Steve had been a part of her life for as long as she could remember, ever since they were in primary school together. For the last year they’d been going steady and Harriet simply adored him. She loved the teasing expression in his dark brown eyes which were looking at her even now with absolute love. She adored his heavy straight brows, somewhat flattened nose and wide nostrils set above a firm square chin, his dark hair cut to less than half an inch all over his head. Steve was a solid sort of guy, both in character and physique, and she was nuts about him.
‘It matters to me. How would you feel if you’d just been told your mam wasn’t really your mam, and that you were illegitimate? It’s all a bit of a shock,’ she ruefully admitted, blowing her nose and dabbing at her eyes. For her entire life Harriet had thought of Joyce as her mother. How could she suddenly stop thinking of her as such? ‘I can’t even get Mam – Joyce – I suppose I should call her now, to talk about it. Even Nan is avoiding me, and won’t say another word.’
Steve snorted with laughter. ‘Rose is very good at tossing down a grenade and then running for cover.’
‘Oh, I wish Dad were here.’ Slate grey eyes swam with tears as Steve put his arm about Harriet to draw her close. If only she could turn back the clock so that things could be exactly as they once were. A week ago she’d been going along quite happily, caring for her dad, seeing Steve most evenings, if only for a chat, a kiss and a cuddle or a walk by the river.
Harriet wanted her father to be alive still, so she could tell him off for keeping such important information from her. Harriet wished she could ask him to explain about this unknown woman who had given birth to her. She wanted to talk it all through with him, to learn more about her real mother. But she couldn’t, he was gone.
‘He must’ve been in on the secret though, mustn’t he? Why was that, I wonder? Why did he never tell you?’ Steve asked, echoing her thoughts.
For the first time in her young life Harriet felt as if her father had let her down. He should have been open and honest and told her the truth, given her the chance to understand and ask questions.
‘I don’t know, do I? But that’s obviously why Mam and me never did get on. I suppose he thought if I ever found out she wasn’t my real mother, then that would finish it for us completely.’
Harriet had often dreamed about how she would like a mother to be. Not like Joyce, all cold and distant. She’d once or twice been over to the Bertalones’ house and been mesmerised by the way Carlotta fussed over her brood. She was constantly hugging and kissing them, tucking them into woolly hats and scarves if it was cold, cooking pasta for them, playing games with them, or just listening to their troubles. The kind of things Joyce never did. Would her real mother have been like that? Would she have loved Harriet more?
‘But why don’t you get on?’
Harriet tucked a stray blond curl behind her ear. ‘Because no one can compete with the wonderful Grant. She always picks fault with everything I do, never will find the time to talk to me, nor take the trouble to get to know me properly.‘
‘I know you,’ Steve said, rubbing his nose against hers. ‘I know that you like the coconut sweets best in a box of Liquorice Allsorts, that you’re afraid of spiders, have a little mole above your left breast, and hate doing your shorthand homework.’
‘Who wouldn’t?’ Harriet giggled, almost forgetting for a moment how miserable and unhappy she was. She wrapped her arms about his sturdy waist and leaned into him, breathing in his familiar scent. Steve had recently started working for Barry Holmes on his fruit and vegetable stall as a summer job before he went off to Teacher Training College in the autumn, and he always smelled deliciously of apples, earthy potatoes and crisp lettuce.
‘Anyway, my doing that secretarial course was her idea, not mine. I mean, can you see me as a secretary?’
‘Ooh, yes,’ Steve said, flicking his eyebrows up and down in comic fashion. ‘In a short black skirt, white blouse and dark framed glasses. You’d look real sexy.’
‘Stop it,’ she laughed, playfully slapping him so that he had to kiss her again to make her stop.
Where was the point in pretending to enjoy a secretarial course simply in order to win Joyce’s approval when it would never be forthcoming, and certainly not now. Did this mean that she was free of Joyce’s tyranny and could please herself what she did in future? The thought brought little comfort, for Harriet had no idea what she wanted to do with this new-found freedom, if that’s what it was. She was a home bird, no doubt about that. Her life revolved around a familiar and unvaried daily routine, blown apart as it may be by the revelation of this long-kept secret. New sensations were stirring in her: anger and resentment and rebellion.
In the distance she could hear the sound of ships’ hooters, the shunt of trains in the goods yard, the hum of traffic. But hidden by hawthorn and cow parsley down at the bottom of these stone steps, sitting on the bench as she watched the water slide sluggishly beneath the old lock, they could be deep in the countryside and not in the heart of the city at all.
‘So what do you intend to do about it?’ Steve asked.
‘What can I do? I’m still convinced there’s more to it than they’ve told me so far, and I want to hear the whole story. Surely that’s not too much to ask?’
