‘I didn’t say I believed them –’
Connie interrupted him with a mirthless laugh. ‘Oh aye, you did. Not in words maybe, but words are nothing. Actions speak louder than words. Just go, Dan, and please don’t come back. Not ever.’
Again they were staring at each other and nothing in Connie’s proud, tight face betrayed the fact that she was bleeding inside. He would ask her to forgive him, say he had been wrong, that he loved her and couldn’t possibly believe what this Mr Simmons had written. Right up until the moment Dan turned, her heart was telling her that he wouldn’t really go, it couldn’t end like this.
The minute the front door banged Mary was back in the sitting room, and as always her friend came straight to the point. ‘What on earth was that about?’ She stared at Connie who was again sitting in the rocking chair, her face as white as a sheet. ‘What’s up, lass?’
Connie couldn’t answer for a moment, and then, her arms crossing her stomach and her hands gripping her waist, she told her. She went on talking while Mary gazed at her open-mouthed, and when she ended, ‘So I sent him away,’ Mary closed her eyes for a second and turned her head to the side.
Then, looking at Connie again she said, ‘You played right into her hands, the pair of you. By, lass, I thought you’d got more sense.’
‘Me?’ If Father Hedley had suddenly materialised with two horns and a forked tail, Connie couldn’t have been more astounded. Or hurt. And it was her hurt that made her say, ‘How can you say that when you’ve never liked him? You’ve been on and on at me from day one to finish with him now then. I’d have thought you’d be congratulating yourself you were proved right.’
‘Don’t be daft.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Aye, you are, an’ I’ll tell you somethin’ else while I’m about it. I don’t blame him for thinkin’ the worst the way he found out. He’s only human, lass.’
She didn’t believe this. First Dan and now Mary. Connie’s great saucer eyes had always been mirrors for her soul, and now Mary dropped her head back on her shoulders and looked up to the ceiling, and what she said was, ‘Don’t look at me like that, lass. I don’t mean to have a go but you’ve always seemed to have a screw loose where he’s concerned,’ and, her head lowering, ‘I suppose everyone’s got a weak point an’ he’s yours.’
‘So you are saying this is my fault?’ Connie asked with painful restraint.
‘Aye, I suppose I am, a bit leastways.’
‘I see.’ The urge to cry had left her; Mary’s defection on top of Dan’s had sent the hurt too deep for tears. And now Connie stood up slowly, her manner strained as she said, ‘Well, you’re entitled to your opinion of course but it doesn’t make any difference. He has gone and I’m glad, glad, do you hear? And I don’t want you to mention his name again, all right?’
‘If that’s the way you want it, lass.’
‘It is.’ And it was the way it would remain. She was finished with love and fancy promises and sweet words that meant nothing. Bricks and mortar were solid and substantial and real, and they didn’t have the power to break her heart, Connie told herself fiercely. She wouldn’t forget that again. Like Mary had said, she’d had a screw loose where Dan Stewart was concerned, but oh. . . The lead weight in her chest was pressing down, grinding her heart to pieces. How did you stop loving someone just because they had stopped loving you?
Chapter Nineteen
At midnight on 4th August, 1914, Britain declared war on Germany, and cheering crowds surged through London to gather in Downing Street and outside Buckingham Palace, where thousands of people sang the national anthem amid scenes of great jubilation. News of the commencement of war reached Sunderland shortly after midnight, and was related to a bellicose crowd gathered outside the Echo offices.
The flood of patriotic fervour temporarily washed away the bitterness of the builders’, mine workers’ and railway workers’ strikes which had laid two million men idle in the preceding months and caused whole families to starve and become destitute, and young men waved their hats and cheered all the way to the recruiting offices, eager to take part in the war which was predicted to be over by Christmas.
