‘I was later leaving school than I had hoped. The Headmaster called us all into a meeting to tell us that our Housemaster is to leave, and that his replacement will be starting when the new term begins.’
‘Mr James, but surely he has only been there a little while, Harry?’ Mrs Lawson queried.
‘Yes, he has, but he has a connection with one of the Governors at Rugby, and he has been offered a post there which will pay more money.’
All the happiness Connie had felt at being here with Mavis and her family was draining out of her like blood from an open vein, she acknowledged sickly. How could it not be? Had Mavis’s brother recognised her? Or could he not see any resemblance in the healthy, well-fed young woman she now was, to the dirty, half-starved, beaten creature she had been?
Did he perhaps not even remember the incident that was burned into her own memory; her own soul, to leave her branded, and desperate to put aside what she had once been?
Connie felt so on edge that she could barely touch the meal Elsie Lawson had prepared for them. She knew that her conversation was lacklustre, and she was aware of the concerned, anxious looks Mavis was giving her, although she pretended not to be.
‘Connie, I have told Mother how well you play the piano,’ Mavis announced, when they had finished eating. ‘And I know she would love to hear you play. There is a piano in the front parlour, she added.
Connie bit her lip. How could she refuse? She could not. And yet she was loathe to do anything which might draw attention to her, and thus prompt Harry Lawson into recognising her. Her legs felt like lead as she got up and allowed Sophie to escort her into the parlour.
‘Perhaps Great Aunt Martha would like to join us? Harry suggested, but immediately his mother shook her head and looked uncomfortable.
‘Great Aunt Martha is still treating Mama like a servant, Harry,’ Connie heard Mavis whisper angrily to her brother.
Afterwards Connie had no notion of what she played, other than that her heart had jumped into her mouth when Harry Lawson had suddenly appeared at her side, to sing in warm tenor voice, whilst turning the pages of the music for her.
‘You play well, Miss Pride,’ he commented.
Elsie Lawson sighed, ‘I do wish you and Sophie might have learned, Mavis. It is such a genteel accomplishment.’
Connie winced, her face burning, half-expecting to hear Harry Lawson immediately denounce her, as she stammered, ‘My mother wanted me to learn.’
‘You have a large family, Miss Pride?’
Connie tensed, as Harry addressed her, but she did not look at him as she answered in a low voice. ‘My mother is dead, and my father has remarried. I … I have a sister and … and two brothers …’
The visit she had anticipated with so much pleasure, Connie acknowledged miserably, had turned into the darkest kind of nightmare.
NINE
1913
‘Lord, but you’d think no one had ever been engaged before to listen to the way Vera is carrying on,’ Josie commented crossly to Connie, as they hurried to reach the dining room, their shift over. ‘And fancy coming back, bold as brass, and showing it off to everyone after what she’s gone and done. Leaving without so much as a by-your-leave, and not saying anything to us as was supposed to be her friends.
A small frown pleated Connie’s forehead, as she listened to Josie’s indignant tirade. The Vera who had come proudly into the nurses home flaunting the engagement ring, which had been Bert’s Christmas gift to her, wasn’t the Vera who had shared their lives for so long.
The fun-loving girl who Connie had initially liked so much, was now showing a boastful, and sometimes even slightly spiteful, side to her nature, which was far less attractive.
‘Well, I don’t envy her her Bert, no, nor her engagement ring either!’ Connie told Josie forth-rightly.
Josie giggled. ‘No, me neither. That Bert, he’s got a right pudding face on him, hasn’t he, and after how Vera was allus going on about how she wanted to marry someone ‘andsome like that George Lashwood!’
‘Connie, Josie. Guess what?’ Mavis demanded excitedly, hurrying up to them. ‘Harry, my brother, has obtained tickets for the panto at the Royal Court, and you are both to come with us.’
‘Ooh, Mavis. He hasn’t, has he? Oh, I’m that made up! The panto, I have never bin to a panto before.’
Connie could feel Mavis looking at her waiting for her response.
