Connie’s Courage Read online

  She looked into his eyes and a cold thrill of fear seized her. He did mean it!

  ‘No! I won’t!’ she told him defiantly, the same rebellious streak that had got her into so much trouble before, spurting to life inside her. ‘And you can’t make me!’

  She knew immediately that she had said the wrong thing.

  ‘Whose goin’ ter stop me?’ he demanded tauntingly. ‘That posh sister o’yourn?’ He laughed out loud.

  ‘I won’t,’ Connie repeated desperately, her eyes widening in terror as Bill advanced toward her, his fist bunched.

  Connie screamed the first time he hit her, the blow knocking her clean off her feet. But, by the time his fists had laid into her body half a dozen times, she was beyond screaming; beyond crying; beyond anything only praying for the pain to end.

  Straightening up over Connie’s motionless body, Bill wiped the blood off his fist.

  ‘Aye, let that be a lesson to yer,’ he grunted, as he stared down at her. ‘I’ve got business to attend to right now,’ he told her, spitting onto the floor, ‘but when I come back you’d better be ready to see sense, otherwise yer’ll get another dozen o’ the same.’

  Aiming a contemptuous kick at her, he went to the door and removed the key, taking it with him and locking her in the room as he left.

  Waves of pain were surging through Connie like the tide on the beach, each one carrying her further and further into its agony. All she wanted to do was to be taken to a place where she could no longer feel it. But it wouldn’t let her go. It was savaging her with brutal teeth, gripping her, and biting into her belly.

  Connie whimpered and then cried out as each fresh surge brought her further agony. Through blurred eyes she looked at the locked door.

  Anger filled her, streaked with blood red fear. She hated Kieron for leaving her and she hated him even more for what was happening to her now. Bill Connolly meant what he had said. And if she stayed here …

  Somehow she managed to get to her feet. Bill had taken the key from the door, but Connie had another one, the one Kieron had left behind when he had abandoned her. Dragging herself to the small box beneath the bed, which held her few remaining personal treasures, she opened it, and removed the key.

  She could feel herself growing more sick and dizzy as she turned it in the lock, but the fear that she might faint and not be able to escape, made her grit her teeth and ignore it.

  She was conscious of someone from one of the other rooms staring at her as she staggered to the top of the stairs. Down at the bottom of them, the door was open, and a thin patch of bright April sunshine warmed the grimy stone of the court outside.

  Connie could feel the pain dragging at her as she started to walk down the stairs. By the time she was halfway down, she had dropped to all fours and was crawling. She tried not to scream out loud, when suddenly she started to fall …

  Harry turned into the alley on his way back to his mother’s lodgings. His chest was aching, as it did whenever he was anxious, a legacy from the weakness he had suffered in it as a child, and he had to pause to take a deep breath. As he did so, he saw Connie tumble through the doorway and into the yard. She was moaning in pain and immediately he hurried toward her, unable to prevent the shock registering in his eyes as he looked down at her.

  Her face was badly bruised and her lip was bleeding. He realised immediately that she had been beaten up, and Harry felt a surge of anger at the thought that a member of his own sex had hurt her so badly.

  Connie looked up at the young man bending over her, his expression concerned. She recognised him as the son of the widow who had recently moved into the court. Somewhere, a part of her registered a feeling of shame and anger that he should see her like this, but then that feeling was overwhelmed by her fear that, at any moment, Bill Connolly would reappear.

  A fresh wave of pain seized her and she tried to clench her teeth against it, but it was tearing at her again, even fiercer than before. She started to whimper, clutching at her stomach as she did so, struggling to get to her feet.

  A couple of women came hurrying out of one of the neighbouring houses and came over to see what was going on.

  ‘By the Blessed Mother Mary, what’s happened to youse, love?’ one of them demanded as she looked at Connie. ‘Yer man got a temper on him, did he, love? Aye, he’s given youse a right nasty thump.’

  Her voice wasn’t unsympathetic.

  Connie was desperate to escape from the court. Somehow she managed to get to her feet, and ignoring both Harry and the women, she started to walk toward the alley. She had only taken half a dozen steps when the pain gripped her again; stronger this time, stopping her in her tracks and making her scream aloud.

