Vinny, however, thought it all a huge joke, and was chuckling over her fussing and her frown of disapproval.
Afraid to take him to task over the issue in public, as this could provoke him into doing something really wild, like when he climbed on top of the bus shelter the other day, yelling at everyone, Harriet made him sit by the fountain while she went to buy a pot of tea and sandwiches. He hadn’t eaten a thing so far today, for all it was Sunday and supposedly a free day in which to enjoy themselves.
Later, after they’d enjoyed their snack, they lay on the grass while he kissed her, long and hard, and she melted inside as he held her close. He could be so gentle, so loving, she really didn’t understand why he would sometimes be unpredictable, so difficult at times.
Was it because of his terrible childhood, having been brought up largely in an institution, some dreadful orphanage or other, and then having been abused by one of the teachers? It was not surprising if it had made him deeply insecure and distrustful of everyone. She might complain about her own situation, but surely Vinny’s had been far worse. Unimaginable. Obviously that sort of thing left its mark.
Deep down the fear was growing that his problem was much more serious than that. If only she could stop him smoking, just for a week or two, then she could see if his health improved. She needed him to start sleeping and eating better, be less irascible.
‘I want to get some practice in later,’ he was telling her, as if she was preventing him from working. ‘I’m working on a new number, new to me that is: Stagger Lee, and I must get it right.
‘Of course you do, you’ve got a gig tonight, remember? I might pop over and see Nan, if you can spare me for an hour or two. I missed her last time.’ It didn’t surprise Harriet when he shook his head, saying he needed her by his side, as always. He never seemed to let her out of his sight for a minute these days.
Vinny was frowning at her through the hazy smoke of his cigarette, eyes half closed. ‘You aren’t thinking of leaving me, are you? I missed you when you were away the other day, babe. I kept thinking you might decide not to come back.’
Harriet laughed, instantly warming to his childish anxiety. ‘I’m glad you missed me but you’ve really no need to worry. I couldn’t wait to get back.’
‘You’re the only one who understands me, do you see, babe?’ he told her, his voice tender. ‘And I’m the only one who understands the band, and the music. We make a good team.’
‘Of course we do.’
She’d already shown him the forms: the one which Joyce had readily signed, and the license she’d got from the Register Office, all duly filled in and waiting only for his signature. But it hadn’t seemed to penetrate in his mind that this meant they could now go ahead with the wedding. Harriet didn’t want to be the one to make the arrangements. That should be Vinny’s task, surely. So she was patiently waiting for him to offer.
‘Why would I want to stay in Champion Street when I have you?’
He tucked a blond curl behind her ear, punctuating his next words by raining little kisses all over her face and throat. ‘You might want to go back to that secretarial course, to your precious market, to the hair salon and your nan, even if Joyce isn’t your real mother.’
Embarrassed someone might see them kissing, she moved a little away from him. ‘Why would I? And aren’t we about to be married, so we’ll be together always then? It’s just that I didn’t get to see Nan.’ She was kicking herself for not having gone over to Irma’s, if only to make sure Joyce was telling the truth. What if Nan had suffered another stroke, or a bad turn, would Joyce even tell her? ‘That’s why I thought I’d take the bus over this evening, just for an hour, but I won’t if you don’t want me to. Or we could go over together, tomorrow if you like? You could visit Hall’s Music shop, have a lovely rummage through their huge selection of sheet music.’
Vinny seemed to perk up at this. ‘Aw, and isn’t that a grand idea? And I could call in and see me little sister, Sal. I’d like that.’
‘That’s a lovely idea, then you could properly meet Nan, at last.’
The smile instantly faded. ‘Aw no, if you get involved with family again, you might change your mind, and decide to stay with them. And what would your lovely nan say about this?’ Vinny queried, lightly patting her rounded belly, clearly indicating her pregnancy.
Harriet paled. She’d forgotten for a moment that although Joyce was aware of her condition, it was by no means certain she’d told Nan. The shame of her stepdaughter’s condition would have hit Joyce hard, and Harriet was still unmarried.