She had tried to distance herself from her friend following their return to the Infirmary. Not because she no longer wanted Mavis, she did! But she was terrified that, even if Harry Lawson had, by some miraculous chance, not recognised her the last time they had met, as time went on, and he saw more of her through her friendship with Mavis, he might at some stage do so.
The alternative, that he had recognised her but had, as yet, for reasons she could not fathom not chosen to say so, was an even more frightening prospect. She realised now that the heavily-veiled woman she had seen in Back Court must have been Elsie Lawson – and that Back Court itself was the horrible place Mavis had described to her with such distress. Mavis would surely want nothing more to do with Connie if she were to find out the truth about her.
‘Connie, what’s wrong? You do want to come to the panto, don’t you?’ Mavis asked her later, catching her on her own, and tugging worriedly on her arm as Connie tried to turn away from her.
‘I don’t know as I want to be beholden to your brother,’ Connie answered her stiffly, not knowing what else she could say.
‘But Harry wants you and Josie to come with us, Mavis told her, looking bewildered. ‘Connie, what’s the matter? Mavis demanded. ‘You’ve been offhand with me ever since we came back from New Brighton. If I’ve said or done something to offend or upset you …
Mavis’s concern broke through the barriers Connie was trying to put up against her. Mavis was the first proper friend she had ever had, and secretly Connie knew that their friendship had gone some way to filling the cold, empty space in her heart and her life, left by her rift with Ellie.
‘Oh, Mavis, no! You mustn’t think that!’ she protested unhappily. ‘As if you could, or would, upset anyone. It’s just.’
‘Just what? Mavis demanded.
‘Well, I … your brother … I don’t think he cares for me a great deal – perhaps he thinks that I’m not a suitable friend for you?’ Connie suggested warily.
‘Connie! How could you think such a thing?’ Mavis objected. ‘Harry is not the sort to say very much about a person, but I know that he likes you, I can tell. And Mama and Sophie have both told me how much they enjoyed your visit.’
Connie could feel the air leaking from her lungs, as her tension eased. Perhaps she had been worrying unnecessarily, after all. Mavis’s brother had certainly not given her any indication that he had recognised her, Connie reassured herself, her natural ebullience reasserting itself.
Squeezing Mavis’s hand, she told her, ‘Of course, I would love to go to the panto.’
Bill Connolly looked savagely at the man standing in front of him.
‘What do you mean he won’t pay? Did you tell him what’s going ter happen to his shop and to him, and to his family, if he doesn’t?’
‘Aye, us ‘ave told him how ‘e needs to be protected in case anyone should brek into his shop, and that us’ull mek sure that no one does, but ‘e says he can’t pay.’
‘Well then, you’d better get some of the lads and go back and show him what happens to folk when they can’t pay their insurance, ‘adn’t you, Bill told his henchman grimly.
‘Harry isn’t going to be able to come to see “The House that Jack Built” with us, after all,’ Mavis informed Connie and Josie over breakfast on the day of their planned trip. ‘The new Head of Harry’s House has called a meeting of all the Masters, and Harry is obliged to go.
Although she sympathised as vocally as Josie, inwardly Connie was relieved that Harry was not to accompany them to the pantomime. She willingly offered to go down to th
e Pierhead with Mavis to meet her mother and sister off the ferry, so that they could all go to the Royal Court together.
Although Connie had intended to affect a sophisticated disdain of the pantomime which could not possibly compare with the delights of the music hall, within minutes of the curtain going up she was as transfixed by the performance as young Sophie.
When the dame yelled out, ‘Oh, no, he isn’t!’ Connie was yelling back with gusto, ‘Oh, yes, he is! and screaming, ‘look behind you’, laughing until tears ran from her eyes.
Harry frowned as he checked his watch. His class had just finished, and it was another five minutes yet before he had to present himself at Mr Cart-wright’s door.
Unlike the junior schoolmasters, the Head of House, lived in great comfort in a house of his own with its own private garden. Harry had seen Miss Rosa Cartwright, the Head of House’s daughter, walking there with her little dog.
