Connie’s Courage Read online

‘Stop nagging me, Mavis, I’m going!’

  As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Connie regretted them, but it was too late to call them back. Vera was looking triumphant whilst Mavis looked worried and upset.

  ‘Oh, Connie!’ she protested unhappily. ‘You really shouldn’t, you know!’

  Mavis had that look on her face again that reminded Connie far too much of the kind of look Ellie used to give her. In fact, she decided crossly, Mavis was getting altogether far too like Ellie. Telling her what to do! Claiming to know what was best for her! Always being the ‘good’ one who never did anything wrong! She had even developed the same irritating inclination to act as Connie’s conscience!

  Although she loved and missed her sister, deep down inside Connie still felt the pain of Ellie’s refusal to make it possible for them all to go home and live with their father, instead of being farmed out with their aunts and uncles. Of course, it had suited Ellie not to do anything because she had been quite happy living with their rich Aunt and Uncle Parkes who had spoiled her. It was Connie’s resentment about Ellie’s behaviour that sparked dangerously inside her now, making her reject Mavis’s well-intentioned warning.

  ‘Vera’s right,’ she claimed stubbornly. ‘It’s time we had some fun!’

  The anxiety in Mavis’s eyes deepened, but Connie was in the grip of a mood of defiance and recklessness.

  ‘So I take it you two aren’t coming with us then?’ Vera challenged Josie and Mavis.

  ‘I daren’t.’ Josie shook her head. ‘Me auntie would never forgive me if I was to get thrown out of here, and me stepma would never let us go back.’

  ‘And of course there’s no need to ask whether you’re coming, Miss Goody Two Shoes,’ Vera taunted Mavis.

  ‘It’s against the rules,’ Mavis answered her firmly.

  ‘Well, it’s you who will miss a good night out,’ Vera told her, giving an exaggerated shrug of her shoulders.

  ‘You’ll be in very serious trouble if you get found out,’ Mavis warned, as Vera got up from the table and Connie followed her.

  ‘No one’s going to find out!’ Vera told her dismissively. ‘And even if they do, we don’t care, do we, Connie. Sick of this place I am.’ As they left the room, she added to Connie, ‘It isn’t as though Sister guards the door or anything. And they can’t lock it, can they, because of the night staff?’

  Giggling together they hurried down the corridor, whilst Connie ignored the small inner voice trying to warn her that she was asking for trouble.

  ‘I’m on one of the Nightingale Wards this afternoon, what about you?’ Josie asked, as she and Mavis caught up with them, a few moments later.

  ‘We’re on the same,’ Connie told her, trying not to laugh as Vera pulled a mocking face behind Mavis’s back, when she answered that she was working in the operating theatre.

  As they came up from the tunnel that connected the nurses’ home to the hospital, Mavis almost bumped into a young policeman who was standing close to the tunnel entrance, holding his helmet beneath his arm.

  ‘Steady, miss! I mean, Nurse,’ he apologised, dipping his head politely, his face red with self-conscious embarrassment. His reaction caused first Vera, and then Connie, to burst out into fresh giggles.

  ‘Ouch, Mavis, I think he took a bit of a shine to you,’ Connie teased her good-naturedly.

  ‘Yes, a big red shine by the looks of his face!’ Vera added, as they both went into gales of laughter.

  There was a faint tinge of colour on Mavis’s own face, but she maintained her dignity, and kept her head held high as she stepped past the unfortunate young man, leaving Vera and Connie to giggle in her wake.

  Cursing himself under his breath, Frank Lewis watched the girls walk away from him. He had only been working in the area for a few days, and his sergeant had told him that the hospital would be part of his regular beat.

  He was waiting for his sergeant now, the older man having told him that he had a bit o’ business to attend to. Frank suspected that the bit of business was probably a cup of tea and a gossip, but he knew better than to suggest as much.

  If all the nurses were as pretty as the serious-eyed brunette he had just bumped into, his hospital beat was going to be a very pleasant one indeed!

  ‘Oh, that Sister Miller, she knew my shift was finished, but she made me go and clean the sinks before she’d let me go,’ Connie puffed, as she hurried into the bedroom and immediately began to pull off her cap and gown and start to tidy herself up.

