The square was bordered with trees and it was elegant; there was no other word for it, Connie thought apprehensively, as they turned into its gracious confines. And the houses were bonny. By, they were. She could imagine their occupants might well be the sort of liberated folk who would read D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, a new book recently published which had raised a few eyebrows being all about the sentimental education of a miner’s son, as the author himself had been. However, Connie couldn’t help feeling that few of these homeowners had experienced a working mine. Here it was as though they were a thousand miles away from the grimness of the narrow mean streets of the growing town, and the cesspool of the docks.
‘This is it then.’ Mary’s tone was – if not solemn – definitely repressed, and Connie glanced at the pair’s sober faces before she said, a gurgle of laughter in her voice which didn’t sound at all like the prim and worthy Miss Bell, assistant housekeeper of daylight hours, ‘Just remember, me bairns, they use the privy the same as we do. All right?’
‘Connie!’ That Mary was shocked was transparent, and her eyes, wide and startled behind her spectacles, sent Connie and Wilf into helpless laughter, the three of them ending up clutching each other as they slithered about on the glassy pavements.
‘Oh, lass! Oh, I needed that.’ Mary was wiping the tears from her eyes, the three of them still gasping with the remnants of what was mainly nervous hilarity, when a deep male voice from the direction of a house some few yards away said, ‘I thought I heard someone out here. You made it then, I’m so glad. Come in, come in all of you.’
The amusement wiped from their faces, Mary and Wilf followed Connie as she made her way towards Dan Stewart where he stood outlined in the lighted doorway.
Had she guessed that he’d been pinned to the upstairs window ever since he’d got back to the square just under an hour ago? Dan asked himself silently as he watched Connie’s approach. He just hadn’t been able to bring himself to believe she would actually come. But she had. She was here. And 1914 was going to be a wonderful year, the best year of his life. He felt the beating of his heart was going to suffocate him, and because he was out of his depth – a feeling hitherto unknown to him – his voice was all the more hearty as he said, ‘That’s right, come in. It’s bedlam but then it’s New Year’s Eve, isn’t it. Everyone can go mad on New Year’s Eve.’ And then, realising his words might be misinterpreted, he added hastily, ‘Not that a sense of propriety shouldn’t still be upheld of course, it’s not a licence for. . . Well, what I mean is. . .’
‘Everyone should be allowed to enjoy themselves at least once a year?’ Connie’s voice was soft and she was smiling.
‘Aye, yes. Exactly.’
Mary stood irresolute, before darting a worried glance at Wilf as the three of them moved forward and into the house. She liked this less and less. A leopard couldn’t change its spots and this was going to end in tears.
The interior of Dan’s brother’s house was a surprise to Connie. She had expected – Well, she hadn’t known quite what she’d expected, she admitted silently. Elegance probably, grandeur even. She had never forgotten the day she had stood in the drive of his mother’s house in Ryhope Road or the terrible scene that had followed. She hadn’t thought of herself as poor or not good enough before that day, but the look on Edith Stewart’s face – even more than what she had said – had buried itself deep into the fertile regions of her brain from that point on. Dan’s mother had thought them base and contemptible, she had been disdainful and repelled by them even before she had realised who her mother was. She had thought they were begging.
Connie breathed deeply, suddenly very tense. She shouldn’t have come, Mary was right. She had nothing in common with any of these people. And then, as though to prove her wrong, a big woman appeared from the far end of the hall, probably from the kitchen if the plates of sandwiches in her hands were anything to go by, and this woman’s voice was reassuringly ordinary and warm – like the cluttered hall – when she said, ‘Eee, now don’t tell us, you must be Connie. Is that right? You don’t mind me calling you Connie, do you, lass?’
‘No, no of course not.’
‘This is Gladys, my brother’s wife.’ As Dan went hastily into more formal introductions, drawing Mary and Wilf forward a moment later, he was silently blessing the day Art had married Gladys. There was no side to his sister-in-law and she was as open as a daisy in the sun, and her voice, thick with its northern accent, was just what was needed to break the ice.
