The sky was low and heavy, the wind cutting through her like a knife, and she put her head down as she scurried along the pavement.
It was partly for John, but only partly, she admitted silently. The rest of it she couldn’t explain to herself, let alone anyone else. It was all tied up with guilt and regret and love and hate, and, not least, familiarity. And being needed. Now her mouth twisted bitterly. The greatest snare there was, the knowledge that you were needed. And she wasn’t thinking of John here, although heaven knew that poor soul needed her since he’d come home.
She had run the house for years single-handed; there wasn’t a nook or cranny that didn’t have her stamp and she kept the daily routine as smooth as cream – she was the mistress of the house in all but name. Edith would be lost without her. So was she saying she stayed for Edith? She moved her head in denial of the thought, and then clicked her tongue irritably at herself. Enough, enough of thinking; hadn’t Henry always said it was the most dangerous pastime there was and he was right, God bless his soul. She did what she knew she had to do and that was the end of it, but she had put her foot down more in the last few years. She wasn’t a stranger to the Church now, not since that time she had met Father Hedley again at her Aunt Ida’s, and it helped. Aye, it helped right enough. Everyone else had been living on a knife edge through the war and there she’d been, more at peace with herself than she’d been for years. Life was strange. It was, it was strange. There was that lad back there having been home twenty-four hours and his mother was going to be the last to know. Aye, life was strange all right.
It was exactly half past three in the afternoon when Connie and Dan walked down Ryhope Road. The wind was lashing the bare branches of the trees overhanging the road and it was already quite dark, the leaden grey sky overhead full of the forecast snow which had yet to begin falling. Connie was holding on to Dan’s arm very tightly and his face was taut and strained, but their footsteps were brisk and steady as they approached the Stewart residence. This had to be done, they both knew it, and it had to be done right, from the beginning. They needed to present a united front to the formidable woman who was Dan’s mother; it might succeed in preventing further mischief-making in the future at least.
Dan opened the gate and Connie stepped through on to the drive, then they were mounting the steps to the front door and the bell was jangling from Dan’s pull. Strangely, now the moment she had been dreading all day was here, Connie felt absolutely calm. She had wanted to be at Dan’s side to support him through whatever went on; that was the only thing that mattered. She hoped his mother, and John too, would meet him halfway because when all was said and done they were his family, but she expected nothing good from this encounter. Dan had virtually returned from the dead, but he had returned to her – that’s how his mother would see it. The woman who had screamed at her with such venom on this very doorstep four years ago was not of a forgiving nature, neither was she conciliatory in any form. And Connie was worried about Dan; he was ill, anyone could see that, and he had a hacking cough and had nearly passed out twice today. They needed to get this over and then she could start looking after him and getting him well again. And she would, and swiftly, she told herself silently.
When Kitty opened the door and saw them standing there she closed her eyes for an infinitesimal moment before saying, ‘Come in, come in the pair of you,’ her voice shaking. It was clear Kitty had been anticipating the proposed meeting with some distress; nevertheless, she led them to the drawing room door without saying anything else, merely squeezing their arms briefly before opening the door and saying, her voice now bright and excited which Dan thought was the best piece of play-acting he had heard for a long while, ‘Madam, oh Madam, look who’s here. Oh, isn’t it wonderful!’
Edith was alone in the large and imposing room and it was apparent she had been sitting reading, not – as one would have expected from the inclement weather – in front of the roaring fire which was burning in the ornate fireplace, but at some distance across the room on one of the chaise longues.
They watched her raise her head and saw her face change as she took in Dan in the doorway, with Connie just behind him, and then, as Dan walked further into the room, drawing Connie into the side of him, Edith rose slowly to her feet. ‘You’re alive.’ There was no expression in her voice at all; no joy, no vestige of greeting, nothing. ‘We thought you had perished when there was no word.’
‘No, I didn’t perish, Mother.’
‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ Kitty was giving the performance of her life. ‘All this time and no news and in he walks, as large as life! I can’t believe –’
‘Kitty!’
