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.
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
