by Anne Bennett
Carmel knew she was not glad at all and any who had watched that exchange and the formal handshake knew that, while the men in the family approved of Paul’s choice, his mother certainly did not. Most would also know who wore the trousers with regards to family matters.
‘Look for high jinks, at the very least,’ one woman said to her companion as the party was being led into the dining room.
The other woman laughed. ‘Oh, yes,’ she agreed. ‘I wouldn’t be totally surprised, though, if the whole thing isn’t called off eventually, despite that ring Paul’s pretty young fiancée is sporting.’
‘Many a slip, so they say.’
‘Indeed, indeed…’
Paul and Carmel, though they hadn’t heard what the women said, knew they would be the subject of some speculation. They had even discussed it. ‘It will be a seven-day wonder or whatever the phrase is,’ Paul had told Carmel. ‘It will be like a baptism of fire, something we have to go through.’
‘I know.’
‘I really can’t understand why people are so interested in one another’s lives,’ Paul continued. ‘I think that they must have too much time on their hands.’
‘I think that too,’ Carmel said. ‘And don’t worry, Paul, with you by my side I can tackle anything.’
That wasn’t exactly true, and Carmel felt so nervous her stomach was churning as she took her place at the table, grateful that Emma hadn’t had a hand in the planning and so she was sitting by Paul. The meal was just as lavish as the one Carmel had endured with Paul’s family, and the array of cutlery and glasses just as confusing. This time, though, Paul was very attentive, showing her what to use so unobtrusively that she began to relax, even though she caught sight of Matthew’s leering and slightly mocking eyes on her. She was able to ignore him enough to make polite conversation with the man to her other side, who seemed to like talking to her a great deal and who a little later described her to his friends as ‘a damned fine filly’.
Carmel didn’t hear him and probably would have found it amusing if she had. Unfortunately for the man, his wife did overhear and didn’t find it the slightest bit amusing.
The diners had reached the coffee stage when they were informed that the band was setting up in the ballroom, if any wanted to make their way there. Carmel caught the look of malice flitting across Emma’s face as she got to her feet. And so, when she reached the ballroom on Paul’s arm to hear ‘The Blue Danube’ playing, knowing Emma was just behind her, it gave her immense satisfaction to say, ‘I love this. Shall we dance?’
Paul stopped, stared at her and repeated, ‘Dance?’
Carmel laughed at the incredulous look on his face. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Dance. You know the kind of thing—you sort of move your feet across the floor to the music.’
‘But you can’t dance.’
‘Can’t I?’ Carmel asked, almost coquettishly. ‘Try me.’
Paul, wondering if Carmel was about to make a fool of herself, if she had perhaps drunk deeper of the wine than was sensible, took her in his arms almost gingerly. He soon found that she was a dancer almost in a class of her own and he began to relax and enjoy himself.
As they swept seemingly effortlessly across the room, Carmel feather-light in his arms, Paul asked, ‘How did you learn to dance like this?’
‘The normal way,’ Carmel said. ‘I took lessons.’
Paul shook his head. ‘I know that isn’t true. With the hours and shifts you work it would be impossible to go to a dancing class. You even said as much to me.’
‘Ah, but I didn’t say I went to a dancing class,’ Carmel said with a smile. ‘And I didn’t, of course. Lois taught me. The others helped, but it was mainly Lois.’
‘And you kept it quiet. You little minx.’
‘I wanted to surprise you,’ Carmel said. That wasn’t strictly speaking true, of course. What she had really wanted was to astonish and possibly disturb Paul’s mother, and from the stricken look on Emma’s face she had succeeded. That gave Carmel a feeling of elation and she stored it all away to tell the girls later.
After that, it should have been marvellous, and at first it was just that. Paul did do a few duty dances with others but Carmel wasn’t left sitting alone at those times. She was claimed by many, mostly far worse dancers than Paul and she had her feet trodden on more than once. Jeff, on the other hand, was surprisingly light on his feet and a good and amusing partner as well. She had just finished dancing with Jeff for the second time when she was approached by Matthew and asked for the next dance in front of both of his parents.
