Lonely Teardrops (2008) (34 page)

She seemed to be implying that what Harriet felt for Vinny was not really love at all, but simply a physical attraction born out of a desire for revenge against Joyce, or as a means to hurt herself.

Was that true? Was that what this was all about? Self-punishment? But why would she do such a thing after all that had happened to her? Hadn’t she a right to a decent, happy life like everyone else, Harriet thought, in a welter of uncharacteristic self-pity. Shelley wasn’t the easiest person to understand. Her parents had both died in an horrific car crash and she was almost as confused and bitter about life as Vinny himself. But never one to bear a grudge, after nearly a week had gone by Harriet could take no more of the other girl’s huffy silence.

‘Are we still friends?’

Shelley instantly gathered Harriet into her arms for a big warm hug. ‘Course we are. Why would we not be? I’ve been every bit as miserable as you. We certainly aren’t going to fall out over Vinny Turner. I know about the baby so I can see now why you were so upset, and I just want you to know that you can rely on me, no matter what.’

Harriet instinctively smoothed the flat of one hand over her emerging bump. ‘Thanks, that means a lot. Everything’s going to be fine, I know it is. It’s just that Vinny’s so booked up with gigs at the moment we haven’t had time to fix a day to pop down to the Register Office.’

Shelley didn’t look at her as she turned her back to Harriet so she could pull down the zip of the new mini dress she’d worn for the gig that night. ‘Maybe he will do soon. But if there’s any problem, I’m here, don’t forget.’

Harriet helped her out of the dress and placed it on its hanger, smoothing the soft blue fabric. She suddenly envied her friend’s beauty and her free and easy style. Harriet would never summon up the nerve to wear a dress so short even if she’d still been slim, and certainly not now with her swollen tummy and breasts bursting out of her bra. Was it any wonder if Vinny wasn’t quite as enamoured of her as he used to be? Still, he was pleased about the baby, she must remember that, which surely proved that he meant to stand by her. ‘Why would there be a problem?’

‘Exactly!’ Shelley agreed, pulling a Sloppy Joe sweater on over her stretch pants. ‘I’m just saying, all for one, and one for all, isn’t that what the band stands for?’

Despite herself, Harriet found herself giggling, remembering how Vinny used to say the same thing. ‘Only when I’m paying for the fish and chips,’ she reminded Shelley.

‘Right, then let’s go and buy some. And you’re paying.’

Joyce deeply regretted her marriage. It had been a bad mistake to marry Stan Ashton. If it hadn’t all happened in such a rush she might well have stopped to consider more carefully the risk she was taking by not telling him the truth. But she’d been at a loss to know how to deal with that rape and the resulting pregnancy, and she’d been desperately in love. No matter how much her mother might criticise, it had seemed the best solution at the time.

Rose, naturally, took a close interest in her daughter’s welfare, and was not blind to the fact that her marriage seemed to be falling apart. When, on occasions, Stan had spent barely more than the odd night at home in the entire length of his leave, she challenged Joyce on the subject.

‘Is that Yorkshireman knocking you about?’ she asked, certain this could be the only reason any marriage wouldn’t work.

‘Of course he isn’t, Mother, don’t talk daft. We’ve got a bit of a problem, that’s all.’

‘What sort of a problem? Another woman, is that it?’

And for the first time in her life Joyce had burst into tears, blurting out how she believed her husband was having an affair with her best friend.

Rose was incensed. ‘I allus knew he were a wrong un. I’ll give him what for when I catch him.’

‘No, don’t. Don’t say anything! It’s nothing to do with you. Anyway, you don’t know the whole story,’ Joyce protested, as her mother ranted on, seemingly prepared to lie in wait for him behind the front door next time he came home on leave, rolling pin in hand.

‘What story, don’t tell me you’ve been at it an’ all?’

‘No, of course I haven’t, nothing like that. Not willingly anyway.’

‘And what’s that supposed to mean? You either have or you haven’t.’

‘I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely honest and open with you either, Mother.’

‘If you mean did I realise that young Grant was conceived quite a few months before you wed his father, then spare yourself the trouble. I wasn’t brought in with the morning fish.’

