Lonely Teardrops (2008) (44 page)

Jerking herself back to the present, Rose handed over the money for the hat and offered up an encouraging, if rather stiff, smile. ‘Anyroad, they’ll not chuck us out of this street, demolish our fine old houses or deprive us of our livelihoods without due compensation, or better still an alternative location, not if I’ve any say in the matter.’

‘Atta girl!’ Patsy laughed. ‘A woman after my own heart.’ Then she put her arms about the old woman and hugged her close as she whispered words of comfort in her ear. ‘Don’t worry too much about your Harriet. She’s a real chip off the old block, and has got her head screwed on too. She’ll sort herself out, don’t you fret.’

‘How, that’s the question?’ Rose wiped a tear from her eye as she walked away, carrying her hat box with care.

But although rumours were flying around Champion Street Market like confetti, being exchanged along with slices of polony on Jimmy Ramsay’s stall, or with every length of curtain net on Winnie’s, not another word on the subject of her granddaughter would cross Rose’s lips. Let them make what they will of the lass’s latest disappearance, they’d get nothing out of her.

Harriet was at that precise moment sitting by a smoky fire which gave off very little heat, and eating a chicken sandwich she’d found in a bin behind one of the new supermarkets.

Through a long hot, dusty summer, she’d discovered these to be a good source of food, as were baker’s shops when they threw away stale items. Sometimes, if she had a penny or two, she’d be able to buy herself a barm cake for a treat. The shop assistant might take pity on her and add a scraping of marg. Passersby tossed her a coin or two occasionally, out of pity, as she sat huddled in her layers of grubby clothes, no doubt resembling a bundle of rags.

For some reason Harriet felt demeaned by this, even though it meant she could provide herself with a hot bath, or a decent lunch for a change. Even a simple mug of tea was welcome.

On the days when she didn’t even have a penny in her pocket, Harriet had become an expert at picking out the good bits from rotten apples, scraping mould from old cheese and even eating raw cabbage leaves. Once, she made herself very ill by spit-roasting a piece of pork she really should have left in the dump.

She’d lost weight, naturally, her hair was badly in need of a good wash and a proper brushing, and she smelt, for all she made a point of going to the public baths for a bath or shower whenever she had a copper or two to spare. No matter how much she scrubbed herself with the strong lye soap they provided, she never felt clean. The dirt from the streets, and from the weight of the sin she carried seemed ingrained in her, on view for all to see.

Shame and humiliation ate at her soul. She’d brought herself to this pitiful state by running off with Vinny Turner and sleeping with him. Had she hoped to change him? Had she imagined that he would forsake the excitement of cannabis for her sake? If so, then she’d been stupidly naïve. It had all seemed like a silly game, a daring escape. Now reality had set in. Was this the price of freedom, this terrible sense of hopelessness and guilt?

She watched other young mothers walk by, proudly wheeling their newborn babies in fancy high prams, and she envied them their contentment and their security. Why couldn’t her life be as uncomplicated as theirs? Why couldn’t Joyce have loved her as other adoptive mothers do?

And why had she stupidly run away instead of staying and fighting for her rights?

Because she had felt unwanted. Because there had been no place for her, not even with Steve. And she certainly wasn’t going to go to him now, as some sort of charity case.

There were times when Harriet blamed herself for everything. On other days, when she was cold and wet and hungry, she would rail against fate, against Joyce, or even against her much loved, late departed father. If Stan hadn’t foolishly embroiled himself in an affair because he refused to believe his wife’s story about the rape, all their lives could have been so very different. The pair of them had wanted only to punish each other but it was Harriet, and Grant too, who had suffered the most. Their children were the ones paying the price now.

Harriet sighed, desperately trying to shake herself free of this melancholy, which did her no good at all. The baby was still moving, still kicking, surely that was all that mattered?

And when it was time for it to be born? Harriet instantly cut off the thought. The prospect of childbirth terrified her. All she knew about the subject was what she’d learned from scraps of girlish gossip at school, none of it much use. When she was ten she’d imagined a baby came out through your belly button, by means of some miracle or other created by the Virgin Mary. Now she might know the correct place, but not the means, nor what would be required of her to bring this baby safely out. And there was certainly no one to ask, so she banished the worry from her mind.

She’d deal with it later, when the time came.

Once, finding a penny in her pocket, she’d slipped into a Catholic church and lit a candle and said a prayer for her unborn child. The act had given her some sort of comfort and strength, but then a cleaner had arrived and shooed her out into the street as if she were vermin.

Harriet’s mind remained a defensive blank on many issues concerning the future. She determined to cross each bridge when she came to it. On one matter though, she was absolutely certain. She had no intention of spending her pregnancy being locked up by Joyce for months on end, either in her own attic bedroom or in a Home for Wayward Girls, as Joyce had threatened. Nor would she allow Steve to ruin his life by feeling obliged to marry her. None of this was his fault.

Harriet had no desire to be found. To make sure her family didn’t drag her back to one or other of these fates, she never stayed in one place for too long.
 

One day she spotted Nan standing at a bus stop. That was when she’d been trailing the streets of Ancoats. Rose was chatting to the other women in the queue, and some instinct told Harriet that she was asking them if they’d seen a pregnant girl hanging around street corners, as they were all shaking their heads and looking concerned. She’d left Ancoats that same day and gone back to Salford.

This was her favoured spot, an old bomb site by the River Irwell near St Simon Street. No one she knew from Champion Street would think to look for her here. Today, with the cool nights of autumn approaching, Harriet remained at the bomb site for only one more night, sharing her pitiful food with old Tom, a tramp she’d become acquainted with. She even wore fingerless gloves now, and had newspaper stuffed into her shoes, just like a real old lag.