Carmel didn’t know how she could refuse, what excuse she could give, though she saw that Matthew was far from sober and she went into his arms with grave misgivings. She found that he too was a good dancer, despite his inebriated state. She was coping with his nearness, which had previously made her so uncomfortable, when suddenly she felt his hands trailing down her back and across her buttocks.
‘Stop it,’ she hissed in his ear.
‘Stop what?’ Matthew hissed back. ‘Showing a lovely girl how I appreciate her body?’
‘Stop this. You have no right to talk to me or touch me in this way.’
‘Even though you are enjoying it?’ Matthew said, holding her even tighter.
‘I am not enjoying it,’ she said through gritted teeth. And she wasn’t, but she was trapped, especially when she saw Emma’s narrowed eyes fixed on the two of them. How could she stamp on Matthews’s toes or pull herself out of his arms and tell him what she really thought of him here, in this sort of place?
Anyway, she knew he was the type of man who would blame it all on her, say she was asking for, lapping it up. Even if Paul believed her, it would bring about an impossible situation between him and his brother. Though Paul never spoke of it, Carmel knew she had already caused enough consternation in that family.
So she contented herself with steering Matthew to the opposite side of the dance floor to where his family sat and told herself to put up with it, until the dance was over. When the strains of it eventually drew to a halt, she sighed in thankfulness as she pulled herself away. Before she had reached her seat, Paul came out to claim her on the floor and she went into his arms gratefully.
She said nothing about the way Matthew had danced with her, but resolved to keep out of his way for the rest of the night. She doubted that he would be in any fit state to dance for much longer anyway, for out of the corner of her eye, she saw him watch them morosely for a few minutes and then return to the bar.
She resolved to put Matthew out of her mind and gave herself up to the enjoyment of the dance. Eventually, she was exhausted and hot. Paul steered her to the tables by the terrace, while he fetched her a drink. Sometime earlier, the door had been left ajar and the curtain drawn back to let some air into the room. Paul and Carmel sat and looked out at the stars twinkling in that sharp and clear night, and Carmel thought she had never felt as happy as she was at that moment.
Suddenly the band began playing, ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance’ for the quickstep. Carmel, who loved the tempo of the dance, was just deciding to get to her feet again when they were approached by a buxom and matronly woman, who had obviously known Paul from infancy and fawned a little over him. She was also interested in Carmel and sat at the table with her while Paul fetched them all more drinks.
When, a little later, the mood changed and the band began playing ‘Rhapsody in Blue’, a slow waltz, the older lady said to Carmel, ‘Would you loan your husband for a little while, my dear? My old duffer of a husband only uses these occasions to get blotto and is in no fit state now to get to his feet. On the other hand, I love to dance, though I believe the tango and quickstep are beyond me now.’
Carmel had no objection. In fact she was quite glad because the unaccustomed drinks had made her quite dizzy. As she watched them take the floor, she slipped out on to the terrace, hoping the night air would clear her head. In the light seeping across from the ballroom she could see the balustr
ade at the end and, knowing she would see more stars the darker it was, decided to make for there, but had only gone a few paces when she smelled cigarette smoke.
She thought perhaps a courting couple had come out on the terrace for some privacy and was backing into the room again when she felt her hand suddenly grabbed. She gave a little yelp and then she was swung round to face her assailant.
‘Matthew,’ she cried in alarm.
A very drunk Matthew ground out the cigarette he had been smoking beneath his foot and encircled his arms around Carmel almost in one movement, saying as he did so, ‘What’s your little game, eh? So prissy on the dance floor and then slipping out to meet me here?’
‘I didn’t know you were here. I came out for air.’
‘Don’t give me that,’ Matthew said. ‘I had to pass right by your table to reach the door.’
Carmel knew he must have done and yet she hadn’t noticed him.
