That'll Be the Day (2007) (16 page)

Worse, when it later turned out that Dulcie was also diabetic, the woman actually needed to be nursed and cared for, tablets and injections given, her food carefully weighed, her diet monitored. It was all so desperately trying that Helen thought she might scream.

Chapter Sixteen

It was a lovely spring day and the market looked brighter and cleaner than usual, the sun glistening through the market hall’s big windows. A stiff March breeze was blowing and the older women were closely wrapped in head scarves and the dullness of winter coats while young girls were more optimistically decked out in puff skirts, rainbow petticoats and Capri pants in striking tartans; many purchased from Dena’s own stall where she sat happily whirring her sewing machine, always ready with a smile or her tape measure to make something for a special occasion, or to help her customers choose exactly the right garment to suit them.

The sight of all this blaze of colour made Betty feel drab in her grey linsey-wool skirt and white blouse, although she’d never felt it right for a flower seller to compete with the glory of her precious chrysanthemums, her beautiful and proud daffs and tulips.

As the weeks and months had slipped by, Betty had become more and more depressed. Christmas came and went and apart from doing well on the stall selling dozens of holly wreaths and pots of cyclamen and hyacinths, there was little in her life to cheer her. The weather hadn’t helped, being the coldest foggiest winter in nearly a decade. Now, with spring coming even the familiar scents of the market, the enticing aroma of Poulson’s pies, the sharp tang of Barry Holmes’s stack of rosy apples and the sweetness of her flowers failed to lift her spirit.

Much of the time her heart was racing and she felt all shaky inside, really rather ill. Betty felt out of control, as if she were stuck on an express train that was heading straight for the edge of a cliff. She couldn’t concentrate on her work, the displays and bouquets she made up for her customers showing less flare and imagination than they had come to expect from a Betty Hemley arrangement.

‘Nay, what do you call this, a funeral wreath?’ her friend Winnie Holmes said to her one morning in that blunt way she had of saying exactly what she thought. She’d asked for a bunch of something cheerful for a sick friend and Betty had handed her six white lilies wrapped up in white tissue. ‘Is that the best you can do? She might not be feeling so grand but she’ll be at death’s door if she sees that lot.’

‘I’m doing my best.’

‘Well it’s not good enough. One look at that lot and she’ll expect the hearse along any minute.’

Betty looked at the ethereal waxy flowers and flushed with embarrassment. ‘Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. How do you feel about freesias? Lots of pretty colours there. I’ll put in a few chincherinchees an’ all. Expensive they are but I’ll give you a good price, and they last well. Known as Star of Bethlehem.’

‘Aye, well, at least the poor lass won’t want to cut her throat soon as she claps eyes on them. You don’t look much better yourself, chuck. Like a wet fortnight in Blackpool without a stick of rock in sight, and you’re as prickly as an hedgehog. It might be none of my business but you’re not yourself, Betty lass, that much is very plain.’

Betty made some excuse or other and sent Winnie on her way with an extra large bunch of her most colourful spring flowers but inside she did indeed feel bleak. She could see no way out. If only he’d never come back.

If only she’d moved the children miles away, down south, or emigrated to America. If she could’ve flown to the moon to avoid him, she would have done so. Betty blamed herself entirely for Ewan’s reappearance in their lives. If he weren’t so set on taking out his revenge on her he wouldn’t be bothering them at all.

Each morning when she woke, Betty would pray that this would be the day he’d grow tired of the game and be off on his travels again. Ewan Hemley never had been able to stay put for more than five minutes; his years in the Merchant Navy had increased his wanderlust rather than satisfied it, so surely he’d grow bored, go on his way and leave them in peace.

Or she’d pray that the kids might ask him to leave, though so far there was little evidence of that happening. They were too wrapped up in themselves as all youngsters were, Jake pestering her for a new van since the old one kept breaking down and Lynda out every night with young Terry.

