‘It doesn’t matter.’ He was here. He was here! She couldn’t believe it.
‘Here, I’ll see to them.’
Connie had made a move to retrieve the packages but he stopped her, going down on his hunkers as he crouched to gather them to him. He was wearing a bowler hat and heavy thick overcoat today, clothing which denoted his distance from the flat caps and cloth jackets of the working class and took him up into the bracket of employers and the upper classes, but then, as he raised his head and glanced up at her, she forgot everything but the fact that he had again sought her out.
And then he was standing up, towering over her by a good seven or eight inches, and she felt a little shiver flicker down her spine and right into the core of her and it was neither unpleasant nor unwelcome.
They stood looking at each other for a moment, their arms equally full of her purchases, before Dan repeated the words he had first spoken when she had been unaware of his presence. ‘I had to come and see you, Connie.’
His face was unsmiling and his voice had been deep in his throat, and now she swallowed twice before she said, ‘You shouldn’t have,’ and then – as a flash of something raw showed in his eyes – she added hastily, ‘I mean because of your family, Dan. They. . . they won’t like it.’
‘They aren’t important.’ It wasn’t said lightly but was a declaration of intent. They continued to look at each other for a few seconds more before he continued, ‘Do you mind me coming, Connie?’
If she sent him away now he would not return. The words hammered in her head. And then a light would go out of her life that, once extinguished, could never be relit. But it would be the sensible thing for both of them, aye, it would. Different classes didn’t mix, how often had she heard that said? But then her mam had said Dan’s father had been an ordinary working-class man who had made good so it wasn’t as if he’d been born into generations of money, was it? But there was his family, she couldn’t forget that. They had hated her mother and they probably hated her. Oh, what should she do?
And then in a second the thing was settled for good or ill when Dan said, his voice husky, ‘Do you, Connie? Do you mind me coming? Because if the answer is yes I have to tell you I couldn’t have stayed away, and I’m not sure I can stay away in the future.’
Their eyes were still locked, and now her voice had the faintest gurgle in it when she said, ‘Then my answer had better be no, I don’t mind, hadn’t it.’
They were close now, their breaths mingling.
‘Do you mean it?’
‘I never say what I don’t mean.’
And then he grinned, his smile lighting up his whole face and turning his eyes to warm chocolate as he said, ‘That might well make things a sight uncomfortable in the future but I can live with it.’
‘That’s very gracious of you.’
And then they both laughed before becoming silent again, and it was some moments until Dan said, ‘Would you care to go to a variety show at the King’s Theatre tonight?’
The King’s Theatre. Connie had never been to a show there since the theatre in Crowtree Road had opened on Christmas Eve just over seven years ago, but she understood that this most beautiful of theatres added a whole new meaning to luxury.
‘That. . . that would be very nice. Thank you.’
‘It will be my pleasure.’ He wanted to laugh and shout and jump up and down, and it was with the greatest restraint that Dan managed to say, the snow whirling about them in ever greater swirls, ‘Would you like me to carry these in for you?’
‘No, no I can manage, thank you,’ Connie said hastily. She could just imagine what Mrs Fraser across the road would make of a gentleman caller being shown admittance when the rest of the house were at work – well, everyone except Mrs McRankin that was, but it was common knowledge that she was virtually bedridden. And if she wasn’t much mistaken Mrs Fraser’s curtains were already flapping. Nosy old biddy! But she had a vicious tongue, and an army of cronies who liked nothing better than a good gossip in the backyards.
‘Till seven o’clock then?’ Connie had turned and opened the front door and now he piled the rest of the packages into her arms as she stood on the step. ‘I’ll call for you here.’
‘Till seven.’ She nodded and then smiled at him and his blood sang, bringing the colour into his face so that his cheeks felt on fire as he slowly backed away while she shut the door.
She had agreed to go with him to the theatre this very night.
The refrain was singing in his head as he made his way into Union Street before turning into High Street West. It was more than he had dared to hope for. But she had, she had. A surge of feeling swept through him and he felt like a young lad again. He wanted to whoop loudly, to slide along the icy pavements – anything to express his burning elation. He would buy her chocolates, a huge box of chocolates! No, not too big, he checked himself in the next moment. He didn’t want her to think he was showing off. And for the same reason he wouldn’t book a box, not with it just being the two of them. She might feel uncomfortable with the other three seats unoccupied, although he would pay ten times more than the £1.11.6d the boxes cost to have her to himself for a few hours. But it would be the next best seats, the orchestra stalls at three shillings. He’d call in at Ferry and Foster’s in Bridge Street and book them now before he carried on to work, but he’d have to be quick, his lunch break was nearly over and the mood John had been in since the New Year he wouldn’t miss a chance to get some snide dig in.
’Course, he’d wasted nearly ten minutes at the Grand before they had told him she didn’t work there any more, but as it happened it had worked out to his advantage when he’d followed his inclination to call at the house. If he had been a couple of minutes earlier she wouldn’t have been back from her shopping and he’d have missed her. As it was he’d spotted her at the far end of the street just as he’d got to the house and had been able to nip in the doorway next door.
Dan was humming a popular refrain from a couple of years back – ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’ – as he entered the premises of Ferry and Foster’s, and he was still humming when he left some two or three minutes later, but within a second the humming was cut off as he came face to face with John on the pavement outside.
‘Hallo, little brother.’ It was a term John had taken to using since the family altercation on Christmas Day and was always spoken with a covert sneer. ‘Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed the day, aren’t we? Lost sixpence and found a shilling?’
Dan looked straight at him but he didn’t answer. He had no intention of telling John his business and they both knew it.
‘You on your way back?’