As she started protesting again, he went on, ‘I always knew that a nurse would be a little goer. It’s a well-known fact, and it is always a good idea for brothers to share things.’ Then his lips were on hers, and his teeth were grinding against hers as he forced her mouth open. She felt his other hand on her breast and for a moment she was frozen in panic. Then white-hot anger surged through her and she fought like a wild cat, raking Matthew’s face with her nails while she struggle to release her lips, and stamping on his toes. Then, finding this was not dislodging him at all, and feeling him rolling one of her nipples between his fingers, she powered her knee into his groin. He let her go with a cry as he fell to his knees and Carmel looked down at him coldly.
‘Do you know something, Matthew Connolly?’ she said. ‘You are not fit to fasten your brother’s shoes. You are nothing to me and never will be. You try anything like this again and I will tell your brother. Let’s see what sort of a man you are then.’
She didn’t wait for Matthew to reply, but after adjusting her clothes she returned to the room to find the dance over and Paul taking the older lady back to her table.
‘Oh, darling,’ he said, catching sight of her. ‘You really are flushed. Are you feeling all right?’
Carmel felt far from all right. Her insides were jumping all over the place. She felt defiled and dirty and her lips were bruised, but she smiled at the concerned face of her beloved Paul and said, ‘Never better, my darling, and longing to dance with you.’
After that she danced every dance with Paul, and was with him as they danced the last waltz and shared the last kiss of the old year, then another to welcome in 1935. But for her the evening was tainted and spoiled, and although she knew she would regale the girls with the glitz and splendour of it all later, and her satisfaction about getting one over on Emma, she knew she wouldn’t mention any encounters she’d had with Paul’s brother.
Jeff had spent the night in the guest room. The reason was that when he had eventually got to bed that night, tired, replete and not entirely sober, he had been treated to a tirade from Emma about Carmel, and for the life of him he couldn’t see what the girl had done that had caused such vitriolic abuse.
Years of marriage had taught Jeff it was far more sensible to keep quiet and let Emma have her say. That way his path was an easier one to tread. However, alcohol and common sense seldom go hand in hand, and so he tried to say a few words in the girl’s defence. It was a mistake and he realised it as soon as the words were out of his mouth.
The tantrum that his intervention brought on was frightening in its intensity and when he retreated to the guest room, the words Emma flung after him would have shocked a fishwife.
He spent a fitful night, and when he woke the next morning he lay in bed and surveyed the state of his marriage. He didn’t like what he forced himself to see. When he had first got to know Emma, she had been a devastatingly beautiful but spoiled young lady. Little had been denied her in her life from her doting parents, and she had wanted Jeff and had gone all out to get him. He’d been unable to believe his luck. Her parents had been all for the match too. Jeff was heir to the engineering works that his father owned and they thought he would be able keep their daughter in the manner to which she’d like to become accustomed.
However, Jeff’s father was a drinker and a gambler, and had gambled with the firm’s assets, a fact that Jeff hadn’t been aware of straight away, so that by the time he had married Emma the receivers were panting at the door.
Neither Emma nor her parents ever knew how bad things were and how hard Jeff had toiled, not only to save the firm but to turn it round. It had worked, but it had taken its toll on him. Jeff had adored Emma as much as her parents had, and had given in to anything she wanted, both because he wanted to please her and because he was often too bone weary, with the crippling hours he was having to work, to argue with her.
She had never been terrific in bed, but Jeff had thought all woman of that social standing were probably the same, and sometimes she could be persuaded. When Paul was born, she was ecstatic. She engaged a nurse to care for and feed the child, but in her way she more than loved him; she worshipped and adored him.
Jeff could have felt jealous of the child, in fact he realised now that he had been jealous of him, for Emma had no love or thought for her husband after that. At any rate, Jeff had to redouble his efforts in the still shaky firm now that he had a son to provide for too, and as he was leaving the house before dawn and was never home before ten each evening, he seldom saw Paul for the first few years of his life and when he did see him, he was only too grateful that he hadn’t to do that much with him.