As dawn came up over the city, lightening the sky with streaks of pink and yellow, she rolled up the old rug she’d brought with her and prepared to move on.

‘Go home,’ old Tom told her in his usual toneless voice, as he had done a thousand times before. ‘Go home to yer mam.’

Harriet merely smiled and told him to take care of his chest, then set off in the direction of an old air raid shelter that she used regularly. She thought this might be a good place for the birth, which must come soon, and she would at least be out of the rain.

The trouble was, the shelter was some distance away and her pace of progress was slow these days. Inhibited by her cumbersome size and loaded down with her entire worldly possessions, she hobbled along like an old woman. Even old Tom was fitter than she was, for all he was three times her age.

But then Harriet had been bothered with cramps in her belly for over a day now, and an aching back. All part of the joys of pregnancy, she supposed. And she was suffering from an even greater urgency to pee. An hour later, though it was still barely five in the morning, Harriet was grateful to find some public lavatories and went inside to relieve herself. She sipped some water from a rusty tap and washed her face and hands. The wash freshened her and she felt better, but then the pains started in earnest, and Harriet realised it hadn’t been cramp at all, but labour pains.

Rose sat in the meeting, fast losing patience at the obstinacy of councillors. Belle Garside had put forward their case and robustly defended it, all to no avail.

‘We can’t be seen to be holding up progress,’ reiterated one pompous man who sat with sausage fingers steepled over a bloated stomach, revelling in his own self-importance. ‘Manchester has to move forward and embrace the modern world.’

Rose stubbornly repeated what Belle had already told them. ‘We accept that some properties in Champion Street would be best pulled down, the old Victorian slums by the fish market certainly, and maybe the row by the old horse trough. But the top half of the street is perfectly respectable, the row where Clara Higginson and Molly Poulson live. Why knock down houses which are still in good shape? Does this so-called modernisation have to be quite so drastic? What is to be gained by destroying a happy and worthwhile community? And why demolish a market hall which you only recently granted us permission to extend and improve?’

She might as well have been speaking in a foreign language for all the good her words did.

‘We can’t be seen to be holding up progress ...’

Round and round they went in an ever decreasing circle of pointless argument.
 

‘So what about an alternative home?’ If the councillors could be stubborn, then so could she. She was in just the right mood for an argument.

‘Everyone will be rehoused in brand new modern flats,’ the chairman in charge of this particular project informed her with little evidence of sympathy.

‘What if folk don’t fancy looking down on the world from a high-rise monstrosity?’ Joe Southworth asked.

The councillor adopted a patronising tone. ‘I’m sure people will be only too grateful when they realise they can escape the dreadful conditions they’ve been forced to endure all these years.’

‘Clara Higginson isn’t enduring dreadful conditions. Her house is as neat as a new pin, as smart as yours any day,’ Rose snapped.

This comment was met with a gimlet glare. ‘Nevertheless she’d be very foolish to refuse, very foolish indeed. The new flats will be fully equipped, with washing machines and everything. We mustn’t be seen to ...’

‘… be holding up progress, I know,’ Rose said, barely managing to disguise her irritation.

Belle Garside intervened, ‘And what about the market traders who have their livelihoods to think of? Where can they go to make a living while you’re bull-dozing the street around their ears?’

‘Aye, we should be paid due compensation for the disruption and loss of trade,’ added Jimmy Ramsay, thinking of his own butcher’s business.

‘And found an alternative site,’ Rose finished.

The sound of indrawn breath was unnerving as all the councillors glanced sideways at each other, then became suddenly absorbed with their jotting pads and engagement diaries, refusing to meet the collective gaze of the delegates from Champion Street Market.

‘I’m afraid finding an alternative site has to be your responsibility. I’m not sure the funds are in place to allow for such things as relocation or compensation.’

’Then put them in place.’

‘What you have to appreciate, Mrs Ibbotson, is we mustn’t be seen...’

Rose closed her ears. She wanted to tell the lot of them to shut up, to slap their silly, arrogant faces, to drag their attention out of their own fat pockets, lined by rich developers no doubt, and think about the affect of their actions on the residents themselves. Many people would shortly be turned out of perfectly respectable homes which they loved, a community which had become a part of their lives over a fair number of years would be torn apart, and for what? Another block of modern flats.

‘Surely there’s room for compromise, for a half-way course?’ Belle was saying.

It would seem not, and while everyone did their utmost to support their Market Superintendent by putting forward a sound argument for a reprieve, it was all too apparent that their hopes for success were rapidly fading.

As one, the four delegates got to their feet and prepared to leave, the generous frame of the butcher seeming to dominate the small stuffy council office. ‘You haven’t heard the last of this,’ Jimmy warned.

‘No,’ Joe Southworth added. ‘We’re not satisfied with the treatment we’re getting. We’re not done yet.’

‘Quite right,’ Rose added her two pennyworth. ‘We’ll start looking for another site, as you suggest, and you can speak to the developers about footing the bill for the cost of the move. It’ll be peanuts to them.’

‘And surely far better than open confrontation and bad publicity in the national press,’ Belle reminded him.

The chairman began to stutter with rage, his face turning a dull purple. ‘Is that some sort of threat? Because if you are attempting to blackmail this project committee …’

Belle flashed her beautiful violet eyes, thickly fringed by long mascara-coated lashes. ‘We’re attempting to achieve justice, a word you gentlemen don’t seem too familiar with. You can’t just toss folk aside, rob them of their homes and their livelihoods without a care for how they will survive.’

‘You’ll be hearing from us,’ Rose darkly threatened as they swept out of the room, a small yet determined figure in her best navy coat, new burgundy velvet hat, and trademark dangly ear-rings.

If she stayed in that office a second longer, she’d clock him one, she would really. And for all this was an important matter, at the back of her mind Rose was still haunted by a far more serious problem.