For Connie, the last few months had been a composite of back-breaking hard work and nail biting tension as she, along with Mary and Ellen, had struggled to make enough to even cover their meagre wages, and then euphoria in July when suddenly the bakery and tea-rooms were crowded every day. But overall it had been a time of waiting. At least that was how Connie felt deep inside.
She couldn’t believe, she just couldn’t believe that one day Dan wouldn’t come knocking on the door. She told herself it was ridiculous to continue hoping, and she was eternally thankful for the exhausting days and nights that meant she fell into bed each night too tired to think, but nevertheless, buried deep, deep in the core of her, the last remnant of hope refused to die completely.
At the beginning of May she and Mary had moved from Walworth Way to the four rooms above the premises of the new ‘Bell’s Bakery & Tea-rooms’. With the assistance of a plumber friend Mary’s brothers had turned the first floor into a neat little parlour leading through to a kitchen, and the second floor consisted of their two bedrooms. It had taken them a full week to get used to the space. With their old room also rented out, Walworth Way was making Connie a handsome little profit each week, which had been very useful whilst things were tight and had provided for their groceries and fuel more than once when the cupboards had been bare.
Connie had been glad to leave Walworth Way for reasons other than merely the splendour of their new living accommodation and the convenience of being above the shop and bakery however.
Exactly two weeks to the day from the confrontation with Dan, John Stewart had knocked at the door asking to see her. She had refused him entry, and when he had made it plain – with a brazenness which had shocked and amazed her – why he had called, she had slammed the door in his face after warning him that if he came again she would inform the constable he was bothering her. The incident had upset and unnerved her, and twice in the weeks leading up to the move she had glimpsed sight of him in the vicinity of Walworth Way, although he had made no attempt to approach her, possibly because Mary had been with her. She told Mary nothing of this, nor Lucy, who was now heavy with child and confined to her bed most days with severe swelling of her limbs and face. Connie visited her frequently and they spoke of most things, but she found she couldn’t mention John Stewart to anyone. It was too humiliating, too debasing, the fact that he thought he could suggest. . . She didn’t like to dwell on what he had suggested.
But on the evening of 5th August Connie wasn’t thinking of John Stewart or even Dan; she was concentrating on keeping the customers in the tea-rooms happy. She and Mary had been rushed off their feet all day – it seemed everyone wanted to be out and about and talking about the splendour of Britain’s ultimatum calling on Germany to respect the neutrality of Belgium which Germany had patently ignored – so when she saw Harold Alridge at the door of the shop she waved gaily at first, before she took in his desperate expression.
‘What is it?’ She had reached his side in seconds. ‘Is Lucy all right?’
‘Can you come?’ Harold glanced round the crowded tea-rooms. ‘Lucy is asking for you. The baby is coming early.’
‘But she is all right?’
Harold looked at her, gulping spittle into his dry mouth. ‘She is tired, very tired,’ was his reply, but the manner in which it was spoken prompted Connie to call to Mary as she untied her apron, and after explaining the circumstances to leave at a run.
Lucy’s labour pains had started in earnest at four o’clock in the morning and it was now nearly six in the evening and still the baby showed no signs of emerging. When Connie entered the luxurious bedroom in the manager’s suite she was shocked at the sight of her friend. Lucy was barely recognisable as the beautiful elegant creature she had always known. Her hair was wild, her poor swollen body straining against the pain racking it, and she appeared oblivious to the ministrations of the midwife who was with her.
‘The doctor is on his way.’ Harold had approached his wife, stroking her forehead with a tender hand as he added, ‘And I fetched Connie as you asked.’
As Harold moved to one side Connie took his place at the other side of the bed to the midwife, and when Lucy’s tortured eyes turned to her she said softly, ‘I’m here, Lucy. I’m here.’
‘Connie?’
‘Yes, dear.’
‘Watch. . . watch over my baby, won’t. . . you. Help. . . Harold care for it. My mother, she might try to take it. . . and she mustn’t. My father. . . It mustn’t grow up with my father, Connie.’