Dan nodded but he still didn’t speak. John, of all people! He had wanted to hold on to the magic a few moments longer before he stepped into the office and lost the glow. There were a hundred and one ways to make life unpleasant at work, and since Christmas Day, and even more so since New Year’s Eve, John had used them all. If it wasn’t for Art he’d have thrown in the towel days ago. He had always been sensitive to atmosphere, and with John and the twins on one side and Art and himself on the other, each day had taken on the quality of walking blindfolded through a minefield.
They had turned into High Street West and had just passed Lambton Street before John spoke again, and then his words were spoken in such a casual, almost pleasant tone, that the full import didn’t register with Dan for a moment or two. ‘Has she got a whoremaster or does she please herself who she opens her legs for?’
‘What? What did you say?’ Dan’s voice seemed to be torn from his throat and his big fist came round like a shot, stopping just an inch or so from John’s face. And then his fingers opened and he grasped the collar of John’s overcoat, hauling his brother on to his toes as John endeavoured to prevent himself being strangled.
‘Let up, let up, man.’
‘Let up?’ It was a slow growl and now Dan, careless of the horrified glances of the lunchtime shoppers, shook John like a rat, his eyes narrowed and emitting a black light as he said, ‘You ever, you ever talk about her again like that and I’ll kill you, I swear it. Do you hear me, John? I’ll kill you.’
‘All – All right. . . Man, you – you’re strangling me – Give over, man.’
‘I’ll kill you, John, and take whatever comes.’
‘All – right.’
John was turkey red now and choking, and after one final shake Dan let his brother drop back down on to his feet while still keeping his hand on his collar as he said, his face thrust close, ‘You’re a dirty-minded little runt, you always have been. You come within six feet of her and I’ll do for you.’
Any reference to John’s lack of inches normally brought his hackles up and had him as aggressive as a fighting cock, but there was something in Dan’s face today that tempered John’s reply, although his teeth were clenched and his eyes slits as he bit out, ‘Don’t be daft, man, I don’t want her. More trouble than they’re worth, the lot of them.’
He wanted her all right. The knowledge was a burning coal in the pit of Dan’s stomach. And Connie had been right on New Year’s Eve – John had wanted her mother too. He had seen the truth of it register in his face when Connie had spoken. ‘You stay away from her, John.’
‘I told you –’
‘Aye, you told me.’ And now there was no vestige of the easy-going brother or long-suffering son in Dan’s countenance as he ground out, with quiet certainty, ‘I’ll make you wish you’d never been born, so think on, John. Think on.’
They stared at each other for a moment more, their mutual hate a live thing, and then Dan turned, walking swiftly round the corner into William Street and leaving John where he was, his body pressed up against a shop wall and his eyes as cold and hard as black marble.
Part Four
1914
Love And War
Chapter Eighteen
The first eight weeks of the New Year were trying and troublesome ones for England. The grim prospect of war enveloping Europe was looming larger, Ulster was teetering on the brink of its own civil war, militant suffragettes burned down two Scottish mansions and a parish church as the women’s campaign to be heard grew more aggressive, and strikes were sparking all over the country.
It was a time of unrest, uncertainty and dissatisfaction, and over it all were brooding the darkening storm clouds of ‘the war to end wars’. But for Connie and Dan, caught up in the wonder of their burgeoning love, it was a season of ecstasy and weightlessness.
That first evening at the King’s Theatre, when they had laughed and talked and Dan had dared to draw her arm through his – ostensibly because of the difficult progress along the pavements coated in ice and snow – on the short walk home from Crowtree Road to Walworth Way, had been but the first of many such outings together. January and February had seen them visiting the antiquities gallery and art gallery in the museum just off Borough Road; wandering among the tropical plants and cages of foreign birds in the Winter Garden at the rear of the museum; enjoying more excursions to the King’s Theatre, along with the Palace and the Empire, and the Villiers Electric Theatre – Sunderland’s first purpose-built cinema.
Connie felt as though she had known Dan always, that there had never been a time when he hadn’t filled her thoughts and her vision with breathless excitement, and yet. . . She was frightened too. Frightened that the bubble would burst, that the dire warnings of Mary – frequently expressed – might just come true.
But when she was with him, his hand clasping hers, oftentimes her arm entwined through his when they were walking and his body so close she could feel his hip moving against her, on those occasions she felt nothing could ever separate them.
He hadn’t kissed her for weeks – five whole weeks – and although she knew that that was how gentlemen behaved when they respected the lass, she had begun to think he perhaps didn’t care for her the way she did him, in spite of all his attentions which seemed to indicate otherwise.
And then, one Saturday evening in early February, when they were strolling home in the bitterly cold frosty air after an afternoon of fun and laughter spent skating on the frozen lake in Mowbray Park and eating roast potatoes and hot chestnuts purchased from the brazier man, Connie had almost fallen headlong on the icy pavement. She had slipped several times during the afternoon too, but then they had been surrounded by myriad whirling figures and noisy bairns skimming over the frozen lake, and it had been different. Now there was just the two of them in the glittering darkness that turned even Union Street into something magical, and as his arms went round her he pulled her into him, crushing her against him until she could feel his pounding heart as though it were her own.
She had dreamt of this moment for weeks, lived it, tasted it, but the reality – as his lips took hers in a kiss that was fire and passion – was a million times better.
How long they stood there, her head flung back against his arm and their mouths straining for deeper intimacy, Connie did not know. All she knew was that when eventually they drew apart something had been said that could never have been voiced by mere words. He had touched each contour of her face, his fingers gentle as he had said, ‘Oh, my love, my love. Do you care for me even a quarter as much as I love you? Do you know what these last weeks have meant to me? Do you? They have been beyond my wildest dreams,’ and then they had kissed again, tenderly this time, and he had held her as though she was precious and priceless.