Lonely Teardrops (2008)

by Lightfoot, Freda

  Amy and Chris George had already sold up and gone, as had Sam Beckett. His ex-wife, Judy, was standing very much behind the campaign to save the market, and the fact she’d recently gained full custody of her children made her even more determined to win. She was also reputed to be back with Leo Catlow, although not in a hurry to re-marry. The world’s morals, Joyce thought, rather hypocritically, were rapidly disappearing.

  Terry, Alec’s son, was steadfastly hanging on to Hall’s Music Shop in the Market Hall, opening his door for business every morning irrespective of the dust and disruption in the street. He was assisted by his wife Lynda when she wasn’t doing her stint working for her mum Betty Hemley on the flower stall.

  Betty was another stubborn soul not prepared to be bullied by any tin-pot building firm, a somewhat ungenerous description of one of Manchester’s largest developers.

  ‘This isn’t simply about folks’ homes,’ Rose reminded her daughter. ‘Or whether they will be given the opportunity to live in one of the new flats, once they’re built. It’s about people’s livelihoods. Champion Street Market has a long tradition going back hundreds of years and to see it dismantled with all the attendant community spirit lost for ever, would be criminal.’

  ‘I do see that, Mother, but where are we supposed to live, if they tear down our house? Tell me that.’

  ‘And it would be little short of a tragedy if the wonderful Victorian Market Hall with its new extension was demolished,’ Rose continued, as if Joyce hadn’t interrupted.

  ‘Are you listening to me?’

  Rose was far too busy painting posters for the final demonstration in the campaign to listen to anyone. Who was listening? Nobody, in Joyce’s estimation. Nobody ever had. They were all too wrapped up in their own concerns, too busy to care about whether or not she was happy. What was she supposed to do if she lost this business? Where was she supposed to go? She’d poured years of hard work and toil into this place.

  Joyce had quickly grown bored of being stuck at home with a baby and come to a decision. She would go back to work. They needed the money in any case, if she was to continue paying Eileen her allowance, as Stan insisted they should, and which even Joyce felt obliged to do, at least for a while. After six months or so she’d fully intended to gradually reduce the amount paid, then stop it altogether. Stan would still have been away at sea and none the wiser.

  Joyce had longed to start her own business. Rose would have to come too, of course, to help look after the baby during the day, but at least they’d be away from Ancoats, and from Eileen.

  She’d soon found and taken on the lease of this shop in Champion Street, which was perfect. There was the flat above, although when she’d first viewed the premises, it had been occupied by an elderly couple. Given time and the right inducements, Joyce had persuaded them to leave, and she’d moved in with the children and Rose, eager to start afresh and put the past behind her.

  Despite the perfidy of fate, everything had seemed to be working out for them at last.

  Now, her own mother had betrayed her, refusing to sign the property over into Joyce’s name, and all because of that flaming child she’d stupidly adopted. Taking Harriet on had been the biggest mistake of her life. She’d succeeded only in landing herself with a great deal of trouble and responsibility. Her noble act of generosity hadn’t saved her marriage in the end. Nothing had.

  Stan had come home at the end of the war a damaged man, both physically and psychologically. He’d blamed Joyce for everything that had gone wrong since he went away, and proved himself deaf to her complaints for their entire married life.

  If she’d disagreed with any decision he made regarding Harriet, he would ignore her, making it very clear that she had no say over the girl’s welfare, that his word was final. Stan had been far too soft with the girl, and always shut Joyce out. He’d allowed her to wear make-up far too young, and to go out with boys, that Steve Blackstock for one. She might well have behaved far more responsibly if Joyce had been allowed to exercise a bit more discipline over her.

  Stan’s answer to everything was to shower the child with soppy love and affection, give her pointless cuddles and thoroughly spoil her. Was it any wonder if Joyce had come to hate her? Just like her tart of a mother, she’d stolen Stan’s affection from her.

