Annie Groves - Connie’s Courage

‘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.

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.