Lonely Teardrops (2008) (5 page)

‘He was a good dad to me,’ Harriet stoutly declared.

Grant grumbled, ‘Huh, he allus made it very clear you were his favourite.’

Ignoring the boy, Rose smiled and gently patted her arm. ‘Aye, he were a good dad to you, and to you too Grant, though you might not have appreciated it at the time. No one could say otherwise.’

‘Oh, spare me the hearts and flowers,’ Joyce snapped. ‘Stan Ashton betrayed me and then forced me to take on his by-blow but . . .’

‘Forced?’ Rose interrupted.

‘Obliged then. But now he’s gone, thank God, so let the sinner rest in peace.’

‘And what about me?’ Harriet asked, getting to her feet to meet the hard, unforgiving eyes of her stepmother with a furious glare of her own. ‘I suppose you want me to go an’ all. Do you want me to leave now Dad is dead?’

Rose was gabbling a protest, clutching her hands to her chest in some distress over the direction the family argument had taken, but it was Grant who answered before anyone else had the chance. ‘Aye, go, why don’t you? See if we care. You’re a selfish little bitch, you, just like yer mam, whoever the tart was.’

‘Leave it, Grant,’ Joyce said. ‘This discussion is closed. I’m off out, in search of a bit of peace and relaxation. You can start clearing this table, girl, and look sharp about it. And see you get to bed early, you’ve work to do in the morning.’

Harriet’s cheeks flamed with temper. ‘Oh, so you’re quite happy for me to carry on being your skivvy then, even if I am the daughter of a whore, as you called her?’

‘You can go to hell in a basket for all I care.’ And without so much as a backward glance Joyce stalked off.

In that moment Harriet knew that her life had changed more than she’d ever bargained for with the death of her father.

Chapter Four

There was nothing Rose liked better than a bit of a crack with her mates from the market. On this occasion they were all moaning about the poor state of trade due to the heavy rain, which had been falling constantly since the day of Stan’s funeral. Belle Garside was insisting they needed to call an extraordinary general meeting of the committee to address the latest rumour that Champion Street Market was once more under threat of demolition.

Joe Southworth, who used to be the market superintendent before Belle was elected to replace him, was resisting the idea, saying that it was all a rumour. ‘Why would anyone want to demolish our lovely old Victorian market hall when we’ve only just finished building on the new fish market extension? Where did you hear such nonsense?’

‘From an impeccable source.’

‘Who, Sam Beckett?’ Joe sneered.

‘No, as a matter of fact, it wasn’t Sam. Ask Alec, he’s heard the same rumour. The city’s house building schemes are making rapid progress. I heard that Kersal, Regent Road and the Hanky Park slums will come down this year. Both Salford and Manchester City Council are voting in favour of demolition all over the shop. It’s inevitable.’

‘I’ll believe it when it happens,’ Joe scoffed, reaching for his pint of bitter.

‘Oh, so we do nothing till it’s too late, do we? Is that the way you’re thinking?’ Belle challenged him, violet eyes flashing with temper. ‘Good job you’re not in charge any more then.’

Rose was sitting with her best mate, Winnie Holmes, a glass of lemonade on the mahogany table in front of her, paying little attention to the argument that ebbed and flowed about her. Having decently disposed of the deceased a few days ago, she was now busily dissecting his life and character.

‘He were a quiet man, were Stan, very private. Patient, you know, but then he’d need to be, married to my Joyce. Save for when he were in pain, then he could really let rip. I can’t say we were ever bosom pals but I used to feel sorry for the poor chap at times. Never complained. Kept things close to his chest, as I mentioned earlier. Secretive like.’

‘But now it’s all out in the open, eh, all that stuff you told me after the funeral? It may be none of my business, but how did your Harriet take it?’ Winnie asked, avid for every gory detail, as always.

‘Like a trouper. I dare say she’s still champing at the bit for more, but I’ll leave that to Joyce.’

Winnie took a sip of her Guinness, wiping the froth from her upper lip with the edge of one finger. ‘Is that wise? I mean, Joyce won’t make it easy for the lass, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

‘How could I mind, when it’s true? But I’ve decided it’s nowt to do wi’ me. Not my job to interfere,’ said Rose, somewhat self-righteously, as if she hadn’t done so already.

