Connie’s Courage

‘Kieron. What … What’s happened? You aren’t in some kind of trouble, are you?’

‘You’re asking too many questions, Connie. And me Uncle Bill wouldn’t like that! It’s him as says you’re to say what I just told yer, if anyone comes asking,’ he warned her.

Connie gave a small shiver. What was Kieron trying to say? What had he been doing? She was no fool and she knew he must be in some kind of trouble if he wanted her to provide an alibi for him.

‘Oh, and I’ve got the tickets for the Titanic,’ he added, almost as though it was an afterthought. ‘So you can stop pestering me about it. Went out special like I did, this mornin', whilst you was still in kip.’

Connie hesitated. Kieron was concealing something from her, she knew that, but she was afraid to push him too hard, and at least he had got the tickets!

Kieron shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. He had used the money he had snatched back from the man he had murdered to buy their steerage tickets, more out of fear for his own safety than any desire to fulfil his promise to Connie. But of course he wasn’t going to tell her that.

In fact, he was beginning to think that his father and his Uncle Bill had it right when they warned him that he would regret getting involved with Connie. She was a girl from a very different background to his own who did not understand their ways as one of their own would have done. Connie came from a respectable, hard-working family; Kieron’s family inhabited a much darker world of thievery and violence, even though Connie herself had not realised it as yet.

Thrilled by Kieron’s announcement, Connie dismissed her anxiety and flung her arms around his neck. This time Kieron didn’t reject her.

The minute she opened her eyes, Connie was wide awake. It was only just dawn but she was too excited to go back to sleep. Today was the day they left for Southampton and the Titanic! They would reach Southampton by evening, and planned to go straight from the station to the port, ready to board the Titanic ahead of her departure at noon the next day. Connie’s small case was already packed!

Eagerly she pushed back the thin, greying bedcovers, and got out of bed, singing happily under her breath.

‘Mother Mary! Will you stop that caterwauling!’

Kieron had been out the previous night drinking, saying his farewells to his friends and his Uncle Bill, Connie guessed. It had been gone midnight when he had banged on their door, demanding that she let him in.

Now, in the pale morning light, he looked a very different man from the handsome young man she had fallen in love with. Drinking had bloated out his face, its flesh a pasty greyish colour, except for where his unshaven jaw bristled darkly.

‘Kieron, get up. We’ve got to hurry. We mustn’t miss the train,’ Connie chivvied him. ‘And I want …’

‘You want. Who the hell cares what you want!’ Kieron told her, staggering to his feet. ‘You’re a bloody rope around me neck, that’s what you are. A bloody Protestant who ‘ud open her legs for any un who’d have her! No decent Catholic girl would do what you’ve done. Me mam ‘ud sooner see me sisters dead! Me Uncle Bill’s in the right o’ it. It’s time I was rid of yer. An rid of yer is exactly what I aim to be!’

As always when he was angry, his accent broadened and Connie flinched at the venom she could hear in his voice.

‘But you love me!’ she protested. ‘You -’

‘There’s only one of us will be sailing on the Titanic, and it won’t be you.’

The cup she was holding slipped from her fingers to smash on the bare floorboards.

‘No. No! Kieron, you don’t mean that. You can’t mean that, Connie protested frantically, as she ran toward him and took hold of his arm, clinging to it in desperation.

‘Who says I can’t? Not you! You brung me down, that’s all you done t’ me. Persuaded me to run off with you like that and against what me family wanted. Me Uncle Bill says as how I’m to mek a fresh start for mesel’ wi’ out you!’

Connie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘We’re going to America to start a new life together,’ she persisted.

‘You’re goin’ nowhere!’ he told her. ‘I’m t’ one what’s going t’ave a new life.’

Bill Connolly had instructed Kieron to leave Connie behind, and there was no way he would dare to cross his uncle. Not that he needed much persuading.

‘But you’ve got us both tickets. I gave you the money, and the jewellery that my mother left me. You can’t leave me here, I won’t let you!’

As she flung herself against him in desperation, Kieron gave her a savage push that sent her careering into the bed. Connie cried out as her temple struck the sharp wood of the frame. Pain exploded inside her head, and she felt herself slide down into heavy, thick darkness, as she lost consciousness.