  ‘I told my ward sister that I’d got me monthlies,’ Vera giggled. ‘I told her I were too sick to finish me shift and that I might be sick. Mind you, I’d have loved to see the face of those miserable besoms I’ve had to run round after this week, if I had been!’ Vera continued. ‘Women’s wards, I hate em’. You don’t know how lucky you are working on men s, Connie.’

  ‘Vera, Connie, please don’t do this,’ Mavis begged them worriedly. ‘If anyone should find out …’

  ‘No one’s going to find out!’ Vera told her, confidently tossing her head. ‘Connie’s finished her shift, and I’m in me bed poorly.’

  Behind Mavis’s back, Vera pulled a face at Connie.

  ‘Oh, I do hope you don’t get into trouble,’ Josie told them. ‘Mavis told me this morning that she was really worried about what you’re doing and that she thinks it is wrong!’

  Connie could see a pink tinge of embarrassment on Mavis’s face, and, for a moment, she hesitated. But Vera was tugging her arm, impatient for her to finish getting ready.

  Quickly Connie put on the pretty summer dress she had saved up so hard to buy. She had fallen in love with the Herrick’s cotton the minute she had seen it, and not just because the familiar name had reminded her of Preston where the company owned a large mill; the white background with its dainty sprigging of tiny pink flowers on green stems, suited her colouring perfectly, and she had enough of an eye for such things to have immediately changed the original pink ribbon trim for a much softer green – even if her sewing skills were such that she had stabbed her finger a dozen times, at least, whilst sewing on the new ribbon.

  Vera, in contrast, was wearing a much fancier dress in blue silk ornamented with bunches of flowers.

  ‘Blacking on your eyelashes!’ Josie exclaimed. ‘But what if it rains? You’ll end up with awful smudges!’

  ‘Do you think I need a bit more rouge on my cheeks, Connie?’ Vera asked her self-critically, after giving Josie a withering look.

  ‘Rouge! You’re wearing make-up!’ Josie exclaimed in shock. ‘But, Vera, that’s ever so fast.’

  ‘No, it’s not. All the nobs are doing it!’ Vera told her. ‘Do you want some, Connie?’

  Cautiously Connie dipped her fingertip in the proffered cream powder and rubbed it carefully into her skin.

  ‘Connie’s looks better than yours,’ Josie pronounced judiciously. ‘She’s not used as much as you, Vera.’

  Finally they were ready to leave, but not before Vera had insisted on adding another smear of Vaseline to her carefully rouged lips, and demanding to know if her hair looked all right.

  Ten minutes later, they were standing at the bus stop, arm in arm, Connie’s eyes bright with excitement, as they waited for the bus that would take them to the city centre.

  Since it was a warm, late summer evening, there was no need for them to wear heavy coats over their summer dresses.

  ‘If you ask me, it’s a good thing we’re both fair,’ Vera commented smugly as they climbed on the bus. ‘I mean, that way we go together, don’t we? I’d hate to have red hair like poor Josie’s, or brown like plain Mavis.’

  ‘She isn’t really plain,’ Connie objected. ‘She’s quite pretty.’

  Vera gave her a sharp-eyed look but didn’t say anything, turning her attention instead to trying to persuade the bus conductor to reduce their fare.

  ‘We’re poor probationer nurses,’ she wheedled. ‘You never know, one day you might have a horrible accident and we could be th
e ones to look after you.’

  The conductor’s heartfelt, ‘I’d rather be dead,’ made them both giggle as they hurried to their seats.

  They got off the bus in Bold Street, and Vera complained, ‘Oh, my poor feet. These shoes are crippling me!’

  ‘I told you they would be too tight,’ Connie reminded her promptly. Unlike Vera, she had no special new shoes to wear, and had had to make do with her summer shoes from the previous year. Not that she minded too much. As she had already told Vera, being on their feet so much and for such long hours tended to make them swell, which in turn made new shoes uncomfortable.

  ‘It’s all right for you. You only take size two and a half. My feet have gone huge since I started at the Infirmary,’ Vera retorted.

  Connie gave her dainty feet a discreetly smug look. Her mother had always said that dainty feet were the hallmark of gentility, and that no lady ever admitted to requiring a shoe size above a three.

  ‘I take after my mother,’ Connie responded automatically. ‘She had small feet.’