‘Lucy, don’t talk like that, dear. Your baby will grow up with you and Harold.’
‘Promise me, Connie.’ And then, as another spasm gripped her, ‘Oh no, no, not again.’
Connie reached out and took her friend’s hand in her own and Lucy held on to it with all her might as she strained and stretched against the contraction, but it was obvious to each one of them that Lucy had no strength left.
At the same moment as the spasm finished and Lucy sank back into the rumpled pillows, the door opened to show the doctor, but when Connie tried to leave Lucy’s grip on her hand became vice-like. ‘P . . . promise me, Connie. I want my child to be free and . . . unfettered, not caged. My home was like. . . a prison. I couldn’t breathe. Help Harold, he’ll need you. You understand?’
‘Yes, I understand.’ From all Lucy had confided about her life as a child Connie had often thought the constrictions not unlike the workhouse. ‘But you’ll be taking care of your baby, Lucy, as soon as you are well enough. But I promise, dear. Of course I do. I’ll help in any way I can.’
‘Harold knows, and he . . . he’s promised.’ Lucy was gasping against the forthcoming contraction. ‘My parents don’t understand children, they never have.’
‘Don’t worry any more.’
Connie would have said more but the doctor and midwife were waiting for her to leave, and she could do nothing other than join Harold on the landing after bending down and holding Lucy close for a moment.
It was another hour before the child was born. It was very small and barely alive, and it was a girl. Lucy Alridge died twenty minutes later.
‘Lass, I know what you promised, an’ it was to watch over the bairn, not take it on full-time. You’ll never manage it, not an’ run this place an’ see to everythin’ else. He can afford a nursemaid, now then. An’ there must be other friends he can call on?’
‘They didn’t have friends as such. Social acquaintances maybe, and Harold has his associates at his gentlemen’s club, but not friends. Lucy used to say she always felt an outsider here, coming from the south, and what with running the hotel and all it left little time for getting to know people. Besides, she wasn’t like that, you know she wasn’t. She kept herself very much to herself. It. . . it was the way she had been brought up. Her father had stifled that part of her and she was only just. . . just beginning. . .’
‘All right, all right, don’t take on, lass. You know I’ll do what I can, an’ me mam an’ all, it’s just that lookin’ after a bairn is a full-time job at the best of times an’ what with it bein’ sickly an’ all. . .’
Connie swallowed deeply in her throat. Mary was right, she knew she was right, but it didn’t make any difference. From the first moment she had seen Lucy’s child last night she had loved her. The tiny screwed up face, the minute hands . . . This wee scrap of nothing had to live, it had to. And Lucy wouldn’t have wanted her daughter to be entrusted to a nursemaid, not at first anyway. Her friend would have wanted her to be with someone who loved her. But not her parents. She had been adamant about that. And poor Harold. . . Connie had never really taken to Lucy’s husband, but seeing him last night had made her realise his whole world had revolved around Lucy. He had been utterly broken, lost. And he hadn’t even held the child. . .
‘Lass, why don’t you just let things settle for a week or two an’ see what he sorts out, eh? He’s not short of a bob or two.’
‘This isn’t about money, Mary.’ Money was the last thing it was about. This was to do with paying back the deep faith in her which Lucy had always shown, a faith which had been tried and tested over the Colonel Fairley affair when Lucy had even gone against her beloved Harold in Connie’s defence; it was about a wretched little cottage and that other tiny fragile child who had been born too soon into a world that had no time for her; it was about Larry and her granny and her mam. They had all gone and she missed them so much, and she couldn’t hold them and tell them how much she loved them. But she could Lucy’s child. That she could do.
Mary had been watching the play of emotion over Connie’s face and what she said now, in a tone of resignation, was, ‘So, you goin’ round there now then?’ It was half past five in the morning and they had been sitting at the kitchen table for half an hour, neither of them having been able to sleep much since Connie got home the night before.