Lonely Teardrops (2008) (40 page)

Each morning, as promised, Grant would bring her breakfast, then her midday meal: a Spam or fish paste sandwich, mug of tea or coffee. Not her favourite meal but she always ate it simply because she seemed to be constantly famished. Maybe it was because she was eating for two. Rebelliously going on a hunger strike, she decided, wouldn’t help her baby in the least, and probably give Joyce enormous satisfaction. Then in the evening he’d bring supper.

Grant would then allow her use of the bathroom where she would wash out the chamber pot with hot water and Dettol, and take as long as possible over her ablutions. He always waited outside until she was finished, studiously marshalling the procedure so that there was no hope of escape.

Harriet was very often near to tears. How would she survive three months of this? It was horrendous! Inhuman! Was Grant going to act as her jailor throughout? Dear lord, it was outrageous. There must be some way out.

He also brought her library books, which she leafed through in a perfunctory fashion. She started on a John Creasey detective story but couldn’t quite engage her mind on the plot. Then she tried
Gone with the Wind
, a favourite which she’d read many times. But not even Scarlett O’Hara’s troubles could take Harriet’s mind off her own.

Very sensibly, Harriet lay down every afternoon to take a rest, for the sake of the baby, as well as to ease her back and legs which ached from constantly pacing back and forth in the small confined space. More often than not she lay staring at the ceiling, worrying and plotting over hopeless plans of escape, but occasionally she would sleep, if only out of exhaustion.

One such afternoon she awoke feeling surprisingly refreshed. Even though it was still light outside, it being June, there was that slight change in the air which told her that the afternoon was over and evening had come.

And Harriet wanted to empty her bladder.

Irritated that Grant yet again late in allowing her to visit the bathroom, Harriet hammered on the door loud enough to bring the entire street running. Although not, apparently, loud enough to bring her half-brother, or to disturb Joyce. Harriet experienced a terrible sensation of being trapped. She was locked in this room without anyone knowing where she was, and her stepmother held the key. It could have been some soppy fairy tale had it not been so deadly serious.

And then she saw the note. Someone had pushed it under the door. She picked it up with a sudden spurt of hope when she saw the familiar scrawl of handwriting. It was from Vinny.

Oh, my goodness. Had he come looking for her? Was he missing her already? She felt touched that Vinny should care enough about her to take the trouble to come back to Champion Street and deliver this letter by hand. But then it occurred to Harriet that Shelley had probably been the one to pop it through the letter box, and not Vinny at all. She sighed with regret. If only he’d turned out to be reliable and supportive, instead of wild and selfish.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a tap on the door. ‘Are you all right, love?’

Harriet ran to press herself against it. ‘Nan, thank heavens. I’ve missed you so much. Can you let me out?’

‘Sorry, love, I don’t have a key. Are you all right?’ The old woman sounded anxious, and slightly out of breath, as if climbing the stairs had taxed her energy.

‘How long is she going to keep me here?’

‘I wish I knew, love, and before you ask, no, I’ve no idea where the key is but I mean to get my hands on one just as soon as I can. We’ll have you out of there in two shakes of a lamb’s tail then. Grant must have it. I’ll appeal to his better nature and persuade him to lend it to me.’

Harriet’s heart plummeted, knowing Nan had little hope of success as
 
Grant didn’t have a better nature. ‘Please do,’ was all she said, not wanting her grandmother to realise how upset she was.

‘Eeh, love, what a pickle we’re in.’

 
‘Was it you who brought up Vinny’s letter?’

‘Aye, and I didn’t let on to Joyce, so you’re quite safe. I come upstairs last night on me hands and knees while they were all abed. You’d have laughed if you’d seen me. I must’ve looked a right tuckle with me nightie tucked up around me waist showing all me bloomers.’

Harriet couldn’t help but laugh. Her Nan was a real case. What would she do without her? ‘He says he’s been promised a recording contract and wants me to go to London with him.’

‘Will you go?’