Vinny lay back on the grass, chuckling to himself, but at least he hadn’t lit up another spliff.
Harriet smiled shyly at him, tickling his nose with a daisy. ‘Perhaps we’ll wait a little longer then, so that the next time I visit my family you can come with me as my husband. Would that be better? More appropriate, don’t you think? And you might feel more secure too. Anyway, what are we waiting for? Let’s get on with it, shall we? I think you just have to sign this form somewhere,’ and she handed him a pen.
Ever perverse, Vinny didn’t take it from her but abruptly sat up, brushing her aside. ‘Are you sure trailing around with the band is a good idea? Particularly now, with a baby coming.’
‘Don’t be silly, of course it is. I want to be with you. What’s all this? You’ve just said you can’t bear to be parted from me, now you question why I’m even here? You aren’t having doubts, are you?’ Oh, she did hope not.
A few seconds passed before Vinny answered, and even then his tone was no longer soft and sexy, but hard and mocking. ‘Maybe you already care about this baby more than me.’
‘Now you’re being silly, it isn’t even born yet. Goodness, look at the time. You should be getting ready for the next gig. Where is it tonight? The St Philips Hotel on Oldfield Road, isn’t it? We’d best get going.’
Vinny pulled out another cigarette, half talking to himself. ‘I don’t feel in the mood for making music tonight. I need to be quiet, and alone. I’ve got things to work out in my head, matters I need to plan.’ A note of caution had crept into his voice and Harriet frowned.
‘What things? What plans?’
‘I’ve just told you. I’ve explained. Weren’t you listening to anything I said? Why don’t you listen?’ He was shouting now, causing heads to turn and people to look at him, puzzled.
‘You aren’t making any sense, Vinny. Come on, love, let’s get back. You’re going to be late.’
He became suddenly angry. ‘I’ve told you, I’m not going to any damn gig! You’ll have to ring and cancel.’
Harriet was aghast. ‘Oh, no, not again! We’ve cancelled so many lately. This will ruin us. There are cinemas and pubs closing every week in Salford, any amount of demolition going on with all these new flats and houses being built. We’re lucky to get the booking at all. We certainly can’t afford to lose it.’
‘You’ll do as I tell you,’ he roared. ‘I’m in charge, not you, and I say cancel!’ Then he marched back to the hotel in a silent fury, flung himself on to the bed and refused to leave it, or speak another word for the next twenty-four hours.
Harriet was seriously alarmed. Vinny’s moods were growing ever more erratic, changing as swiftly as if someone had flicked a switch. It certainly didn’t improve in the days and weeks following, even after he’d recovered from his latest sulk and was thumping out tunes with a skill and dexterity that was astonishing, almost as if nothing untoward had occurred. Harriet didn’t dare mention how furious the manager of the pub had been when she’d gone round personally to apologise, making the excuse Vinny was ill.
‘That’s the last booking he gets off me.’
Sadly, this was by no means the last cancellation either in the coming weeks. Even the other band members began to grow concerned, and urged Harriet to do something about it.
‘I’m trying, but you know how difficult he can be at times.’
Vinny was in such a strange mood she didn’t
even try to raise the subject of the marriage licence again, nor suggest going to see her nan. Everything she said was wrong. And she didn’t feel well in herself, nauseous for most of the day, not just in the mornings, and lethargic and strangely tearful at the same time. She needed Vinny to take better control of things, to comfort her for a change, but he seemed oblivious to everyone else’s troubles. Whenever Harriet attempted to discuss the number of people they’d let down he’d sink into deeper depression, refuse to discuss it, or just shout at her.
His behaviour tonight was typical. When she’d gently pointed out that they were running short of money, he studiously refused to discuss the problem. He just snorted with laughter as if at some private joke, and, as always, lit up another stinking weed.
‘You’re never satisfied, you. I wonder sometimes why you bother to stick around. A chick like you, all decent and proper and well brought up, a good girl, slumming it with a rough sort of guy like me, you must be bored out of your mind. Why not go back to good old Stevey boy?’