  Immediately the other woman’s expression changed. ‘’Ere Mary Ann,’ she called over her shoulder to the woman standing behind her. ‘Get your Jim to run round to Ma Deakin’s, will yer, looks like she’s miscarrin'. ‘Ere come on, love!’ she told Connie comfortingly, bustling up to her, ‘Let’s get yer back inside. Ma Deakin ‘ull soon ‘ave youse sorted out. How far gone was yer?’

  The girl was pregnant. Harry was filled with pity and shock.

  As the two women bustled round her, Connie lifted her head and looked at him. Their glances met. In Connie’s eyes he could see a mixture of fear and pride, and shame.

  Turning away, Harry hurried toward his mother’s lodgings. The two women had taken charge of Connie, and were trying to get her back inside the building.

  ‘No. No. Don’t take me back in there. He’s going to come back for me.’ She scarcely knew what she was saying, she was so terrified and so maddened by pain.

  ‘What the ‘ell’s goin’ on ‘ere?’

  The two women fell back as the local midwife hurried to Connie’s side.

  ‘She’s losing, Ma,’ one of them explained unnecessarily. ‘Got beat up bad by ‘er old man, by the looks o’ it.’

  Connie gave a terrified scream. She felt as though her insides were being ripped out. Mary Deakin frowned, and took hold of her. ‘Too late to get her inside now!’

  Discreetly Harry let himself into his mother’s lodgings.

  Connie felt as though the pain would never end, wave after wave of it, but all the time there was something else worse than the pain tormenting her. She heard herself scream, and then she was falling into burning hot blackness.

  Connie opened her eyes. Her mouth felt so dry. She moved, and then cried out as she felt pain sear through her.

  ‘Ma, she’s awake.’

  A woman was bending over her. A stranger! Terrified, Connie looked around the room. Had Bill Connolly carried out his threat, was she already in the brothel?

  ‘Well, youse back with us, are youse? Must say I thought we was gonna lose yer. Had a real bad time of it, you have. Bleeding like youse were never gonna stop, and then being that bad wi’ t’fever that youse looked fit to die. But I’ve niver lost a lass yet, and I weren’t gonna lose youse.’

  Connie blinked as she looked up into the beaming face smiling down at her.

  ‘I’ve … I’ve … been ill?’ she questioned uncertainly.

  The smile changed to a frown.

  ‘Aye, that yer have, lass. Lost yer babby, you did, and nearly died yersel. Eeh, but that bugger who knocked youse about left you in a right bad way. Although I says it m’sel, wi’out me to tek care of youse, yer would have been dead, right enough.’ Ere, our Jenny, go and get some water for the lass,’ she instructed the girl standing behind her.

  ‘Lucky youse was, lass, that them women in the court had the sense to send for Ma Deakin. The best midwife around these parts, that’s what I am,’ she told Connie proudly. ‘Shame about the babby, lass. But …’

  The baby. Connie struggled to sit up.

  ‘Tek it easy, love,’ the midwife warned her. ‘Youse’ull be all right, but ‘e give yer a right thumping and youse got a couple o’ cracked ribs. Bound ‘em for yer I have, and them’ll fix easy enough. He didn’t ought ter have knocked yer abo
ut like that and youse carryin’ an’ all! I’ll tell yer straight, it were touch and go for the first few days you were here. Lucky yer was, too, that our Lily is away visiting m’sister, otherwise there wouldn’t ‘ave bin a bed for yer. Eeh, lass, youse were in a bad way. ‘T in’t none o’ my business, lass, but if I was yer ma …’

  Connie shivered, as the midwife’s words brought back for her the full horror of what had happened to her. Tears of fear and misery filled her eyes.

  ‘I haven’t got a mother. She’s dead,’ Connie told the midwife, shivering again as she added, ‘I haven’t got anyone.’

  It was true, after all, Kieron had deserted her, and Ellie, the sister she had turned to rescue her from the misery of her life with their aunt and uncle, had been more interested in her own life and her own happiness, than she had been in Connie’s misery.

  And, if she had refused to help before, how much more likely was Ellie to refuse to do so now! Ellie would probably tell her that what had happened to her served her right, Connie decided self-pityingly. No, she had no family now. They didn’t want her, and she didn’t want them!