  But what would her husband think of his beloved daughter now? Shacked up with one lad after giving birth to the child of another. What did that say about a decent girl’s reputation? Joyce sincerely hoped such wanton behaviour would reap its just rewards in the end. The lass really didn’t deserve to be happy.

  Harriet had been staying with the Blackstocks for almost six months now and was still obstinately refusing Steve’s frequent and increasingly persistent offers of marriage. Summer was upon them, his finals were over and done with and a teaching certificate was in his hand. He even had an offer of an excellent post teaching mathematics at a local secondary school.

  ‘So what’s the problem?’ he asked her, times without number. ‘You know very well that you love me.’

  Yes, it was true, she did love him. And yes, she knew that he loved her, but where did that get them? Joyce had loved Stan once upon a time, and Stan had loved Joyce, apparently. But Harriet’s father, fine man that he still was in her eyes, had found it quite impossible to live with the fact that Grant was not his child. And from that moment on, the pair of them had resolutely set out to destroy their marriage and each other.

  No matter how many times Steve insisted they weren’t Stan and Joyce, Harriet remained adamant. ‘Maybe later, after you’ve settled into your new job and had time to think straight. We have to be sure.’

  Even Margaret was beginning to ask if there was something wrong with her son. She’d surprised herself by warming towards the girl during the months Harriet had lived in their home. She admired her courage, her resolve to be independent and not be a bother to anyone. She’d even got herself a part time job working mornings for Lizzie Pringle making sweets and chocolates, but even then Margaret had had a hard task persuading Harriet to allow her to mind the baby.

  ‘Nan has offered to look after her.’

  ‘Yes, but I thought I could perhaps share the load. Looking after a baby is quite tiring and your grandmother is not as young as she was. Perhaps I could have Michelle for a couple of mornings a week at least?’

  ‘I-I’m not sure. I don’t want to be a nuisance.’

  ‘If you were a nuisance, dear girl, we would tell you.’ This was from Mr Blackstock, who briefly put down his paper to put an end to a discussion which threatened to go on all night and quite ruin his hopes of listening to the football.

  His wife smiled and lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘I know Rose is fully engrossed in this campaign to save the market. Would you object if I spoke with her, discussed the situation and see what she proposes would be a suitable routine?’

  And with a resigned sigh Harriet conceded she would have no objection to that. She was stunned by this change of heart on Mrs Blackstock’s part, and nervous of relying too heavily upon her good will, in case it should fill her son with hopes she might not, in the end, feel able to fulfil.

  Rose was indeed agreeable to Mrs Blackstock minding Michelle for two or even three mornings a week. The two women happily agreed to share the task as they were both equally besotted with the child.

  ‘And of course if Harriet and Steve should marry, in the end, then I will be Michelle’s grandmother too,’ Margaret reminded Rose, with a secretive little smile.

  Rose frowned. ‘Do you reckon they will marry? They’ve one or two obstacles to overcome first, and that lass of mine has a stubborn streak.’

  ‘Obstacles surely can be overcome if love is strong enough,’ Margaret said, almost waxing lyrical.

  ‘I take it you’d have no objection then?’

  ‘We want only what’s best for Stephen, but I can see Harriet is not quite the harlot that folk have made her out to be. Misguided perhaps, and rather foolish, but by
no means wicked.’

  Rose was glad to see that Steve’s mother had grown less intractable, won over by the charms of young Michelle, no doubt. Unfortunately, Harriet herself had grown more cynical about life, and seemed to have lost all faith in love. She was like a lost soul searching for the truth, and finding it might hurt her even more. Yet sometimes risks had to be taken.

  Watching the way her granddaughter was behaving, and afraid the silly lass might be about to throw away all chance of happiness with her stubbornness, Rose decided once again to listen to the wisdom of the cards and decided it was perhaps time to act on her instincts.

  She went to a secret place in her old room, one which even Grant knew nothing of, lifted a floorboard and took out an envelope. It was time the past was finally put to rest, so that sound decisions could be made about the future. She took the letter to the Blackstock’s house in St. John’s Place and posted it through the letter-box. Tomorrow she would call and see what Harriet felt about it.