Matthew had been born when Paul was four and Jeff saw that the baby only had the scrapings of affection from Emma, which made the child surly, whining and demanding, and so less likeable. When Jeff did try to get to know both boys in the rare free time he had, Emma made it quite plain their rearing was up to her, together with her parents and the servants she had engaged to help her. Jeff’s job as a father, it appeared, was in the implanting of the seed and providing the money for them all to live comfortably.
Not a full year after Matthew’s birth, Jeff came home one day to find that Emma had arranged for their double bed to be disposed of and single beds installed instead. Emma said that a double bed could cause all sorts of unpleasantness starting and single beds were better altogether, for they had two sons now and didn’t have to deal with all that messy business ever again.
Even then, Jeff settled for a sexless and loveless marriage and said nothing. Now he wondered why he had. He was not a weak man generally, and was known as a hard knock in business—a man to be reckoned with, not one to stand any sort of nonsense. Yet he had always given in to Emma. This meant he had backed away from fatherhood. His life centred around the factory and his club. He seldom saw his sons and certainly didn’t know the remotest thing about them.
Now he realised what a disservice he had done the growing boys in taking this, the coward’s way out. He hadn’t even known about Paul’s love of medicine, his dreams of being a doctor. He had assumed as the eldest son Paul would inherit and run the engineering works, and it had been a shock to find out the boy had other plans. Jeff had had to do an about turn in his dreams, and at first he’d been disappointed and surprised.
Emma had a great deal of influence with Paul and had always been able to turn him to her way of thinking, but this time she had come up against a brick wall. Paul told her he wanted to be a doctor, he had always wanted to be a doctor and wouldn’t be happy doing anything else. In desperation, she had drafted in Jeff to ‘talk sense into the lad’. However, when Jeff had spoken to Paul, he had been impressed by the boy’s commitment and supported him, once he realised he was serious and had nurtured this idea for years. And now he had done it: he was Dr Connolly, soon to be a married man.
Suddenly Jeff decided to go to take a look at the house Paul seemed so proud of. He got to his feet cautiously, trying to ignore the pounding in his head and queasy stomach. He bitterly regretted he hadn’t made th
is stand sooner.
He knew that Paul would be at home that day because he had said he had the next day off duty, and Jeff knew where the house was for Paul had told his parents the first time he had roared up on the motorcycle he had acquired.
‘Come and see the house,’ he’d urged. ‘See what you think.’
Emma’s nose had lifted in the air. ‘If you think for one moment that your father and I are going visiting some slum that you have the ridiculous notion of living in, then you can think again,’ she’d said.
Emma had nearly always answered for Jeff too, and that day it had irritated him, but before he had had chance to give voice to this, Paul had retorted angrily, ‘It’s no slum. If you were to come and see for yourself…’
‘It is all a matter of degree,’ Emma said, waving her hand dismissively. ‘And why,’ she demanded glancing out of the window, ‘did you buy that ridiculous machine that your brother is now examining with such interest?’
‘I’ve already told you this,’ Paul said, deciding to leave the matter of the house to one side. ‘I needed wheels. I work such awkward hours I couldn’t use public transport.’
‘I see that,’ Emma said. ‘But why didn’t you buy a car?’
‘Because I can’t afford one.’
‘Don’t be silly, Paul. Your father would have bought you a car.’
‘Then it would have been Dad’s car, not mine. And probably bought with conditions.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Oh, I think you do.’
‘Look, Paul,’ Emma had said. ‘That motorbike is totally unsuitable. For one thing it is a death trap, and for another it is not the mode of transport for this type of area. I mean, what would the neighbours think?’
‘Bugger the neighbours! Who cares what they think?’
‘I do. I care a great deal.’
‘So, I can’t come and see you if I come on the bike, is that what you are saying?’ Paul had asked with a voice like steel.