But how much longer could she be expected to put up with Ewan’s presence in her house, listen to his criticisms, take his flaming orders, and daily witness the evidence of his vile manners. And Betty sensed that he was watching her just as closely. Some plan was being hatched in that evil little brain of his. She just wished she knew what it was.

Looking around this place that she loved, it seemed to Betty that people were relaxed and happy, taking their time as they strolled around the stalls, pausing to browse through dusty copies of Arthur Mee Encyclopedias, to examine a piece of cracked china, or gossip with friends. Betty envied them this freedom.

Gossip, of course, was the life blood of the market. Even Dena, loved as she was, remained a hot topic for speculation. She was still living with Winnie and Barry Holmes, still seeing Belle Garside’s boy and still causing outrage by refusing to marry him, even though she had one illegitimate daughter already.

Were people talking about her, Betty wondered? Did they imagine she’d happily welcomed her ex-husband into her home? At that opportune moment she spied Constable Nuttall on his walkabout and caught the young policeman’s attention by handing him a carnation.

‘What’s this?’ he laughed. ‘Bribery?’

‘It’s for later, when you go out on the town.’

‘A nice thought, Betty, but I’d never hear the last of it from my sergeant if I took to wearing flowers in my buttonhole. What is it you want? Is something wrong?’

‘Aye, you could say that. I’ve got a problem, Bill, and I thought you might be able to advise me on how best to deal with the matter.’ She told him then how Ewan Hemley, her ex-husband, had suddenly walked back into their lives and into her home.

‘Aye, I did notice you had a visitor.’

The constable listened patiently to Betty’s tale of woe, her plea for help, all about how he’d parked himself upon them and insisted on being waited on hand, foot and finger. ‘He’s been here for weeks – months - and shows no sign of leaving.’

‘Is your complaint that he refuses to contribute towards household expenses?’

‘No, it’s not just about money, though I’m sure he would start dipping into my purse if I was stupid enough to leave it lying around. I don’t want him here, living in my house. I hate the bastard, pardon my French. I need you to give him his marching orders, to get him out of it and make him leave. That’s the point, d’you see, it’s
my
house, not his, and I don’t want him here. I don’t want him anywhere near my kids.’

Constable Nuttall looked troubled. ‘But they’re
his
kids too Betty and if he claims he wants to get to know them a bit better, then surely that’s a good thing. Really quite a worthy cause.’

Betty battled against an instinctive urge to shout that there was nothing worthy about a man who put his hand down his daughter’s knickers when she was only five years old. But there were some things that were too private, too
dreadful
, to bring out into the cold light of day and share with strangers, even if they were the law.

‘He wants to plague
me,
to take his revenge on
me
for the fact I took them away from him, and got him into trouble at the time with the police. He doesn’t give a toss about them really.’

The policeman instantly became alert. ‘What sort of trouble?’

‘Petty thieving, illegal gambling. He’s not bright enough to do anything really bad, or to get away with it, but the police searched our house and found our cellar stuffed with the gear he’d nicked, so he says I shopped him.’

‘And did you?’

‘Happen! What difference does it make now? I wanted him out of our lives. Now he claims he’s served his time, probably more than once since I last saw him, and he’s going straight. If you believe that, you’ll believe pigs can fly.’

Constable Nuttall chewed on his lip for a moment, then drew Betty into the shadows behind the dustbins, out of the mêlée of customers and the noise of stallholders calling their wares. The smell of rotting vegetables was sharp in her nostrils but Betty paid not the slightest attention, her gaze riveted on the policeman, anxious to hear his every word.

‘I can certainly keep an eye on him, bearing in mind what you’ve just told me, and if you hear anything further about any current activities he becomes involved with, I’d be interested in that too. It goes without saying that all confidences would be respected. Anything you tell me is perfectly safe. He’d never hear from me that you’d grassed on him. No one would.’

Betty had a struggle not to let her impatience show. ‘I appreciate all of that, but this isn’t about Ewan’s career as a small-time crook, it’s my children I’m concerned about.’