Two more agonising days passed and Harriet was still waiting to hear the full tale, growing increasingly impatient. She was preparing the evening meal, with Grant being more of a hindrance than a help, as usual. Heading for the living room to lay the table she found him lounging in the doorway, her passage blocked. ‘Do you mind getting out of the way, some of us have work to do.’
Her brother was a great, broad bully of a lad with short greasy brown hair that sprouted out at odd angles all over his head, as if he’d just climbed out of bed and not bothered to brush it. He had a habit of hunching his shoulders up into his thick neck, which he was doing now as he leaned against the door-jamb, watching her with a narrowed, probing gaze.
‘I’m not stopping you.’ Smirking nastily, he stepped to one side but just as she was about to slip past, side-stepped back again so that she almost collided with him. Snaking out his hands he latched on to her, his fingers digging into her shoulders as he hissed his next words right in her face.
‘It’s time you started to be nice to me. Particularly now that you can no longer run to Daddy for protection.’
Harriet gave him a scathing look. ‘I can manage, thanks, so long as folk keep out of my way.’ Thrusting him to one side she carried a plate of bread and butter to the table and began to set out knives and soup spoons for the chicken broth she’d made. Grant stood watching, breathing noisily through his open mouth. Irritated, Harriet asked him to fetch the cruet, and the plate of cheese she’d left on the kitchen dresser. He made no move to do so and her patience snapped. ‘For goodness sake, can’t you find something useful to do with your life instead of getting under my feet?’
Grant spent a great deal of time in the local pub, largely spending money provided by his mother, somehow managing to avoid the necessity of working. He might claim to ‘have a few irons in the fire’ but they rarely came to fruition. Nevertheless, money was his god.
‘Don’t imagine that when it’s Mam’s turn to follow our beloved father to the cemetery, or even Nan’s, you’ll be left so much as a brass farthing. You’re not the favourite, I am. You’ll get nowt. You’re a nobody.’
Harriet looked up at him coldly as she went back to stirring the broth. ‘You think I care about money? Even if Mam had any, which she doesn’t, I wouldn’t touch a penny of it, not now.’
Grant’s smirk vanished as he was thrown off balance by this response. ‘Why wouldn’t you? What do you mean, not now? What’s happened?
‘None of your business. Go and call Mam.’
Ignoring her instruction, and deciding she was only making an argument for the sake of it, he gave a little self-satisfied chuckle. ‘Oh, there’s money all right. There’s the hair salon for one thing.
Mam owns that outright, you know. She doesn’t pay rent. And Nan must have some life savings stashed away in her Post Office Savings Account.’
‘You disgust me. Get out of my way.’ Pushing him to one side Harriet went to the head of the stairs and shouted down to Joyce to tell her supper was ready.
With supper over, Joyce finally consented to tell the tale of how Harriet’s mother, her real mother, had died in an air raid. Harriet herself had apparently been rescued from among the rubble. The story was swiftly told, the bare details only given, and there was something like triumph in the gleam of the older woman’s eyes, which brought a sour taste to Harriet’s mouth.
Joyce seemed to be implying that this poor girl, whoever she might be, had deserved her fate for having been so careless as to bring an unwanted child into the world.
Harriet felt stunned by this information, which wasn’t at all what she’d expected to hear. Her head teemed with questions yet she couldn’t seem to find her voice in order to ask any of them. Given the choice, she would have preferred this discussion to have taken place in private, without her brother listening to all the juicy details as he slurped tea from his saucer.
Surprisingly, Joyce snapped at her son in an unusual chastisement. ‘Use the cup, Grant, like everyone else.’
Harriet remained silent for some long moments while she digested the story of her mother’s tragic end. ‘And she wasn’t married?’
‘No.’
‘So, it’s true then, I am illegitimate?’
‘If we’re being strictly accurate, yes, you are.’
Grant gave a loud guffaw of laughter. ‘You mean Dad’s wonderful little princess isn’t so perfect after all? She’s just a little bastard.’
Rose smacked his face, as only a grandmother dare. ‘I’ll wash yer mouth out with carbolic soap if you use such words in my presence again.’
Unfazed by her anger he shook the slap off as if batting away a fly, and carried on eating his fish supper. Grant had refused the chicken broth and bought himself haddock and chips instead from Frankie Morris’s shop across the road. Even the greasy smell of them was making Harriet feel queasy.
She again addressed the woman she’d always believed to be her mother, her heart beating slow and painful in her breast. ‘Why did you keep me then?’
‘It were a miracle you survived that bomb,’ Rose said, rushing into the ensuing silence and rubbing a comforting hand up and down Harriet’s arm. ‘You’ve been a survivor ever since, eh?’