Harriet shook her head, even though her grandmother couldn’t see her through the bedroom door. ‘I’m pleased for him. Maybe he’ll get himself together now he has the chance to be a real success. But it’s over between us as far as I’m concerned. I was stupid to get involved with him in the first place.‘

‘I hope you mean that.’

‘I do.’

‘I’m relieved to hear it. He’s trouble is that one.’

Harriet neither agreed nor disagreed with her grandmother’s opinion of Vinny. She looked down at the letter in her hand. ‘I’ll write and wish him luck. Will you see that he gets it?’

‘Aye, course I will, somehow.’ Letters, Rose thought, weren’t they the bane of her life?

Her grandmother came often after that first time, whenever Joyce was occupied with her customers in the salon, or out with Joe Southworth. Harriet would hear her fetch a chair from the neighbouring bedroom she used to occupy, the creak of the cane seat as she sat herself on it. Then Harriet would slide down to the floor, resting her back against the varnished wood panels of the door so that they could talk.
 

Today, she wrapped her arms about her knees and asked the one question that haunted her. ‘Tell me about my mother. Who
is
she? I know nothing about her, and my head is teeming with questions.’

Silence, followed by a heavy sigh. When Rose spoke again, her voice was tense and barely above a whisper. ‘If I tell, you’re not to mention this conversation to Joyce, not a word, you understand?’

‘I won’t, I swear it.’

‘She’d have me roasted on a platter if she knew I’d been interfering again, spilling the beans, as it were.’

‘I won’t say a word, but you haven’t told me anything yet,’ Harriet reminded her, desperate for information.

The whisper was barely audible through the thick wooden panels, nevertheless Harriet heard every word, clear as a bell. ‘She was a friend of your mother’s, of Joyce’s, I mean. Best friends. Joyce and Stan weren’t getting on as they should, for whatever reason.’

Rose paused here as if choosing her words carefully, which in fact she was. She was deliberating over whether to mention the doubt over Grant’s parentage. It was the sort of information that could be dynamite for the young lass if she let anything slip in an unguarded moment. She’d mebbe come to that later.

‘I’m sure he were a good man at heart, your pa, but he had his faults, they both did. Stan were badly damaged by the war, in his head as well as in his legs. But then the war messed up a lot of folk in this street. Anyway, Eileen, that were her name, and Stan, they had a bit of a fling like, and you were the result.’

‘I think I’d gathered that,’ Harriet said.

‘I know very little about Eileen, to be honest, but Joyce and Stan were like chalk and cheese, oil and water, at daggers drawn, like a red rag to a bull, however you like to put it, they never did get on.’

‘Don’t I know it,’ Harriet responded with feeling.

‘It were like that right from the start. The marriage might have had a chance if either of them had been prepared to offer a modicum of forgiveness to the other, but they never did, and trust was alien to them both.’

‘But why, if they loved each enough to marry?’

‘It were a bit of a rush job, because of the war, tha’ knows. Joyce did love him at first, that’s true. Then it all went wrong.’

‘But why? I don’t understand.’

Another short pause, and then, ‘You must keep your word not to let on that you know, not to anyone.’

‘I promise.’

It all came out then about the rape, of Joyce being pregnant with another man’s child, a stranger’s child, at the time of their marriage. ‘She didn’t know his name,’ Rose explained. ‘And even if he were only a drunken sailor out for a good time and not some stranger up a back street, that were no excuse for such dreadful behaviour.’

Harriet was aghast. It made her see Joyce in quite a different light. ‘What a terrible thing to happen! So Grant isn’t Stan’s son?’ Harriet too was whispering, unable to quite take this all in.

‘No, I don’t who the lad’s father was.’

‘Does Grant himself know any of this?’

‘No.’

‘And Joyce didn’t even tell Dad?’
 

‘Not until after they were wed. She was too afraid she might lose him. He guessed the truth though when he came home and found the babe-in-arms he’d expected to see practically walking.’

