Connie’s Courage
A stirring novel of passion, lost loves and one girl’s determination to conquer the odds from the author of Child of the Mersey.When Connie Pride finds herself alone and pregnant in the rough courts of Liverpool, she despairs. Deserted by her lover, menaced by his bullying uncle, and too proud to ask her estranged family for help, there seems no hope.Rescued from the gutter, she is offeredthe chance to train as a nurse at the Poor Hospital. Life becomes a whirl of hard work and long shifts, but also lively evenings at the music hall with her fellow nurses and the newly drafted soldiers. Finally Conniehas a purpose in life – especially when the wounded of World War 1 start to arrive in their droves on the hospital wards. Witha roof over her head and a steady wage, ifshe can stay out of trouble, the future looks brighter. Even love seems possible again …But then a face from the violent past turnsup to disrupt Connie’s new life and shatter her dreams. All she has built up is threatened – and she herself is in physical danger. Itwill take every ounce of the courage she possesses to overcome the odds – and a little help from old friends and new …
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ANNIE GROVES
Connie’s Courage
I would like to dedicate this book to my mother who paid me the best compliment I have ever had in being so impatient to read Connie’s story. Here she is, Mum – I hope you like her!
Contents
1912
Connie admired her reflection in the old spotted mirror she had propped up on the small chest by the window to get the best light. Not that very much light did come in through the small, filthy window of the room she and Kieron were renting in one of Liverpool’s poorest areas – a huddle of terraced houses in an airless court down a narrow back alley – but Connie preferred not to think about their surroundings.
She had begged the landlord of the pub where she worked as a barmaid to let her take the mirror when his wife decided to throw it out. It was her sister Ellie who had always been considered the pretty one, and not her. She rubbed anxiously at her lips with a cloth, to try to give them a bit of colour, before applying a thin smear of Vaseline to them. She and Kieron might not have any money, but that did not mean she had to let herself go completely.
They might be living in straitened circumstances now, but things would be different once they got to America, she assured herself, picking up her skirts and whirling round, the reality of her situation forgotten, as her natural optimism brought an excited glow to her face. America! Oh, but she just couldn’t wait to get there!
‘We’re going to America. We’re going to America!’ she sang at the top of her voice, dizzy with anticipation and happiness.
But her happiness turned to a sharp stab of discomfort, as the light from the window glinted on the cheap wedding ring she was wearing. A wedding ring she had no legal right to, because she and Kieron were not married.
In reality, she was not Mrs Kieron Connolly, but still Miss Constance Pride, daughter of Robert Pride of Preston. Not that her father cared anything for her now. No, he had a second wife to replace Connie’s dead mother, and a new family to displace both Connie and her siblings from his affections.
Connie still hated to think about the unhappiness she had experienced after her mother’s death. The four Pride children had been split up amongst their mother’s sisters, without being allowed any say in their own futures. The Barclay sisters had been renowned for their beauty and grace when they had been young, and Connie knew that her aunts had never approved of her mother Lydia’s marriage to a mere butcher.
When Lydia had died following the birth of her fourth child, Ellie, Connie’s elder sister, had been sent to live at Hoylake with their Aunt and Uncle Parkes.
Mr Parkes was an extremely wealthy man – a lawyer – with a very grand house in the prestigious area of Hoylake where all the rich shipowners lived. Mr and Mrs Parkes had given a ball whilst Ellie had been living with them, and Connie had been invited to attend.
She had tried not to show how overawed she felt by the unfamiliar elegance of her aunt and uncle’s home, or how upset and frightened she had been by the realisation that she and her sister Ellie were living such different lives. Her elder sister had seemed like a stranger to her, and she had felt so envious of her, and the wonderful life she was living.
It had seemed unfair that Ellie should be living a life of luxury with the Parkes, whilst Connie was stuck in a horrid, cold rectory with their parsimonious Aunt and Uncle Simpkins.
John, their brother, and the new baby, Philip, had been sent to live at Hutton with another aunt, and Connie hadn’t had any contact with her family since she ran away with Kieron.
When Ellie found out that Connie had run away from their Aunt and Uncle Simpkins to be with Kieron, she had tried to persuade her sister to return to them, claiming that Connie would be socially ruined if what she had done should become public knowledge. But Connie suspected that Ellie was thinking more about her own social position, rather than Connie’s!
Ellie had gone up in the world through her two marriages: her first into a ship-owning family, and then, when her first husband died, Ellie had married her childhood sweetheart, Gideon Walker. Gideon was a craftsman who had inherited a considerable amount of money, and a house in Winckley Square, the smartest part of Preston. This was much to the resentment of their Aunt Gibson, who also lived in the same square with her doctor husband.
Since their Aunt Gibson was used to considering herself of a much higher social status than Ellie and Connie’s late mother, she no doubt thoroughly disliked having Ellie as her well-to-do neighbour. Not that Connie had any sympathy for their Aunt Gibson. She was the one who had insisted on splitting them all up following their mother’s death, after all, even if she had claimed she was acting on their mother’s wishes. But Ellie had been the one who had let her!