Harriet tried to smile at her grandmother but her face felt all stiff and unresponsive. She turned back to Joyce. ‘Well, why did you, when you clearly never have liked me, let alone loved me as a mother should?’
‘Nay,’ Rose gasped. ‘What a thing to say!’
‘It’s true enough, isn’t it? I love you, of course. You’re my mam, so why wouldn’t I love you. But I’ve never felt loved in return.’
Joyce looked at her, not troubling to deny the accusation. ‘I could’ve insisted you were adopted, I suppose, instead of keeping you.’
‘So why didn’t you? For all the interest and affection you’ve shown towards me over the years, it’s a pity you didn’t. I might’ve found someone prepared to love me properly.’ Harriet’s lovely face seemed to have shrunk it looked so pinched and diminished, with twin spots of feverish pink on each pale cheek.
‘Your dad and I thought it best to keep you. It seemed the right thing to do. There was a war on, remember.’
‘That’s right,’ Rose said, directing fierce glances at her daughter. ‘Rules change in a war. We all have to pull together.’
‘Aw, give over, you’ll be going on about the Dunkirk spirit next. Why would you be so generous when your husband has just cheated on you? At least, I’m assuming that’s what happened, unless of course there’s something else you aren’t telling me? Was Stan really my father?’
There was a long, telling silence as Harriet looked from one woman to the other. She could feel her breath balled tight in her chest as she waited for the answer.
Joyce fluffed out her dark curls with one careless hand. ‘Course he was your father. No doubt about that. Stan never minded who he slept with, so why not some chit of a girl whose name he didn’t even know?’
A deep sense of relief flooded through Harriet, as if the world had tilted from its axis for a moment and had now righted itself again. What did it matter who her mother was, so long as Stan Ashton was still her lovely dad? She supposed she should feel a nudge of sympathy for Joyce being faced with clear evidence of her husband’s infidelity, but it wasn’t easy. She was such a cold fish, so hard and brittle that Harriet couldn’t entirely blame her father for looking elsewhere. Maybe the girl had been kind to him. But something was puzzling her, something about this story didn’t ring quite true.
‘You say Dad didn’t even know her name, but you must’ve known it, or how else would you have been aware she had a child by him, or that she’d died in a bomb raid?’
Joyce glanced across at Rose, a glare which clearly said see what a mess you’ve got us all into. Rose didn’t meet her daughter’s gaze but kept her gaze on her empty soup bowl.
‘Well, of course he knew her name, in the end we all did. I meant he probably didn’t bother to ask it before he did the business. Typical!’
‘So what was it?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Her name. What was her name?’
Joyce drew in a sharp breath. ‘Good lord, I can’t remember her flaming name, not after all these years. I’m sure there were any number of women your wonderful father went out with. He wasn’t too fussy.’
Harriet lifted her chin. ‘Yet he always denied that.’
‘And you’d be a fool to believe him.’
‘He must have stuck by her all those months though, otherwise how would you know she’d been killed?’
Again that chilling silence before Joyce bit back. ‘Doesn’t that just prove what a lout he was to keep on seeing her, despite having a wife and son. Now do you see what I had to put up with?’
Desperate to discover all that she could, Harriet persisted with her interrogation. ‘So, what was she like then, this girl who was my real mother?’
‘She were a bitch,’ Grant put in, momentarily taking his eyes from his fish supper to turn his amused gaze upon Harriet.
‘How would you know, you were nobbut a babby?’ Rose snapped at him, quick as a lash.
Joyce got up from the table, smoothing her hands over her linen skirt as if to brush the matter away. ‘Grant is right, Mother. The daft girl slept with my husband, so don’t expect me to say anything nice about her, even if she was a – a friend of sorts.’
‘A friend?’ Harriet queried, but no one was listening to her.
‘She was a whore, nothing less.’
‘Nay, that’s coming a bit rich, even from you,’ Rose protested, her cheeks pink.
With a freezing glare Joyce looked down upon her mother where she sat all tight-lipped with one protective arm about her granddaughter. ‘When I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it.’
‘I’ve nowt to say save the truth,’ Rose shouted right back. ‘All right, the lass were mebbe no saint, but that doesn’t mean she was what you’ve just called her. And if your husband turned to . . . well . . . to another woman, we know he wasn’t entirely blameless, don’t we? I’ll admit that I never really took to Stan Ashton. He were a Catholic for one thing, and a Yorkshireman for another. Wrong religion and wrong side of the Pennines, and then for what he did . . . But he must’ve been soft in the head to wed you. I said from the start it were a bad mistake, but would you listen?’
‘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.�
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‘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?’
Lonely Teardrops (2008) Page 3