‘Now give Dan your coats, that’s right, and come in and meet everyone.’ Gladys’s smile included Mary and Wilf as well as Connie. ‘The bairns are playing dressing up in another room at the moment but they’re all dizzy with excitement and dashing about like mad things, so I warn you. Martha has already had sloe gin all down the front of her.’
Gladys continued to talk as she led them into the large, pleasant parlour which, together with two other reception rooms and a small kitchen and scullery next to the indoor privy and washhouse, made up the downstairs of the house. There was a huge fire burning in the beautiful ornate fireplace, the furnishings were of good quality and the massive square of Persian carpet which covered most of the floor was splendid, but the atmosphere was homely, the furnishings worn in places and the general ambience was one of unpretentious comfortableness. Gladys had immediately sensed the tension between Dan and the trio when she had walked into the hall, and, having now seen Connie, she could understand how her youngest brother-in-law was feeling. The girl was quite unusually lovely – she didn’t think she had ever seen eyes of such a deep violet-blue before – but she was very contained, almost aloof. Although that was probably nerves of course. This must be something of an ordeal for her, and after all that had happened in the past. . . She’d got some guts to be here at all.
Art thought along similar lines a moment later when he braced himself to walk across and shake Connie’s hand. ‘I’m very glad you could come.’ He shook Wilf and Mary’s hands, saying the same thing, before turning back to Connie and adding, ‘I don’t know what to say. Sorry seems too inadequate a word, and far too late, but I can assure you from the bottom of my heart it is genuine. I deeply regret my part in the incident which had such disastrous results for us all.’
Connie nodded, her embarrassment tying her tongue for a second, but then, as she looked into the soft brown eyes that were so like Dan’s she was able to say, ‘It. . . it’s all right. I know you and . . . and your brother weren’t like the others, Mr Stewart.’
‘Art.’ Art smiled at her even as he was thinking, This is the start of something between her and Dan, even a blind man could see it, and what’ll happen if Dan starts courting her the Almighty alone knows. Mam’ll go mad, stark staring mad, but she’s only got herself to blame. She’s all but thrown him at her by taking the attitude she has.
‘And I’m Connie.’ It was said shyly, and accompanied by a smile that didn’t quite manage to hide her apprehension, and suddenly Art found himself thinking, Damn Mam and all her manoeuvrings! He wouldn’t have had Gladys if his mother had had her way, and why shouldn’t Dan have his chance too? His mother wasn’t going to like it but they’d all weather the storm if they stood firm.
‘What would you like to drink?’ Dan was speaking to the three of them but his eyes and ears and all his senses were full of only Connie, and when Art said, ‘Oh everyone’s helping themselves, lad, that’s easier on me and Gladys. You look after Connie and –’ he turned to Wilf, his eyebrows raised, and as Wilf said hastily, ‘Wilf, Wilf and Mary,’ Art continued, ‘Wilf can look after Mary, all right?’
Very neatly done. Mary’s face was straight as she surveyed them all. The brother had already got Dan and Connie paired off and she didn’t trust any of them as far as she could throw them. The wife seemed all right – Mary had to admit that Gladys had been something of a surprise – but she had married the brother, hadn’t she, so she couldn’t be all she seemed. Well, this lot weren’t going to
pull the wool over her eyes. For some reason Connie had a weak spot where Dan Stewart was concerned, but she hadn’t, and she would make sure she kept her eyes and ears open. There were some nice men in the world – she glanced at Wilf out of the corner of her eye at this thought, her mouth softening for a moment – but actions speak louder than words, and it would take more than a bit of soft soap to convince her that Dan Stewart wasn’t playing some game of his own.
‘Mam, if you take my advice you’ll leave ’em to stew in their own juice. They’re not daft, they know which side their bread’s buttered and they’ll be back with their tails between their legs right enough.’
