Lonely Teardrops (2008) (21 page)

He could be lively and funny one day, and barely speak to her the next.

Despite these contradictions in his character, and regardless of all common sense, Harriet really rather liked him. She was utterly in his thrall. Maybe this was because he was the only person to have shown her any kindness since her dad died.

One night as they sat on the canal bank beneath a canopy of stars in a velvet blue sky, alone for once as the others were fast asleep, he began to talk about his childhood. This surprised her because he didn’t take kindly to being questioned. It came about quite naturally, with very little prompting. Harriet simply asked him if he remembered his mother, and out it all poured.

She was Irish, he told her, probably with some Romany blood in her. She was unmarried when Vinny’s older brother Dermot, and then himself a couple of years later, had been born in Dublin before the war. ‘She was called Maggie, what else? Suited her perfectly. She had red-gold hair, typically Irish, not like mine all brown and mousy.’

‘Yours isn’t in the least mousy. I’m sure I can see red lights in it, a sort of auburn.’

Vinny grimaced.

‘What do you remember most about her as a child?’

‘That hair, and her red lips. Her soft smile and skin as pale as silk. And I remember her screams when me da beat the living daylights out of her.’ He gave a cynical laugh. ‘I bet you never thought you’d be getting involved with the scum of the Irish?’

‘You aren’t scum. It wasn’t your fault. So what happened to your father? Did they get married in the end?’

‘When the next little accident came along, or maybe it was the one after that. Anyway, didn’t she persuade him to do the deed eventually, more’s the pity? I’ve two younger brothers as well as Dermot, and me little sister, Sally. Da went in the navy and we never saw him again.’

‘You mean he got killed in the war?’

‘I mean – we never saw him again. God knows where he is, and I care even less. I hope he rots in hell, so I do.’

Harriet fell silent. It was beginning to dawn on her that she wasn’t the only one with family problems.

‘We came over to England, to Manchester, some time during the war. Ma got a job in a munitions factory and turned yellow as a result. They called them canaries. It was the gunpowder, I expect. She had to change into special clothing: white coat and brown leather shoes with W D - that’s War Department - written on it. No glass buttons or metal as they could create friction with gunpowder. Everything had to be tied with ribbons and she’d be frisked before she went in, for cigarettes or matches. She loved to smoke did my mam. Her job was putting washers on detonators, and any that didn’t work she put in a can and a man would come round and squirt oil on the rejects and take them away. She once told me that her friend had worked on filling bombs and shells, using a sort of hopper, and one day did something wrong and got blown up right next to Ma standing at the bench.’

‘Oh, how dreadful!’

Vinny offered her a packet of Black Cat cigarettes, but Harriet shook her head. He offered to share with her one of the funny smelly ones instead, which she laughingly agreed to do. She guessed they were even worse for her but really didn’t care. They made her feel so much better about herself even if they did leave her feeling muzzy-headed and sleepy. And she craved oblivion in order not to think too much about Steve. Vinny lit it for her and they shared the cigarette, drag for drag. It seemed such an intimate thing to do.

‘I remember we were constantly packing up and moving on to the next place. It certainly wasn’t all treacle toffee and Noddy stories. She never had much time for us, or the energy, always working on two jobs at least, one during the day, and one at night, which we won’t go into too closely. Me and my brothers spent our time throwing stones at dogs, pissing up walls, or starting fires. Anything for a laugh, something to do, you know.’

Harriet didn’t know, not entirely, but she remained silent, riveted by his tale.

‘We were constantly hungry because she’d forget to feed us, daft cow, and then . . .’

Harriet leaned against his shoulder, sensing his pain. ‘And then?’

‘Then after coming unscathed out of that factory, she fell off the ferry boat that goes up the Manchester Canal to Liverpool, didn’t she, the silly cow? And we were sent to the orphanage.’

‘Fell off . . . Oh, no!’ Harriet was shocked. ‘But I thought you still lived with your mother behind the fish market.’

