous statement in the circumstances but no one commented on it, and as Wilf collected their coats from the large mahogany hall-stand Art joined them, looking enquiringly at his wife but asking no questions.
The goodbyes were hasty and awkward, but then they were outside in the bitingly crisp air and walking quickly out of the square, not a word passing between them.
And it wasn’t until they were nearly home and just about to enter Walworth Way from Crowtree Road, and the sudden din of the ships’ hooters in the docks and the muffled shouts from the public house they had just passed told them they’d entered 1914, that Mary stopped and drew Connie’s stiff figure into her arms. She glanced at Wilf’s worried face over her friend’s shoulder, and her voice was quiet and not at all as one would expect on New Year’s Eve, as she said, ‘A happy New Year, lass. A happy New Year.’
Chapter Fifteen
It was half past seven on Thursday morning, New Year’s Day, and Connie hadn’t slept at all. It was strange; she didn’t even feel tired. She hadn’t done since they had got back to Walworth Way the night before, and Mary and Wilf had joined the others in the kitchen. She had come straight into her room intending to blot the events of the evening out in the soporific escape of sleep.
She had felt tired at that point – bone tired, exhausted – but then she had opened the top drawer of the oak chest-of-drawers she had bought a few weeks previously, and her eyes had fastened on the small engraved box next to her clean nightdress. It was a beautifully carved little thing decorated with animals and birds, and it housed the most precious thing she possessed. She had taken it out of the drawer, walked over to her bed and sat down before she opened the hinged lid. The piece of rag was just as Larry had given it to her, and as she took it out of its resting place and held it against her cheek the pain in her heart became unbearable.
She had still been sitting there rocking to and fro, the rag clutched between her fingers, when the lodgers had gone to bed and Mary had said goodnight to Wilf over an hour later, and the agony of loss and guilt and regret and a hundred other emotions besides hadn’t subsided. It had been nine years since her baby brother – and he would forever stay in her mind as her baby brother – had died, but it could have been yesterday such was her anguish. John’s venom and the violence of the scene that night had resurrected all the misery that the opiate of day-to-day living normally kept under wraps, and Connie felt desolate. Desolate and confused and alone.
She had pretended to go to sleep for Mary’s sake, but once her friend’s faint rhythmic snores had rumbled the air waves she had sat up in bed and pulled the curtain nearest to her slightly to one side, peering out of the chink into the dark cobbled street of grim terraced houses. She had remained like that until the night sky had changed to silver grey and it was time to get up, but by then her mind was more at peace.
She hadn’t been responsible for the accident which had taken her loved ones, although she would always regret that she hadn’t started work a day or two later. If she had been there she knew she would have saved them that night. Whatever it had taken, she would have saved them.
But she was responsible for the travesty of the night before and she had to shoulder the blame for this. She had known it was foolish to see Dan Stewart again. It was his kinsfolk who had destroyed her own family, and whatever way you looked at it it was wrong to let her attraction for him – and she was attracted to him, she had to face that – overrule her conscience. Dan, and Art too, weren’t like the others, and she had felt their remorse for what had occurred was genuine, but they had made their personal apologies and she had accepted them and that was that. It was settled, and it had to remain that way. For all their sakes.
She rose quietly, pulling her coat over her nightdress and thrusting her feet into her ankle boots before creeping out into the kitchen. There had been a half-hearted attempt to clear the debris from the jollifications of the night before, and at least someone had had the sense to bank down the fire in the range so it hadn’t completely burnt away, although the kitchen was still icy-cold.
Connie soon had the fire blazing and once the kettle was boiled she had a hasty wash before making a cup of tea for herself and Mary and carrying it through to the other room. They would have to get a move on if they weren’t going to be late for work, and it was work she was going to concentrate on in this new year. She knew where she was with her job – it was orderly and controlled and there were no nasty surprises – and it was the means of the sweet jar growing fatter. And the sweet jar held the key to the future. A future in which she would be working for herself within the next few years if she had anything to do with it.
The image of a tall dark man with soft brown eyes and a handsome, somewhat autocratic face, swam into her mind for a moment and she brushed the shadow of Dan Stewart aside irritably, angry it had surfaced again. Last night had proved how futile any thoughts in that direction were, and no doubt within a couple of days he would have forgotten about her completely. And she would forget about
him.
She nodded to the thought purposefully, and such was her determination that she marched into the bedroom like a small virago, causing Mary to awake with such a start that her heart didn’t stop galloping for a whole minute.
