Ragamuffin Angel

by Rita Bradshaw

  He would never have her. The lust that had driven him all his life since he had had his first taste of a woman as a lad of fourteen was just as strong as it had ever been, adding to the daily torment of living, and now he felt himself become hard beneath the tartan blanket. But the revenge he was about to take would bring him a measure of satisfaction through the long nights when his body burnt and ached for the release a woman could bring. No, not just a woman – her, Sadie Bell’s ragamuffin brat. The whore, the filthy, dirty strumpet . . . The profanities in his head died away as the taxi stopped outside the Three Tuns. He had to concentrate now; everything depended on the next few minutes and he had to keep calm and steady.

  The scandal of tonight would bring his mother low, her and her precious social standing. The thought gave him immense pleasure and he savoured it through the task of being transported into the hotel foyer. They had all been sacrificed on the altar of his mother’s craving for power and prestige, and in one night he would bring it all to nowt. He just wished he could see her face when they told her the news, that would have been the sweetest pleasure of all. Damn her. Damn them all. . .

  For a moment Connie couldn’t believe her eyes. ‘John. . .’

  ‘What?’ Dan heard the murmur and saw her face turn white, but it was a moment before he turned in his seat and by then the waiter had wheeled John down the two steps into the dining room of the hotel and over to the side of their table in the far comer.

  ‘What on earth . . . John, what do you think you are doing?’ Dan had half risen as he’d spoken, but now, at an abrupt gesture from John, he sank back down into his seat again.

  ‘What am I doing?’ John’s voice was low and conversational as though he wasn’t aware of the horrified faces of some of the diners who were less tactful than others. ‘I’m here to have a talk with my brother, Dan. Nowt wrong with that, is there?’

  ‘Where’s . . .?’

  ‘Mam? Kitty?’ John watched Dan’s eyes return from the dining room door before he said, ‘I’m here alone, Dan. I’m a big lad now, or hadn’t anyone told you?’

  ‘What do you want?’ Connie’s heart was leaping painfully but her voice didn’t betray it, and the cool measured tones brought John’s eyes fixing on to her face.

  ‘You’re a cold, hard bitch at heart, aren’t you? Your mam was the same. I’d have looked after her, set her up so she was sitting pretty but she’d have none of it. She’d got her eye on getting Jacob to marry her, that was the thing, and she knew I wouldn’t fall for that one.’

  ‘My mother loved Jacob.’

  ‘And the small fact he’d got a wife didn’t come into it?’

  ‘Oh don’t take the line of morality, John, not you.’ Dan’s voice was cutting.

  John’s shoulders visibly stiffened and they watched him take a few deep breaths. When he spoke again his voice was still quiet. ‘We’ve never got on, have we, Dan. Not even when we were bairns. You were always the favoured one, the blue-eyed boy, simpering and drooling to get your own way. Everything, including her’ – he inclined his head towards Connie – ‘has fallen into your lap.’

  ‘That’s not true.’ It was Connie who spoke and her voice was fierce. ‘You don’t know what he’s gone through –’

  ‘Spare me.’ Connie’s hand had reached across the table to clasp Dan’s as she’d spoken and the sight seemed to infuriate the man in the wheelchair. And now John’s voice was precise, definite, when he said, ‘You were the cause of Ann leaving me. Oh, aye, you were,’ he added at her involuntary gesture of denial. ‘It was when I was first shipped home. I was delirious most of the time apparently, and I talked a bit. Said things.’

  ‘Things?’ Connie asked tautly.

  ‘Aye, things.’ And John settled back in his chair, his expression indicating that he was enjoying the anticipation of what he was about to reveal. ‘She told me, the day she said she was leaving me, that I’d let on about the night I burnt your brother and granny. About the screaming, the smell, all of it.’

  ‘Dan. . .’ Connie’s hand was gripping the neck of her dress, but although she spoke Dan’s name her eyes were fixed on the devilish face of his brother.

  ‘You swine! You loathsome, filthy swine.’ In the same moment that Dan rose to his feet, intending to bodily remove his brother from the restaurant, John brought out the gun he had been hiding under the blanket on his lap.

