Lonely Teardrops (2008) (9 page)

Rose was wearing a frock she’d had since the thirties. It was magenta silk, a bit faded admittedly but Ron had bought it for her and Rose had always kept it for best so it hardly looked worn. She’d never need to replace it, that was for sure, and why should she? It reminded her of Ron, and his loving, tender generosity towards her. She’d dressed it up with a pair of dangly pink ear-rings and a sparkly brooch. Ron had been fond of buying her the odd trinket, once he could afford to spoil her a bit.

She could buy her own bits and bobs now, she supposed, should she wish to do so, but liked to be a bit careful with her brass. You were bound to end up that way when you’d never had much in the first place.

‘How much do you reckon all this lot cost?’ Rose asked of her granddaughter. There was nothing Rose loved more than trying to assess what someone might have paid for a dress, necklace, house, or whatever. ‘A pretty penny, I should imagine.’

Rose had quite a bit put by herself, as her Ron had always been prudent, opening a post office savings account, putting money aside in the Oddfellows Friendly Society for their old age, and in case any of them should need a doctor. It’d built up nicely over the years as they’d all been pretty healthy. He’d also been a bit of a gambler, not on the dogs or the gee-gees, but in something called the stock market.

‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained,’ had been Ron’s motto, along with, ‘We’re right at the bottom of the heap, you and me, lass, so we can only go up. What have we got to lose?’

Rose hadn’t understood any of it, but it seemed he didn’t lose, at least not too often or too much, and had left her surprisingly well provided for.

Not that Joyce was aware of quite how much her dustman father had left. Oh, no, Rose kept that very close to her chest. The silly lass had looked down on her father when he was alive, so she didn’t deserve to benefit from his death. Ruined the silly mare’s life, in a way, that snobby streak of hers.

Anyroad, just as well if she didn’t inherit, since that madam went through money like water. No, when Rose went to meet her maker, she meant to leave whatever remained of her savings to Harriet, not selfish, silly Joyce. Not that she’d informed her daughter of these intentions, not yet.

Harriet was saying, ‘Much of this celebration has been given to Patsy as a gift by the other traders, since she has no mum and dad of her own. Rather like me.’

‘Nay,’ Rose demurred. ‘Not at all like you. You have me. I’m still yer nan, and you had a father, don’t forget.’

‘I’ll never forget Dad. But I’m sad he didn’t tell me the truth. Why didn’t he?’

‘He did what he thought was best,’ Rose prevaricated, for once defending her son-in-law. ‘Your Mam . . . Joyce . . . did too. It might’ve turned out all wrong but they did it for the best of reasons, at least, we have to assume so.’

Why Joyce felt so bitter about the blows that life had dealt her, was quite beyond Rose. She would never have taken her personal grievances out on Harriet, even if she was the child of a straying husband. Why Joyce persisted in doing so, and had got herself so churned up with revenge, Rose would never understand, not if she lived to be a hundred. Some good had come out of it, she supposed, in that they still had Harriet, but quite a bit of bad too.

 
She again wiped a tear from her eye, one of sadness this time.

‘What about your mum, she died young, didn’t she?’ Harriet had heard this story before but still loved to have it repeated. She needed to hear it now to prove that she still had a place in the Ashton and Ibbetson family tree. She felt so alone, as if the world had shifted and she was about to fall off the end of it. Even though she’d never felt close to Joyce, she still thought of her as her mother. It was hard not to, since that’s what she’d been for Harriet’s entire life.

Rose nodded. ‘Aye, my mam were sickly with TB, and died young leaving six childer. Me Dad were a docker working on the wharves, and a right bully. He’d beat the living daylights out of you soon as look at you. A Yorkshireman no less, so no wonder I never had no time for that son-in-law of mine, since he came from the same neck of the woods.’

‘Dad wasn’t violent,’ Harriet protested. ‘He never laid a finger on Mam, though he’d sometimes land Grant a clip round the ear.’

‘Aye, and the stupid lad probably deserved it.’

