Annie Groves - Connie’s Courage

It was all right for Ellie, happily married to Gideon, with everything she could possibly want, even if her first husband had committed suicide, leaving Ellie pregnant and alone and with his lover and her child on her hands.

Connie gave a small sniff. Now there was a scandal! Ellie’s first husband, Henry, had taken a lover while working in Japan for his father’s shipping line. The Japanese woman had given birth to Henry’s child, and travelled to England, with her baby daughter, to find him.

But trust Ellie to come out of it all whiter than white, with everyone singing her praises, and a second husband in Gideon Walker who had loved her right from the start! As Kieron loved her, Connie tried to reassure herself. Even if he hadn’t been showing it very much lately.

Uncomfortably, Connie admitted, that she and Kieron seemed to spend all their time quarrelling these days. Since their arrival in Liverpool, he had taken to disappearing for hours at a time, returning the worse for drink and refusing to tell her where he had been, other than that it was on his Uncle Bill’s ‘business'.

He certainly always seemed to be able to find the money for drink, even when they had none for decent food or accommodation. Connie had seen the pitying looks the other women living in the court gave her, but she had refused to acknowledge them, hugging to herself instead, the knowledge that soon she and Kieron would be starting their new life together.

Titanic sailed in less than three days’ time, and Connie had parted with the single reminder she had left of her past life and her beloved mother – she had given Kieron the piece of jewellery her mother had left her, so that he could sell it to raise the money for their fares.

It had all been so different when she had been growing up in the comfortable, happy household her mother had run in Friargate above their father’s butcher’s shop. Theirs had been a home filled with love and laughter, and secretly she still missed those days dreadfully. She had certainly never envisaged that she might one day be in her present situation.

‘Kieron, the tickets!’ she begged again.

‘Shut that bloody noise, will you!’ he answered her aggressively.

Connie looked at him anxiously. ‘Kieron, you did get the tickets, didn’t you?’ A pleading note had crept into her voice, and she was beginning to panic. ‘We’ll be sailing in three days, and you said that you would get them today!’ she reminded him, unable to keep the anxiety and distress out of her voice.

‘Aw, will yer stop nagging me, Connie. There’ll be plenty of time to get the bloody tickets tomorrow.’

‘But you said you would get them today. Why didn’t you? Where have you been?’

‘What I do wi’ me time is no bloody business of yours. You don’t have no rights over me!’ he told her in an ugly voice.

Connie bit her lip, her face flushing at his deliberately hurtful reference to the fact that they weren’t married.

At times like this, it was as though he had become a stranger. She could feel the mortified prick of tears at the back of her eyes, but she willed herself not to let them fall. No, she might not be Connie Connolly, but she was Connie Pride, and pride was what she had!

With that pride she turned back to look at him, and saw something in his eyes that made her heart start to beat with anxious, apprehensive strokes. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ she demanded immediately.

‘Nothing’s wrong, exceptin’ that I’m sick and tired of your nagging,’ Kieron told her, pushing her away so roughly that she fell against the table.

‘I’m beginnin’ to think I should tek me Uncle Bill’s advice and have nowt more to do wi’ you,’ he added bitterly.

Connie flinched at the sound of Kieron’s uncle’s name. There was something about him that was dark and frightening, and Connie was secretly glad that, in America, they would have the safety of the Atlantic Ocean between themselves and Bill Connolly.

‘Kieron, you don’t mean that!’ she protested. ‘You love me!’

‘Get out of me way, I’m going out,’ Kieron answered her angrily.

‘Kieron!’ Connie begged him, but he ignored both her protest and her shocked tears, pushing her out of his way as he headed for the door.

Things would be different once they were on board the Titanic, Connie comforted herself after he had left. She was unhappy and hungry, but there was no money for her to run down to the pie shop and get herself something hot to eat. She blinked fiercely, determined not to let herself cry, and remembered her father’s butcher’s shop, and the happy home life she had known before the death of her mother.

Kieron glared furiously across the smoke-filled, filthy room at the man sitting opposite him. On the table between them was the money they had both staked – and the winning hand the other man had just gloatingly revealed.

Kieron could never resist a gamble. It lured and possessed him, like drink or women lured and possessed other men. It was a need and a lust that overwhelmed everything else in his life. His decision to run away with Connie had been made on the toss of a coin – heads, he took her; tails, he didn’t.

‘Bad loser as well as a bad player, are you, Connolly?’ his opponent sneered as he made to pick up his winnings, including the money Kieron had gambled and lost. The money he had been supposed to use to buy his and Connie’s tickets for the Titanic. The laughter of the men watching died abruptly, as Kieron swore and jumped up, reaching for one of the empty bottles standing on the table. Smashing it downwards to break it against the table, he lunged toward his opponent stabbing the jagged glass into his throat before anyone could intervene and stop him.

The bright red blood spattering everything matched the dark red murderous mist rising up inside him.

A barmaid coming in to collect the glasses screamed, and the man standing closest to Kieron grabbed hold of him, gesturing to two of his companions to help him.

‘Leave ‘im, mate. We’ve got us own skins to think about,’ one of them started to refuse.

‘He’s Bill Connolly’s nephew,’ the other man reminded him sharply.

Bill Connolly was well-known in the area, and not someone it was wise to cross. There would be some very unpleasant repercussions for anyone known to be here this evening, especially if Kieron Connolly was taken by the police.

As they dragged him toward a side door, Kieron made a savage grab for the money, crushing the bloodstained notes in his hand.

When midnight came and went and Kieron had still not returned, Connie finally left the chair where she had been sitting waiting for him, and crawled into bed.

It was almost lunchtime the next day when he returned, and Connie flung herself at him, sobbing in relief, and demanding, ‘Where have you been? I was so worried … I hate this place, Kieron. I can’t wait for us to leave. How could you leave me here on my own all night …’

‘I didn’t,’ Kieron stopped her.

‘What?’ Connie’s forehead creased in confusion.

‘If anyone should come round here asking any questions, Connie. I was here all night. Never left the house all evening, I didn’t,’ he told her. ‘And you better not be forgetting that if’n anyone should ask. Otherwise you’ll have me Uncle Bill to answer to,’ he said threateningly. ‘If’n anyone was to come round here asking after me and where I was last night, you’re to tell ‘em that I was home with you, and that we was tucked up all nice and so cosy in bed together for ten o’clock … Understand? ‘Cos you’d better had!’

Connie’s mouth had gone dry, and her heart was hammering against her ribs.

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