‘I’m afraid it’s a bit more complicated than that. Stan isn’t his father.’
 

And so, at last, driven by despair, Joyce confessed to her mother the whole truth, the entire tale from start to finish. How Grant was the result of ‘an unpleasant encounter’, a careful choice of words, at a friend’s party, and how she’d been three months pregnant when she and Stan had married, of which he’d been entirely ignorant. Joyce found it distasteful to use the word rape, but her mother used it for her.

‘When you say that you weren’t willing, do you mean that this bloke, whoever he was, raped you?’

‘Don’t be coarse, mother, but yes, I am. It all happened so quickly. One minute I was having a laugh with this silly young drunken sailor, the next ... Oh, it really doesn’t bear thinking about. And the trouble is, Stan doesn’t believe a word I say on the subject. He doesn’t believe I
was
raped!’

‘Not surprising, if you failed to mention it till months after your marriage that there were actually three of you present at that little wedding ceremony.’

Rose then proceeded to give Joyce a long lecture on the question of trust in marriage, on how, even though Stan was not without fault in this matter, Joyce had only herself to blame. ‘I told you not to marry him.’

‘No, you didn’t,’ Joyce wearily protested. ‘You said something rude like, well, if that’s the best you can do, I suppose I’ll have to accept him. You’d decided you didn’t like Stan long before you even met him.’

‘Aye, well, he’s the wrong religion, and from the wrong side of the Pennines. Now he’s playing away from home an’ all, so me first instincts were right, weren’t they? Why would I like him?’
 

‘Oh, Mother!’ Joyce endured the prolonged lecture with all the fortitude she could muster, thankful when Rose finally ran out of breath. She gave her mother a long- suffering look. ‘Please don’t go on about it any more. I feel bad enough as it is. Don’t make things worse.’

‘I’m not sure it could be any worse.’
 

But in this, she was wrong. When Stan arrived home later that same evening, it was to announce that Eileen was pregnant.

Joyce’s first reaction was blind fury. How dare this woman, this so-called friend, be pregnant with her own husband’s child when she had utterly failed him in that respect? How would she endure it? She wanted to scream and claw out his eyes, beat him about the head for what he’d done to her. Was this Stan Ashton’s idea of revenge because of one lie she’d told him? ‘You assured me you weren’t sleeping with her. You
swore
you were just good friends.’

Stan gave her a pitying look. ‘That was months ago. In any case, since you clearly believed I was having it off with her, there didn’t seem any reason not to. Eileen’s keen for us to wed, so obviously you’ll have to give me a divorce. My family will never speak to me again, of course, although they already seem to have cut me off without a penny, thanks to your lies. Father Dimmock will no doubt excommunicate me, but I can’t see any other solution. In the meantime, I’m moving Eileen in here.’

‘You’re
what
?’

‘She can’t live on her own, not in her condition, and with a war on. Besides, her parents have thrown her out. I’ll fetch her in, shall I? She’s waiting outside.’

And both Joyce and Rose watched in open-mouthed disbelief as Stan moved his mistress into the spare room, and then went to join her in it.

‘By heck,’ Rose said. ‘This beats the filums any day.’

The silly squabble between Harriet and Shelly was quite forgotten and everything was back to normal. The band was booked for so many gigs they rarely had a free night. Not one was cancelled as Vinny too seemed to be on a more even keel, working hard but seemingly relaxed and enjoying life. Harriet took great care not to upset him, or to mention how anxious she was for them to be married. She still had the forms, safely stowed away in her bag, waiting for the right moment.

But as May slipped by and June arrived with the promise of summer in the air, Harriet was forced to admit it was harder to disguise her condition. And she’d quite lost her nerve to call on Nan again. What would the old lady say if she saw the state of her now, nearly five months gone and still unwed? Being a strong chapel-going Methodist with high moral standards, the old lady would be appalled to find her granddaughter in such a condition. Much as Harriet longed to visit her, she no longer dared do so.