Winnie considered her friend with a wry shrewdness. ‘Aye, I reckon it’s best to leave ‘em to it, in the circumstances. So who was she then this flighty piece Stan knocked up, and what happened to her?’

There was a slight tightening of Rose’s mouth but Winnie didn’t notice. ‘She was killed in an air raid in nineteen forty-one. Harriet were nobbut a couple of months old.’

‘Eeh, that were a bit of bad luck. And Stan were away at sea at the time, eh?’

Rose agreed, the long ear rings she always wore clicking noisily as she briskly nodded. ‘Aye, as luck would have it. We were still living in Ancoats at the time. Anyroad, by a miracle the babby survived, found half buried beneath the rubble and he weren’t for letting her go, not Stan, for all she’d be a cuckoo in the nest.’

‘Oh, aye, soft as butter that lad, not like your Joyce who’s hard as nails.’

‘You might say that,’ Rose drily commented. ‘Though life has played some cruel tricks on her, so softness isn’t something she can afford.’ Quietly sipping her drink Rose was beginning to wish she’d never started on this conversation. Joyce was very particular about not being shown up in front of folk and she’d go for the jugular if she thought her mother had been talking out of turn. Fortunately, Rose had only related their agreed version of the tale, although even that might be too much.

Eyes stretched wide with curiosity, Winnie was saying, ‘Eeh, it were a miracle that babby were found alive. The good Lord must’ve been watching over the little lass on that day.’

 
‘As He has been watching over her ever since.’ Rose smiled softly, knowing she too had kept a watchful eye on the girl, just in case the good Lord forgot. The reason she’d broken her word to her daughter after all these years was because of Harriet. She couldn’t bear to see the child go on being blamed for a situation that was none of her making, and it would be sure to get worse, now that her father was no longer around to protect her. Anyroad, it was long past time the matter was brought out into the open, and to hang with the consequences. Things surely couldn’t be any worse than they were already.

‘Even so she has my profound sympathy. Joyce never struck me as a woman who’d generously overlook her husband’s fall from grace and take in a poor illegitimate infant. She must’ve been mad as blazes to have such trouble land on her doorstep. It’s a miracle she forgave him.’

Rose pondered this for a moment. ‘I’m not sure she ever did. No one could say they enjoyed a happy marriage, more like world war three.’

‘Still, there’s allus a silver lining, eh? She’s a treasure is your Harriet. I must say I was surprised when you told me all of this. I never thought that the lass weren’t Joyce’s real daughter, not for a minute, and I shall look on Joyce with more compassion in future. She’s a real trooper, bless her heart. A saint, no less to accept the lass as her own.’

Rose swallowed the last of her lemonade in a single gulp and stood up. She’d said more than enough. Too much. ‘I reckon I’ll be off to me bed. It’s been a long day one way or another and I’m fair beat. See you tomorrow, Winnie.’

‘Aye, chuck, take care. And don’t worry, it’ll all come out in the wash.’

‘Yes,’ Rose wryly agreed. ‘Dirty laundry generally does.’

An hour or two later, Rose was sterilising the scissors and combs and wiping down the counter tops as she usually did at the end of a working day. Once the salon was all neat and tidy, with every scrap of hair swept up off the linoleum-covered floor, they’d go upstairs and she would put the kettle on for a brew before supper.
 

Joyce took off her pink overall and hung it behind the door, then touching up her make-up and teasing her dark curls into place with a damp finger, she told Rose not to bother making a cup for her as she was going straight out to meet Joe in the Dog and Duck, as usual.

Rose muttered something under her breath but her daughter’s response was swift. ‘If you’ve something on your mind, Mother, come right out and say it. Don’t chunner to yerself like some old witch.’

Rose for once decided not to take issue on the perils of demon drink and instead mildly enquired, ‘I only wondered if you’d seen our Harriet recently?’

‘No, I haven’t.’