  It was instinct that threw Connie across the table at the wheelchair as the gun was fired, aimed straight at Dan’s heart, and as the momentum of her thrust sent the wheelchair skidding to one side Dan clutched his chest and fell to the ground amid a conglomeration of cutlery, plates, glasses and tablecloth.

  The lurching of the wheelchair caused John to drop the gun on the floor where it went spinning under a nearby table, but he didn’t mind. He had done what he came to do. He began to chuckle, his face lit up as he gave vent to his glee, and with the laughter went the last shreds of his sanity.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ‘By, lass! There’s me an’ Wilf sittin’ at home nice as you like an’ all this happenin’. I feel like I can’t turn me back for a minute.’

  It was so typically Mary, and so unconsciously humorous, that despite the dire circumstances Connie couldn’t help but smile as she exchanged a wry glance with Dan across his hospital bed, and it was Dan who said meekly, ‘I’m sorry, Mary, but it did take us a bit by surprise too.’

  ‘An’ you say he meant to do for you, Dan?’

  ‘Oh aye.’ Dan nodded, his face straightening as he glanced down at the copious bandages covering the left side of his chest and shoulder. ‘If Connie hadn’t caused him to miss his aim he’d have done for me all right.’

  ‘Whatever next!’ Mary shook her head slowly. ‘He must be mad.’

  ‘Apparently the police doctor would agree with you there.’ Connie’s voice was calm and steady. The doctor who had seen to Dan and the very capable sister in charge of the ward had both emphasised that Dan was in shock – and who wouldn’t be with their own brother attempting to murder them! the sister had added – and he needed peace and quiet and the deeper connotations of John’s actions playing down for the present. He had lost a lot of blood, the doctor had explained, but that wasn’t really the problem here. He had had a rough time of it in the prisoner of war camp by all accounts, and these things affected the mind even more than the body. Something like this could at best delay his recovery, at worst . . . The doctor hadn’t gone on to explain what the worst would mean but he hadn’t had to.

  ‘They’re sayin’ John’s gone doo-lally?’ Mary asked now.

  ‘I think he always has been, Mary.’ Dan glanced across at Connie and they stared hard at each other, their eyes unblinking, and it was in that moment that Connie experienced something akin to a feeling of relief. Dan wasn’t in shock, not in the way the doctor thought anyway. Whatever had had to be faced regarding his brother he had faced a long time ago.

  It had been pandemonium when they had brought Dan in last night, and the doctor had operated immediately to remove the bullet lodged in the bottom of his shoulder. He had still been heavily sedated when Connie had arrived back at the hospital first thing that morning after leaving a message for Mary with Ellen, and it was only in the last couple of hours that he had been able to converse with her. They hadn’t mentioned John’s last words before he had fired the gun, but each knew the other believed them. Connie couldn’t let herself think about the screaming part – she had to believe that was John’s spite coming through and that her brother and granny had been overcome with smoke as Father Hedley had insisted at the time – but she did believe he had been responsible for the tragedy. Murder. He had murdered her family, and he had probably intended that she die in the fire too.

  The police were saying that it was the war that had sent John over the edge; shell-shock they’d labelled it, and it was a bad case. No hope of recovery. Heartbreaking for all concerned. He’d likely be institutionalised for life, the constable who had c
ome to sit by the side of Dan’s bed for a while said gravely, because they understood he was separated from his wife and his mother had said she couldn’t have him back to live with her again. Poor devil . . .

  Poor devil. Connie had looked at the ruddy, fresh-faced constable and for a moment he had appeared very young to her. John was a monster, that’s what he was. And yet, it wasn’t him, not wholly. Dan’s father dying before his time; Jacob’s suicide; Mavis losing her mind and now John attempting to kill his own brother; the family disintegrating – it all had its seed in Edith’s obsessional desire for power and dominance. What she couldn’t control she destroyed, and she had destroyed her own family as well as Connie’s. Dear God. Dear God . . . Connie was praying with her eyes open as she listened to the constable droning on.

