Connie’s Courage. Annie Groves

fell back as the local midwife hurried to Connie’s side.

      ‘She’s losing, Ma,’ one of them explained unnecessarily. ‘Got beat up bad by ‘er old man, by the looks o’ it.’

      Connie gave a terrified scream. She felt as though her insides were being ripped out. Mary Deakin frowned, and took hold of her. ‘Too late to get her inside now!’

      Discreetly Harry let himself into his mother’s lodgings.

      Connie felt as though the pain would never end, wave after wave of it, but all the time there was something else worse than the pain tormenting her. She heard herself scream, and then she was falling into burning hot blackness.

      Connie opened her eyes. Her mouth felt so dry. She moved, and then cried out as she felt pain sear through her.

      ‘Ma, she’s awake.’

      A woman was bending over her. A stranger! Terrified, Connie looked around the room. Had Bill Connolly carried out his threat, was she already in the brothel?

      ‘Well, youse back with us, are youse? Must say I thought we was gonna lose yer. Had a real bad time of it, you have. Bleeding like youse were never gonna stop, and then being that bad wi’ t’fever that youse looked fit to die. But I’ve niver lost a lass yet, and I weren’t gonna lose youse.’

      Connie blinked as she looked up into the beaming face smiling down at her.

      ‘I’ve … I’ve … been ill?’ she questioned uncertainly.

      The smile changed to a frown.

      ‘Aye, that yer have, lass. Lost yer babby, you did, and nearly died yersel. Eeh, but that bugger who knocked youse about left you in a right bad way. Although I says it m’sel, wi’out me to tek care of youse, yer would have been dead, right enough.’ Ere, our Jenny, go and get some water for the lass,’ she instructed the girl standing behind her.

      ‘Lucky youse was, lass, that them women in the court had the sense to send for Ma Deakin. The best midwife around these parts, that’s what I am,’ she told Connie proudly. ‘Shame about the babby, lass. But …’

      The baby. Connie struggled to sit up.

      ‘Tek it easy, love,’ the midwife warned her. ‘Youse’ull be all right, but ‘e give yer a right thumping and youse got a couple o’ cracked ribs. Bound ‘em for yer I have, and them’ll fix easy enough. He didn’t ought ter have knocked yer about like that and youse carryin’ an’ all! I’ll tell yer straight, it were touch and go for the first few days you were here. Lucky yer was, too, that our Lily is away visiting m’sister, otherwise there wouldn’t ‘ave bin a bed for yer. Eeh, lass, youse were in a bad way. ‘T in’t none o’ my business, lass, but if I was yer ma …’

      Connie shivered, as the midwife’s words brought back for her the full horror of what had happened to her. Tears of fear and misery filled her eyes.

      ‘I haven’t got a mother. She’s dead,’ Connie told the midwife, shivering again as she added, ‘I haven’t got anyone.’

      It was true, after all, Kieron had deserted her, and Ellie, the sister she had turned to rescue her from the misery of her life with their aunt and uncle, had been more interested in her own life and her own happiness, than she had been in Connie’s misery.

      And, if she had refused to help before, how much more likely was Ellie to refuse to do so now! Ellie would probably tell her that what had happened to her served her right, Connie decided self-pityingly. No, she had no family now. They didn’t want her, and she didn’t want them!

      Mary Deakin eyed her sympathetically. She had a soft heart, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that she had a houseful of her own, she would have willingly offered Connie a bed.

      ‘Eeh, I’m that sorry for yer, lass.’ She shook her head. ‘Ter ‘ave no ma, and no folks o’yer own. It dunna bear thinkin’ about!’

      It was obvious to her from both Connie’s shabby appearance, and what, to Mary, was her posh voice, that Connie was someone who had fallen on hard times. And, in Mary’s motherly opinion, fallen in with a right wrong ‘un man-wise, which reminded her.

      ‘Jenny Parker says as how she ‘eard from someone ‘oo saw ‘im leavin', that it were Bill Connolly who belted yer. By, but yer’v got yersel’ into a pickle o’ bother, lassie.’ She shook her head gravely. ‘Gettin’ yersel on the wrong side o’ Bill Connolly.’

      Connie felt terrified. ‘He doesn’t know where I am, does he?’ she demanded frantically. ‘He mustn’t know.’

      There, lass, there’s no need to tek on so,’ Mary tried to comfort her. ‘We ‘aven’t told ‘im nothing. We looks after one another round ‘ere, and he ain’t one o’ us.’

      Too distraught to be comforted, Connie struggled again to sit up.

      ‘He mustn’t find me,’ she told the midwife, her eyes brimming with frightened tears. ‘If he does…’ She started to shudder. ‘He said …’

      Her face went white; her voice dropping to a terrified whisper, as she wept and told the midwife what Bill Connolly had threatened her with.

      ‘Eeh, the bugger! Hangin’s too good for him, and so it is. Eeh, lass, you’ve had a right bad time. ‘Appen it’s just as well yer lost the babby.’

      ‘I’ve got to get away from here. He musn’t find me.’ Connie repeated. ‘But I don’t know where I can go …’ Not back to Preston, she acknowledged miserably, she certainly wouldn’t be welcome there!

      ‘'Ere, I’ve just remembered sommat,’ the midwife exclaimed happily. ‘I’ve got a niece up at’ ospital, and she were telling us that they’re wanting to tek on girls ter train up as nurses. Yer lives in whilst yer training, and I could ‘ave a word wi’ her if yer wants me to … By, but if’n I had me time again I’d jump at it. Yer’ll be safe enough up there, lass, the Matron don’t allow no men into the nurses’ ‘ome! ‘Ave their balls off if’n they tried, she would.’ She laughed.

      A nurse! Connie frowned. Working as a nurse was not something she had ever considered doing. Why should she have done? There had been no reason to think of such things in the life she had been envisaging for herself, up until Kieron had deserted her so cruelly. She had, Connie admitted, seen her future in very different terms, imagining it being more like her own mother’s marriage to a man who loved her.

      The rosy glow of believing Kieron loved her had faded long before their last quarrel, she admitted, but the fear of what separating from him would mean for her own respectability, had kept her clinging to the fantasy that, in him, she had found her one true love.

      And she had yearned so for that love, desperate for it to fill the hurting space left in her life by the break-up of her family.

      No respectable man would ever love her now though! Or marry her! So what was to become of her?

      ‘I don’t know anything about nursing,’ she began doubtfully. ‘And …’

      ‘Lord bless yer love, yer don’t need ter. Tek yer on and train yer up they will!’

      A nurse! Vague memories of being taught at school about Florence Nightingale, the woman who had lifted the work of nursing from something no respectable woman would ever consider, to an almost saintly vocation, floated through Connie’s head.

      ‘It u’ll give you a new start, lass,’ Mary urged her kindly. ‘No one up at ‘ospital needs to know nowt about what’s ‘appened down’ere, and if youse ‘ull tek me advice, you’ll say nowt about it yersel. Best put it all behind you, and make out like it never ‘appened, like.’

      The picture she was drawing was a very tempting one, Connie acknowledged. A new start … She could have a whole new life, become a whole new person; she would be safe from Bill Connolly, and free from the shame of having run away with Kieron.

      Connie’s