  Mrs Blackstock brought the letter up to Harriet just before supper. She quickly read it through, not realising at first what it was, then sat staring at it in a state of total disbelief. If she hadn’t been holding this paper in her own hands she wouldn’t have believed it even existed. It wasn’t a note from Nan, as she’d expected when she’d recognised the handwriting on the envelope, it was from her mother. Not Joyce, but her real mother. Nor was it a long letter, no more than a few lines of print in an unformed, shaky hand.

  Rose tells me you know now that Joyce isn’t your mother, and that she has thrown you out on the streets, just as she did with me many years ago. She also tells me that you’ve been asking after me. I expect you are angry for my having abandoned you, but there were good reasons why I kept out of your life. I will agree to see you now, if that is what you want. Think carefully before you decide.

  Your loving mother.

  It was dated about a year ago, at a time when Harriet was trailing around the streets with Vinny and the band, sleeping rough under the canal bridges, and then in that old warehouse as they made their way in the music business. She’d thought herself all alone in the world, and yet she did have a mother, after all.

  For this letter must mean only one thing: that she wasn’t dead at all. She was very much alive.

  Harriet pressed the letter to her lips in wonder, almost as if she wanted to smell the imprint of her in the writing. Her mother’s own hand had touched this paper. Her real mother! She could hardly believe it. All these years of silence, and now, because of the callous way Joyce had treated her, she suddenly decides to reveal herself and make contact.

  But why, for goodness sake? What on earth was going on? Harriet’s mind was teeming with questions. Where had her mother been living all this time? Why had she neglected to get in touch for all these years and allowed them all to think she was dead? Why had she gone away in the first place?

  Did she feel angry that this woman had abandoned her as a young child? What sort of mother could do that? Yet there must have been a good reason, as she says in the letter. In her heart, Harriet blamed Joyce.

  Whenever she thought of what her stepmother had done to her, she felt filled with resentment. Joyce was surely the one responsible for this mess and no one else. Just by the way she’d callously packed Harriet’s bag that night and told her to leave, didn’t bear thinking of. She hadn’t given the slightest thought to Harriet’s well-being, or to the dangers she would inevitably face in the streets.

  As things had turned out, Harriet had felt safer living rough with her tramp friends than at the mercy of a woman who hated her.

  And who had told her mother of these recent events? Could it be Rose? Had her grandmother been holding on to this letter for months, while she was agonising over whether or not she should stay with Vinny? If so, why?

  It was long past time someone explained properly what this was all about, what exactly had happened during the war to drive her mother away.

  Rose came over the next day and Margaret showed her straight up to her granddaughter’s room. She suspected at once there was some emergency or problem when Rose refused her offer of a cup of tea and a slice of her best fruit cake. Rose was never one to miss a treat.

  ‘Perhaps later then,’ Margaret said with a little smile. ‘When you’ve had your chat.’ She tapped on Harriet’s door and when it opened, she could see at once that the girl had been crying. Even after Rose had thanked her and closed the door, Margaret did not immediately return downstairs. She remained where she was at the top of the stairs, secretly listening, concerned over whatever drama was about to unfold and whether it would concern her son.

  She could hear Harriet quietly sobbing and Rose offering soothing words that Margaret couldn’t quite catch, and wished Steve was here. Unfortunately, he was away on a school geography trip and wouldn’t be back until the morning.

  Then Harriet said, ‘Will you take me? I need to make this visit. I surely deserve a full explanation. I need to understand what’s going on, find out how I feel about things before I can make any definite decisions about my future. But I can’t face this alone. Will you come with me?’

  ‘Course I will, but it won’t be easy for either of you after all this time. It took me a while to decide whether it was the right thing to do to even give you this letter.’

  ‘I dare say it did, Nan, but I have all this love inside of me still waiting to be expressed.’

  ‘You mustn’t decide too quickly, chuck. There’s a lot at stake. Give yourself a few days to think about it. If you still feel the same at the end of the week, then I’ll support you in whatever you decide.’