When she came round Connie was on her own. Frantically she tried to stand up, and then had to sit down again as nausea overwhelmed her. She was cold and shivering, and it was a long way down the stairs to the filthy outside privy they shared with everyone else in the house. Somehow she managed to will herself to get to her feet.

She had to get to the Titanic. Kieron could not have meant what he had said. She knew him. She knew his temper. He would be regretting what he had said to her now, she reassured herself pathetically, and besides he had their tickets. She had to get to Southampton and find Kieron. They would make up their quarrel like they always did, and everything would be all right.

Feverishly, Connie gathered her things together.

At the station, the guards shook their heads and averted their eyes from Connie’s obvious distress. It was too late. There was no train that could get her to Southampton before the liner sailed, and anyway she had no ticket, nor any money to buy one.

She spent the rest of the day wandering round Liverpool in a daze, unable to accept what had happened – that Kieron had deserted her, cheated her not just of her money and her mother’s jewellery, but also of her future.

It was dark when she finally let herself into the empty, cold room. Not bothering to undress, she crawled into the bed and wept until there were no tears left. It wasn’t fair. It had been her idea that they should go, and now she was left behind whilst Kieron went without her.

On board the liner, Kieron joined in the excited celebrations. A pretty, blonde girl, overcome with excitement, threw herself into his arms and kissed him. He kissed her back enthusiastically, before releasing her to go and stand at the rail to watch Southampton and England disappearing. He had sold Connie’s ticket to someone on the dock who had been desperate for one, aye, and got double what he had paid for it!

Around his waist he could feel the pleasing heaviness of the money belt secured there – filled with the money his Uncle Bill had given him in exchange for his promise that he would not take Connie to America with him.

‘America she wants t’go, does she?’ he had commented when Kieron told him of Connie’s plans, and showed him the tickets he had bought with the money he had taken from the gambler, in an attempt to forestall his uncle’s anger at the murder he had committed. Bill Connolly did not like anyone doing anything that might draw the attention of the law back to him.

‘Aye, well, it ‘ud be the best place for you right now, lad, there’s no denying that,’ he had acknowledged grimly. ‘Arthur Johnson’s dead. You were a bloody fool to go at him like that, and in public. Have you learned nothing, you bloody hot head! A quiet word to me and I could have had it sorted, no one the wiser and no danger of you being blamed for it either. Lucky for you that someone had their wits about them and got you away and cleaned up.

‘You’d better make sure that Protestant whore of yours keeps her gob shut as well. America is it,’ he had continued musingly. ‘Aye, well, there’s no denying that a fresh start is what you need now, lad. I’ve got a couple o’contacts there – men who ull be pleased to have someone who knows Bill Connolly working for them, but mind what I’m saying, lad, yer’ll be a lot harder to trace without that Connie with yer. You don’t want to be dragged back here and hanged for murder. So if yer’ve any sense, and yer tek my advice, yer’ll leave her behind. In fact, yer can tek it that that’s an order! And mind that yer obeys it, and does what I’m telling yer!’

Kieron knew better than to risk crossing his uncle. If he did, even in New York, he knew he wouldn’t be safe from his vengeance. And besides, the truth was that he would be glad to be rid of Connie. She had been a novelty to him; a challenge, but now he was ready for fresh novelties and new challenges. ‘So give us yer word, lad!’

Eagerly Kieron had done so. And had been rewarded by his uncle’s approving, ‘Yer da and mam will be right pleased t’ear you’ve come t’yer senses,’ as he counted out a sum of money that made Kieron’s eyes widen in greedy pleasure.

He felt neither guilt nor compassion for Connie or the man he had killed.

The blonde girl was giving him a poutingly inviting look. Whistling cheerfully, Kieron pushed his way through the crowd toward her.

Reluctantly Connie opened her eyes. It was still dark, but she was too cold to go back to sleep. It had been four days since Kieron had left, but, as she had now discovered, he had not left her without something to remember him by.

She moved underneath the thin, poor blanket that was all she had to wrap around her cold body, and immediately the small action made her stomach heave.