Connie couldn’t prevent her hand going to her mouth as the word was barked across the room.
‘Madam, it’s Dan.’
‘I know who it is and I can see who he has with him. Would you kindly show my son and that . . . that person out, please?’
‘No, I won’t.’
The words had the same effect as a live grenade on Edith. She virtually sprang across the room, her head bouncing on her shoulders as she hissed, ‘Then I’ll do it! I’ll do it.’
‘Mother, please. It’s been over four years and with a war in-between, can’t we at least behave like human beings? We came to tell you we intend to get married and . . . and to ask you to be present.’
Edith was looking straight at Dan and she made a small movement with her head. She was trembling as if consumed with rage, and then her answer came through clenched teeth. ‘I don’t fraternise with whores.’
‘You old devil.’ Dan’s lips moved away from his teeth as if he was surveying something vile as he stared into the cold, narrowed eyes watching him, and as Connie pulled on his arm saying, ‘Leave it, Dan, leave it. Please, come away, dear,’ he said, ‘She’s worth ten, twenty of you and you know it.’
‘Get out of my house!’
‘With pleasure, but before I go I might as well tell you I intend to sell my share of the business, all right? So you can get the papers drawn up and then I’ll be out of your hair for good. You can send them to the Three Tuns at Holmeside where I’m staying.’
‘Get out!’
They had stepped out into the hall, a distraught Kitty behind them, when, in answer to his name being spoken from the direction of what had been his father’s study, Dan became transfixed by the sight of the man who had just wheeled himself into the hall.
Connie heard his sudden intake of breath and she turned her head just a moment after Dan, and then she too became frozen. There was nothing about the creature in the wheelchair she recognised save the eyes, and these were like chips of black lead in the distorted gargoyle of a face. The exploding shell which had taken John’s legs had tried to incinerate all the projections of his face. The nose was almost completely burnt away, leaving a portion of bone and two gaping holes, and his lips, eyebrows and chin had all suffered a lesser fate. Funnily enough the eyelids looked to be intact, although red and scarred like the rest of his skin, and both ears were almost whole. There was no hair above his forehead, but from the long tufts resting on his shoulders it was clear the back of his head was not affected. It was a monstrous face, a face from hell, and Connie had to force herself not to close her eyes to shut out the sight of it.
‘So you came through untouched?’ The voice was thick, like someone speaking through layers of treacle. ‘I might have guessed.’
‘They’re leaving.’
Edith’s voice was like snapping steel jaws but John ignored his mother, the dark piercing light of his eyes moving over Dan before travelling to Connie at the side of him and then returning to his brother.
‘Hallo, John.’
Dan’s voice was shaking, and in answer to it John said, ‘Not a pretty sight, is it? Mam can’t bear to look at me, can you, Mam – not that she was ever keen to do so before anyway. I’m locked away in there’ – the head gestured towards the half-open door – ‘when she has her fancy friends call. She’s worried
I’ll frighten ’em, aren’t you, Mam? But she was placed in an awkward position when that bitch of a wife of mine left me, Dan. She could hardly refuse to take in her own son, now could she? What would the Christian Women’s Guild of Fellowship have thought of their president then, eh?’
Edith said not a word, but as she looked at John – and he at her – the enmity between them was like a live thing, snaking across the hall and causing the fine hairs on the back of Connie’s neck to rise.
‘I’m sorry, John.’
‘Sorry, are you?’ John’s gaze snapped back to Dan as he spoke. ‘Aye, I just bet you are. And you, are you sorry?’ he asked Connie, the terrible face turning to look fully at her. ‘Pleases you, does it, to see me reduced to half a man, less than half a man? Sitting pretty aren’t you, from what we hear, and they say that whoring don’t pay! By, you could tell ’em different, eh?’
‘Come on, we’re getting out of here,’ said Dan quickly as he glanced at Connie’s deathly white face.