Harriet fleetingly wondered why she didn’t. It would be so much less complicated. Vinny was becoming impossible. It was a constant battle to get him to concentrate on anything. He might talk wildly about success, of plans and dreams and things he needed to sort out, but trying to pin down exactly what he was thinking or feeling about anything was quite beyond her. Harriet never quite knew where she was with him.
And he still hadn’t got round to signing those forms.
But did she really want him to? Did she want to spend her life trailing after the band with a baby in tow, worrying about what Vinny was up to half the time? Was Irma right when she suggested some man, Vinny himself perhaps, was blocking her happiness? Harriet felt a knot of anxiety rise up from the pit of her stomach, threatening to choke her.
She couldn’t think clearly, and was experiencing serious doubts over marrying him. Yet what choice did she have? Joyce had made her opinion on Harriet’s situation very clear on her last visit to the salon. She’d felt like a pariah in her own home.
And the very idea of coping alone, of bearing a child who would be forced to go through life with the shameful stigma of illegitimacy attached, exactly as she herself was suffering, was unthinkable. And despite Steve’s protestations of loyalty he would never have her back, not with another man’s child in her belly. Nobody wanted her. Nobody liked her. She didn’t even like herself very much.
Vinny suddenly got to his feet. ‘I’m off out.’
‘But it’s past midnight.’
‘So? I like going out at night. I like walking, just looking at the stars, or sitting by the canal playing my guitar. Don’t you ever want to do something wild and exciting, something dangerous and thrilling? An adventure.’
Harriet went to him and put her arms about his neck. ‘Of course I do. Didn’t I choose to do exactly that when I agreed to join you in this adventure?’ Wanting to please him, she gave him a long, sensual kiss, curling her tongue round his, losing herself in the ecstasy of the moment. As they broke apart she smiled at the wicked twinkle that came into those green-gold eyes. ‘Happier now?’
‘Oh yes,‘ he murmured.
‘Good.’ She drew him back to bed, making him lie down and covering him with the sheet, snuggling in beside him to wrap her arms about him as if he were a child. ‘Maybe I too needed a bit of fizz putting into my life, but we’ve done that, haven’t we?’ She wanted to go on to say it was time now for them to settle down and be more grown up and sensible, but couldn’t quite get the words out.
He was chuckling to himself, as if at some private joke in his head. ‘A bit of fizz, that’s it exactly. Maybe we should be even more adventurous, what do you think? I’ll maybe ask Shelley if she has any suggestions.’
Harriet frowned. ’Why involve Shelley? What’s it got to do with her what we do?’
‘Shelley can be very inventive. Haven’t you noticed?’
Curled in the crook of his arm, intent only on calming him, Harriet wasn’t sure where this conversation was leading, but she was mildly concerned. She rolled over on to her back to gaze up at him so that she could more carefully study his expression. But it was perfectly bland, as unreadable as ever, and then his eyelids drooped closed and the next instant he was fast asleep, snoring gently.
Harriet’s heart had begun a slow pounding as she thought of all the nights when Vinny wasn’t beside her in whatever hotel room they were occupying at the time. She’d always assumed he was with the lads, but what if he wasn’t? What if he was with Shelley on all those nights she’d believed him to be innocently strumming his guitar? Oh, lord, she did hope not.
A night or two later, as she helped her friend to get ready for the next gig in the cramped washrooms of some seedy pub, Harriet resolved to ask her straight out. The thought of Shelley and Vinny together had become a nagging worry at the back of her mind.
‘Can I ask you a question?’
‘Sure, fire away.’
‘Are you and Vinny lovers?
Shelley looked startled, and then burst out laughing, as if Harriet had cracked some sort of joke. ‘Would it matter if we were?’
Harriet stiffened, could sense herself sounding all disapproving like some sort of maiden aunt. ‘It might.’
‘I thought you and me were best friends,’ Shelley said, briskly brushing out her dark cropped curls till they seemed to stand on end. ‘And friends share everything, don’t they?’