What a stupid individual this particular son was. Edith Stewart looked at John, her cold face with its flat features betraying none of her thoughts. He wasn’t like her or Henry – Henry, for all his faults, had been an intelligent man and had possessed excellent business acumen – but John was positively cretinous at times. He was a constant irritation, but never more than when he was presumptuous enough to dare to give her advice, like now.
‘The matter is not open for discussion, John.’ Edith spoke quietly, glancing round her drawing room which was full of various pillars of Sunderland society, including the Rotheringtons and their mousey daughter. She liked this room. She had spent a great deal of time and thought on its furnishings and decoration when they had first moved to Ryhope Road two years after Dan was born, and she felt this room was a true reflection of herself. The walls were of an eggshell blue and the paintwork two or three shades darker, and the gold-framed pictures which covered a great deal of their surface had been bought for their size and grandeur rather than their content. The two sets of windows were draped in long folds of dove-grey velvet and exactly matched the carpet, and the heavy mahogany chairs and chaise longues which were dotted about the room, along with the china cabinets and two bookcases, had cost a small fortune. Either side of the enormous fireplace, draped in a mantel-border of the same material and fringing as the curtains, stood two four-foot matching figures of young negro girls worked in black marble and carrying baskets of fruit on their heads. The aesthetic beauty of the statuettes was quite lost on Edith – she had purchased them simply because they had been expensive and impressive.
Edith breathed in deeply, drawing on the satisfaction and sense of power the room always gave her, before she turned to John at her side, and said, her manner dismissive, ‘I’ve told you what I want you to do, John, so go and do it. It’s’ – she glanced at the enormous gold and black marble clock which took up most of the mantelpiece – ‘half past ten now, that will give you plenty of time to convey my message and have them back here before twelve o’clock.’
Damn it all, he didn’t believe this. John worked his jaw for a moment, his teeth clenched and his eyes angry. New Year’s Eve and she expected him to go running round to Art’s place like an errand boy. ‘What if they won’t come?’
‘What?’ Her voice was sharper now and she must have realised this because she had moderated her tone when she said, ‘Of course they will come if you tell them I’ve specifically asked for their presence.’
Them! All this was for Dan, she couldn’t give a fig for Art and Gladys. He wetted his lips, then dug his teeth deep into the flesh of the lower one before he said, ‘Aye, well that’s what you say but I’ve got my doubts.’
‘Really.’ The tone was icy.
John’s lips moved but whatever he had been about to say he thought better of it as he glanced at his mother’s tight face, and after another moment he swung round and made his way across the room.
‘John?’ Ann had been watching Sidney attempting to make conversation with one of his grandmother’s councillor friends and his daughter – a stuck-up little madam if ever she’d seen one – and inwardly commiserating with her son, and now her voice was abrupt as she caught hold of her husband’s arm and asked, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’
‘She wants Dan and the other two bringing here.’
‘And you offered to go and get them I suppose?’ said Ann cuttingly. She had known, within weeks of getting wed, that there were three in her marriage and that Edith was the strongest of them all, and she bitterly resented what she considered her husband’s spineless attitude with his mother, especially in view of the fact that he was the devil incarnate with herself.
She had known Edith most of her life – Ann’s parents owned a string of drapery shops in Sunderland and Newcastle and were in the Stewarts’ social circle – and Edith had always treated her with some warmth, so when John had started courting her she had known she had his mother’s approval. What she hadn’t realised, and had only discovered during the first acrimonious weeks of her marriage after a particularly violent altercation with John, was that their courtship had been purely his mother’s idea. Edith had demanded a daughter-in-law of some social standing and one who wasn’t inclined to be difficult, and Ann had fitted the bill. She had been tricked – and that wasn’t too strong a word for it – into marriage with a debauchee who had never had the slightest pang of love towards her to soften his harsh treatment.