‘Oh, goodness, how awful!’ Harriet was silent for a moment, sifting through this shocking information in her mind, trying to make sense of it. ‘So that’s why Stan never really got on with Grant?’

‘I dare say. The fact that Joyce lied built up a deep resentment in him.’

‘And that’s why he had the affair, out of revenge because Grant wasn’t his son?’

‘I reckon so.’

For the first time in her life Harriet felt pity for her half-brother. He too was a pawn in this dreadful marriage, a victim of their parents’ need to punish each other for the misfortunes life had dealt them. ‘But why didn’t
my
mother want me? Why did Eileen let Joyce and Stan keep me when Joyce clearly resented my very existence?’

‘Nay, you’d have to ask her that.’

‘If only the dead could talk.’

‘Aye, if only they could.’

Eileen made it abundantly clear to them both that on no account was she prepared to surrender her child to anyone, particularly not to Stan who now seemed to have become quite cool and distant towards her. ‘I won’t do it, not simply to avoid scandal and gossip, or even to see her legitimised, or whatever fancy name you might use for this so-called adoption, not at any price. Harriet is
mine
!’

‘And how do you propose to survive? How will you provide for her?’ Joyce gently enquired, as Stan stood silently by, apparently dumbfounded by this violent reaction to his generous offer.

‘I’ll cope somehow.’

‘You don’t even have a home to go to, a job or any money. Would your parents take you in?’

Eileen mumbled something incoherent, which obviously meant the answer was in the negative.

‘So, what would you do? Where would you go? I’ve fed and kept you throughout this pregnancy, without even charging you board and lodging beyond your ration book. I’m still feeding you,
and
the baby, now. How could you possibly manage? If you were found starving on the streets, or put in some mother and baby home, she’d be taken away from you anyway. Besides which, she isn’t simply your child, she’s Stan’s too, and as her father he has as much right as you to decide how she is raised.’

‘I know what your little scheme is,’ Eileen screamed. ‘You want to steal Harriet from me. Well, I won’t let you do that, do you hear? She’s
mine
!
My
child, not
yours
, and you’re not having her.’

Stan took Eileen by the shoulders, trying to calm her. ‘Look, it’s nonsense to accuse us of trying to steal her from you. We aren’t doing any such thing. You could still be involved in her upbringing, see her any time you like. You could become a favourite aunt. Wouldn’t you like that? All the fun and none of the work. Don’t get yourself into a state, Eileen. We want only to do what’s right, what’s best for the baby.’

She turned on him then like a spitting cat, making the baby cry as she still held her tightly in her arms. ‘No you
don’t
! You want to take her from me. Well, you’re not having her, do you hear? I’m leaving
now
, and taking Harriet with me. You can’t stop me!’

‘You’re upsetting the child,’ Stan quietly reminded her, taking the baby from her arms and laying her safely in her crib. Eileen’s gaze remained fixed on the infant, her fear and longing all too evident.

Joyce adopted a more placatory tone, while making sure she blocked the exit in case the woman should decide to make a run for it. ‘Now don’t be foolish, Eileen. Look outside, it’s late November. It’s cold and raining, and you have nowhere to go. Stop talking nonsense and start thinking about this child instead of yourself for a change.’

But Eileen wasn’t willing to listen to anyone, certainly not Joyce. She launched herself at Stan. ‘You said you’d marry me. You swore it. You promised me that you’d divorce her and marry me, then you and I could bring Harriet up as man and wife. You
promised
! Why can’t we do that?’

‘Because,’ Joyce calmly interposed,‘Stan has no grounds for divorce. I’m not the one who has enjoyed, if that’s the right word, an extra-marital affair. And for another, he’s a Catholic and believes in the sanctity of marriage. Did he fail to mention that small fact to you?’ Turning to her husband, Joyce quietly asked. ‘Did you promise her marriage?’

Stan looked uncomfortable, clearly regretting it if he ever had. ‘I may have said something of the sort, I can’t remember.’