Rose was well on the road to recovery, and for the first time in many weeks was walking through the market under her own steam, albeit with the aid of a walking stick. Stan’s wheelchair had been abandoned, returned to the doctor who had given her a clean bill of health and told her to get out more and enjoy life to the full, which was exactly what Rose intended to do.

She’d certainly had enough of sitting in that back room hour after hour, waiting for someone to call in for a chat, or to wheel her out so she could escape for a short while from her prison. How Stan had tolerated his wife largely ignoring him for so many years she couldn’t imagine. She was beginning to see her son-in-law in quite a different light these days.

She struck out with as much vigour as she could muster, revelling in the warmth of the sun on her face, smiling as friends hailed her as she passed by. Big Molly gave her a cheery wave, calling Rose over and insisting on giving her old friend a pork pie.

‘On the house, I’m that glad to see you out and about again.’

Barry Holmes tossed her a rosy red apple, saying it matched her cheeks, which made Rose laugh and feel all girlish.

The June day was warm with the promise of summer, mingling with the scent from Betty Hemley’s flowers, and Rose sighed with pleasure. How she loved the market. How many years had she lived here? Nearly twenty. A long time. They’d come to Champion Street following the trauma of losing their old house in Ancoats, their lives having gone up in flames. Joyce was already working on the market, helping out at various stalls. Then she’d started up the hairdressing business on her own.

‘You have to hand it to that lass of mine,’ Rose muttered to herself. ‘She might not suffer fools gladly, but she doesn’t believe in sitting on her hands and moping.’

Oh, but nothing had been the same since that day. Everything had changed, in some ways best not remembered at all.
 

Rose stopped for a moment to catch her breath and wipe away a stray tear. The war had been over for fifteen years. Let it go, she chided herself. It was a different world. Princess Margaret has married the son of a lawyer instead of a royal prince. A handsome young John F. Kennedy is promising a new dawn, and folk are frightening themselves to death watching that new film, Psycho, at the pictures.

‘What is the world coming to?’

Rose rested her weary limbs on the bench by the ancient horse trough. Her left leg was still playing up, not quite behaving as it should, but good progress was most definitely being made. She massaged her knee, as her old friend had advised her to do. She was grateful to Irma for all the hard work and exercises, difficult though they’d been at times. Today she felt a new woman, not a worry in the world, save for Harriet, of course, and that letter she still carried in her pocket. Unfortunately, Irma had been no real help to her there, merely saying the answer would come to her if she followed her instincts. Rose let her mind again slip back to the past, as old women tended to do.

She recalled how old Mr Lee, who’d been wounded in the First World War, used to sit here selling his matches. Gone now, poor old chap, although plenty of his colleagues in flat caps and mufflers were still gathered in a huddle, smoking their pipes and putting the world to rights, remembering the good old days.

The market was changing too. The Lascars were all gone, the Indian seamen, and Rose missed the colour and character they had brought to the street. They used to be on the flat iron market too.

The grizzled old men were entertaining themselves this morning by watching open- mouthed as the youth of today sauntered past. Dressed in their Italian suits and winkle picker shoes, Slim-Jim ties and fancy waistcoats, they looked proper dandies. And these were just the young men.
 

The girls all looked like Brigitte Bardot in their skinny raincoats, or tight-fitting blouses tucked into the waist of their Capri pants. One girl tottered by looking very like Minnie Mouse in her impossibly high-heeled white court shoes, outlandishly dressed in a tight black and white spangled top and the greenest, brightest, checked trousers. She reminded Rose of the clowns that used to feature in the Belle Vue Circus. Eeh, maybe she was getting old.

Rose thought of her beloved granddaughter, who she hadn’t seen in months, and wondered if Harriet had started wearing outlandish clothes in that band she’d joined. She’d used to telephone and leave messages, and had written many letters and jokey postcards, but there’d been fewer of those lately. Rose was desperate to see her, to give her a hug and a kiss. Rose would know then what she was wearing, wouldn’t she? She’d know if she was well and happy, eating properly and looking after herself, instead of worrying herself sick night and day. In her heart Rose was convinced something was wrong. Harriet would never willingly stay away so long, or keep so quiet. There must be a good reason.