Lonely Teardrops (2008) (53 page)

Barry Holmes had collected together a box of rotten tomatoes, ready to throw at the drivers if they came anywhere near the top end of the street. Not that that would stop them, but rotten fruit and veg were the only weapons he had to hand.

Clara Higginson, together with all her friends from the church, were quietly forming a protective chain in front of her house where they were singing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ as if they too were about to go into battle. Clara had escaped from the Nazis in Paris during the war, so had no intention of being fazed by a few bulldozers.

Lizzie Pringle was there too with her husband Charlie, along with Aunty Dot pushing a pram with the usual group of foster children in tow, Joey, Beth and Alan among them, determined to save the home they loved. The actual sweet making took place elsewhere but they’d also be sorry to lose Pringle’s Chocolate Cabin, which had been the inspiration for the entire business. Lizzie was determined to stand firm.

Betty Hemley and her daughter Lynda stood arm in arm, together with her son Jake, and Lynda’s husband Terry ready to withstand all-comers to save both Hall’s Music Shop and Betty’s flower stall. Dena Dobson was with them, stoutly assisted by her new doctor friend Adam, and, of course, little Trudy. Dena could, if necessary, set up her fashion business elsewhere, but she loved this market, this street, and had no intention of leaving it while one house, one wall, one brick remained in place.

The unlikely trio of Irma and Joe Southworth with Belle Garside, as chairman of the committee and market superintendent respectively, placed themselves in the centre of the street, right outside the main doors of the iron framed market hall, as if they meant to guard it with their lives if necessary.

The crowds were growing, everyone who’d ever had any affection for the market had come along, ready to defend it. Joan Chapman and her sewing circle. Constable Nuttall and Miss Rogers, the sour-faced social worker, the whiskers on her chin seeming to bristle with anger. The old men who spent their days mulling over their betting slips by the old horse trough. Young Spider, who’d been taught to box by Barry Holmes at the Lads’ Club, showing he was more than ready for a punch up with these so-called developers.

Benny was handing out free hot potatoes from his cart, to keep everyone’s strength up, and even Chris and Amy George were present, despite them having now left Champion Street. If the market was saved, Chris thought he might open a bread stall, supplying it from the baker’s shop he’d opened on nearby Deansgate. Everyone was shouting and jeering, preparing to begin their march and ignoring the line of police gathering at the end of the street.

‘All we need is for the chairman of our local council to get behind us,’ Rose mourned. ‘We need him to see sense, to realise that Manchester can have its fancy new blocks of flats but they shouldn’t let developers walk all over them and destroy perfectly good houses. Their power and greed should be restrained. If only somebody would be on our side!’

‘I’ve just been talking to Leo Catlow,’ Jimmy Ramsay said, rushing up, ‘I thought, since he’s an important businessman living on the corner of our street and well in with the council, he might put in a word and help us at the eleventh hour.’

Rose set her jaw into a grim line. ‘No matter how long it takes, we’re not moving an inch.’ So saying, she sat down in the middle of the road, and, following her lead, so did everyone else.

The roar of bulldozers grew louder as the huge machines began to make their cumbersome progress along the street, moving ever closer to the demonstrators. The work’s boss had evidently grown weary of all the bad press and attention he was getting, and resolved to put an end to this dispute as swiftly as possible.

‘He’s coming for us now, heading for the top of the street here,’ Clara Higginson pointed out.

‘By heck,’ Rose cried. ‘He’s going for Big Molly’s house first. Right, we’ll show him.’

As one, the stallholders and residents, their numbers swelled by an increasing band of loyal customers, surged towards the machines. Rose lay herself down on the cobbles right outside Molly Poulson’s house. Big Molly’s anxious face could be seen peeping through the lace curtain, yet she stayed put, as did Rose.

It was at this precise moment that Harriet and Steve emerged from the presbytery. Harriet looked rather like a zombie as she walked somewhat unsteadily towards the assembled crowd, Steve supporting her as best he could with one arm about her waist.