  It had to stop somewhere, didn’t it, this cycle of hate and destruction? She loved Dan and she knew he loved her. Aye, she knew that all right. And she wanted his bairns. There were still times when her arms ached for Lucy’s daughter, but when she had her own children that loss would be eased. A new generation, products of love and tenderness not ambition or cold manipulation. Perhaps in their children the past would finally be put to rest.

  Connie turned to Mary now, squeezing her friend’s arm as she said, ‘It was good of you to come but we didn’t expect it, not with the baby and everything.’

  ‘Don’t be daft, lass. I wanted to.’

  ‘I’m glad you did, Mary. You can do me a favour if you will.’ Dan was lying propped against his pillows and his face was the same colour as the white linen. ‘Take this woman home and make sure she has something hot to eat and then goes to bed. She’s exhausted.’ And then he said to Connie, at her involuntary movement of protest, ‘I mean it, dear. They’ll be bringing the evening meal in a moment and I shall eat that and then settle down, but I shan’t have an easy mind if you don’t go with Mary now. You’ve been here all day and you’re worn out.’

  ‘He’s right, lass.’ Mary stood to her feet with a smile at Dan. ‘I’ll wait outside until you’re ready to go.’

  It was another five minutes before Connie joined Mary in the corridor outside the ward, mainly because – as she had leant over to kiss him goodbye-Dan had whispered, ‘Darling, what John said . . . It won’t make any difference to us, will it?’ After her reassurance she had sat on his bed, his good arm holding her close, and they had remained like that for a minute or two until she had kissed him again before rising to her feet.

  ‘I love you, Dan Stewart.’ She stared into the dark, chocolate-brown eyes and what he saw in her blue ones caused him to relax back against the pillows again, a slight smile touching his lips as he breathed out very slowly.

  ‘I love you, Connie Bell.’

  ‘Then that’s all that matters.’

  Connie shared a meal with Mary and Wilf and returned to her own flat at seven o‘clock, and at half past, after answering a knock at her front door, she found a red-faced and agitated Wilf in front of her again. ‘What is it, Wilf?’ she asked quickly. ‘Are Mary and the baby all right?’

  ‘Aye, aye.’ His voice was low and he was speaking rapidly. ‘It’s her, Dan’s mam. She’s down in the restaurant asking to see you.’

  ‘Mrs Stewart?’

  ‘Aye, I got a right gliff meself, lass, and the old biddy was all for pushing past me and making her way up here until she realised the door was locked.’ For safety reasons it had been decided, when the extension was being built, that the door leading up to the flat would have its own set of keys of which Connie had one, Mary and Wilf another, Gladys the third and now Dan had been given the spare. ‘Got right uppity she did an’ all, ordering me about like I was a servant or something.’ It was clear Wilf was not enamoured of Edith Stewart.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Wilf, but did she say what she wants?’

  ‘Just that she wants to see you.’

  They stared at each other for a moment, and then Connie smoothed a few tendrils of hair that had come adrift from the bun on the top of her head back behind her ears and jerked her chin upwards, her eyes narrowing as she said, ‘Then would you mind showing her up, Wilf?’

  ‘Lass, Mary’d skin me alive if I left that wicked old so-an’ -so alone with you up here.’

  ‘I’m not frightened of her, Wilf.’ The chin went up a notch higher. ‘And I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of thinking I am. I will be perfectly all right.’

  It was an order, and after a long moment of hesitation Wilf nodded. Connie remained standing just inside the front door as Mary’s husband turned and made his way down the steep, narrow stairs leading to the door which opened into an alcove at the side of the restaurant, but he was only halfway down when the sound of shouting brought her on to the small landing. Wilf turned and looked up at her, motioning her with his hand to stay where she was, and then continued swiftly down the remaining stairs, shutting the door securely behind him.

  Surely . . . Yes, that was Kitty’s voice she could hear. Connie was down the steps in a trice, and as she opened the door that Wilf had just closed it was to see Edith Stewart in front of her, her profile all but snarling, and Kitty, pale-faced but unmoving, standing a few yards away with Wilf between them.