New Year’s Day. The year was starting like this and she knew exactly who was to blame for the current state of affairs between herself and her son. Edith brought the fragile china cup, held between her finger and thumb, to her lips and sipped at the tea before placing the cup gently back on the saucer and glancing round the breakfast room. She always breakfasted alone in here now that Dan was gone. Kitty had suggested she might like a tray in her room but she wasn’t starting any of those slipshod habits and she had told Kitty so.
She breakfasted light – she was aware that her stout, chunky build was not conducive to large cooked breakfasts – and normally confined herself to one poached egg, a slice of toast and two cups of tea. Moderation in all things led to a long life. She nodded to the thought. And she intended to live for a long, long time.
Her breakfast complete, Edith sat back in the chair and dabbed her mouth on the linen napkin, her hard black eyes fixed on the pair of Spode urn-shaped pot-pourri vases which stood alone on the windowsill, so as to bring all eyes to them. But today her possession of the fine porcelain gave her none of the normal satisfaction, in fact she didn’t even see the vases.
She hadn’t been able to believe what John had related last night. That Art and Gladys had allowed Dan to bring that girl – that whore’s ragamuffin brat – into their home as a guest was beyond the bounds of comprehension. Of course Gladys was a low, raucous-mouthed woman, likely she had seen a kindred spirit in the Bell creature. She hadn’t forgotten or forgiven her daughter-in-law’s attitude that Sunday in October over the accident in the mine at Sengenhydd in the Aber Valley. Gladys raising her voice to her like that – virtually shouting – and just because she had said that the explosion and fire which had taken the lives of over 400 men was a natural hazard and to be expected. Of course there was a whole branch of Gladys’s family that were miners and so she was bound to blame the employers and mineowners; she would never rise above her squalid beginnings, that one. But Gladys, common and unrefined as she was, was one thing. Connie Bell was quite another. She couldn’t bear, couldn’t bear to think of Dan touching that. . . that contaminated person.
Edith admitted to herself that she had been foolish, very foolish, to react as she had on Christmas Day. Of course it was John’s fault springing it on her like that and she had told him so, but knowing Dan as she did – his penchant for the underdog and overdeveloped social conscience – she should have played it differently. She sat forward in her chair again, biting her lip with vexation.
She knew the Rotheringtons had expected Dan to be present last night, and if they were to catch any whisper of him consorting with the likes of Connie Bell. . . She stood, her lips folding into a thin line. Something must be done, and at once. Somehow her methodical, well-organised plans had gone haywire and things were getting swiftly out of hand. And she wouldn’t have it. She wouldn’t tolerate this.
The first step would be to make discreet enquiries as to how her letter had been received by the management of the Grand Hotel, and what they intended to do about the trollop they had working for them. Of course the manager was a man. Edith’s eyes narrowed. And he may well be the sort of individual who thought with a lower part of his anatomy than his brain when it came to creatures like the Bell chit. Edith made no apology in her mind for the vulgarity, and it didn’t occur to her that the lady she now professed to be would not have thought in such a way.
But pressure could be brought to bear, she told herself tightly. She wanted Connie Bell dismissed, and she would also keep a careful eye on the baggage to make sure she didn’t acquire another post like assistant housekeeper. John would come in useful there. She wouldn’t rest until that girl was back where she belonged, in the gutter, and Dan saw the daughter of Sadie Bell for what she was: the cunning, conniving little madam.
But her enquiries would have to wait until tomorrow. Edith walked to the door and opened it quietly. She was hosting the New Year luncheon for the Christian Women’s Guild of Fellowship – a society drawn from the town’s most influential women which had first begun in 1895 when the
Sunderland Daily Echo
had run an appeal to ‘Feed the Poor Bairns’, and the money raised had provided breakfasts for the town’s poor school children – and she wanted to make sure Kitty had the five-course menu under control. The luncheon had been held at the Rotheringtons’ last year and they had a cook
and
a maid. However, there had only been four courses and one of those had been a somewhat uninteresting soup.
Edith stepped into the hall, taking a few moments to adjust the blooms in the large flower display standing on a small, walnut veneered table enhanced by herringbone inlays, either side of which stood a pair of superb Queen Anne chairs. Once the roses were to her liking she raised her eyes and glanced around the beautifully decorated surroundings. Her Dan with the scum of the streets! Never. Never would she allow such an abomination.
She would rather see him dead first.
It was almost eight o’clock in the evening and it had been a long, long day. Connie had just been checking the clean linen in the laundry room – normally her last job of the day – but she had been drawn to the sashed window in the last few moments, where a border of snow was mounting against the bottom pane. It had been snowing all afternoon, and would be quite deep again by now. She stared out into the whirling thick flakes, her hands full of fluffy white towels, the weariness of a heavy day following the emotional turmoil of the evening before and then a sleepless night evident in her bowed shoulders.