‘Course you are, but you could be doing him a disservice, Betty love. I have to say that divorce is a tricky area and not one I’m expert in, to be honest. It’s not like this is a question of custody, is it? If he really is going straight and they are still his children, after all, his renewed interest in them must be seen as a good thing, so unless he’s actually assaulted someone or hurt them . . .’

‘He’s far too cunning for that, not till he’s got his feet well under our table, but a leopard doesn’t change his spots, as they say. He certainly
did
hurt them in the past when we were all together. That’s one of the reasons I divorced him, and it could all start all over again if we don’t get rid of him.’

Constable Nuttall sucked in his breath. ‘Tricky! I mean until he actually does do something . . . and, as I say, it’s not really my field. Have you got a restraining order against him to make him keep away?’

‘No, could I get one, even though Jake and Lynda are adults now?’ Betty felt a kindle of hope, which the policeman swiftly quenched.

‘Probably not. The judge would say that since Lynda’s . . . how old . . . in her mid-twenties anyway, that she was mature to make up her own mind. As is Jake in theory, although I accept that’s a harder one to swallow. Have you tried asking Ewan to leave?’

‘Course I have,’ Betty snapped.

‘And he refuses?’

‘He won’t budge an inch, and he’s talked Lynda and Jake round into taking his side. He’s biding his time, I tell you. Once he feels secure he’ll show his true colours and how will we stop him then, when it’s too late? You have to help me Bill. You must. I’m desperate!’

‘I’m sorry, Betty, I can understand and sympathise with your distress but there’s nothing I can do. He isn’t breaking any laws, d’you see?’

Oh, she saw all right, because that’s where the problem lay, with the law. No policeman was interested in a ‘domestic’, not in Betty’s experience. Women might have been considered worthy of helping to win the war but a man still maintained all the rights, over them and their kids.

When had anybody ever helped her? Certainly not the first time when she’d been in even more desperate straits with her children distressed and abused, and herself more battered than a piece of fried haddock. All of them: doctors, solicitors, magistrates, social workers and the police might have made all the right noises, but where was the practical assistance that a desperate woman needed in such a situation? Where were the shelters for a battered wife to go in order to escape from a violent husband?

Why was the only solution for abused children to take them into care away from the mother too, just because she didn’t have a safe place to take them to or money to feed them, even when she was innocent of any crime against them? And how could she possibly have any money when her husband didn’t give it to her and the state didn’t give a toss?

That was the kind of predicament Betty knew only too well, the one she’d been in the first time and got out of by shopping her husband to the police. Ewan Hemley had gone to jail and she’d sold every stick of furniture she possessed then taken her children and run for it.

Now here she was, thirteen years after fondly believing she’d finally succeeded in getting rid of him, and still running. The whole frightening scenario was starting up all over again.

‘Bloody men!’ Betty shouted at the shocked policeman. ‘You all support each other. I hate the flaming lot of you!’ Whereupon she stormed off in a fury, only to hide up a back alley and sob her heart out into her clean hanky.

When she was done crying and had mopped up her hot tears, Betty pushed back her shoulders and made a private vow. She’d battled and won against him the first time, and would do so again. She’d protect her precious kids, no matter what the cost.

Chapter Seventeen

Flowers were not much in evidence on Salford Docks where Leo was working. The canal was too slow a method of transport for anything which needed to be kept so fresh and sold before the tightly furled buds opened. But the business was not short of other products in need of shifting from place to place. These were boom times and Leo always felt stretched to the limit.

The docks were crowded with vessels and first thing every morning fleets of buses would arrive to unload hundreds of workers, not to mention a unending stream of men on bicycles, canvas bags strung across their backs carrying their sandwiches in a bait box. Unofficial visitors to the docks were strictly forbidden, because of the danger of overhead cranes and the unexpected movement of transport, or the operation of dangerous machinery.