‘It’s just that I haven’t seen her around today and I wondered if happen you’d found time to have another little chat with her.’

‘Why should I?’

‘You were a bit blunt the other day, the way you told the tale. And you left quite a bit out, didn’t you?’

Joyce stabbed at her thin mouth with a bright fucsia pink lipstick. ‘I told her all she needed to know. Anyroad, how would I know where she is, I’m not her keeper. No doubt she’s off sulking somewhere, still nursing her supposed wounds.’

Rose leaned on the brush and considered her daughter. ‘So you aren’t going to tell her the rest?’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘No names, no places, no further details, nothing more.’

‘No, and don’t you say owt neither or you’ll be sorry. You’ve said too much already. Why can’t you keep your big trap shut and leave these matters to me?’
 

‘I were only trying to help, in my way,’ Rose protested.

‘Well you didn’t help, not one bit. You just made matters worse.’ Joyce pencilled a smooth brown line along each thinly clipped brow.
 

Rose pursed her lips. ‘And what about our Grant? What are you going to tell him? Were you thinking of ever getting round to telling your son about
his
correct parentage? That Stan was no more his father than you were Harriet’s mother, that the pair of you based that sham of a marriage on a lie. No wonder it ended up mired in secrets as dark and nasty as a muck-cart.’

Joyce whirled about before even her mother had finished speaking, her face draining of all colour so that the pink lips looked lurid against the grey pallor of her skin.

‘Shut your mouth. I’ve told you a thousand times to keep your nose out of my business and not interfere.’

‘Right then, I’ll shut up,’ Rose announced, slamming down the brush. ‘My lips are sealed. Not another word. I’ll just have to conveniently lose my memory, then, won’t I? As you say, it’s none of my business. But don’t blame me if the lass keeps on probing. She’s not stupid isn’t our Harriet.’

Rose stalked off upstairs to put the kettle on for that much needed cup of tea, and Joyce left the salon in a huff to meet up with Joe in the Dog and Duck, so neither of them saw Grant emerge from the little kitchenette just behind the salon. He’d been helping himself to a few quid from the stash of notes his mother kept in a small safe in the wall, having acquired the combination some months ago. He was always careful not to take too much at a time, and to make sure he never touched the money on a Saturday when his mother counted it carefully and audited her accounts before depositing the cash in the bank on a Monday morning.

This evening, apart from being anxious for the two women not to discover this little habit he’d acquired of furnishing his own back pocket with a bit extra, he’d been riveted by the conversation between the two of them. He hadn’t been able to believe his own ears. Now he walked out into the darkened, empty salon rather as a sleep-walker might.

He was shocked, stunned to the core. Stan not his real father? Then who the hell was, and why had his mother never bothered to inform him of this important fact? He felt betrayed, cheated, and deeply angry.

Grant presumed that Joyce must have been pregnant when she married Stan, a fact she’d obviously omitted to mention to her unsuspecting husband. That would be what his grandmother had meant when she said the marriage had been based on a lie. Never own up to the truth if there’s any danger of it causing you problems, that was Joyce’s motto. And his dearly beloved mother was nothing if not creative, which was perhaps a skill he’d inherited from her. Poor old Stan probably hadn’t even been aware of what was going on until it was too late.

But he hated the fact that his mam had lied to
him
just as she had to Harriet. Not that it made him feel any more sympathetic towards his half-sister. Grant cared about nobody but himself.

Deep down he blamed Harriet entirely. He certainly didn’t blame his mother. If Joyce hadn’t been compelled by Stan to keep his stupid love-child, then he might well have paid more attention to his son, albeit one who wasn’t of his own flesh and blood. And if Nan hadn’t taken it into her daft noddle to spill the beans in an effort to protect her precious granddaughter from his mam’s so-called bullying, none of this would’ve come out at all, and he’d have been none the wiser. So any way you looked at it, Harriet was the one to blame.

But what did this mean for him? Grant had no regrets about not having Stan’s blood run through his veins. He’d hated the man for years, sensing there was some problem between them which had blocked all hope of a normal relationship, rather as Joyce had felt towards Harriet. He laughed, a bitter mirthless sound.