If it wasn’t for Sidney – who was totally hers and a balm to her soul – she knew now she would have braved her parents’ horror and the wrath of her mother-in-law, and even the inevitable ostracism of their social circle, and left him sometime in the last long eighteen years. As it was, three years after Sidney had been born, when they had been wed for six years, she had made a stand against John’s rapacious sexual appetites and insisted on separate bedrooms with a determination which had surprised them both, and since that time a little peace had come into her life.
‘I didn’t offer to go and fetch them as it happens,’ John now growled under his breath, ‘but she won’t listen to reason.’
‘And so you are going anyway.’
‘Don’t start.’
Don’t start! Ann glanced across the room and saw Sidney making his way over to her, a look of concern on his young face which was habitual when his father was anywhere near. It disturbed her but she had long since accepted there was nothing she could do about it. Her son was shy and sensitive and clever – everything his father was not – and Sidney had always seemed to sense how things were between his parents, even though she had been careful to avoid any unpleasantness in front of the lad when he was younger.
But at least she had won her fight to allow Sidney to follow the desire of his heart and continue his education with a view to attending university and then medical school, rather than be drawn straight into the family business as John had demanded. But she didn’t fool herself that her husband had given in to her wishes or those of his son. Surprisingly Ann had found an ally in Edith when the matter had been brought to the matriarch. A medical man in the family? Possibly even a surgeon or a consultant? Edith had weighed John’s desire to have his only son working alongside him and under his control against the prestige connected with her grandson’s ambition, and there had been no contest.
‘Mother?’ The expensive private school Sidney was now attending on the outskirts of Newcastle had taken ‘mam’ from his vocabulary, but Ann didn’t mind. She knew her son loved her.
‘It’s all right, Sidney.’
John knew what the exchange had meant and he stared at them both for a moment, resentment and deep bitterness burning inside him. She had been determined he would have nothing to do with his son from the moment the child had been born, damn her. She’d fed him poison along with her milk, a toxin which had warped the normal feeling a son should have for his father, until now the lad had an aversion to him. If he could have had his way a year ago – got him away from his mother’s skirts and working with him in the business – he might still have been able to reach him. But not now. Sidney was as good as dead to him now. He didn’t want it to matter-the lad was a milk-sop, a weakling with all his namby-pamby, mawkish ideas of working for the good of humanity, ‘the good of humanity!’ what was that? – but it did matter. Damn them both, it did matter
.
‘I’ll be back before twelve.’ He was speaking directly to Ann and when she merely shrugged, lifting her eyebrows as she turned away, the desire to strike her was strong. She’d push him too far one of these days with her airs and graces, the mealy-mouthed’ dried-out bitch. She’d always been skin and bone from a young girl and as plain as a pikestaff; she ought to be down on her knees thanking him for being prepared to take her on in the first place.
He glanced at them both one last time – or at their backs to be more precise as they walked across the room – and then turned on his heel, walking out without looking to left or right or returning the salutations that one or two of the distinguished company sent his way, and his face was as black as thunder.
Connie was sitting in the corner of a comfortable chesterfield sofa, a plate of food on her lap and a glass of wine on the small occasional table at her side. She was beginning to feel more at ease. This was partly due to the fact that the sofa was in an alcove, and the recess engendered a feeling of privacy, although it was still on view to the rest of the room, but she could see Mary and Wilf – who at first had stood stiffly to attention – chatting to another couple and laughing and smiling, and this pleased her.
‘They’re fine.’ Dan had followed her glance and now he brought her attention back to himself as he continued softly, ‘Don’t worry about your friends.’
‘I’m not.’ And then Connie smiled self-consciously as she added, ‘Well, perhaps I am. They don’t know anyone and they only came to keep me company.’
‘She doesn’t like me, your friend, does she.’ It was a statement not a question and followed with, ‘Not that I blame her of course.’ He gave a short laugh.
‘She doesn’t know you.’
‘No, she doesn’t.’ There was an awkward pause and then Dan said, his voice so low she could scarcely hear it, ‘That’s all I’m asking you to do, Connie. Get to know me a little.’
Ragamuffin Angel Page 21