Harriet half smiled, glancing about as if expecting to see Grant emerge out of the crowd. She’d deliberately avoided him today, since she still felt uneasy over the fact he’d followed her down to the river the other day. Whatever little game he was playing, she didn’t find it in the least amusing.

Rose was saying, ‘Anyroad, when my mother died, Dad said he could only cope with me two brothers. Me and my three younger sisters were farmed out, split up around the family, and never managed to keep in touch. Iris and Daisy are in London somewhere, I think. It’s that long ago I can’t rightly remember. But to this day I’ve no idea where our Violet lives, or even if she’s alive or dead.’ Rose frowned. ‘Though I might’ve forgotten that too, I suppose.’

‘Oh, Nan, that’s so sad.’

‘Well, my memory isn’t what it was, not by a long chalk.’

‘No, I mean about losing touch with your sister.’

‘It happens, sometimes, in a big family. Aye well, that’s enough about me, eh? Doesn’t Patsy look pretty, and all flushed and happy. Things turned out all right for her in the end.’

Rose often stopped the story at this point, not wanting to remember too closely how she herself had been brought up by an elderly great aunt who claimed not to like children and was living on a penurious pension. She’d seemed to think that having a youngster around would be useful for running errands, cooking her meals and helping to care for her in her old age.

When the doctor had called one day to find the house fetid, the old woman almost comatose and eight year old Rose near starving to death, they were both finally taken into the workhouse. At least there someone remembered to feed and clothe her. Rose never properly recovered from her ordeal, feeling rejected and spurned by her father, and neglected by the rest of the family.
 

Trust, love and affection were not words that held much meaning for Rose, not until she’d met Ron Ibbetson. He’d walked into the laundry where she worked to ask what it would cost to have his shirts done every week. In the end she’d married him and washed them for nothing, but he was a wonderful husband to her and although he was only a dustman and hadn’t two beans to rub together in the early years of their marriage, they’d never gone short of love. They’d had a good life together and Rose still missed him badly.

Now she squeezed her granddaughter’s hand. ‘Happen it weren’t the brightest decision our Joyce ever made to keep this all from you, but it wasn’t easy for her to discover her husband were a cheat, and then to be made homeless, bombed out like she was, and landed with a little bundle of joy.’

‘Mam and Dad were bombed out too? I never knew that.’ Harriet’s eyes stretched wide, instantly wondering why they’d never even bothered to tell her something so important. Could the two incidents be linked in some way? If so, she couldn’t for the life of her think how. ‘Was it in the Christmas Blitz, or around the same time as the young girl, my mother, was killed?’

‘Er, one or t’other, I don’t remember,’ Rose said, sounding flustered. ‘You were only a babby, I know that.’

‘Where were you all living?’

‘Ancoats.’

‘I mean where in Ancoats? What street?’

Rose’s expression became dead-pan, as it sometimes would when she’d walked into the kitchen and forgotten what she’d come in for. ‘Nay, don’t ask, you know how confused I get.’

‘You surely must remember your own address, Nan?’

 
‘Nay, we was allus flitting. You did in them days. First we were in the Dardanelles, then moved on to Ducie Street and, eeh I don’t know. . . we never seemed to stop in one place for very long, what with the war and everything. It were something fanciful or flowery, I seem to recall. I think there were a pub on the corner with a Scottish-sounding name, although it might be gone now. I can’t say for certain. Eeh, will you look at them flowers Betty Hemley is setting out on the tables. If she ever sends Patsy a bill for that lot, the poor lass’ll have to declare herself bankrupt.’

Something like panic had come into the old woman’s eyes and Harriet was instantly filled with compassion and worry for her grandmother. She was getting very forgetful all of a sudden. Surely she wasn’t going senile? Oh, she did hope not.

‘Come on, chuck, I’m starving hungry, let’s get stuck in.’

Harriet laughed.
 
‘At least you haven’t lost your appetite.’

‘Oh, no, I can still remember where me mouth is.’