  ‘What is it?’

  They all turned at the sound of Connie’s voice, but it was Wilf who said, before either of the two women could open their mouths, ‘This ’un’ – indicating Edith with a jerk of one thumb which caused the bristling woman to expand still further – ‘is telling this lady to get out.’ The terminology left no one in any doubt as to Wilf’s standpoint. ‘And she’s refusing to leave.’

  ‘This is Kitty, Wilf.’ The two had never met but she had spoken of Edith’s housekeeper and the fondness Dan held for her several times. ‘And she knows she is welcome in my home at any time.’

  ‘She followed me here!’ Edith was beside herself, her small body thrusting forward in her rage. ‘How dare you! How dare you follow me, Kitty, and don’t say you didn’t. Get back to the house and we’ll speak of this later.’

  ‘Aye, I did follow you here.’ There was no vestige of the menial in Kitty’s stance, nor yet in the tone of her voice when she continued, ‘And it looks like it was just as well I did. I’d have thought you were satisfied by the trouble you’ve caused without plotting further mischief.’

  ‘What? What did you say?’ Edith stared at the plump woman in front of her. She had known the warm-hearted Irishwoman for most of her life, and taken advantage of her for just as long, but she would have sworn on her own life that Kitty didn’t have the gumption of a bairn. Soft as clarts, that’s how Edith had always thought of her, and now here Kitty was openly defying her. But what was worse, much worse, was that it was in front of that baggage who had brought such shame to their name, and from the sound of it the two weren’t unacquainted. By, Kitty would suffer for this little lot.

  ‘The restaurant is due to open in a few minutes and I won’t have a disturbance,’ Connie said coolly. ‘If you wish to speak with me you had better come upstairs. You too, Kitty.’

  Edith Stewart looked fully at Connie, and the younger woman’s poise and calm had the effect of making her want to leap at the lovely face, to tear and gouge at it with her fingernails. The strength of the desire shocked her; it suggested a lack of control that wasn’t to be borne, and to combat the weakness she breathed deeply, inclining her head in a stiff nod of acquiescence.

  Connie led the way upstairs, and once the two women were standing in the parlour she indicated the sofa, saying, ‘Please be seated,’ her heart thudding with the force of a sledgehammer.

  ‘I haven’t come to sit and chat,’ Edith said sharply. The interior of the flat had surprised her – it showed great charm and taste which further increased the anger and irritation she was trying to master. That this little chit, that whore’s flyblow had risen to this! By, the devil looked after his own all right. And Kitty, standing there as though she had every right to force her way where she pleased. Well, she still intend
ed to say everything she had come to say – that would give her great lump of a housekeeper something to think about! She had always suspected that Kitty had been sweet on Henry and that the silly woman had thought he had a soft spot for her; this would teach the insolent baggage a lesson. No one crossed her and got away with it.

  ‘Then perhaps you would like to tell me what you have come for?’ said Connie steadily, her face betraying nothing of her inward turmoil.

  ‘Very well.’ Edith suppressed the rage that Connie’s refusal to be intimidated was causing and allowed a pause, while they stared at each other, before she said, ‘The scandal you have caused will take some living down, you are aware of that I suppose? But it will be explained that John is suffering from shell-shock and that his injuries have turned his mind; people can understand that with our war heroes.’

  War hero? John had risen to war hero status now?

  ‘And of course once Dan is sufficiently recovered to leave the infirmary he will return home to live with me. I understand from the doctors that he is a sick man. All this will be made easier if you leave the district, or perhaps I should say when you leave the district. With you gone people will forget very quickly, and once Dan is well again he can resume his relationship with Miss Rotherington; the two were very close at one time.’

  She was as mad as John. Connie found her mouth had fallen open in a little gape and she shut it quickly, blinking twice before she said, ‘Dan was never close to Miss Rotherington and he wouldn’t consider coming to live with you again; you must know that surely? We are going to be married.’

  ‘Over my dead body.’

  ‘Now look, Mrs Stewart –’