Vinny glowered and shook his head. ‘Dermot and his girl friend Jo are supposedly responsible for us now, at least that’s what they claim. He’s another such as me da, a real bully. The only thing you can say in his favour is that he provides a roof over the kids’ heads by paying the rent, and Jo is good with our Sally. But Dermot isn’t easy to live with, a real chip off the old block. An Irish rogue of the worst kind, through and through. I couldn’t take any more. I tell you I was glad to get away.’

Which somehow explained everything. Harriet had tears in her eyes by the time he was done. ‘You know what I think?’

He scowled at her. ‘What?’

‘I think you were right when you said it was fate that brought us together. We have so much in common, you and me, with our messy family lives.’

His expression softened, the way it often did when he relaxed enough to set aside the bitterness and reveal his true nature . ‘That means we can help each other, right?’

‘Right.’

He began to kiss her, gently pushing Harriet down in the grass beside the canal.

Her head was spinning from the cigarette, but it felt so good to have someone hold and love her like this, to stroke her face and softly kiss her mouth, and then with increasing passion, exploring it with his tongue, stirring a need in her. She rather liked it when he slipped his hand beneath her blouse and fondled her breast, kissed her throat and told her how lovely she was. Harriet made no protest as he unhooked her bra and caressed her naked breasts while he kissed her. She felt so daring, so marvellously free. He unzipped her jeans, and she helped him to tug them down, groaning with delighted shock as he slid his fingers inside her.

She knew it was wrong but a part of her wanted to be bad, to prove she had some control over her own life.

Harriet welcomed him with eagerness and passion when he entered her, not even bothering to remember what Nan had told her about how to make a boy stop, as she’d related the facts of life to her all those years ago, looking all pink-cheeked and embarrassed. Harriet didn’t care what she
should
be doing, how she
should
be behaving. Who was to tell her now what was right and wrong? What sort of an example had Joyce set her, anyway, or even her own father who’d kept a mistress and a dark secret about her birth for years?

She liked Vinny, even if she had absolutely no intention of falling in love with him, or with anyone in fact. Harriet felt she’d lost everything in the world that mattered to her, so what more did she have to lose?

Chapter Eighteen

Gossip was the life blood of Champion Street Market, and the topic on everybody’s lips today, as it had been for many mornings in the last few weeks, was the uncertain future of the stallholders. Their livelihoods were under serious threat.

‘I really don’t know what we’ll do,’ Amy was saying to Irma, as she chose a selection of biscuits from her stall. ‘I think I’d like some of those coconut crunch, please. Chris has a fancy to accept the developers’ offer, I’m ashamed to admit, and nothing I say seems to change his mind.’

Irma slipped two or three extra Shrewsbury biscuits into the bag she was weighing to give it good measure before skilfully spinning it between her fingers to secure it.

‘It’ll be a fair sum of money I reckon?’

‘Suspiciously generous,’ Amy agreed. ‘And of course his dad owns the property so Chris doesn’t have total say.’

‘You have to look after number one in this world,’ Irma agreed. She was about to hand over the bag when a young boy dashed by, knocking a tin of biscuits to the ground.

‘Sorry, missus,’ he said as he put it back in place, then cheekily added, ‘I’ll buy them off you, if you like. Me brother and me likes a few broken biscuits.’

‘Gerroff, you little monkey. Go and break somebody else’s biscuits and leave mine alone. You’re getting nowt cheap off me.’
 

For a moment it looked as if the lad might argue the toss but then he saw how Irma pushed up her overall sleeves to reveal sizeable forearms, and did a runner instead.

‘I need eyes in the back of my head to watch them little tykes,’ Irma grumbled.

Amy was deeply sympathetic. ‘They’re just as bad with us over at the bakery. They hang around every morning waiting for Chris to throw away the stale bread so they can pinch it. Anyone would think they were starving.’