‘Aye, well you’ve got two legs to carry you where you want, eh, Dan?’ Not once in all the time he had been speaking had John raised his voice from the low, almost conversational tone he had been using. ‘Two legs, her to supply all your basic needs –’
‘Connie is going to be my wife, John.’
‘Is that right? Aye, well there was a time when I’d have said you were being taken for a mug, but she’s doing all right for herself now, isn’t she. The pair of you will be living the high life . . . little brother.’
The Great War might have ended seven weeks ago but not this one. This one wouldn’t end until one of them was dead. The thought, coming from nowhere as it did, shocked Connie into action, and now she actually tugged at Dan’s arm saying, ‘Please, Dan, you can do no good here. Nothing has changed.’
‘Nothing’s changed?’ The words were so weighed down with bitterness that they emerged in a snarl from John’s misshapen lips, and were followed by a host of profanities that caused the spittle to collect in white blobs and dribble on to his chin.
Connie was hardly aware of Dan leading her across the hall but when they stepped outside she took great hungry lungfuls of the clean cold air in which the first snowflakes were beginning to whirl and dance.
So much hate, so much resentment and hostility; the house wreaked with it. How did Kitty stand it? Connie asked herself now, as she fully understood what had prompted the same question from Gladys earlier in the day.
‘Oh, love, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I should never have let you persuade me to let you come today.’ Dan looked as white as a sheet, the dark shadow of the beginning of stubble on his chin standing out in stark contrast to his sallow skin.
‘I wouldn’t have taken no for an answer.’
They walked down the steps leading from the front door as they spoke, Kitty just behind them, and now the buxom housekeeper said, ‘Aye, that’s right, lass. You start as you mean to carry on, eh?’ and the three of them smiled weakly. ‘I’d best be getting back in; John has these seizures, fits, when he gets upset or excited, and she won’t give him his medication. Won’t have anything to do with that side of things, says she finds it too upsetting.’
They all stared at each other for a moment; Kitty’s voice had held a deep and bitter cynicism that was at odds with her easy-going, kind nature.
‘Thank you, Kitty.’
Dan stood looking rather helplessly at the older woman as he spoke, and now Connie took his arm – the contours of which were painfully accentuated under the thick cloth of his overcoat. ‘Come and see us as soon as you can, Kitty,’ she said softly. ‘Dan’s staying at the Three Tuns until we can get married but he’ll be having all his meals with me and just going back there to sleep.’
‘Except tonight. I’ve booked us a table at the Three Tuns tonight so I can have you all to myself,’ put in Dan quickly, and then, turning to Kitty he said, ‘There’s always someone wanting to ask her about something back at the tea-rooms and restaurant; no wonder she’s as thin as a rake.’
‘Well that makes a pair of you.’
A slight movement on the perimeter of Connie’s vision brought her eyes from Kitty’s determinedly cheery face to the partly open front door. John was in the aperture; how long he had been there she didn’t know. He was staring at her, his flaky lids drooping over the hard black light of his eyes, his hands working at the tartan blanket draped over his waist and hanging emptily to the base of the wheelchair.
The look in his eyes pinned her for a moment and then she wrenched her gaze away from the raw lust, her voice almost a gabble as she said, ‘Look, it’s coming down thicker, we’ll have to go. Goodbye, Kitty.’
‘So long, lass. So long, lad.’
They all hugged once more and as they turned to go their separate ways – she and Dan towards the gate and Kitty back into the house – Connie knew without glancing his way that John had disappeared.
They didn’t talk much on the way home. The wind was driving the snow before it in stinging gusts and there were few people about. Connie wished Dan hadn’t set his heart on this meal at his hotel for the two of them. The dull pasty white of his face and the exhausted pinkness of his eyes bothered her; she would far rather have cooked them a tasty meal in the flat and then – regardless of his noble leanings – seen Dan tucked up in the spare bedroom with a hot water bottle and one of Mary’s special herbal night-time drinks that aided restful sleep. John had accused Dan of coming through the war untouched, but the walking skeleton at the side of her had been disabled all right. Maybe not as visibly as his brother, but the physical and mental wounds were still there, and the broken body and mind needed time to heal. And love, lots and lots of love. She wanted to bathe him in her love, wrap him up in it, pour it on the hurt and trauma like a healing balm.