Mr Cartwright did not have a wife, being a widower. From the window of his cramped attic room, Harry could look down on the quadrangle where some of the pupils were huddling out of the way of the chill winter wind.
Harry could not concentrate on the impending meeting, though. And for the very simple reason that his thoughts were already consumed by something else, or rather someone else; Miss Connie Pride! In fact, from the moment he had set eyes on her in his great-aunt’s house, Harry had scarcely stopped thinking about her.
When Mavis had begged him to include her two friends in the treat he had to battle with his conscience. He had been shocked to recognise in Mavis’s friend the young woman he had seen in such an appalling and unhappy state in Back Court. Initially he had supposed that the two of them must have met when his mother and sisters were living in Back Court. Even so, he knew that Mavis could not possibly have the knowledge about Connie’s true situation whilst living there, that he had. But very quickly, it had become plain to him that this was not the case, and Mavis knew nothing of Connie’s past.
Harry knew perfectly well that, even if he could not bring himself to denounce Connie, he should, at least, put an end to her friendship with his sister. But she must have suffered so dreadfully, and she had obviously been very brave.
She spoke well; she played the piano; she even revealed, without knowing she was doing so, an awareness of current affairs and general knowledge that could only have come from receiving a good education. Those were not things she had gained in Back Court.
How had she come to such a pass in the first place? Through naivete and foolishness and the betrayal of a man, he suspected. Because, for all that he knew about her, there was a sweet innocence about her that touched his heart and made him loathe to do anything that might hurt her. Such tender emotions? And for a young woman who was virtually a stranger to him? Anyone would think that he was in danger of losing his heart to her! He was certainly spending far too much time thinking about her.
Mavis had described her friend as pretty, but Connie was more than merely pretty, Harry decided. She had a fierce pride and spirit that shone out of her and made her truly beautiful. She aroused feelings of tenderness and protectiveness inside him stronger than any others he had known.
It was time for him to go.
The icy wind nipped at his ears and hands as he braved its coldness to cross the quadrangle and head for the house. Harry’s salary did not allow for the indulgence of a thick, warm winter coat, although he had the new muffler which Sophie had knitted him and given him for Christmas, and he was still eating the hamper of food his mother had put up for him, after complaining that he was too thin.
A stern-looking maid admitted him to the house, ‘I’ll tell the Master that you’re here,’ she informed him, before disappearing.
The hallway was cold, and Harry wondered where the other teachers were. A door opened and Mr Cartwright strode toward him, saying bluffly, ‘Ah, Lawson, excellent timing, do come in. Rosa was just about to ring for tea.’
Removing his muffler, Harry followed the Head of House into a comfortably appointed parlour, feeling slightly awkward as he realised that he was the first to arrive.
‘Rosa, my dear, come and meet one of my teachers, Harry Lawson. Lawson, this is my daughter Rosa.’
As they shook hands, and Rosa gave him a demure look from beneath lowered eyelids, Harry noticed how soft and boneless her hand was.
‘I’ve instructed Cook to send plenty of crumpets, Mr Lawson. All young men like crumpets, don’t they?’
For some reason he couldn’t explain, Harry found the soft voice grated on him.
‘Papa has been telling me how clever you are, and that it is expected that you will become Assistant Master when Mr Thomas retires.
‘It is by no means decided, Harry felt bound to answer her.
‘But of course it is, my boy, Mr Cartwright boomed out firmly. ‘You have an excellent record, and as I was saying to the Head only the other week, it would be an excellent thing for the school to have a young man such as yourself as my second in command.
Harry didn’t know what to say … He knew that he should feel complimented, but what he actually felt was discomfort, and almost disquiet.
‘My daughter wants to see us having a bit more jollity here, Harry, and she has commanded me to instruct you that you must put yourself at her disposal to that end. It will be good training for you in your eventual duties as my assistant to involve yourself in the social side of our calling. I have noticed that we do not have as many pupils applying to our House as the others. That needs to be addressed, and I intend to invite the parents of our boys here to take tea with us.