Rose sat up, wary of leaving her post but concerned for her granddaughter. ‘What’s wrong, love? Where’s our Michelle?’

Harriet shook her head, quite unable to answer. Steve quietly told the old woman that there was a problem. Swiftly, he explained what had taken place in the priest’s office. Rose’s jaw dropped open, the campaign for saving the market instantly forgotten.

Scrambling to her feet, Rose turned on her daughter. ‘What have you gone and done now?’

‘I’ve done what’s right, what’s best for that child,’ Joyce announced, her mouth firming into its customary tight, forbidding line.

 
‘You’ve done what’s best for
you
, as you always do, because you don’t understand the meaning of mother love. Never have.’

‘I will not have my reputation ruined.’

Rose gave a bitter laugh. ‘You’ve ruined your own reputation with no help from anybody. You’ve no one to blame but yourself. You’ve been sleeping with my best friend Irma’s husband for months, if not years. Why is it that you think yourself above the moral issues you freely impose upon others?’

‘How dare you!’ Joyce’s cheeks flamed, acutely aware of the gossiping crowd gathered about her, smirking behind their hands, agog at this very public display of dirty linen being aired. ‘Drat you and your interfering ways, Mother. Somehow you always manage to set yourself against me.’

‘Someone has to. I might be a bit blunt and rough but I don’t hurt childer, as you seem to enjoy doing. I don’t treat people with contempt, or waste my entire life on some misguided mission of revenge. Love and affection seem to be strangers to you, so is it any wonder if your husband came to hate the sight of you? And what did you do when he sought comfort elsewhere? Almost burned to death the lovely girl he’d fallen in love with, then stole her child.’

Whatever Joyce might have been about to say by way of response to this very public revelation of her darkest secrets, was lost in a terrified scream from Harriet.

All eyes turned as one towards the bulldozers. ‘Oh, dear Lord, it’s Grant,’ Harriet cried. ‘Look what he’s doing. He’s putting Michelle down on the cobbles, right in the path of the bulldozer.’

‘
Murderer
!’ Rose screamed, but her voice was lost in the hubbub as everyone moved at once, surging forward instinctively to rescue the baby.

Despite her disability and age, the old woman very nearly got there in time, shouting at the driver and ineffectually setting her shoulder against the huge machine as if she could single-handedly stop it.

Surprisingly, it was Joyce who reached the pair first. Flinging herself in front of the bulldozer, she pushed her son out of the way, but just as she reached for the baby she somehow lost her footing, slipped on the wet cobbles and fell.

Champion Street Market did indeed earn a reprieve in the eleventh hour, not simply because all work was stopped for the day due to the accident, but because the council had called a halt to the project. Leo Catlow had apparently been negotiating with the developers for some time, and the efforts of Rose and Belle Garside, Jimmy Ramsay, Joe Southworth and the rest of the committee, had also made them think twice.

New meetings were to be held and it was agreed that demolition would continue on the lower half of the street, the damp old Victorian houses would be replaced with modern flats, but the better houses at the top end would indeed be spared. In view of this change, new plans needed to be drawn up. The flats would not in fact be high rise, but a range of two storey maisonettes and apartments, more in keeping with the rest of Champion Street.

The historic, iron-framed market hall would be retained, along with its new extension. The outside market would be relocated to nearby streets, by permission of the council, until all building work was completed, at which point it could return and continue to operate for the next hundred years, if the committee so wished.

The stallholders held a street party to celebrate, attended by everyone: Big Molly and Clara Higginson, the Bertalones, Dena, and Winnie and Barry Holmes, Amy and Chris George, Betty Hemley, Terry and Lynda, Patsy and Marc, Lizzie Pringle and Charlie, not forgetting Aunty Dot and the children, with everyone overjoyed that their beloved Champion Street Market was to be saved and their homes spared from the wrecking ball.

Whether it was the baby she was trying to save or, more likely, her beloved son, they would never know, but Joyce failed to save herself. She was crushed beneath the giant caterpillar tracks.