  Her mother! Connie’s eyes clouded.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Vera demanded sharply, watching her.

  ‘I was just thinking about my mother,’ Connie told her honestly.

  Immediately Vera gave her a brief hug. ‘Oh law', I forget sometimes about you and Josie losing your mas.’ She wrinkled her pert nose. ‘You must miss her, Connie.’

  ‘I do,’ Connie admitted truthfully, sadness clouding her expression. ‘Nothing was the same after she died.’

  Vera gave her a sympathetic look. ‘My mam and dad might have their barneys, but me mam can wind me dad round her little finger. When I get married it’s going to be to someone as does as I tell him!’ Vera announced firmly. ‘And he won’t be some jumped-up Johnny either, nor one who tries to take too many favours, if you know what I mean. I know me worth and any lad who walks out with me is going to know it as well.’

  Her words touched a place inside Connie that hurt, and made her feel not just afraid, but also as though she and Vera stood on different sides of a hidden divide.

  Once she had been like Vera, happily confident about her own future and the man who would share it – a man who would love her as her father had loved her mother. The reality of her relationship with Kieron had been bitterly painful, but of course she could never admit to the knowledge she had gained or how she had gained it.

  ‘Oh, look at that pretty crêpe-de-Chine blouse, Connie,’ Vera demanded, losing interest in the subject of men. Dutifully Connie gave her attention to the window display Vera was admiring. ‘It would go a treat with my new twill skirt. It’s a bit pricey though.’ Vera heaved a big sigh, ‘I think I’ll go in mind, and ask them to put the blouse to one side. I’ve got a birthday coming up and me mam and dad can get it for me.

  A little enviously, Connie followed her friend into the shop. A brand new crêpe-de-Chine blouse was a luxury she could not afford.

  ‘There, I ll telephone me mam and tell her that me birthday present is all sorted out for her, Vera announced triumphantly as they left the shop, the blouse having been put to one side after the payment of a small holding deposit.

  ‘We’re going to be late for the dance,’ Connie warned Vera.

  ‘Oh, we’ll get there in time if we hurry, and if we do miss anything it will only be the supper, that’s all. I can’t wait to see that George Lashwood again. I’ve never seen anyone so handsome or so smart. When he was singing, my heart fair turned over inside me chest,’ Vera sighed.

  Because of the popularity of the weekly dance, the entrance to the dance hall was thronged with people, and once they had bought their tickets, Vera and Connie had to squeeze past a group of young men in obvious high spirits, laughing and telling one another jokes.

  ‘By, but me throat’s dry. I wish we’d thought to get ourselves a glass of porter.’ Vera told Connie, nudging her as one of the young men winked broadly at them, and swept them a bow.

  ‘Looking for a seat, ladies?’ he invited, indicating the seat from which he had just removed his own hat.

  ‘We want a seat where we can see the dance floor,’ Vera told him chirpily, whilst one of his companions gave them a bold stare and exclaimed, ‘You two are a pretty pair, and no mistake.’

  Vera stuck her nose up in the air and pretended to be offended, but Connie noticed that she didn’t seem to be in any hurry to walk away.

  ‘Not walking out with anyone then, or meeting up with someone here?’

  The question was directed at both of them, but it was Vera who answered it, tossing her head and saying, coquettishly, ‘And what business of yours might that be then?’

  ‘Just the business of a normal red-blooded man who’s seen a real beauty of a girl,’ he quipped back. ‘Two right beauties they are, eh, Charlie?’ he added, nudging his friend in the ribs and winking.

  ‘Well, for your information, we’ve come here to listen to Mr George Lashwood singing, and not to listen to no impertinence from the likes of you!’ Vera told him firmly.

  But she was still lingering near to their table, and when one of them asked if she would like a glass of porter, she pretended to hesitate and then announced, ‘Well, I’m not bothered for mesel', but Connie, me friend here, said just as we came in that she was sorry we hadn’t got ourselves a glass and a bit o’ sommat to eat.’

  ‘Vera, I said no such thing.’ Connie objected, adding determinedly, ‘We’d better go and find some-where to sit.’ She turned and started to walk away leaving Vera with no option other than to follow her.