As she retched into the basin she had placed on the floor the previous night, Connie wept dry tears. She had missed her monthlies twice now, and had thought nothing of it at first, beyond being relieved to be spared its inconvenience, but now with this sickness, she was shockingly aware that the unthinkable had happened, and that she was carrying Kieron’s child.

Running away with the man she loved had seemed a thrillingly romantic adventure, but the knowledge that she would bear an illegitimate child was neither thrilling nor romantic; it was a horrifyingly shameful prospect. She would be ostracised by everyone, not just her own family, and no decent people would want anything to do with her. There was no greater shame or disgrace for a woman than to have a child outside marriage.

Alone, and without anyone to turn to, she might as well be dead, Connie recognised bleakly. And, in fact, those closest to her would probably prefer her death to a disgrace that would contaminate them as well as her.

She retched again, as sick terror filled her. The room was cold with a dampness that was worse somehow than any sharp frost. Connie made no move to get up. What was the point? She wanted to hide herself and her shame from everyone.

She had no food, other than a stale half loaf, and no money to buy any, not even a couple of tatties from Ma Grimes’ shop in the next street, never mind a juicy hot pie from the pie shop; but even if she had had the money she knew she would not have wanted to go out, fearful lest someone might guess her condition.

She had heard tales from her mother’s servants, when she had sat listening in the kitchen to their gossip, of women being driven from their lodgings by their neighbours – sometimes physically – because of their sin in conceiving a child outside wedlock.

No one had any sympathy for a woman in such a situation. Connie shuddered, terrified of the fate that lay ahead of her. Perhaps if she didn’t eat she would somehow starve what was growing inside her of life, she thought desperately. Or even better, perhaps if she just went to sleep, when she woke up everything would be all right: she would be back at home in Friargate with her parents and Ellie and John. Oh, how she longed for that! To be a little girl again safe with her family; with her mother still alive to look after her and love her.

Shivering, she pulled the blanket round her body. Tears of despair and fear filled her eyes. The rent was only paid until the end of the week, after that … Even if he agreed to give her back her old job, the landlord at the pub wouldn’t keep her on once her belly started to swell … Miserably she huddled into her blanket, unable to imagine what the future held for her.

TWO

Ellie Walker stood tensely in the elegant drawing room of her Winckley Square house and looked anxiously at her husband, Gideon.

The trauma she and all the other Pride children had suffered with the death of their mother might have ended for her with her marriage to her childhood sweetheart, but Ellie wanted it ended for all her siblings: Connie, who had so recklessly run away with Kieron Connolly; John, their brother, who had endured so much misery before he had become apprenticed to the Preston photographer for whom he now worked, and young Philip, who was in danger of growing up not knowing that he had a brother and two sisters. Ellie longed to have Philip safely here under Gideon’s roof, and in the nursery with their two young sons, Richard and Joshua. But right now, it was Connie who concerned her the most.

Ellie knew that Connie had disgraced herself beyond redemption in the eyes of the world by what she had done, but she couldn’t help but love her.

‘Is there any news of Connie yet, Gideon?’ she demanded, clasping her hands together. Gideon Walker frowned as he looked at his distressed wife. ‘Come and sit down,’ he urged her.

Waiting until she had done as he asked, he began gently, ‘You know that through the agent my late mother used to find me, we’ve discovered that Connie and Kieron Connolly have stayed at a variety of addresses.’ Gideon hesitated, not wanting to distress Ellie further by telling her that these addresses had, more often than not, been in areas no respectable person would ever want to admit living in.

‘But where is she now, Gideon?’ Ellie pressed him worriedly. ‘Have you found her?’

‘In a manner of speaking,’ Gideon responded heavily. The last thing he wanted to do was to upset Ellie, but he knew that she had to be told the truth.

‘Kieron Connolly bought tickets for them to sail on the Titanic. According to the passenger manifest he bought one in his own name and one in Connie’s,’ he told her quietly.

‘What?’ Ellie stood up, her hand to her mouth. ‘But that means … You mean she’s left England. She’s going to America? Has he married her, Gideon?’

‘Not as far as we can tell. Her ticket was in her own name, Connie Pride.’ Gideon answered her, adding firmly, ‘Under the circumstances, perhaps it will all be for the best.’