Ironically, her last act was to save the baby she’d resented so much. Despite a lifetime of seeking revenge in the pursuit of her good name, even Joyce, cold and hard as she undoubtedly was, could not commit murder. As she fell beneath the great yellow machine, she performed the one heroic deed of her life. She pushed the baby, securely wrapped in its blanket, so that it slid across the slippery cobbles and came to rest, unharmed, at Harriet’s feet.

Harriet instantly snatched up her child and held her safe, sobbing with relief. She was indeed a miracle child, a gift from God.

Steve wrapped his arms about them both and held them close. ‘You’re safe now, Harriet. No one will ever hurt either of you again, not without going through me first.’

The hair salon was also to be spared from demolition and Harriet thought she might take the shop over herself. She’d learnt quite a bit already by helping Joyce, and could take a course in hair styling to learn the rest. She and Steve would live in the flat above, once they were married, and Rose could continue to live in Stan’s old room at the back.

It felt like a new beginning, fresh hope for the future.

Rose came home from hospital the next day, having been kept in overnight for observation, with her arm and shoulder in a sling. She’d broken it in two places in her ineffectual and bravado attempt to stop the bulldozer.

‘At least this little babby is alive and well,’ she said, giving her granddaughter and great granddaughter a one-armed cuddle. Nowt else matters. And it could have been worse. Tough as old boots, that’s me. I’ll not be much good at knitting for a while, but then I never were.’

They all laughed. There was no dampening the spirit of this old woman.

Grant was now residing in Her Majesty’s prison. It seemed that while the argument over the adoption had raged in the priest’s office, he’d simply picked up the baby and walked off. Not, apparently, with any firm idea in his head about what he intended to do with it. As he confessed to Constable Nuttall on their way to the station in the police car, hands securely handcuffed, he simply wanted ‘to get his own back on Harriet’. A disturbingly familiar motive.

He’d apparently expected the driver of the bulldozer to see the baby in good time, and stop. ‘I only wanted to frighten her, to make her suffer as she has made me suffer by always being the favourite both with Stan and my grandmother, and for being the only one who’ll benefit from Nan’s will. I hate her, and her stupid child.’

‘Well, let’s see if you like the men you’ll be sharing a cell with in prison any better,’ Constable Nuttall had drily remarked.

Joyce was given a proper and dignified funeral, as she would have expected. Father Dimmock gave the eulogy and spoke movingly of her complete selflessness which she’d amply demonstrated in her last moments. Harriet and Rose didn’t trust themselves to even glance at each other as he spoke these touching words.

Later, at the wake, which Irma organised for them at the salon, Harriet took the opportunity for a private word with Father Dimmock. He accepted that whether or not Joyce had forged the papers, Harriet, as the baby’s mother, had the right to refuse permission. The adoption would not now go ahead.

‘Perhaps,’ Harriet asked the old priest, with a twinkle in her eye, ‘you’d be willing to marry us now that Steve has qualified.’

Father Dimmock smiled kindly at her. ‘I’d be proud to. Delighted, in fact.’

Steve whooped his delight. ‘If that’s a proposal, I accept,’ and laughing, he hugged and kissed Harriet right there in front of the priest.

Later, when everyone had gone home, and Harriet was alone with Rose in the flat above the salon, she again asked the question that had been haunting her for months.
 

‘So tell me what happened to my mother.’

‘Eileen was treated for severe burns. It was a miracle, the doctors said, that the fire officers had got her out alive. She would never, however, be the woman she was. All her hair had gone and her once pretty face was a mass of burns, much of the skin having bubbled and melted. Her arms and legs too were badly affected and it would be some weeks before they could even be certain that she would survive. Once they were sure that she was stable, Eileen was sent to one of them specialist hospitals set up to treat pilots shot down in dog fights. A great deal had been learned about the treatment of burns, and in the use of plastic surgery to reconstruct damaged faces, but much of it was still experimental and she faced a long, hard road of pain and suffering.’