  Mary Deakin eyed her sympathetically. She had a soft heart, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that she had a houseful of her own, she would have willingly offered Connie a bed.

  ‘Eeh, I’m that sorry for yer, lass.’ She shook her head. ‘Ter ‘ave no ma, and no folks o’yer own. It dunna bear thinkin’ about!’

  It was obvious to her from both Connie’s shabby appearance, and what, to Mary, was her posh voice, that Connie was someone who had fallen on hard times. And, in Mary’s motherly opinion, fallen in with a right wrong ‘un man-wise, which reminded her.

  ‘Jenny Parker says as how she ‘eard from someone ‘oo saw ‘im leavin', that it were Bill Connolly who belted yer. By, but yer’v got yersel’ into a pickle o’ bother, lassie.’ She shook her head gravely. ‘Gettin’ yersel on the wrong side o’ Bill Connolly.’

  Connie felt terrified. ‘He doesn’t know where I am, does he?’ she demanded frantically. ‘He mustn’t know.’

  There, lass, there’s no need to tek on so,’ Mary tried to comfort her. ‘We ‘aven’t told ‘im nothing. We looks after one another round ‘ere, and he ain’t one o’ us.’

  Too distraught to be comforted, Connie struggled again to sit up.

  ‘He mustn’t find me,’ she told the midwife, her eyes brimming with frightened tears. ‘If he does…’ She started to shudder. ‘He said …’

  Her face went white; her voice dropping to a terrified whisper, as she wept and told the midwife what Bill Connolly had threatened her with.

  ‘Eeh, the bugger! Hangin’s too good for him, and so it is. Eeh, lass, you’ve had a right bad time. ‘Appen it’s just as well yer lost the babby.’

  ‘I’ve got to get away from here. He musn’t find me.’ Connie repeated. ‘But I don’t know where I can go …’ Not back to Preston, she acknowledged miserably, she certainly wouldn’t be welcome there!

  ‘'Ere, I’ve just remembered sommat,’ the midwife exclaimed happily. ‘I’ve got a niece up at’ ospital, and she were telling us that they’re wanting to tek on girls ter train up as nurses. Yer lives in whilst yer training, and I could ‘ave a word wi’ her if yer wants me to … By, but if’n I had me time again I’d jump at it. Yer’ll be safe enough up there, lass, the Matron don’t allow no men into the nurses’ ‘ome! ‘Ave their balls off if’n they tried, she would.’ She laughed.

  A nurse! Connie frowned. Working as a nurse was not something she had ever considered doing. Why should she have done? There had been no reason to think of such things in the life she had been envisaging for herself, up until Kieron had deserted her so cruelly. She had, Connie admitted, seen her future in very different terms, imagining it being more like her own mother’s marriage to a man who loved her.

  The rosy glow of believing Kieron loved her had faded long before their last quarrel, she admitted, but the fear of what separating from him would mean for her own respectability, had kept her clinging to the fantasy that, in him, she had found her one true love.

  And she had yearned so for that love, desperate for it to fill the hurting space left in her life by the break-up of her family.

  No respectable man would ever love her now though! Or marry her! So what was to become of her?

  ‘I don’t know anything about nursing,’ she began doubtfully. ‘And …’

  ‘Lord bless yer love, yer don’t need ter. Tek yer on and train yer up they will!’

  A nurse! Vague memories of being taught at school about Florence Nightingale, the woman who had lifted the work of nursing from something no respectable woman would ever consider, to an almost saintly vocation, floated through Connie’s head.

  ‘It u’ll give you a new start, lass,’ Mary urged her kindly. ‘No one up at ‘ospital needs to know nowt about what’s ‘appened down’ere, and if youse ‘ull tek me advice, you’ll say nowt about it yersel. Best put it all behind you, and make out like it never ‘appened, like.’

  The picture she was drawing was a very tempting one, Connie acknowledged. A new start … She could have a whole new life, become a whole new person; she would be safe from Bill Connolly, and free from the shame of having run away with Kieron.

  Connie’s spirits started to lift. She could picture herself nursing grateful patients whilst an admiring, handsome doctor looked on. Of course, her cousin Cecily’s husband was a doctor, and both he and his father practised in Liverpool. No doubt they attended patients at the hospital, but that knowledge did not put Connie off, far from it. Gleefully she imagined how graciously she would receive her family’s awed praise of her nobility at giving her life to help others.