  She didn’t want to encourage the young men’s overtures. In fact, she didn’t want anything to do with them. After all, she had already learned the hard way what happened to girls who gave their love too easily. It would be a long time, if ever, before she ever trusted a man again.

  As soon as she had caught up with Connie, Vera demanded crossly, ‘Why did you have to go and do that? I was enjoying m’self.’

  Connie made no response, knowing there was no way she could explain how she felt to Vera, or why!

  ‘Connie, I thought we was coming out for a good time and now that’s the third time you’ve refused to stand up with someone!’ Vera objected, when Connie shook her head obstinately at the young man who had just asked her to dance.

  ‘My feet are killing me,’ Connie fibbed. ‘But don’t let me stop you, Vera.’

  Vera pouted and protested, ‘It’s not the same if you’re going to sit here being miserable all night.’

  The truth was, Connie admitted inwardly, that she had agreed to come, more out of a stubborn determination not to let Mavis tell her what to do, than anything else.

  ‘It’s a good job that Josie and Miss Goody Two Shoes didn’t come with us, mind. Josie would have gone as red as fire every time a lad came anywhere near us, and Mavis would have stuck her nose up in the air.’

  ‘Mavis enjoyed the comedian the last time we went out,’ Connie felt obliged to point out. ‘It would have been more fun, too, if all of us were here!’

  ‘It u’d be more fun if you’d give some of these lads a chance and have a dance wi’ one or two of them,’ Vera told her forthrightly.

  ‘If you want to dance, then don’t let me stop you.’ Connie told her again, but she herself wasn’t prepared to give in to the blandishments of the young men who tried to coax her onto the floor. Logically, she knew that all men weren’t tarred with the same brush as Kieron, but somehow she just couldn’t stop herself from being suspicious and wary. The miscarriage she had suffered might, in some ways, have been a blessing, but, in others, it had left her shocked and afraid, and she knew it would cast a shadow over her life that would last for ever. No woman could go through the pain and humiliation she had suffered and not be marked by it.

  The evening was over and the dance hall was starting to empty. Tiredly, Connie linked up with Vera whilst they made their way outside, and then fought their way through the crush to their bus stop. Connie rubbed her stomach as it gave a hun
gry rumble.

  ‘I’m starving,’ she complained as they climbed on the waiting bus.

  ‘Well, whose fault’s that?’ Vera challenged her. ‘If we’d stayed with them lads as first showed an interest in us, like as not they would have treated us to a bit of sommat to eat.’

  ‘Yes, and what would they have been expecting to get from us for it?’ Connie demanded pithily.

  ‘Well, expectin’s one thing. Getting it’s another,’ Vera giggled.

  The bus dropped them outside the Infirmary, and quickly they made their way inside.

  There was a bit of a to-do in the reception area: an elderly man whose face was covered in blood, and an elderly woman with him who was obviously his wife. Connie noticed that one of the two burly policemen with them, was the same one who had taken such a shine to Mavis.

  Skirting past the commotion they hurried into the tunnel.

  ‘We’re later than I thought we were going to be,’ Connie commented a little bit apprehensively, as they came out of the tunnel. ‘I … Oh!’

  They both came to an abrupt halt as, suddenly, Sister Jenkins was standing in front of them.

  ‘And where, may I ask, have you two been?’ she demanded.

  SEVEN

  Connie could feel all the pleasure of the evening draining out of her body as though it had been her blood. In its place was a cold, icy feeling of deathly despair.

  ‘We … we’ve just been out for some air, Sister,’ Vera fibbed.

  ‘I see. I take it then, Nurse, that you are recovered from the indisposition which took you off Sister Hughes’ ward this afternoon?’

  Vera went red, and said nothing.

  ‘And you, Nurse Pride?’

  There was nothing that Connie could say. She suspected that Sister Jenkins knew exactly where they had been!

  ‘This is not the first occasion on which I have had to speak to you on a matter of discipline, Pride.’

  Connie quailed beneath her disapproving look, her apprehension growing.

  ‘I have no option but to report your behaviour to Matron.’

  Connie sucked in a shocked breath, her apprehension turning to a cold, hard ball of fear. Suddenly, and too late, Connie realised how much trouble she was in. It was obvious both from Sister’s expression, and her reaction, that she was taking their breaking of the rules very seriously.