Chapter Eight

Curiosity got the better of Harriet and she decided to do a bit of snooping on her own account. The next day, being a Sunday, she persuaded Steve to go with her to Ancoats and see what she could find out. He wasn’t too keen at first, warning her that delving into the past sometimes made things worse, not better.

‘You don’t understand,’ she argued, ruffled that he couldn’t see how angry she felt at having been lied to so heartlessly all these years. ‘I have to know who I am, and what happened. But then it’s my life, not yours, so how could you possibly understand?’

‘I’m trying to understand, Harriet, I am really. I want only to protect you.’

‘I don’t need protecting, not by you, not by anyone. I just need the truth, something which everyone seems determined to keep from me.’

So here they were, walking along Great Ancoats Street. It was hard to imagine that this had once been green countryside where farmers had cultivated their land, and grand mansions once graced meadows that sloped down to the River Medlock. The industrialisation of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had put paid to all of that rural idyll but now change was again in the air. The ramshackle cottages and unsanitary terraced houses were being cleared away, as were the bombed out houses left by the war.

‘Where did they live?’ Steve asked.

Letting him take her hand, even though she still felt a bit cross with him, Harriet matched her stride easily to his. ‘According to Nan you go along Great Ancoats Street, up Union Street, and their house was near some mill or other.’

‘Oh, that’s helpful. There are any number of mills in Ancoats, and were probably even more then.’

‘She’s also mentioned warehouses, when she’s talked before about living in Ancoats.’

‘Which warehouses? There are plenty of those too.’
 

‘I don’t know, do I? I’m doing my best to remember.’

Now Harriet was wishing she’d asked more questions, found out more details which were admittedly vague, before embarking on this exercise. ‘Nan couldn’t seem to remember the address as they were constantly flitting, because of the war or whatever. But she thought it might be something fanciful, maybe like Paradise Street, but then she started talking about flowers. Oh, and there could well have been a pub on the corner with a Scottish-sounding name, although that might be gone now.’

‘Great! Something fanciful, or possibly flowery, and a Scottish pub that might or might not still be there. Fat chance after all this time.’

‘You could try to sound a bit more optimistic.’

‘I am, but we don’t have much to go on.’ Then seeing Harriet’s gloomy expression, gave her hand a little squeeze. ‘Why don’t you admit this is a complete waste of time, love. Like I say, it probably won’t do you any good in the long run.’

‘No, I absolutely refuse to give up so easily. We can ask someone. I mean to find out what happened.’

Steve sighed. ‘Think hard then. Your nan must have dropped some other clues in all the times she’s talked about her childhood, and yer mam’s. Did she ever tell you anything really useful, like an address?’

Harriet felt filled with frustration, and irritated with him for finding the obvious flaws in her quest. ‘Nan’s so vague these days, getting quite forgetful.’ She frowned, then brightened as a memory stirred. ‘It must have been near the market, not far from Smithfield. I remember her once saying that her uncle and aunt had a stall on the market, selling fish. And they could hear the trains shunting in the goods yard.’

‘Right, well we know where that is. Let’s go and look for a flowery or fanciful street not too far from Smithfield and the railway. But if we haven’t found it in a hour, we’re going home, right?’

‘OK.’

It took them less than twenty minutes. ‘This must be it, Blossom Street,’ Harriet cried excitedly. ‘And here’s the pub, look: the Edinburgh Castle. You can’t get more Scottish than that, and it’s still here. Oh, but I expected the street to be little more than a pile of rubble yet it looks perfectly all right, as if it’s never been troubled by war at all.’

They stopped to ask a woman pushing a pram if she remembered a house being bombed in this street during the war but, laughing, she shook her head. ‘I was only a toddler, love, at the time. You’ll have to ask someone a lot older. Try Mrs Marsh at the bottom house. She’s lived here for years.’

Mrs Marsh at the bottom house must have been out, or deaf, because she didn’t answer when they knocked, but an old man next door came out to see who was making all the racket.

‘Are you talking about the Christmas Blitz?’ he asked, in answer to their question.