They spent some time with Wilf and Mary before they left for the Three Tuns, and Dan held the baby. His face had worked when Connie had first placed the small infant in his arms, and knowing a little of the horrors he had been through and the abominations he had seen, the other three had chattered away about inconsequentials to give Dan a chance to compose himself.
Dan had sat quietly, his head down. Damn it, he was going to cry! No, he mustn’t cry, not here, not now. He had seen some of them that started on that game and once started they’d found it difficult to stop; half barmy some of them had become. No, he could master this. He could. It was just that the sight of the sweet, innocent little face and tiny, tiny limbs had caused something to melt deep inside where the hard core sat, but that was all right, it was. He could let it go a little at a time and it would be all right. Thank God this war had been the war to end wars; if nothing else the suffering and mayhem had had a purpose in teaching men that. But at what a cost. Ten million dead and still more left like John. And Art gone, and most of the men he had joined up with.
‘Are We Down-Hearted? No!’ That had been the mood of the songwriters when the war had begun. ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ but ‘Your King and Country Want You’ so ‘Jolly Good Luck to the Girl Who Loves a Soldier’; she must, the songwriters had urged, ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’. And then, by 1916, stoicism had set in, Dan thought bitterly. ‘What’s the Use of Worrying?’ as thousands ‘Packed Up Your Troubles’ and dreamed of gathering ‘Roses in Picardy’. But by 1918 there was bitter irony in carolling, ‘Oh, Oh, Oh, it’s a Lovely War!’ By that time the annihilation had touched every family in Britain, high or low born, rich or poor. Fathers, sons, grandsons, brothers . . .
‘Isn’t she bonny?’
Connie’s voice brought him out of the abyss and he turned his head to see her at the side of him, young, fresh, beautiful and his. His. He had everything to live for, everything to strive and work for. He had Connie.
‘Aye, she is that,’ he said softly. ‘She’s the dawn of a new tomorrow.’ And he wasn’t just talking about Martha Ellen.
John had encouraged Kitty to accompany his mother to Gilbert and Doreen’s New Year’s Day music
al soiree. She knew she loved the time with the bairns in the nursery, he’d said, and the bairns looked forward to her going and it was a help to Doreen if she knew the evening wasn’t going to be interrupted. He would be perfectly all right; he wasn’t a bairn for crying out loud and he didn’t need his nappy changed. So Kitty had gone. And immediately the house was empty John had wheeled himself into the drawing room and used the telephone to call for a taxi which had arrived promptly at eight o’clock.
John was waiting for the knock at the front door and he had a wad of notes in his hand to ensure the cabbie’s assistance in the awkward task of getting himself and the wheelchair where he wanted to go. And he had his service revolver in his pocket.
He wasn’t going to get another chance like this one, he told himself, as the taxi moved slowly through the snowstorm towards the Three Tuns Hotel. He knew exactly where they were and he had surprise on his side; it could be weeks before he was left alone in the house again. Kitty watched him like a hawk, stupid interfering old baggage that she was. She might have pulled the wool over his mother’s eyes but he had known she’d been aware of Dan’s return before his brother and Connie turned up at the house. Dan had always been her favourite. Seems he was everyone’s favourite, but not for much longer. No, not for much longer.
As anticipation and excitement began to make his heart race he warned himself to go carefully. He couldn’t afford to have a fit now, although he’d taken as much of his medication as he dared without sending himself to sleep. The muted screaming in his head – which was always with him but sometimes became so loud it caused a red mist in front of his eyes and a pain like knives stabbing into his brain – was shouting two names tonight. Connie and Dan. Connie and Dan. He’d show her. Aye, he’d show her all right. She had been the cause of him losing everything. Her and her whoring mother had put a curse on him, that was it.
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