‘And in the summer we can have a garden party, Papa, Rosa broke in excitedly, turning an animated face toward Harry. ‘Do you not think that is a good idea, Mr Lawson? I do so love a garden party. And we can have punts on the river. Just like at Oxford … Oh, Papa, I do miss Oxford so …’
‘My daughter is missing her friends, and who can blame her,’ the Head of House told Harry. ‘But, between us, I am sure that we can build a small Oxford for her here that will satisfy all her needs, don’t you think?’
‘I have so many plans, Mr Lawson. But I shall need your help with them,’ Rosa told him.
She certainly did have plans, she reflected bitterly. Plans that would show her cousin Gerald that, whilst he thought he could toy with her and make her fall in love with him, and then cast her aside so that he could pursue some ugly heiress, two could play at that game.
A dull and poor junior schoolmaster like Harry could not possibly really compare with her handsome, dashing cousin, with his dangerous, flirtatious smiles and wicked whispered promises, but Rosa was determined that she would be wearing an engagement ring on her finger before her cousin placed one on the hand of his ugly heiress.
Gerald had laughed openly at her when she had foolishly let him see how much she wanted to marry him – but why else, after all, would she have allowed him the liberties she had, if she had not believed that he loved her, as passionately as she did him.
‘Rosa, you are a sweet puss, and if things were different … But I am a lazy, expensive fellow and I need a rich wife.’
‘I have money.
Gerald had laughed and shaken his head.
‘No, Rosa, you merely have a modest bequest from your mother. My heiress is rich, very rich …
‘But you do not love her. You love me! You said so yourself! she had objected passionately.
‘Ah, my sweet Rose. In your arms, tasting the nectar of your lips, I would say anything …
‘You cannot mean to marry someone else. You must not, she had sobbed. ‘I love you.
But despite her tears and pleas, Gerald had refused to be moved.
So she had vowed that if she could not have his love, then she would have her own revenge. And that revenge would be her marriage to someone else. Harry would suit her purposes perfectly!
‘I am only a poor, weak female and we are nothing without the support of a strong man.
Harry said
nothing, applying himself hungrily to the rapidly cooling crumpets.
‘It is too cold for us to walk in the gardens to discuss our plans now, Mr Lawson, but Papa has given his permission for you to call on us whenever I need to speak with you, Rosa told him, clapping her hands together in an affected manner. ‘Oh, I am so pleased to have your help with this task. I don’t want to disappoint Papa, when I know how important it is to him that the parents have the most favourable impression possible of our House.
She had, Rosa decided smugly, been very clever playing on her father’s vulnerability and pride in such a way, but then she had always been able to twist him around her little finger!
Later, as he made his way back to his own cold quarters, Harry wondered why he was actually enjoying the freshness of the icy air, and why he was not rejoicing at the opportunity which had befallen him to improve his prospects of advancement.
Connie shivered in the cold March wind as she hurried into the Infirmary. Officially it was her afternoon off, but Mavis had come to her, hesitantly and self-consciously, earlier in the week to ask her if she would mind changing half days with her.
‘Of course not,’ Connie had replied promptly.
‘Oh, Connie, thank you. Frank has asked me to go out with him, and Thursday is his only half day free.’
‘I told you he had a twinkle in his eyes for you,’ Connie had teased her, but inwardly she believed that the young policeman would be a good match for her friend.
There was a sudden commotion in the corridor as Mr Clegg, the surgeon, hurried out of one of the wards, pulling on his coat, and carrying his medical bag.
‘Ah Nurse!’ he called out as he saw Connie. ‘Come with me, and hurry.
Connie hesitated uncertainly, but Sister had hurried out into the corridor behind the surgeon, and she told Connie immediately, ‘Yes, Nurse Pride, go with Mr Clegg.
The Surgeon was walking so fast that Connie could barely keep up with him as he raced through the Infirmary and across the forecourt.
‘Someone has just brought word that one of my patients has gone into early labour and there may be complications. Fortunately, she does not live too far away, but we must make haste.
Connie’s Courage Page 11