  ‘Yes, please, I would appreciate it if you would speak with your niece,’ she told the midwife, and already, although she didn’t know it herself, she was sounding more like Miss Connie Pride, and less like the disgraced young woman who had run away with Kieron Connolly.

  FOUR

  Connie sat nervously beside Ma Deakin as the bus jolted through the streets. Thanks to the good offices of the midwife’s niece, she had been granted an appointment to be examined by the Matron to see if she was fit to train as a nurse.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked anxiously, as she looked out of the bus window. ‘This isn’t …’

  ‘Mill Road, o’course, ninny, Ma Deakin answered her affectionately, giving her a dig in the ribs with her elbow as she chuckled.

  ‘Mill Road, but that’s where the poorhouse hospital is!’

  ‘Aye, that’s right, where else would we be goin’? Come on, ‘ere’s our stop,’ Ma Deakin instructed Connie, heaving her weight out of the seat.

  The Infirmary, in other words, the Poor Hospital. All the bright dreams Connie had been weaving suddenly collapsed. To have to be taken into one of the Poor Hospitals carried as much stigma as being taken into the workhouse, and, for a minute, she was tempted to get off the bus and run away. But she had nowhere to run to, she reminded herself in despair, as she followed the midwife.

  Even on this sunny day, the Infirmary cast a dark shadow which made Connie shiver. When Ma Deakin had spoken of her going into nursing, it had never occurred to her that she had meant her to go into the Poor Hospital. Why, it would be as bad as though she were in the poorhouse itself.

  ‘I’d best not come any further with yer,’ Ma Deakin was saying. ‘T’ matron here don’t approve of the likes of me – yer have to have a proper training to call yersel’ a midwife round ‘ere. Now, you haven’t forgotten what yer have to do, ‘ave yer, luv?’

  The motherly concern in her voice gave Connie a pang of guilt. Ma Deakin had been so kind to her, she couldn’t offend her by telling her that she could not work in the poorhouse hospital.

  ‘Yer to go in and ask for t’ matron, and to give ‘em our Sarah’s name. Tell ‘em she’s arranged everything like!’

  Numbly Connie nodded her head. Was it really to come to this wretched place that Ma Deakin had washed and
mended Connie’s shabby dress, shaking her head over Connie’s best one, ‘No, lass, that’s too fancy.’ She had pursed her lips and added, ‘Yer don’t want ‘em thinkin’ yer flighty, like!’

  ‘Connolly will never come looking for yer in here.’

  Connie looked at her saviour, her eyes suddenly brimming with emotional tears. Flinging her arms round the midwife, she gave her a fierce hug.

  ‘Eeh, lass, don’t be such a softie,’ the midwife told her, giving her a push in the direction of the hospital. ‘Off yer go now, and think on, lass. No more getting yersel’ into trouble!’

  The entrance to the Infirmary loomed in front of her, and Connie knew that if Ma Deakin hadn’t been standing watching her, she would have been tempted to turn and run away. The poorhouse hospital! The life she had known really was lost to her now, and as for her dreams about the fun she would have going to the music hall and the picture house … She gave a small shudder of fear. They locked you in your room at night at the poorhouse, didn’t they? Everyone knew how cruelly its inmates were treated.

  She checked, and turned to look over her shoulder. Ma Deakin was still watching her. With feet that felt like lead, Connie took a reluctant step into the new life she was now dreading.

  Harry Lawson grimaced to himself in disgust as the pungent smell of bad drains filled his nostrils. The sooner he could get his mother and sisters out of their current accommodation, and into something decent, the better.

  He had to return to Hutton in the morning, but he was hoping he might have obtained some translation work from the P&O shipping line. It would mean long nights spent working over complicated documents translating them from Spanish in the main, and sometimes French into English. The pay wasn’t very good, but, so far as Harry was concerned, every penny helped.

  As he passed the spot where Connie had gone into labour, he averted his gaze. The plight of the young woman had concerned him, for her own sake, and for his sisters’ as well. He couldn’t bear the thought of them being pulled down to such a level, but poverty dragged clanging chains of other ills with it, as Harry knew.