  Having heard enough, Margaret crept quietly downstairs and put the kettle on.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Later, with little thought of the consequences of such an action, Rose admitted to Joyce what she had done. She confessed that she’d given Harriet a letter from her mother.

  Joyce gazed at Rose stunned. She was still struggling to find her voice when Harriet herself came to stand beside her grandmother.

  ‘I want to meet Eileen, my mother.’

  Smiling and squeezing her granddaughter’s hand, Rose went on, ‘I’ve suggested she think about it for a few days but if she’s still of the same mind, I’ll arrange a visit. It’s time to let go of this war of attrition you’ve waged for half a lifetime against an innocent child.’

  ‘And time you told me everything, don’t you think?’ Harriet quietly added. ‘I don’t expect it to be easy, but I’d like the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’

  She was still coming to terms with the fact that her beloved father wasn’t quite the hero she’d imagined him to be. He had flaws, as everybody did, never finding it in his heart to believe his wife’s explanation of being raped, and growing to hate her for failing to mention her pregnancy at the time of their marriage. Harriet could understand his attitude but a lifetime was a long time to carry a grudge.

  Joyce though, was even worse. Having lied and tricked him, hoping to miraculously pass off Grant as Stan’s own son, why would she be surprised when he cheated on her? The pair of them, once so deeply in love, could have forgiven their respective transgressions, instead they’d started a war that was still raging to this day.

  Joyce’s need for revenge hadn’t died with her husband. Instead she’d redirected her venom on Harriet, his love child.

  ‘Why?’ Harriet asked. What happened between you and my real mother back in 1941 when I was born?’

  ‘All right,’ Joyce said, calmly seating herself. ‘If you want to know the truth, sit down and I’ll tell you.’

  She would never know what woke her. She’d given Harriet her last feed at ten o’clock, put her to bed as usual, and must have fallen asleep while reading in the armchair. She hadn’t bothered to light a fire but switched on the electric heater instead, the warmth of which had obviously lulled her off to sleep. But something must have disturbed her. Joyce sat up, all senses alert, ears straining fo
r any sound, the light in the room gloomy with only a small table lamp lit and the black-out curtains firmly drawn.

  Was it an air raid? Had the siren sounded? She could hear nothing, not even a whimper from the baby. After listening for some long moments, she tucked her legs under her and went back to her book when once more her senses were alerted. Something was definitely wrong, she was sure of it.

  A strange prickling awareness crawled down her spine. Was that a creak on the stairs? Someone was in the house. Joyce got up from the chair and padded to the door in her bare feet. Wrenching it open, heart pounding with fear, she was confronted by the sight of her hated rival. Eileen was standing frozen half way down the stairs, and in her arms was Harriet.

  ‘How the hell did you get in?’ Joyce was appalled, livid that this woman, this harlot had somehow invaded her privacy.

  ‘She’s mine!’ Eileen said, and ran the rest of the way down the stairs. Before she had chance to reach the front door, Joyce grabbed hold of her, shouting for her to hand over the baby.

  ‘Give her to me, give her to me!’ Joyce yelled, tugging at her coat as the other woman struggled to free herself. Joyce hit out, striking her across the head. Eileen yelped, then struck back, clawing at Joyce’s face with her nails. Joyce screamed, then retaliated by grasping the other woman by the hair and shaking her like a dog.

  Eileen squealed in desperation. ‘Let go of me! Let go! She’s my baby, she’s mine! Stop it, you’ll hurt her.’

  ‘It’s you I want to hurt, not the baby! Give her to me or I swear I’ll kill you.’

  They fought like mad women, Harriet screaming at the top of her lungs as Joyce frantically struggled to rip her from her mother’s arms. Eileen desperately clinging to her child. Somehow, as they thrashed about, punched and clawed at each other, they were no longer in the hall but in the living room. Joyce snatched off Eileen’s scarf and flung it across the room. It landed on the electric fire that stood by Joyce’s chair and, unnoticed, began to smoulder, both women entirely focused on the tug-of-war over the child.