Southend U3A

May 2024

Loyalty - Marie Day

We’d always been a tight knit group; right through school and onwards. Although we’d gone our separate ways we kept in touch, sharing time together when we could. Through the internet, through frozen screens, mute buttons left on and time zone differences we managed to pass on how our lives were progressing; good or bad. I must admit we were a strange bunch from varying backgrounds but we became what I thought was an impregnable group that nothing would change. No one ever tried to infiltrate the friendship we had. I thought I could trust them with anything. Not to be too over dramatic even with my life. I perhaps let my guard down as in my job I had to try at least to judge character in the people I knew and I’d known them for so long. That’s why I spend so much time now wondering what and why it took such a different direction that summer.

I was lucky in my family. They were great. My Dad known to all as ‘Steady’ Eddie Faith – ‘king of the seafront fishermen’ at ‘Fairhaven on Sea’. Mum – Trudy Faith. My twin, younger sisters Dee Dee and Cate Faith. And last but by no means least my young brother Thomas Faith – known as Rusty obviously because of his red hair. I’m the eldest, Constance Faith; Connie to family and friends.

Being the eldest Mum and Dad wanted me to do well at school and be the first in the family not to spend my life swabbing decks, filleting fish and timing my life by the tide tables. School was fine. As I’ve said I had lots of friends. We all met on the first day at ‘Headly Grammar School’. It was all for one and one for all. Or that’s what I naively thought. After college, university or entering employment (as our headteacher put it at our leavers assembly) we’d lose track for a while but then meet up again at parties, weddings and all points celebration over the years. I suppose my view was coloured by our closeness as we grew up. The ‘eight musketeers’. Why would that ever change? I went off to work in London as my job experience increased. All was well.

What happened next came out of the blue. I got a call from Dad. He said he’d been contacted by ‘that nice Harry Gance and that sweet Ava Rice’ who I used to go to school with. They wanted him to invest in a deal that (of course) couldn’t lose. When I spoke to Mum, true to form she backed Dad; after all, hadn’t she made fish fingers and chips for these two all those years ago. Before I’d checked anything out, they’d invested in the scheme taking out a loan secured against their fishing trawlers. A loan they had obtained from the bank managed by the third member of our gang one Cramford Tucker (pretentious Christian name courtesy of his mother’s maiden name) and witnessed by number four, his accountant Lucy Slack. How she became an accountant I’ll never know as it took her eight tries to pass her Maths GCSE!

Before I had time to catch my breath a distraught Mum told me as I came through the front door that Rusty had been arrested. While I was away, he’d taken up with guess who? Friends number five and six Lew Denis and Desiree Green. These two I must admit were hangers on to our group. One always making sly and often rude remarks and one who begrudged anyone who made a success of anything. By the way Rusty wasn’t only called that because of his hair colour but also because of his first initial ‘T + Rusty’ – Trusty! Lovely lad, everyone’s friend but what teachers tend to call ‘easily led’! I spent the rest of an already long day at the police station trying to get Thomas home. These two ‘friends’ had encouraged him to graffiti unmentionable words onto the side of Dad’s friend Freddie’s fishing boat after telling him Freddie had tried to cheat Dad out of his boat.

And oh, it continued when I arrived home with the shame faced Rusty to find Mum and my sisters crying and Dad lying on the floor with a black eye! In front of Dad, fists clenched, yelling at my family – you’ve guessed it again if you are counting – number seven of my erstwhile lifelong chums. Ira Fury; manager of the local boxing gym. He turned and started yelling at me and demanding money. Retained by the bank, so he said, to reclaim the unpaid monthly payments on the loan. By this time, I had had just about enough and I don’t know how I did it but I removed Ira from our house. It’s a bit of a blur but it may have been that Ira realised there were six of us, all be it three in tears, one the worse for wear, one shame faced but one maybe looking around for the nearest blunt instrument if he didn’t leave. Anyway, he was gone. On to the next problem.

I ran to the bank, shoved past Lucy, easy enough as she was dozing in her chair, Slack by name and slack by nature. I crashed through the door to Cramford’s office. He was busy at his desk not with bank matters but with a large plate of doughnuts in front of him. He had just sunk his teeth into the first sugary confection and jam dribbled down each of his chins. I banged my fists down hard on the desk and the plate of doughnuts crashed to the floor. Cramford, who had always been a coward and the now upright Lucy who was too idle to even try to make up a lie folded before my eyes. At one point I thought Cramford was going to cry but more for the loss of his doughnuts than for any wrong doing on his part. Lucy just stifled a yawn and left it to him to implicate their buddies in their plan to cheat my family out of their business.

All these years of me thinking they were my friends. Their reactions to being caught astounded me; left me open mouthed and almost speechless! It seemed they all got together one night for a drink or several. They had compared the woeful tale of debts from failed enterprises, restaurant bills, fines for various misdemeanours and non-payment of rent and decided that as Desiree said it wasn’t fair that my family had so much and they all had nothing. Harry and Ava were quite proud of their idea. Ava called it a money-making dream. Desiree had always envied my happy family and Lew just stood muttering rude words under his breath. Cramford and Lucy had been defrauding the bank to pay for Cramford’s food addiction and Lucy had been too lazy to cook the books properly. And last but not least Ira, who had always had a quick temper, was invited into the conspiracy to frighten my parents for his share of the proceeds.

Perhaps their biggest mistake was thinking I wouldn’t find out and what I would do if I did. They also forgot to give me my full title. I was always just ‘little, loyal Connie’ to them. When people refer to me in my professional capacity nowadays, they call me Chief Inspector Constance Faith. You see even though we’d been such good friends, that meant I knew every bit about them – good and sadly bad. In my head I called them ‘The Magnificent Seven’ on good days but on bad days they were always ‘The Seven Headly Sinners’.