Irma frowned. ‘I reckon some of them are, even though that Harold Macmillan keeps telling us we’ve never had it so good. People assume it’s badness or lack of morals which drives a kid to steal, but it could be out of love for his family, because they’re hungry. Why would a child care about stupid laws made by folk better off than himself? It’s been going on for years. Nabbing, skimming, nicking, whatever you like to call it.’

‘Yer right there, Irma,’ Winnie Holmes put in, as she sidled up to join in the gossip. ‘You have to watch them little blighters. I see ‘em run in the market hall for a bottle of Vimto or a tin of condensed milk, then slip something in their pocket when the stallholder’s back is turned. I reckon their parents put ‘em up to it.’

‘That’s just it, this lot don’t have no parents,’ Irma said. ‘I know them Turner kids, and that little tyke was one of them. They’ve had a bad time of it with no mam and a bully for a big brother. Young Vinny used to stand up for them, not that he’s any knight in shining armour, but he made sure they were at least fed. Yet even he’s vanished now.’

‘And we know who he’s vanished with, don’t we?’ Amy added. ‘I can’t believe Harriet would do such a stupid thing. What can she see in him?’

‘It’s none of my business but I put it all down to trouble at home. I can say no more,’ Winnie darkly commented, tapping the side of her nose.

The school bell rang somewhere in the distance, and while one group of kids ran hell for leather, scared of being late and made to stand in the school yard until the headmaster saw them, others didn’t move a muscle, but just went on messing about in the dirt, playing marbles and swapping cigarette cards.

‘Get off to school, you lazy hounds,’ Winnie shouted at them. ‘Go on, or you’ll get a clip round the ear.’ As the old woman moved towards them they didn’t need telling twice but ran, though whether in the direction of their school classroom was another matter. ‘That truant chap isn’t doing his job proper, that’s what I say,’ Winnie said in disgust. ‘The world is going to the dogs.’

‘Aye, it certainly is when perfectly good houses and markets like this one are being closed down to make way for yet more barracks of high-rise flats,’ Irma agreed. ‘What will them kids do when Champion Street has been flattened? If their families are in difficulties now, how much worse will their lives be? Their parents barely manage to pay their way, often doing a moonlight flit when the rent arrears pile up. And they won’t all be given posh new council flats in Ordsall.’

Amy was looking thoughtful at these words. ‘Maybe they do need something better though than the damp-riddled houses on this street. I’ve had personal experience of how bad those can be. Happen we do need a clean sweep and a fresh start somewhere decent for our kids to grow up.’

Steve was beginning to see that not only had he been unfortunate in getting embroiled in a quarrel with his parents when he should have been meeting Harriet at the dance, but he’d badly over-reacted when finding her dancing in the arms of another bloke. He’d been stupidly jealous and rather pompous and arrogant, instead of being instantly apologetic for letting her down by being late. No wonder she’d gone off in a huff. She was clearly angry with him.

Everyone was saying that she’d run away with Vinny Turner, but why would she do such a crazy thing? Why would she choose Vinny Turner over him?

But then why had he deliberately asked that blonde for a dance when he’d spotted Harriet walking over to him? Had he just wanted to be perverse, trying to show he didn’t care? Well, he’d proved that all right, hadn’t he? What a mess he’d made of everything. He missed her so much. He could hardly concentrate on his studies for thinking about how stupid he’d been.

At the first opportunity, once he’d settled in to the college routine, he came home on a weekend visit and went straight to the hair salon to see her. He was horrified to learn that the rumours were true. Harriet had indeed left home. He demanded to know why, and where she’d gone.

‘How would I know?’ Joyce airily remarked. ‘She’s a grown woman and pleases herself what she does. Nothing to do with me. Not my responsibility any more. If she wants to hang around with no-good layabouts, that’s her decision. You should thank your lucky stars, lad, that you’ve had such a lucky escape. She’s not the girl for you.’

Steve was appalled by the woman’s callousness, and yet wondered if perhaps Joyce was in fact riddled with guilt, trying to convince herself she didn’t care when deep down she was as concerned as he was. If that was the case he had to admit she was disguising her feelings well.