Gideon knew how much his wife’s tender heart ached for her disgraced sister, but privately he acknowledged that Connie’s departure for America was probably in all their best interests, including Connie’s own.

Her reputation had been destroyed, and no one on her mother’s side of the family was prepared to so much as speak her name any more, never mind find it in their hearts to forgive her and welcome her back into the fold, as his soft-hearted Ellie wanted to do.

Tears welled in Ellie’s eyes, as she struggled to accept what Gideon was saying, but she didn’t argue with him.

It had been nearly a week now since Kieron left, and Connie had done little other than sleep, and stagger weakly downstairs and across the yard to use the privy. She refused to refer to it as the ‘bog’ as her neighbours so cheerfully did.

It was on one of these occasions that she saw a new family, all wearing mourning, moving in to one of the other houses, and she smiled bitterly to herself to see how the mother, a small, fragile, obviously middle-aged woman, whose facial features were obscured by her heavy widow’s veiling, glanced around herself in numb despair.

The small group were huddled together, the mother trying to comfort the young girl who clung to her skirts, whilst a tall, too thin, young man hurried to open the door for them. A lock of soft, brown hair flopped over his forehead, and would have fallen into his eyes if it hadn’t been for his spectacles. He looked pale, and moved slowly, as though he had been ill.

Well, his health certainly won’t mend living here, Connie acknowledged cynically. That they were not used to the kind of surroundings they now found themselves in was obvious. Their clothes might not be fashionable but they were clean and pressed, the young girl’s apron immaculately starched.

Did they believe they were the only people here to think themselves above such a place, Connie wondered angrily, as the mother lifted her skirt above the dirt of the yard.

‘Oh, I am sure the house will be better inside, Harry,’ the woman murmured bravely.

The young man was shaking his head and looking very unhappy. ‘Mother you cannot live here. We must find somewhere better.’

Connie glared at them. Better was it! Well, good luck to them. Normally the only place a person moved to from one of these poverty-ridden slums was either a wooden box or the poorhouse. Which reminded Connie, her own landlord would be calling soon for his rent money, and she had no idea how she was going to pay him. She cast an anxious look toward the entry to the back alley, half-afraid to see him suddenly appear.

One of her neighbours, making her way to her own house, gave her a curious look. Connie hadn’t made any friends amongst the other women living in the court. She and Kieron hadn’t been there long enough, and besides she knew that they would shun her if they knew that she and Kieron weren’t married.

Listlessly Connie made her way back to her room. She felt weak and light-headed, and she couldn’t remember the last time she had eaten, but she wasn’t hungry anyway. Perhaps if she was lucky she might just go to sleep tonight and never wake up again.

Self-pityingly she thought about how her family would react to her plight. They would be happy to see her dead, she was sure! Her aunts would not have dreamed of hiring a servant who lived in the kind of conditions Connie now did. Her grimy, darned clothes were shabbier even than those worn by her aunt’s scullery maid.

She touched her concave belly, and turned her face into the grimy pillow to weep.

Three doors away, Connie’s new neighbours were exploring their new home.

‘Mother, you can’t stay here,’ Harry Lawson protested, as he looked around the shabby parlour.

‘Harry, we’ll be fine,’ Elsie Lawson tried to reassure her son, but in reality she was as appalled by her surroundings as he was. Her elder daughter was yet to join them, so Elsie told Harry brightly, ‘When Mavis gets here we’ll set to and clean it up.’

It was only just a month since she had lost her husband. Thieves had broken into his grocery shop and bludgeoned him to death.

Elsie was still in shock. The shop had been a rented property, as had the pretty house they had lived in, and her husband had only left her a small amount of money. Of her three children, only one was working, and Harry’s job as a junior schoolteacher at Hutton Grammar School paid him only a pittance.

She had been told that property was much cheaper to rent down in this part of the city, and naively she had not fully understood why!

‘You can’t stay here, Mother,’ Harry was repeating. ‘I’ll leave Hutton when my contract finishes at the end of next term, and I’ll look for another teaching job.’