‘Not their men, they don’t.’
Shelley stabbed at her lips with a pale pink lipstick. With those huge Bambi eyes, and elfin hair cut, she looked positively frail, more like a child. Yet she was anything but. She only had to start singing, with that throbbing husky voice of hers, and men fell at her feet, shivering with desire. ‘Anyway, I thought you weren’t in love with Vinny.’
‘I’m not!’ Even as Harriet issued the hot denial it sounded strangely hollow and unconvincing. Who was she kidding? If she didn’t love him, why did she stay? Because he made her feel wanted maybe? Yet it seemed nothing like the love she’d felt for Steve.
Shelley shrugged her shoulders as she began to apply violet blue eye shadow. ‘Well then, if you don’t love him, what does it matter who else he might be sleeping with?’
This wasn’t at all the response Harriet had hoped for, or expected, and her voice trembled with anger as she answered. ‘Maybe because I believe a bloke should be faithful to the girl he’s dating, that he should only go out with one person at a time.’
Shelley applied a line of kohl above and below her black spiky lashes, and giggled. ‘What a funny, old fashioned girl you are. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t claim not to be in love with a guy and yet want him all to yourself.’
‘Why can’t I? That’s the decent way of going about things, certainly in my book.’
‘Oh, well then, if you say it’s the decent thing to do, it must be, mustn’t it? You’re the one who’s an expert on morals.’
Grabbing hold of Shelley’s arm Harriet gave the other girl a furious shake. ‘This isn’t some silly joke that we can all have a good laugh about. This is my life, my future!’ It crossed her mind to confess about her pregnancy, but at the last moment something held her back, a need for privacy perhaps. ‘You leave Vinny alone, right? He’s mine.’
Shelley shook her off, instinctively tweaking her fly-away curls and checking her lipstick, as she’d be out there singing before a drunken audience in less than five minutes. ‘Making claims on him now, are you? You really are a glutton for punishment. Living on dreams, more like. Trying to turn Vinny Turner into something he isn’t and never could be.’
‘And what exactly do you mean by that?’
‘Nothing, nothing at all.’
‘Well, just you remember, Vinny and me are planning a future together, so you keep your grasping little mitts off my man. Right?’
‘Ooer! I’m shaking in my shoes.’
‘Go and chase Duffy instead. He’s not choosy about which girls he s
leeps with, and leave Vinny alone or you’ll have me to deal with.’
Shelley moved away from the mirror, dusting a few traces of powder from the tight shirtwaister dress she was wearing. At the door of the washroom she paused, smiling as she issued her parting words. ‘Vinny Turner is great fun, but as for planning a future with him, I’d think again if I were you. However, if you’re determined you want him, love, you can have him and welcome. He’s all yours, and good luck to you.’
So why, when her erstwhile friend sashayed into the bar lounge to a huge round of cheering and applause, didn’t Harriet feel more elated by her victory?
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Joyce was as determined to save her reputation, as obsessed by her desire to keep her good name unsullied, as she’d been all those years ago when first married to Stan. Keeping her son on the straight and narrow had been difficult enough, and now Harriet had let her down badly. Was any woman more beset with problems than she?
She was back-combing Patsy Bertalone’s hair when her son came in, giving Patsy’s usually sleek, silver blonde hair some lift on the crown to make it more stylish. Grant was doing a bit of portering for Leo Catlow so at last had a regular income coming in. Since it was Friday, his mother told him to leave his contribution towards the housekeeping on the kitchen table.
Grant mumbled a protest, though not very loud. His mother could be soft as butter with him at times, but never when it came to money. He had to pay his whack; his board, as she called it. Which was a nuisance considering how much it cost him to take part in the nightly card games he and his mates enjoyed playing.
‘Have you seen your grandmother by any chance, son?’ Joyce asked, in that mincing way she had of speaking in front of her clients.
Grant shook his head. ‘There’s a meeting going on at the market hall, so I expect that’s where she is. Putting in her four pennyworth.’
Lonely Teardrops (2008) Page 24