‘You will do no such thing, Harry Lawson,’ Elsie stopped him angrily. ‘What do you think your poor father would say if he could hear you saying that? He was that proud of you, Harry. Getting a scholarship and all! And there’s no better public school hereabouts than Hutton. You said when they took you on, that you were lucky and what an honour it was to be chosen to teach there. I know they don’t pay you much now, but when one of the older teachers retires, they’re bound to give you a promotion,’ she finished proudly.

Harry shook his head. Everything she had said was true, but he couldn’t leave his mother and sisters to live here.

‘This place will be all right for now,’ Elsie assured him again, with a cheerfulness she was far from feeling. ‘Once I’ve given it a good clean and got some of our own things in, it will look a lot better – you wait and see.’

Harry smiled. He knew how proud both his parents were of him. But he had seen the pretty young girl crossing the yard earlier, her face pinched with cold and hunger, her dress shabby and faded. His heart had gone out to her. There was no way he wanted to see his own sisters ending up like that. He had been granted some special leave because of his father’s death, and he decided he would spend that time making enquiries to see if he could get a teaching post with a less prestigious school. He needed to find somewhere where he could live out, and not in, as he had to at Hutton, and to try to get some extra part-time work to help with the family finances.

‘Titanic Sinks – Hundreds Feared Dead!’

Gideon’s stomach lurched with disbelief as he stared at the headlines in his morning paper.

He picked it up and scanned the front page article. It was true! The liner its owners had claimed was unsinkable, had sunk!

That news, in itself, would have been shocking enough, without the fact that Connie had been on board it.

Ellie was upstairs in the nursery, and he had a mad impulse to throw the papers on the fire before she could see them.

He heard her footsteps crossing the hall and she came into the room, her eyes bright with happiness and love; her mouth curved into a delighted smile.

‘Gideon, you’ll never guess what! Joshua has just smiled at me! Nurse says he is still too young, but I know that he did. Oh, I wish you could have seen –’ Abruptly she stopped speaking as she saw the look on his face. ‘What. What is it?’

He went to her and gently led her to a chair, holding both her hands as he told her quietly, ‘There is bad news, Ellie. The Titanic has sunk with a terrible loss of life.’ He kept hold of her hands, and watched her as she struggled to assimilate what he had said.

‘The Titanic … But no! That can’t be true! She’s unsinkable! It was in the papers! She cannot have sunk … Connie is on board her!’ Ellie protested pathetically, before catching her breath and denying frantically, ‘No, Gideon! No! No!’ Shocked tears streaming down her face, Ellie turned to him. ‘There will be survivors though, surely?’ she begged.

Gideon felt the pity grip his throat. Connie had been a steerage passenger, but he couldn’t bring himself to remind Ellie of this, and take her hope away from her. But something in his expression must have betrayed him because suddenly she demanded, ‘You think that she’s dead, don’t you?

Oh, Gideon! This is all my fault! I should have done more for her, Gideon. If I had she would never …’

Gideon was not going to allow that!

‘Ellie, you have nothing to blame yourself for,’ he assured her immediately. ‘Connie was always headstrong and wilful, and you did your best for her.’

‘The family will have to be told,’ Ellie whispered, as though she hadn’t heard him.

‘I shall do everything that is necessary,’ Gideon assured her.

‘She might have survived. There will be survivors, won’t there, Gideon?’ Ellie repeated helplessly. ‘Such a new modern liner, there would have been lifeboats and …’

Gideon said nothing. According to the papers there had not been enough lifeboats to hold all the passengers, and those travelling steerage, like Connie, would have had the least chance of surviving.

As tears filled Ellie’s eyes, Gideon took her in his arms. ‘I’ll get young John round here, aye, and send a message to your father as well. And your ma’s family – the posh lot – will have to be told, I suppose.’

Ellie couldn’t speak. How could it be possible that Connie could be dead, drowned? Wilful, naughty, reckless Connie. Connie, her little sister.

‘Well, what I want to know is, what on earth Connie was doing on the Titanic in the first place?’

Amelia Gibson’s voice was sour-apple sharp as she looked accusingly at Ellie. Gideon had informed Ellie’s mother’s family, the Barclay sisters, of the news via Ellie’s aunt, Amelia Gibson, who was also their neighbour.